For some time I’ve been troubled by the role of worship at Amazing Grace. Worship is a strength for us, in my view. It is an asset for sure. But when you look at how we spend our money and time, worship out-weighs most every other aspect of ministry.
I’ve kept this concern to myself, since it seems downright anathema to question the role of worship for a Lutheran church. Worship is at the heart of our life together. Our Lutheran tradition emphasizes Word and Sacrament, that is, the Bible, baptism and communion. These are pillars that hold up the capitals, so to speak.
In the 1990’s, it made sense for Amazing Grace to center its focus on worship. There were new people coming to our area. Worship was how people got introduced and integrated to our community. If worship didn’t go well, the church didn’t grow.
But when we consider how things have changed in our time and place (see my articles below), I’m seeing how we at Amazing Grace need to emphasis other aspects of the Christian walk other than that of worship.
Worship has long been a subject of great concern at Amazing Grace. We live in the tension of whether or not our worship service is “seeker friendly”, meaningful, relevant, faith-enhancing or sleep inducing.
Many Lutheran churches have wrestled with the “contemporary vs. traditional” question of worship, with congregations often splitting into two services, one traditional, one contemporary, allowing worshipers to go to their respective corners. For a variety of reasons Amazing Grace has not made this split, for better or worse. Amazing Grace has engaged such questions in the past, but as of today remains settled in these two ways.
1) We like variety in worship. Doing the same thing week after week is not what we want.
2) We embrace our liturgical heritage. We worship in the classic pattern of the Lutheran church, commonly called the “liturgy” (the stuff we do such as the Greeting, Kyrie, Great Thanksgiving, etc). We may use different instruments and styles of music, but the liturgical pattern remains the same.
I am at peace with these two convictions. For a variety of reasons which I will likely need to explain in a future post, I think these are sound convictions from which we frame our approach to worship.
There are some in our midst who are at least raising questions about how we worship, and it is okay to raise those questions and for us to discuss them.
However, the purpose of this entry is to say this: before we enter the many questions pertaining to worship, look at how few children we have in Sunday school. Consider our youth. Ask parents of high schoolers how much we have to offer their children. Consider how much time we spend on worship compared to how much time we spend serving and helping others.
One could make the argument that the worship question is connected to the youth and service questions. That if we had “better” worship (however you want to define that) we would be better off overall. I remain unconvinced by this argument.
But I have another way of seeing our situation. Yes, worship is important and crucial to our life together. But so is expanding and improving other aspects of our ministry, specifically the areas of helping others and helping families.
The struggles we are experiencing have more to do with our losing track of these two important areas of ministry, not what form of worship we are doing.
Worship does not have to be the primary conduit to our congregation. We can build something new, a new way people can come and learn about our church, through a ministry other than worship. For many of you readers, this is a new way to think about church. But it is one that holds promise.