Intergenerational

Dorris the Worshipper

Post a Comment » Written on February 1st, 2013     
Filed under: Guest Post, Intergenerational, Music, Stories

Today’s post was written by Nathan Albert. It was originally published in two parts (here and here) on his blog, it seems to me… Nathan is the Pastor of Student Ministries at Christ Church in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Previously, he was the collegelife coordinator with University Ministries at North Park University in Chicago, IL and has also worked as the Director of Pastoral Care with The Marin Foundation. Nathan earned his Master of Divinity from North Park Theological Seminary where he focused his thesis on the biblical scholarship pertaining to homosexuality. He is a licensed minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church, an avid thumb wrestler, and excited to spend the rest of his life with his lovely fiancee Kate. Follow him on Twitter at @nathanalbert.

Last spring, I attended a church on the East Coast. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and I arrived to the church service a little late. It’s inside a school, and there were hundreds of people singing along to songs as I entered.

The church service was by no means a Pentecostal service, but people occasionally clapped, raised their arms, and swayed to the tunes. It’s a place where you felt safe and welcomed.

In the front row was an elderly woman. (If you don’t know, I have an affinity to cute old people. They warm my heart.) I later learned her name was Dorris, and she was a survivor of the Holocaust. She was dressed to the nines in a red dress. Next to her was her cane and, on each side of her, a friend.

As the final song was being sung, Dorris happened to catch my eye. There was her cane leaning on the chair next to her. Dorris was standing with arms raised completely above her head in worship. And around Dorris’ waist was her friend’s arm, willingly holding her up to worship.

It brought me to tears.

Here was an elderly woman so in love with God that she risked falling in order that she could worship the God that saved her. In that moment, nothing else mattered to her but worshiping her God. And there was a woman next to her who loved Dorris so much that she would do anything so that her friend Dorris might be able to worship the God who saved her. In that moment, nothing else mattered but holding her friend up so she might worship.

It was beautiful. And a blog post may not adequately explain what I saw in that moment. But it was beautiful. I promise.

I hope I become a person who will do whatever it takes so that my loved ones can freely worship God. And I hope that I will have people in my life that will do whatever it takes so that I can freely worship God. Even if that means holding me up so I can worship like Dorris.

Recently, I was fortunate to have a short conversation with Dorris the Worshiper. Although brief, it was packed with wisdom. Although introductory, it was full of experience. And although a conversation in passing, it was one I shall not forget.

After simple greetings, I asked her how long she had been a part of the church and how long she had been a Christian. Through her accent, she reminisced about how her parents raised her Catholic and allowed her to partake in the Eucharist as a child. She went on to mention how she attended this particular church and had been hooked from day one. She comes to worship and always sits in the front rows because she loves the music.

With a smile upon her face, she concluded the conversation by saying that she comes to church in order “to see my Jesus.”

“I want to see my Jesus,” said Dorris.

As I stood in the back of the sanctuary, I watched Dorris the Worshiper in the front row enjoy the music.

I watched Dorris the Worshiper as she saw her Jesus.

In that moment, I think I saw Jesus too.  And it was pretty cool.

 



Our Churches: Bethany Covenant Church – Mount Vernon, Washington

Post a Comment » Written on November 13th, 2012     
Filed under: Architecture, Better Together, Choral, Culture, Intergenerational, Local Church, Our Churches, Style of Worship, Vocation and Call

We continue our series of posts here on the Worship Connect blog profiling individual Covenant churches. Our purpose is to celebrate God’s work in and through us, to demonstrate the diversity of approaches to worship in the ECC, and to prompt prayer for one another. We are better together.

Our latest post comes to us from Randall Wilkens Associate Pastor of Worship and the Arts at Bethany Covenant Church in Mount Vernon, WA.

About 30 years ago, the congregation of Bethany Covenant Church decided it was time to move out of their small neighborhood church building. They had outgrown it—maybe not so much in numbers as in vision—and they wanted to ramp-up their outreach and visibility in the community. So this church of about 250 members bought five acres in a developing area of town and made plans to build. The first phase of the multi-phase project would include a sanctuary with a capacity of 780, about three times the church’s membership! It would seem this little church didn’t plan to stay little!

