As I mentioned in an earlier post, I got the opportunity to spend a few days shadowing worship designer Marcia McFee at the Indiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. I had a great time—in addition to being a wonderful artist, leader and practical theologian, Dr. McFee is a fun person to be around. I took copious notes in a teaching session she held for the conference, and although I could reproduce her presentation here verbatim, I'd rather just pull out a few salient takeaways.1. Worship style is not as big of a deal as we make it out to be. Dr. McFee didn't say this outright, but her approach makes it clear. In a church obsessed with worship style and divided by wars over guitars vs. organs, Dr. McFee's work is refreshing because she approaches worship design with absolutely no reference to style. She is steeped in the language of ritual and liturgy, but she emphasizes the importance of context and of working with what you have. Don't add more bells and whistles in an attempt to make worship more exciting, she says. Instead, work on getting more out of what's already there. Even the simplest settings have the potential to be a spiritual portal to transformation, what Dr. McFee says worship always should be.
2. Preparation gives you the freedom to worship. Dr. McFee used a metaphor that I appreciated: worship preparation is like building a pile of leaves. It takes time and energy, and you may be worried about messing it up once it's been built up, but the bigger your pile, the freer you are to dive in. Worship should be a freefall into the love of God, a fall broken and enabled by the preparation. Sometimes people are resistant to too much preparation because they want the Spirit to be free to move, but that's just why the image of a leaf pile is perfect—it is built with intention, but you cannot be so attached to it that you're afraid to mess it up by diving in, as leaf piles are intended to be dived into. Dr. McFee encouraged pastors who feel like they never get to worship when leading to take a closer look at how they are preparing themselves, both logistically and spiritually. Even worship leaders should be free to worship, to invite others into worship in which they too are participating. Dr. McFee talks about moving from presiding over worship to residing within the worshiping community, from being "guardians of religious practice" to being "midwives of sacramental moments." Wow, right?
3. Fear around changes in worship reflect an unarticulated fear of losing God. This point struck me as important. I've observed some pretty irrational reactions to changes in worship (or in churches in general) with much puzzlement—including, at times, my own reactions. Dr. McFee said that because worship is most people's access point to God, a change can leave them fearful of losing that connection. At the heart of this, of course, is our problematic tendency to domesticate God, to put God in a box of our choosing. This is not something for which to chastise parishioners, but it is something to understand when meeting resistance to change in any church setting, especially in worship.
Those are just a few things Dr. McFee talked about in her presentation, and there was much more I learned in conversation and observation. All in all, I learned a lot from my few days with her, and I look forward to exploring these and other themes around worship not only this summer but throughout my life and ministry.
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