Local Preachers Study Morning

I'm leading a morning on "radical worship" tomorrow and I offer this to others who train preachers. Feel free to pinch anything!

People rarely comment on the worship we conduct apart from “nice hymns” perhaps. We can take silence as a job well done! But if we dare to do something different, or radical, then people might well react. We’ll look at whether Jesus was radical a bit later and whether as preachers and worship leaders we are called to be radical today to make people sit up and take notice or simply to react. What is it we proclaim on a Sunday, and what sort of world are we sending people we share with into. Is our preaching and worship leading to be contextual, challenging, uncomfortable sometimes?

People want it to be a comfort. They don’t come to church to be upset or to be told things cannot stay the way they have always been. They like what they like! But I wonder whether our task sometimes is to unsettle, to stir, to proclaim a revolutionary Gospel! To make people think.

I like my liturgy, I am comfortable with the same words over and over again, they are a solace for me in trouble, a rock to hold onto. But if I have the same diet always, then I haven’t the resources to cope with anything other than what I am comfortable with. I will not be adventurous in my faith and my worship leading. It’s like pondering the menu of the local Chinese take away, we look at it at length and then order the same we always order because we like that best. It’s like sitting in the same seat in church. We like it there. It’s like preaching your hobby horse sermon every Sunday, we’re comfortable with it. The lectionary passage is a bit challenging so we ditch it. This comfort thing though is not wrong – take services at our two local Methodist homes, the comfort of old hymns and prayers we know by heart, brings people in those times of worship alive. So don’t ditch the comfort but I think you need the comfort AND the radical and challenging.

I want us to think about whether Jesus was radical (Where did he get this from?) 

Two passages I want us to think about. First from “Radical Jesus” by John Vincent, Marshall Pickering, 1986: quoting Mark 1: 14

“Our word “believe” does not quite get the force of the Greek word here. It really means “”Give yourself over to, risk your life on, put your faith in, trust yourself to.” So, Jesus says, “don’t hold yourself back. You will not get anything that way, rather, let yourself go, “get with it” take a chance, act as if it were true. The “good news” is that the Kingdom is here. Let yourselves start acting as if it is true.”

The question is how we share the Kingdom with people and make it relevant for them. Do we have to leave our comfort zones in order for the message to get across to where people are? There is a responsibility as we prepare and lead worship. What do you make of this paragraph?

“Regular Sunday worship is the churches’ shop window. It is up to all of us to ensure that what is presented there is high quality no matter what form worship takes. Worship should be a beautiful thing for God and for those participating, so that all will come to know the life giving love that we have received and give thanks for every time we worship.”

(Jill Hopkinson, National Rural Officer for the C of E in Country Way, October 2013)    

Is there a role for prophetic preaching, telling it how it is. When I did it once I was asked “are you alright?” How do we leave a congregation feeling after a challenging, radical sharing of the message? Are we called to be popular? Someone said to me last Saturday at something I was at, “we are not meant to be liked.” But I want to be liked, don’t you? And sometimes there is a low expectation in congregations!

I remember Mrs Lancaster. Mrs Lancaster was a member of the Sisterhood at Kinsbourne Green Methodist Church in the old Harpenden Circuit. I used to do their Sisterhood when I was a lay worker on the staff. She had an ear trumpet and she would nod off quickly. I remember one meeting when after she had snored through most of my talk she came to and she looked at me and she said very loudly, “Good God, is he still talking????!!!”  

A lovely quote that sums up Jesus here really:

“When we look at our world through the lenses of God’s grace, it changes everything. We can no longer view others as “competition” that we have to outdo in our piety in order to “make it in” to heaven. Everybody “makes it in” because God wills it. Period. The whole creation is to be drawn into the peace and love and life of God’s kingdom.”

What this means for us is that we cannot view ourselves as God’s “favourites” who receive special blessing over and above others. It means that we all receive the gift of God’s grace that extends to everyone equally. It means that no one can be viewed as outside God’s grace—no one is excluded; all are welcome. And that is radical!

Sometimes a different scenario can be a challenge to us, but life happens to people in between worship occasions and we need to be where people are. Some worship may now not speak to some people that we offer. Perhaps we are heading for multiplex services in the same building at the same time, or maybe different churches will offer different styles and you travel to the style you like. How do we share the message of God’s Kingdom and Christ’s love where people are – and what if life has happened to people and we need to adapt the way we present the message away from what we have prepared? Can we have a radical shift in approach?

Get someone to choose a well known, short passage. Pretend that is tomorrow’s passage and you are appointed to preach. Life has happened for the local church or it happens during the service! How do you adapt your message or don’t you?

·       60 young people on a scouts and guides outing are to be in church for the first part of the service.

·       The steward of the village church with three members has died in the night.

·       The local factory has suddenly made a considerable amount of the workforce redundant and lots of them are in church raw about that.

·       There are a group of people with dementia brought in a minibus who like to shout out during the service.

·       You are planned to lead worship on Christmas Day. You have people there who only come to church once a year.

·       The Queen has died in the week before the service.

·       A church up the road has been told it is not safe to enter it and so they are in your church feeling bereaved and lost.

·       An unruly baptismal party is bored in front of you.

·       You are planned for an evening service in a rural chapel and there is only you, the steward and the organist there!

Martyn Atkins in “Preaching in a cultural context” Foundery Press 2001, says Wesley was into answering a question that burned in his spirit, “How should I preach the Christian Gospel to those in front of me?”

I was looking at my 1987 book of worship and sermons. The world has changed since 1987. I did it all back then! Now there is more participation, church lay out has altered, there is multi media, congregations are more diverse and spasmodic in attendance and there are more opportunities to share I think then perhaps our five appointments on the plan. The challenge to show Jesus, who was radical and relevant so much so people responded to him. We need more people to take up this work. I think the next few years could be exciting if we are prepared as John Vincent says in that old book I found we let ourselves go. But beware this final story:

A preacher had been berating his congregation for almost an hour. As he pounded the pulpit in a dramatic climax, he asked the hypothetical question in soaring oratorical tones: “What more can I say?” A voice in the back pew responded: “Say Amen, and sit down!”