Old New School Evangelism

David Hayward reminds us that what we often think are the “tried and true” methods of evangelism aren’t so tried and true. They may actually seem a little absurd.

Check out more of his humor and art at his blog.

Worship And The Local Church

Well, I meant to post this yesterday, but a late night Tuesday night and a field trip to "The little Smithsonian of the west" with my six-year-old’s kindergarten class means that blogging matters had to wait.

In the previous post I suggested that an element in establishing immersive worship is the recovery of the church calendar - rescuing it from the American cultural calendar.  The comments migrated toward the next inevitable question: what might that look like in the local church?

Let me simply list the things Fitch suggests in The Great Giveaway and then I’ll try to interact with those suggestions.  For Fitch, immersive worship would include: 1) patterning worship after call and response.  In other words, pattern worship in such a way that God’s call initiates and sustains worship rather than our activities (singing, praying, etc.) being what initiates and sustains worship.  This is, according to Fitch, the Biblical pattern we see for worship (e.g. Exodus 15; 1 Chron. 16; Rev. 4-5).  2) Revive the church calendar.  3) Reinvigorate the Eucharist making it a central part of worship.  4) Use candles and other tactile symbols [how’s that, Doug? ;)].  5) Use the visual arts.  Utilize the power of the message viewed with the eyes as well as that heard with the ears.  6) Sing substantive music.  Substantive does not necessarily mean "old," "hymn," or "of a traditional style."  It means that the words have substance.  They lead us to great thoughts of God.  They speak a message that engages us at a deep level.  It may be that we take a great old hymn and update it musically and/or contemporize it lyrically.  7) See the sanctuary as an art gallery.  Employ visual depictions of the church season.  Show the story along with telling it.

Fitch writes:

We evangelicals should visualize and ritualize our worship around tangible symbols that invite us out of our heads into the existence of God. We need to symbolize mystery and recognize his transcendence in ways science and modernity won’t let us. We need to touch, see, and remember the cross because it was and is real.  We need to be invited into his drama with real things.

He is aware that to many this will sound Catholic.  It is, without a doubt, a departure from the Free Church tradition.  But the Free Church tradition struggles with being disconnected from the past and therefore uncertain in its present and future.  What Fitch seeks is worship that is connected to its past, yet is at the same time flexible enough to speak evangelistically to the present and adapt to the future.  Strict adherence to historical liturgical forms may very well lead to a dead traditionalism.  However, we can maintain the historical substance of the liturgy of the church while adopting more current and relevant forms.  I know this will sound anathema to Baptists.  We generally pronounce it li-pfft-tur-blblpht-gy-plplbft.  But I’m finding more and more especially among the younger crowd who are disenchanted with a faith that seems divorced from its past (meaning the ancient roots.  For most Baptists "the past" means the 1950s, or if you’re lucky the 1850s).  Reconnecting worship to what Robert Webber called "Ancient-Future" ways may well be an avenue for escaping the self-centered/consumer approach to worship.

Gifts From God

Check this out.  This young lady is absolutely amazing.

[HT: TallSkiniKiwi]