Field Notes #10: Geeking Out Over Worship Planning

If you know me at all, you know that I am a nerd. I used to subscribe to Star Wars Insider and I once got Middle English grammar books for Christmas--and was excited about it.

So it should come as no surprise that I literally had a giggle fit today as I was typing the lyrics to next Sunday's closing hymn and realized just how brilliantly it fit the service. And how wonderfully everything seems to be aligning with a theme that develops over the course of the service and culminates at the end. Seriously, June 6 is gonna be a great service at HCUMC, at least I hope so. I will have a much more detailed post Sunday evening, both about the morning's service and the new worship thing we're starting that night. Heyo!

Speaking of being a dork, Val gave me a volume of Feasting on the Word, a very cool lectionary commentary edited by Barbara Brown Taylor, as a gift. It's pwetty! And I really ought to start collecting commentaries. My dad has a ton, of course, but there's always new stuff coming out.

Music practice went pretty well tonight. We were really short on singers, but we'll have more come Sunday morning. Art, the drummer, is back in town, so this was my first time playing with him and Jeana. It was pretty cool. I still need to figure out exactly what I want to do as far as helping lead worship, how much I want to try to add musically, etc. I know that as an intern at a very loving congregation I have a lot of license to try new stuff (which is lovely), but I'm trying to balance that with not taking over--especially because goodness knows I couldn't if I tried! But this "blended" worship service is a learning process for everyone involved, and it's cool to be a part of it.

There's a lot more I could write about, but it'll keep, and some of it will be far more interesting once it actually happens. Sunday morning: preaching, music, etc.; Sunday evening: new worship service thingy; Tuesday night: first Psalms class. Aaaaand I'm going to the beach between now and then. :) Woohoo!

Field Notes #9: The Victory Is in the Preparation

Things are starting to get busy around here! And I like it.

What's going on right now:

I'm preaching on Sunday. Egads! Sermon prep, and making musical selections that will fit. I'm doing a bit fat no-no and trying to preach on 3 different texts. Fortunately, the Old Testament and Epistle readings for this coming Sunday are pretty similar, so it's not like I'm trying to do exegetical acrobatics. Of course, it's Promotion Sunday, which means we're celebrating graduates and kids moving from elementary to middle and middle to high school. I doubt that'll find its way into the sermon, but we'll see. Oh, AND it's communion Sunday! Which makes my heart smile. I was hoping to pick a choral anthem anyway, and here's the perfect opportunity. And I think I'm gonna try and do some creative stuff--the GBOD website had a neat semi-dramatic reading thing that ties the OT and NT texts and is cool, and I'm contemplating using a clip from The Bible Experience as the Scripture lesson. I don't wanna scare people off, though...

I've decided to teach a class. Psalms, here we come! This is the header for the bulletin insert I just drafted to advertise my class. I like that font (Matura MT - Script Capitals), haven't used it before. Anywho, I'm excited about this, even though I know it's basically me giving myself more work and it's doubtful there will be a very large crowd. I may shoot an email over to the interns at Salem UMC to see if any of their folks might be interested. Anyway, the four parts are gonna be as follows: (1) Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible; (2) Psalms: The Songbook of the Bible; (3) Psalms: The Poetry of the Bible; and (4) Psalms: Prayers of Vengeance. I will be using lots of Bonhoeffer and Brueggemann, naturally. It's gonna be awesome!!

I'm part of planning a new worship service. One of the HCUMC college students who's home for the summer has expressed interest in starting a small alternative worship service aimed towards youth and young adults. He and his girlfriend (who lives in Huntersville, nearby) are both very talented and passionate and have a heart for authentic worship. The idea is for it to be a more contemporary (but not rock band-like) service in an intimate setting. We're looking at every other Sunday evening. We're still figuring out how that will work with youth group (hopefully in conjunction), how often to do it, and what to call it. Has giving things cool Biblical Greek names gone out of style? :)

We're moving into the parsonage this week. We actually need a name for that too. It used to be the parsonage but has been renovated into mostly offices and meeting/conference/Sunday School room, though it still has the master suite (AKA my crib once it gets its occupancy certificate). It's a wonderful space and looks great. Thursday night we're moving and cleaning and whatnot, so maybe by next week I'll finally live in the same place as all my junk. Plus the living room there could be a good place for this new service to meet.

And then there's youth group (we meet on Sunday and will hopefully start doing something during the week as well), meetings, LeaAnne going out of town next week (which means Val and I have to do the powerpoint and bulletin and everything), folks in and out of the hospital, etc. etc. etc.!

And that's not even my personal life! This weekend, I'm taking a short beach trip (apparently the only kind of beach trip I take), to see Gary's band Climb Jacob's Ladder play in Wilmington. Er, and sing with them, too. And I suddenly have 2 shows of my own the following weekend--I'm playing the Davidson Farmer's Market on Saturday morning and I'm back at Maddi's Southern Bistro that night. PLUS, Gary's leaving the country next week--he's going to El Salvador on the 10th! Crazy!

I also really need to learn to get up in the mornings. Debbie's got sweet blinds on these windows so it stays dark in my room, which is a blessing and a curse. Tomorrow I am determined to get up with my alarm. When I finally did get up this morning, I went first to The Coffeehouse at Denver to work. I may do that again tomorrow, or go back to Dilworth Coffee at Denver.

New Blog Layout!

So, clearly, I'm using a new template. I downloaded it from BTemplates and modified it to be more distinctly me. Photoshop is a wonderful thing, and knowing HTML is handy (sometimes even in ways that matter).

Another thing I did to reorganize my blog was that I completely changed my labelling system. I realized that tagging every post with as many descriptors as possible is great for YouTube videos, not so great for blogs. So I narrowed it down to topics that I am labelling using mostly Bible verses, except for the series I have. Here's a brief explanation of each:

• Bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2) Mostly dealing with community
• Go therefore and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) Missions and evangelism
• Help my unbelief (Mark 9:24) Faith, doubt, faith and reason
• Let justice roll down like waters (Amos 5:24) Social justice, theories of justice, issues like the death penalty, immigration, etc.
• Let the little children come to me (Matthew 19:14/Mark 10:14/Luke 18:16) Youth, children, and growing up
• Love one another (1 John 4:11-12, among others) Love, friendship and relationships
• My grace is sufficient for you (2 Corinthians 12:9) Grace and providence
• My heart is like wax (Psalm 22:14) Pain, grief and suffering
• My sin is ever before me (Psalm 51:3) Sin, confession, repentance and forgiveness
• Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) Prayer and prayers
• Sing to the Lord a new song (Psalm 96:1, among others) Music and worship
• That they may all be one (John 17:21) Christian unity, ecumenism and interfaith dialogue
• There is no longer Jew or Greek (Galatians 3:28) Race and racism
• There is no longer male and female (Galatians 3:28) Gender issues
• These people who have been turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6) Society, culture, current events and politics
• They shall beat their swords into ploughshares (Isaiah 2:4/Micah 4:3) War, violence and peace
• We will all be changed (1 Corinthians 15:51) Eschatology and the resurrection
• Your word is a lamp to my feet (Psalm 119:105) