NURTURING SPIRITUAL DEPTH IN CHRISTIAN WORSHIP 10 Practices Janice Jean Springer perfect, $19.95 144 pages, 5½" x 8½" ISBN 0-89390-679-4 December 2008 View Table of Contents View Excerpt Quantity:

This book is for clergy and lay leaders of prayer in all denominations. Leading the communiy's worship begins with the leader's spiritual depth. Use the tools in this book to develop this depth. Assess the energy in a worship service, maintain it, and strengthen it. Draw people from their heads to their hearts and give them a sense of God's presence. Learn specific ideas on using creativity to enhance the worship experience.

About the Author
Janice Jean Springer is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She has more than 25 years of experience in deep prayer and local church ministry. Her worship ideas have drawn strong gratitude from folks in traditional, moderate, progressive, small, large, city, rural, old, and young churches. Currently she serves as Minister of Spiritual Formation at University Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Missoula, MT.

Giving Thanks
Call to Worship
My Assumptions about Worship
1.  Lead Worship Out of a Place of Deep Prayer.
2.  Consider What’s Happening to the Energy.
3.  Move People Out of Their Heads.
4.  Read Scripture So Nobody’s Bored.
5.  Make Every Part Match.
6.  Use Fewer Words.
7.  Create a Safe Intimacy.
8.  Make Worship Inclusive.
9.  Integrate Music More Fully.
10. Insist on Integrity in the Worship Service.
Benediction
Endnotes  

                   Our primary mission is not to help change the world, but to be the church: to be a
                   community that worships the God of Jesus amidst a culture that worships other gods.
                                          ---Martin B. Copenhaver, Anthony B. Robinson, William H. Willimon.2

I want to name the assumptions I make about what is true and necessary in Christian worship, for if you are considering my ideas about worship, you have a right to know where I am coming from. I hope these thoughts will challenge you to ponder your own assumptions and to discuss those in an adult education class, at a church retreat, in a worship committee meeting. I suppose, in a very simple form, this is my theology of worship:

Worship is the central act of the faith community.

Worship is first and foremost about recognizing as Ultimate Reality the Great Mystery that we name God.  That makes worship different from a pep rally or a talk show or a concert or a support group session. Worship should center on the power of God more than on the problems of people. Worship includes praise, adoration, thanksgiving. Worship is about being in relationship with Ultimate Reality. In worship, we are able to know about God. In really good worship, we can be led to know God.

Worship grows out of our scripture: its words, its stories, its truths.

Christian worship flows from Christ. Though worship may be either christocentric or theocentric, and though some regard Jesus as Lord and Savior and some know him simply as teacher, the way of Christ is always foundational.

The Easter message should be central in every service: the message of hope, of transformation, of new life, of God’s power to bring life out of death.

Worship should create disciples, people who commit themselves to the way of prayer, compassion and justice that Jesus taught and modeled.

Good worship is always political (which is not the same as talking about politics.) It is always counter-cultural. It is always protest. Worship is a community’s most radical political act.

Worship is the church’s unique contribution to the struggle for justice in the world. Worship will include issues of justice and global perspectives, but it will not be reduced to an activist rally.

Worship should welcome all people; in that way it models the radically inclusive love of God and the community building way of Jesus.

Worship is a communal act, as Christianity is a communal faith.

The people in worship are a congregation, not an audience.  They come as community, not as consumers.

Worship should speak to the whole person: body, mind, heart, soul. Worship should have enough variety (not in every service, but over time) to appeal to diverse personalities.

There is no one right way to worship. The diversity of worship in the Christian tradition is one of our gifts and strengths.

Christianity stands alongside the other world spiritual traditions as the carriers of our species’ best wisdom and deepest truths. We are not in competition with other faiths.  Some of our best truths are universal, found in all major religions. Some of our best truths are unique, our particular gift to the human journey. We do well to learn from other traditions, but the goal of that learning is always to go deeper into our own tradition.