I'm sure many of you have seen what the folks at North Pointe have been up to this season (which they mistake for the Christmas season). I wonder what you think about it. Is this type of creative element appropriate for Sunday worship, or better suited for a non-Eucharistic setting (assuming that North Pointe considers their Sunday worship Eucharistic)?
(Video link)
I remember waking up Sunday morning thinking, I sure hope this works...
We just want people to laugh a little bit and just enjoy the season. Hopefully they'll connect with what we do, but if not, that's okay.
So what do you think? Contemporary Church pragmatism? Cultural accommodation? It's certainly "new, improved, and continuously improving," Andy Stanley style. (My thoughts on this ministry philosophy here.)
Don't get me entirely wrong, I do think what they're doing is pretty danged awesome. Just wondering if this is the best way to lead people in the active participation of proclaiming and enacting God's story together, particularly in the context of Eucharistic worship.
Here's the full video of their seven minute worship element:
(Video link)
HT: Michelle Bythrow
7 comments
Comment by Keith W on December 11, 2010 at 7:02 AM
My initial two thoughts are:
1) I don't see in the N.T. corporate worship separated/delineated into "Eucharistic worship" and "other worship."
And, if we point to Acts 2:46 to disagree with my above statement, it would seem to indicate that "eucharistic worship" is more keen to a home group setting and "non-eucharistic worship" is more reserved for temple courts gathering (hmmm..... hundreds of folks in an auditorium?). Again, I don't see a distinction though.
2) Luke 6:44.... not sure we (you and I) are in the position to even comment on this because we are not in the correct vantage point (watching youtube on my couch in Indiana really isn't the best vantage point to make a fruit call).
And if we do try and make a fruit comment, I would simply be careful and mindful of Matthew 7:1-5.
Love you Ryan,
Keith
Comment by Unknown on December 11, 2010 at 8:23 AM
Worship ...I'm not sure who has the market cornered on proper Christmas (or Advent, or whatever the ancient terminology might be) worship. I'm reluctant to stand in criticism on anyone, regardless of my passions or position, leading followers of Christ-or those who may be responding to God's still small voice with only a faint flicker of spiritual hope-into an understanding of our hope and understanding of God's great compassion and love for us. We all remember the woman at the well, trying to bait Christ into a debate on how and where to worship God. Christ's response was that God is Spirit, and those who worship Him will do so in Spirit and Truth (Eugene Peterson renders this as engaging God with who we really are).
I'm not a paid "worship" professional, but my "passion and position" is to present Christ as fully available to all of his creation and celebrate with others endeavoring to do the same.
May God be lifted up (Colossians 3.12-15)
Patrick
Comment by lisa on December 11, 2010 at 9:04 AM
I imagine all the techie, gadget-savvy dudes in the audience stopped checking the scores for their favorite teams and paid attention to worship that morning.
I don't think I'd like it every weekend. But I wouldn't mind something like this maybe once a year or whatever. I prefer something a little more reflective. If I had been in this church service, I would have had my heart and my eyes secured to the stage and the 'show.' Instead of being led to fall at the feet of His throne.
Maybe they could have done this after service in the lobby or had a concert to show off how fun they can be. Instead of hijacking worship. I don't think it's impossible for someone to have worshipped God during this show. But I'm pretty sure I would have had a hard time focusing my worship on God and would have had a far too easy time worshipping Apple products.
Comment by Ryan Flanigan on December 11, 2010 at 9:36 AM
Keith, it's more of a "method" call than a "fruit" call. North Pointe must be doing something right. There is much fruit of their ministry all over the place, especially through the influence of Andy Stanley and their music. I do believe God is worshiped and glorified at and through North Pointe.
Maybe I'm not in the place to make an accurate method call, but don't you think we ought to regard with a bit more care the history of the church and the way the NT church (post-Bible times) formed its liturgy and methods of doing worship and making disciples, and the, perhaps, universal orders of worship and discipleship they discovered and employed early on, such as the "gospel priorities" of the liturgy (see Bryan Chapell) and the development of larger, weekly worship gatherings centered around the Table of the Lord (Eucharistic worship) to accommodate the masses of converts.
It seems, looking at the popular methods of the "contemporvant" church (myself included), that we have disregarded, to a degree, the old structures of worship in favor of culture-friendly structures, built on Western-individualist constructs. Or we look back, overlooking the history of the church, to the Acts church, deriving our worship methods from there. The former has led, in my estimation, to a spectator church with a congregation-audience mentality (which I think we see in the iBand production). And we are so far removed culturally from the latter (think Eastern and pre-Enlightenment philosophy) that I don't see how we can derive and apply our worship methods strictly from there (not to mention how little the NT has to say about liturgical forms).
I don't have these things figured out; I hope I don't claim to. That's why I am asking, so again I appreciate your feedback. I know my opinions come through (usually parenthetically), but that doesn't mean I'm hating.
