What I'm Reading #3: Redesigning Worship (by Kim Miller)

Redesigning Worship: Creating Powerful God Experiences, by Kim Miller

Redesigning Worship is one of the books that my field ed supervisor, Dr. Val Rosenquist, gave me to read as part of my worship learning experience at Hill's Chapel United Methodist Church this summer. The author, Kim Miller, is Campus Designer at Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, OH. That a church would have such a staff position is fascinating in and of itself and definitely piqued my interest in this book.

I'm probably not going to read this cover to cover, partly because some of this is just not applicable to the context of HCUMC and partly because I have a zillion other books I want to read. But there are definitely great resources here. There are even sample scripts for drama and media to incorporate into worship, part of the approach of "multisensory worship" that Miller emphasizes. Miller also stresses the importance of the spoken word to communicate and motivate. She says that God speaks to us in many different ways and can reveal himself through all sorts of art forms, but ultimately it is verbal language that convicts and explains. As someone who is very interested in the role of the arts in worship, this is important for me to keep at the forefront.

I do have one qualm about this book (remember, I'm only reading portions, so I may have missed something). I saw a subheading in the section about building a worship team entitled "Seek Only Mission-Driven People." Along the same line(s), I read a quote from Mike Slaughter that I at first wrote down as a favorite quote, but later removed: "Ironically, worship is not the central focus of church, rather the process of focusing the church for God's mission in the world." Now, I do not fundamentally disagree with this; much of Slaughter's point is that there is a problem when people see the whole of their life of faith as being contained in one hour on Sunday mornings. That is absolutely true. I have heard pastors deliver the simple benediction, "The worship is ended; let the service begin," and I love it. But I am wary of anyone who is too quick to treat worship as a means to an end. It may be that I have too narrow an idea of what defines "mission" in my own mind, but I worry that the admonition to "seek only mission-driven people" creates a worship team whose outlook might be too myopic. I like the idea of balancing out folks who are gung-ho on the mission front with those who are deeply prayerful and spiritual. Worship is about forming us to go out, but it is also an end in an of itself, and we should not be so quick to rush out and be Christ's hands and feet that we forget to kneel at his feet.

But I think the witness of Ginghamsburg, Mike Slaughter and Kim Miller is a prophetic one (and it is entirely likely that either Slaughter or Miller would read the above paragraph and agree with me). The focus on the Word; how they acknowledge and embrace tension and conflict in worship; the determination not to sacrifice truth to relevance; all of these are things from which the broader church can and should learn.


Favorite Quotations

"If there is no tension with the message, the team doesn't feel it's worship worthy."

"No matter what the theme or occasion for the worship gathering, the word must drive the worship. Everything else we do must support and enhance it."

"God's redemptive purpose is to get more of the church into the world rather than coaxing the world into the church." -- Mike Slaughter, Ginghamsburg Church

"We must show the relevance of Jesus to our culture but also the radical difference, the 'worldview' of Jesus in the culture. Too often we have strived to be relevant but ceased to be revolutionary." -- Mike Slaughter

"Worship loses the prophetic voice of God when we fear people and not God." -- Mike Slaughter