Reinventing Our Predictable Worship Subculture

I just read a powerful dialogue on Nancy Beach’s blog. (Nancy is programming director at Willow Creek Church in Chicago and author of a challenging book entitled, An Hour on Sunday: Creating Moments of Transformation and Wonder.) Please do yourself and your congregation a favor: Go to her blog site and read Nancy’s entry, The Future of Worship and Sally Morgenthaler’s response. I couldn’t agree more! I am convicted about my own “predictability.” Precious and wise God, discontent our souls with anything less than pure, transformational worship! – Dwayne

Excerpt from Nancy Beach’s Blog:

(At a Willow Creek Arts Conference recently) Sally (Morgenthaler) made a point that she believes the worship subculture is in a major decline, and that we need to have the guts to start over and re-invent together what our gatherings should be going forward. I share her concerns that much of the Christian worship music all sounds alike, and is easily distinguishable from where secular music has gone. I also believe that our gatherings have become far too predictable, dependent almost exclusively on music and teaching while abandoning many other art forms and communication tools. A worship subculture exists, and in most of our churches, we cannot point to huge gains in reaching those outside the church with our weekly worship gatherings. So what does all this mean?…

I certainly don’t have the answers. But I welcome the questions, as uncomfortable as they may be, and encourage my fellow artists and church teachers to face these questions head-on, without fear and defensiveness. We all want the same thing, I think – to create experiences that move and ultimately transform people on their spiritual journeys, by the power of the Holy Spirit. If we will listen attentively to the culture, to our congregations, and to our Creator…we will begin to make our way out of the clouds and discern where to go next. Let’s keep the dialog and questions going…

• This excerpt was not used by permission. I’m about to leave on vacation and wanted to post this before I left! I did, however, post an explanation to Nancy on her comments to her post. Guess I’m trusting the old addage, “Better to seek forgiveness than permission”!