Comment by Ryan Flanigan on December 11, 2010 at 1:00 PM
Patrick, I would say that "the holy catholic church" has the market cornered on proper Advent, Christmas, and entire Christian Year worship. Although if we think of it in marketplace terms, i.e., Western, capitalistic individualism, observing the Christian Year universally doesn't really make much sense. If, however, we submit our lives to the kingdom of God and Christian liturgical formation, it would be ignorant of us to throw out Christian Year worship and spirituality. In doing so, we'd be placing ourselves as individuals that "make up" the church, getting out of it what we want, instead of finding our center, our source, primarily in God as a community he has "made" for himself. Someone else gets to begin the prayer of the praying community. Someone else determines our worship actions (Eugene Peterson). If God left it up to individuals to determine how to pray and to apply whatever they feel like to their "personal" worship, there would be no unity, and instead utter chaos.
In my opinion, the American contemporary church has failed miserably in this respect, catering to the felt needs of individuals, strategizing how to attract more and more of them to sustain the "market." I don't deny pure motives, nor do I deny that God can and does still work in and through a flawed church. I'm just wondering if there is (and has been for hundreds of years) a better way, a universal (catholic) way.
Comment by Keith W on December 11, 2010 at 5:02 PM
"but don't you think we ought to regard with a bit more care the history of the church and the way the NT church (post-Bible times) formed its liturgy and methods of doing worship ..."
Bit more care, sure... religiously holding tight to it? Not at all. I'll look at Acts 2:42-47, and then 1 Cor. 9:19-23. I don't think a tribe in Africa needs to look towards the the 2nd century church to structure their worship; just as I don't think we in the 21st century need to either (please note, I said "need to"... I'm not saying we should be ignorant or ignore the rich history, I just don't think we should tie ourself religiously to it either.
If I'm gona look at a proper liturgy, I'll turn to 1Cor14:26-28... So, when is the last time both of our churches (the public gathering, ... "when we come together") opened up the mic per the direction of the scripture in 1Cor14:26-28.?
"It seems, looking at the popular methods of the "contemporvant" church (myself included), that we have disregarded, to a degree, the old structures of worship in favor of culture-friendly structures, built on Western-individualist constructs."
Why is that bad? 1 Cor. 9:19-23...
"And we are so far removed culturally from the latter (think Eastern and pre-Enlightenment philosophy) that I don't see how we can derive and apply our worship methods strictly from there"
Yep, we're removed... oh....1 Cor. 9:19-23
"(not to mention how little the NT has to say about liturgical forms)."
1Cor14:26-28... so,... when are we gona start looking at that when we plan?
Comment by Ryan on December 11, 2010 at 8:22 PM
My Dear Keith,
From the bottom up (with love):
Your last question: "1Cor14:26-28... so,... when are we gona start looking at that when we plan?"
When we start having the same problems the church at Corinth had.
Your second to last comment: "Yep, we're removed... oh....1 Cor. 9:19-23"
Yet we still operate in a Modernist paradigm and overlook the Church Fathers when we look back at the NT. Don't you think they considered these Scriptures?
Third to last: "Why is that bad? 1 Cor. 9:19-23..."
Seriously? I guess if we're okay with producing lukewarm, culture Christians with no desire to surrender everything to Christ, and with every intention to continue living life on their own terms, feasting in the pagan temples of idolatry (1 Cor. 10:1-22), then we, the church, should keep catering to their selfish wants, competing with popular culture, a losing battle indeed. And there's a big difference between cultural engagement (what Paul did) and cultural accommodation (which Paul condemns...1 Cor. 10; Rom. 12:2; and elsewhere).
Lastly: So, when is the last time both of our churches (the public gathering, ... "when we come together") opened up the mic per the direction of the scripture in 1Cor14:26-28.?
Boy would that be a disaster! Or maybe our interpretation of Paul hear is different than the Church Fathers, who indeed included this kind of full participation in the liturgy (the prayers of the people?). Of course, we can't fathom a (large) church functioning in this way within our individualist constructs. We envision a mic open for a bunch of disjointed individualists with a million different agendas, and it freaks us out. Paul's framework was "unity of heart and mind," and his expectation was for everyone to be on exactly the same page in worship, which would lead them only to offer gifts that would edify the entire body and not to use the "open mic" for topics of self-interest or prayer requests for aunt Myrtle's big toe. Perhaps the historic liturgy is a lot closer to 1 Cor. 14:26-28 than we in the West think.
I think a key difference between our current paradigm and that of Bible times is their willingness to change themselves, to form their lives around a center, which they retained from their Jewish heritage, versus our unwillingness to change ourselves and desire to change everything around us instead, including the biblical/historic structure of worship (Chapell).
Thanks for joining us and sharing your thoughts.