The Spontaneous Spirit

On Tuesday I attended a seminar about designing worship gatherings. Kim Miller who manages the worship celebrations at Ginghamsburg church in Tipp City, Ohio led the meeting. It was, for the most part, a good teaching on how to design worship gatherings that are intentional and very well thought out. From our experience at Christ Community Jenn and I were privileged to see a functioning model of intentional worship for two years. Although I was not on staff I was able to see the process and how the staff truly functioned as a team rather than a hierarchy. I think there is honest attempt to put this into place at New Albany and we have seen progress being made.
My passion is for worship that creates a sacred place for people to encounter God. I have designed a Good Friday Tenebrae service because other than Eater our church had no other Holy Week services scheduled. This worship gathering will be very structured and liturgical in nature. During the seminar one of the Nazarene pastors in attendance asked, In all this structure where do you leave space for the Spirit to move?” I leaned over to Jenn and asked, Why do we think the Spirit only moves in our worship services on Sunday morning?” This is the kind of teaching that needs to take place so that we can create worship services that do not assume that the Spirit only work in some magical spontaneous moments and we must always be ready to keep singing that same hymn or chorus for the next thirty minutes when the Spirit moves. We make room for the Spirit by half-heartedly planning our worship gatherings. I believe that a well-designed and well-planned worship gathering is fertile ground for the Spirit to move in the lives of people. If everything we do in a worship gathering revolves around the Word that penetrates peoples hearts to very core shouldn'’t we then expect a movement of the Spirit. Shouldn'’t we be expecting the Spirit to move in every aspect of our offerings of worship to God, even the planning? I believe it is an insult to the Spirit to ignore his movements during the week and then leave a little time to sense his movements if we feel especially emotional during the music set.
This fall I will be starting a new worship gathering that will meet at New Albany Nazarene on Saturday nights. Our worship will follow the fourfold pattern: we enter to worship, we hear the Word, we give our thanks, and we leave to serve. Our worship will be thoughtful, we will take it seriously, we will avoid spectacle and our gatherings will be full of expectations that we will experience God through the Spirit in new ways. We will worship God, we will serve our neighbors and we will become more deeply devoted disciples of Jesus Christ. It is well planned and, I believe, Spirit filled.

Listening- The Truth is the Light, The Wood Brothers

Reading- Confessions, Augustine of Hippo