When the new sanctuary was completed in 1987, it was immediately the premiere performance space in the Mount Vernon area, and remained so until 2005 when McIntyre Hall was built on the campus of Skagit Valley College. The sanctuary’s sloped wooden ceiling and curved sheetrock walls were designed in consultation with an acoustic engineer, with ever-pleasing results. The room has often been used by school bands, community choirs, and other concert groups. It continues to be the venue for our church’s annual Christmas Musical—drawing an audience of 1,200 over two nights—and for other concert outreaches the church undertakes throughout the year. And of course it is used for worship multiple times each week—both for our own traditional and contemporary services, and for multiple services of a Russian congregation that rents the building.

A lot can change in 25 years. When Bethany’s sanctuary was built, contemporary worship was not yet common in evangelical churches. So despite the fact the sanctuary platform is almost 80 feet wide from the baptistry on one end to the choir loft on the other, it never seems to have quite the right space for a worship band. And while the forward-thinking congregation made sure a projection screen was installed, they never envisioned it would be used every Sunday, so it was designed to disappear into the floor most of the time. When raised it was about two stories high, so the unused bottom half eventually had to be concealed to prevent it from dominating the room like a huge white monolith. When that screen accidentally tore five years ago, its demise provided us an opportunity for a welcome upgrade!

Other changes have been made over the years and still others are planned. All the major components of the sound system have been replaced over the past ten years. As recently as last summer a new production booth was completed—housing new Mac computers and video equipment donated by a member of the congregation. Plans are underway to replace the mauve carpet with something more up-to-date, and to modify the platform to better serve current worship needs. Those worship needs continue to be those of a multi-generational congregation which values traditional and contemporary worship equally, supporting both with just about equal attendance.

On the contemporary side, Bethany Covenant struggled in the past to find its voice. In planting a church several years ago, we were depleted of many of our best contemporary worship musicians. Yet we have not given up on the conviction that contemporary worship is needed for an effective outreach and to give expression to younger generations of worshipers. We have persevered, and that perseverance has paid off, as we are now blessed with an influx of young worship musicians whose leadership has brought more vitality to our contemporary worship service.On the traditional side, Bethany Covenant has a long-standing heritage of choral music, and still has a fine 35-voice adult choir, along with successful youth, children’s, and bell choirs. We are blessed to have a 9-foot Steinway concert grand that’s used for everything from classical piano pieces to accompaniment for our resident gospel quartet. And this weekend we will dedicate a brand new, 3-manual custom Allen organ. This instrument is unique; there is not another like it anywhere in the world. Everything from the individually-selected stops on its French terraced console to the 34-channel audio system, promises years of beautiful music devoted the glory and majesty of our God. The organ even features a MIDI module that will make it a useful instrument for contemporary worship.

There is always a concern that when a church has two unique services it will just end up as two congregations meeting in the same building. That doesn’t seem to have happened at Bethany Covenant. A Christian formation hour between the services gives the whole congregation a chance to grow in their faith together. Fellowship dinners on Wednesday nights provide opportunities for the whole church family to sit down to a meal together. “Festival services” several times a year bring everyone together in one gathering where traditional and contemporary styles are integrated. These gatherings happen around some of the most important times in the life of our church: our fall Ministry Fair, Christmas, Easter, and Confirmation Sunday. In the opinion of our church’s worship pastor (the writer of this article!) gathering like this as one body to worship our Lord is like a little taste of heaven!



Our Churches: Community Covenant Church – Lenexa, Kansas

3 comments Written on November 6th, 2012     
Filed under: Better Together, Church History, Intergenerational, Local Church, Missional, Our Churches, Vocation and Call

We continue our series of posts here on the Worship Connect blog profiling individual Covenant churches. Our purpose is to celebrate God’s work in and through us, to demonstrate the diversity of approaches to worship in the ECC, and to prompt prayer for one another. We are better together.

Our latest post comes to us from Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at Community Covenant Church in Lenexa, KS.

It’s kind of like trying to pour a concrete foundation in the middle of an earthquake.

Culture in the West is changing; the new realities are that 50% of the congregation attend 50% of the time, 25% attend 25% of the time, and a faithful 25% attend 75% of the time or more. The culture in the Kansas City Metro Area is no different, and it’s a challenge for our community. AsBaby Boomers transition into a new era of taking care of aging parents, as Gen-Xers are confronted with the increasing demands of sports for their kids on Sunday, and as college-aged and young adults migrate away from the Church in droves, we can’t help but notice that the earthquake is not being kind. Given that our entire pastoral staff has changed in the last five years, and given our rather large building, you’d think the deck was stacked against us.

Think again.

The people of Community Covenant Church of Lenexa, KS, are learning how to be cultural architects in these new realities. As the missional conversation has taken ahold of us, we have been well-positioned to become missionaries to our local contexts because we already think of ourselves as a big family: our (rather talented) choir is the biggest small group in our church; our pastoral team, while all new to the Covenant (and all in orientation at the same time this last year), have become good friends with a deep respect for the diverse gifts the others bring to the table; most of our volunteer base is, while busy, very dedicated to each other and the community they serve.

It’s a good place in which to be.

While there are the inevitable cultural conflicts, we recognize that these are what come in the midst of such a diverse community. Ethnically we are fairly homogenous (though this does tend to reflect our context), but in so many other ways we reflect a wide variety of ages, socioeconomic statuses, political affiliations, family backgrounds, and of course, artistic preferences.

We hold two different worship gatherings on Sunday morning that sandwich a Christian Formation hour (the new fancy term for “Sunday School”). The traditional gathering at 8:45 incorporates hymnody (led by voice, choir, organ and piano), liturgy, and tends towards a more conservative, reserved, formal flavor. Many of the regular attenders here reflect the heritage of our church family, families (now grandparents, parents, and children) who have been attending since the very beginning of our charter. The modern gathering at 11:00 is in many ways opposite in flavor; the music is generally upbeat, led by a band (that changes weekly; sometimes by a single guitar and voice, but more often by a full team with electric, acoustic, bass, multiple keyboards, drums, violin, and flute).

The sanctuary itself was built eight years ago with the traditional gathering in mind, incorporating stained glass, pews, and a full choir loft. Modular lighting is very valuable to us, as it gives us the ability to create a more colorful environment for our modern gathering, but maintain the traditional look of the sanctuary for the early gathering. It also gives us more flexibility when the space is used by many outside groups, but also by the preschool we run and by the College Prep school that utilizes our building all five days of the work week.

Through all of this, what has been most valuable has been our processing through Reggie Joiner’s book Think Orange with our staff and many in our council. To sum it up, when the light of the gospel in the Church (yellow) is combined with the loving hearts of families (red) we get an orange partnership. This has led us to retask one of our pastors to Family Ministry, to renovate our children’s wing to better reflect the culture and needs of the children themselves, and to regularly incorporate the full family of Jesus into our worship gatherings (“Orange Sundays”  or “Family Sundays” ) and into events throughout the year such as our “Illuminate” event at Christmas, our “Fall Light Festival” at Halloween, and our Tenebrae and Easter Gatherings. Both incorporate all generations – the full family – in diverse ways, such as fellowship, worship through song, games, artistic presentations, and of course, food.

Lots and lots of food.

We are still learning. Our pastors have weekly meetings to discuss the ongoing project of casting (and re-casting) the compelling vision God is slowly revealing to us; we’re experimenting with meeting schedules, new ministry formats, and church leadership models; we’re reading – a lot – and we’ve joined a cohort of other pastors in the KC Metro area who are in the same boat as we are. I’m often overwhelmed thinking about the enormity of the task before us.

But as I’ve written before, God is doing a mighty work among us.

And I, for one, am thrilled to be a part of it.



Orange

4 comments Written on May 25th, 2012     
Filed under: Better Together, Books, Culture, Intergenerational, Leadership

Today’s post was written by Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at Community Covenant Church in Lenexa, KS.

 

[Think Orange]

Our church recently went orange.

