You Make the Call

I’d have to go with the stand-up, sit down, stand-up, sit down thing. I figure start off standing, perhaps for all the singing, then sit. But once they’re down, leave them down. Even if someone spontaneously stands.

Alternatively, I’d 86 any song with lyrics about hands being raised or dancing or anything that people are actually unlikely to be doing. I figure it’s a bad idea to have the congregation lying about what they’re doing, especially if they’re ostensibly singing to God.

1. Tithing/giving or whatever you want to call it. There has to be a better way than the prayer that guilts you just enough to open up your wallet and give a dollar or more. Why not add it with communion in some sort of way where you can give when you go up to get communion. This is always a difficult one.

2. Less time on announcements and more time on being in the presence of God during worship or amongst each other in community. After being the one who made the bulletins for years at the church I used to work for, I kinda expect you to read them.

3. Anything that makes your bulletin feel like a magazine. If there is some cute little card inside or extra paper, it is bound to fall out which then makes it not so cute. The last thing I need is for people to see my crack because I have to bend over and get a stupid card that I am only going to throw away when I get home. No I do not want to put my prayer request on it now that I had to pick it up. =P

Take out the songs where we sing about worshiping God instead of worshiping God. Things like “I will worship/with all of my heart” or “I could sing of your love forever!” So why not worship with all of your heart instead of singing that you will? Why not sing of his love instead of saying that you could do it forever, knowing full well that you’re going to sit down in 2-5 minutes and not say a word?

Please, inspire me to awe of God, not to a greater sense of how awesome I am for my devotion to him or worse, a greater sense of how horrid I am for not living up to the lyrics I’m asked to sing. God’s worth singing about and our efforts, even if we really could worship with all of our heart, are not.

And completely separate of that, I couldn’t agree more with Ben’s point 3.

Anything that promotes watching instead of participating…

http://vimeo.com/11501569

Linked to that on Saturday.

One word…announcements. Yes, I know all the arguments about how announcements help people to then worship by being the body of Christ and such. But let’s be honest, no one listens and they don’t make an impact. You can spend weeks talking about something from the platform because someone thinks it’s important (or maybe it actually is), and people still complain they don’t know what’s going on. Sometimes I would like to do a four week experiment of having no verbal announcements, but at the same time work hard directing people where to get the information they need and then see if people are more or less engaged. Why do we let announcements and special “ministry spotlights” drive what we do and how we arrange our time together? Why do we continue to perpetrate the mistaken assumption that if it is said from the platform, then everyone will know it’s important? Just saying…

I don’t know what I would take out, but I would really like more time to pray—to take turns praying out loud as a congregation, to break into small groups to pray, to have time to pray silently and to pray for people around you. In general, I wish people were more comfortable with silence and space in worship.