Reviving Liturgy in the Relevant Church :: All Ages, One Message

With our crazy lives and schedules, family worship can be hard enough to pull of, never mind finding relevant meaningful resources. This is the reality for our congregations. Unfortunately, it might be something that doesn't happen in many homes, simply because they can't "find the time."

Why not make it easy on them?

What if "Average Joe" in your congregation was not only being fed spiritually at church, but you were also giving him the resources to feed his family and even giving him a head start?

You can do this by integrating all ages on one liturgical track. There are resources for every age level out there on the various versions of the liturgical year. If you find one that fits your context well, you should be able to make it work for all of your small groups, children's classes and "Kid's Church."

This way, the family sits down to lunch after church and they have something they can actually discuss! Since all 2.5 kids have experienced and learned about a bible theme and story in their different classes and worship gatherings, they all have something unique to share on the topic as well commonality in experience of learning on the topic.

The church has a more united and clear vision; the family, likewise has a united experience and clarity on God's plan for them as they apply what they're learning in their walk with Him.

It gets REALLY good when you take this a step further. Not only does this give great post-church conversation, but it provides a foundation for 24/7 worship. Curriculum also usually include material for daily use and devotion. From the Book of Common Prayer for the common texts to the daily devotionals that are built in to Group or Lifeway's liturgical calendar - there are resources to continue the learning and growing for the family between weekend worship gatherings. You can even share some of these resources on a daily basis through social media to help bring devotional thoughts and bible texts straight to the parishioner.

Reviving Liturgy in the Relevant Church :: Enriched Worship Experiences

Establishing a liturgical calendar not only ensures that you cover a diverse amount of material, it will also help establish sermon series' and worship themes far in advance. That will give whatever team or individual is charged with planning your worship services a big head start and a chance for true success.

Believers and seekers alike are seeking a narrative within the worship experience. If the worship leader is making a point about God's sovereignty throughout the songs, there is a video about God's love and the sermon is about forgiving others, then your congregation walks away with perhaps a nice experience, but no narrative that helped them grow and grasp the ONE main point that was essential that day. When the elements have no deep correlation, they will not lead the congregation along a worship journey throughout the service and into a deeper understanding of God's character. It remains shallow and discombobulated.

Conversely, if a worship experience is built like a narrative, the congregation goes on a spiritual, emotional and logical journey throughout the service. One element builds on the previous. There are highs and lows that help tell the story and ultimately bring restoration, hope and redemption. That is the nature of our own condition and God's plan for us - so, naturally it works.

Let me share a real, relevant example of this. My church (New Hope Adventist Church) uses the Faithweaver curriculum by the distributer Group. This weekend's worship theme is our calling to worship God in His holiness. The story that will be used for the sermon is the Prophet Isaiah's calling and his response to God's holiness. With this knowledge, my worship planning committee helped me craft this weekend's service to prepare people's hearts for this calling that would be presented in the message with songs like "Not to Us" by Chris Tomlin, "Surrender" by Lincoln Brewster and "You Are Holy" by Elevation Worship. We picked a video of a young woman's testimony of how she surrendered her personal dreams and agenda to be an influence in the lives of her young students that live in poverty - what she calls her "humble response to God's holiness." The congregational prayer will immediately follow that and give people a chance to submit to God's plan.

All of these things are intentionally built to drive home that central point, which will culminate in the message. We go through highs and lows and drive home the point using various avenues, but it all leads people to the same place - to respond to God's holiness - our main point.

All of this intentionality begins with a liturgical calendar. It will help you develop important seasonal themes and even work in the felt needs of your congregation as you cover a diverse series of topics and narratives from the Bible.

There are more resources for planning worship around themes and the liturgical year than you could ever make use of. It gives you a depth of creativity to cull from even as you implement and develop the creativity of your own team.

Reviving Liturgy in the Relevant Church :: An Introduction

In many ways, the contemporary worship movement has been a reaction to "old church" function and form. For good reason, pioneers have sought to make worship personal and relevant, but it hasn't come without any cost. One thing that I believe we've lost out on is comprehensive liturgy. Many traditional churches follow the three year cycle of Common Texts that assist in creating seasons for the church as well as covering stories and theology from varied sections of the Bible, to keep the material covered in worship diverse and varied. Very few contemporary churches that I know of stick to the three year cycle.

As "application" has taken a more prominent role in modern preaching, we instead build sermon series' around felt-needs of the congregation and community. This does have many benefits, but it can allow a church to stick to some of its favorite themes in the Bible rather than push the church leaders to continue learning and searching for deeper truths and a more dynamic understanding of who God is.

Churches that have a defined liturgical calendar have a great opportunity to grow the spirituality and biblical knowledge of their congregation. Beyond the benefits of a varied biblical learning experience, it creates an environment of integrated learning for every age of attendee, lays a strong foundation for other worship elements and gives parishioners material for personal devotions.

Learning about liturgy, the Consultation on Common Texts and the Book of Common Prayer has been an exciting experience for me - I have a lot to learn yet on the topic though. I invite you to engage the ideas I present and contribute some thoughts from your own experience in your church by commenting below. I'll attach links and commentary to help you if (like me) you did not have the privilege of experiencing this type of liturgy first-hand in the church.