If you’ve never heard of orange before, you ought to go have a look at Reggie Joiner’s book Think Orange. In a nutshell, when the light of Christ preached in the Church (yellow) and the heart of the family (red) are combined in the right way, amazing things happen for all involved; we become orange. When the Church partners with the family, everyone benefits; children, teens, college and post-college-aged men and women, singles, couples, parents, and seniors all learn from each other and grow together. When the walls are broken down between cultures, between the silos of ministry, and between generations, the Church moves closer to being who she was created to be. There’s just one catch:

It’s hard.

Actually, no. It’s REALLY hard.

It’s also something that is becoming increasingly necessary in the new realities in which our churches in America find themselves (though one might argue, it’s always been important and maybe a lot of us forgot). Parents are incredibly busy bringing their kids to a larger and larger array of extracurricular activities (mostly sports, sadly, many of which are increasingly held on Sunday mornings) and thus have little time to volunteer. Church as a body gathered is becoming less of a priority for some, while for others the demands of job, work, or career keep them moving so much that Sunday is the only respite they get from being on the move. And so Sunday gatherings are facing declining attendance, even as the membership numbers are increasing and even (in some cases) as financial situations are oddly stable. From one statistic, 50% attend 50% of the time, 25% attend 25% of the time, and the rest attend around 75% of the time. And all the while, each of these groups still see our local church as their spiritual home.

It’s a weird world we’re living in.

It can be frustrating.

Church + FamilyThe challenge for us as pastors is to be mindful of the new realities, this terra nova that we’re exploring, and to pioneer new ways of doing the old principles – community, discipleship, and worship – in a world we weren’t expecting to live in and doesn’t live inside the tidy little boxes we were trained to use. In a world that is busier and busier, it is more and more important for the Church to enact its calling as both sabbath culture and as missionary culture, one that both gathers and sends, and become orange. We the church have a Word, often countercultural, for our people; but they have real challenges to face, and the world of the Church doesn’t always feel like it has solutions for those challenges. So when we think the world is becoming hard, our families are facing that difficulty tenfold. So instead of seeing our people as fighting us, we must see ourselves as the spiritual mentors, examples, and even change agents that we are and come alongside families to learn together what it means to be disciples of Jesus today.

And a family, by the way, is what the Church IS; an intergenerational, intercultural, interdenominational family. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s busy. It’s full of weird brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and everybody in-between. And yet, that’s what we have going for us:

We’re still in this together.

Only one question for you today: how can we best resource the families in our congregations to be holy, grace-filled missionaries in today’s changing world?



Innovation vs. Comfort

3 comments Written on March 30th, 2012     
Filed under: Intergenerational, Leadership, Music, Style of Worship

Today’s post comes to us from Kim Aliczi, a worship leader and member at Trinity Covenant Church in Manchester, CT.

Ten years ago, during the adoption of our youngest son, my husband and I ended up spending Easter in Russia – without our other two children, away from our church, our family, our friends – but with a young Baptist missionary couple. We had been in the country for over 2 weeks, I was homesick and heartsick, and thankfully they invited us to worship in their small apartment that Easter morning. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the music I wanted to sing was not Darlene Zschech or Chris Tomlin – or whoever else was “cool” in worship circles at that time. All I wanted to hear played, all I wanted to sing at the top of my lungs were the old hymns – and as I tearfully choked my way through “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” which was accompanied on their little, out of tune spinet, I experienced one of the most beautiful and memorable Easter Sunday services I’ve ever been a part of. Continue Reading »



Sacrifice

5 comments Written on July 22nd, 2011     
Filed under: Culture, Formation, Intergenerational, Local Church, Multicultural, Music, Style of Worship, Uncategorized

This week on the ECC Worship forum we welcomed several new members, discussed practicalities such as presentation software (Pro Presenter was the overwhelming consensus), and even discussed (at some length) the complexities of music and its relationship to taste; much like garage sales, it seems that what may be one person’s ear ache is another’s inspiration.

It was a strong reminder that music is an intensely cultural commodity, and while there is not a single culture on earth that does NOT have music, its form varies quite a bit from culture to culture. From the drums of Africa to the sitars of India to the organs of Europe to the guitars of America and Australia, music takes on many, many forms, and even within cultures one may find a plethora of styles and tastes. As our world shrinks, these styles collide with one another, with near-infinite possibilities and combinations. Continue Reading »



sundry things…

1 Comment » Written on July 9th, 2011     
Filed under: Architecture, Arts, Better Together, Intergenerational, Leadership, Liturgy, Local Church, Multicultural, Music, Order of Worship, Resources for Worship, Style of Worship, Technical Arts, Theology, Visual Arts
Tags: , , , , ,

It’s been a busy week over on the Better Together Facebook page for lead worshippers and those who think about worship in the Covenant. Many things were discussed; I used the word ‘sundry’ above, but now realize that can mean ‘trivial’ or ‘unimportant’. I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to make up your own mind how trivial these are.  A brief survey of the topics includes:

Heritage Hymns (“how did you get to be a worship pastor when you don’t know………..?” fill in the title of your favorite Swedish hymn or song)

“when will the HymnBook/Book of Worship be available/searchable online?” Continue Reading »



Telling Each Other’s Story (But NO Anonymous Song Requests)

1 Comment » Written on June 9th, 2009     
Filed under: Intergenerational, Leadership, Liturgy, Music, Order of Worship, Resources for Worship, Songwriting, Style of Worship, Uncategorized, Writing and blogging
Allow me to share an idea that’s been helpful in our church. It has done much to lessen the “worship wars” that sometimes happen because of stylistic preferences.  See what you think.
We ask people to recommend songs that “God has used to touch your life.”  People get to request a song that would like the worship team to lead sometime in the future, but each person has to include his or her name. No anonymous song requests. And only one or two songs per person.

At the close of a song (we usually project the lyrics) the congregation would see something like:

“This is one of __________ favorite worship songs.”

For example: (We don’t project the stuff written after in italics…)

“Big House”
This is one of Elizabeth’s Thompson’s favorite worship songs. (Elizabeth is our 5 year old daughter.)

“Because He Lives”
This is one of Bob Floyd’s favorite worship songs. (Bob is our 60 something Leadership Team chair)

There are often a number of names listed after a song.

We’ve found the naming names helps people to see why this song fits for our church. You might not like the song yourself, but if you know that God has used it to touch someone else in the congregation, and who, you get over that more quickly, rather than gripe and complain about how you’re convinced God doesn’t like the song. (It’s amazing how often God hates all the things you happen to hate isn’t it?)

We’ve had services where “In the Garden” is in the same worship set as “Jesus Freak.”  And strangely enough, it fits for us.

Rooting for you,

Andrew



We Are What We Eat (But We Become What We Sing)

2 comments Written on June 3rd, 2009     
Filed under: Articles, Books, Culture, Dangerous Worship, Intergenerational, Local Church, Music, Prayer, Songwriting, Theology, Writing and blogging
Last Sunday one of the members of our worship team, a 15 year old girl, lead the worship band and the congregation in singing the song “Whatever You’re Doing” written by the band Sanctus Real. Lead by her, it was so authentic, and sung with such passion, that across all ages and musical background/tastes, everyone was able to relate and enter into the experience of the song. It was a reflection of the story of her faith and the remarkable “awakening” that has taken place in her life over the past two year as her faith has come alive, a journey that many in the congregation have been able to share with her. There were few dry eyes.

I would not be surprised if this song continues to be a regular in our worship vocabulary, because it touched the congregation so deeply.

This also got me thinking. This is how songs shape us. A moving song reflects God’s work in our midst, and then lives on to shape the language by which we relate to God in the future. In  the future, people in our church will relate to God with the metaphor of peace in the midst of “chaos,” in part because they related to this girl’s experience as expressed in song – and the way they experienced God in the musical retelling of the story.

This song, and the way we experienced it, will influence our theology.

If you tell me the song themes your church sings the most right now, I’ll tell you what your church’s core theology will be in the future. We become what we sing.

What do you think? Do you disagree with this idea? Why?

What songs were present in significant spiritual moments in your life? How did those ideas shape the Christian you became?

Or the big picture questions: What songs are your church singing the most right now? How will those songs shape the future core theology of the Covenant church?

And the flip side question: what core theological ideas we hold as priorities now will lose influence in the future because we do not sing about them?

Rooting for you,

Andrew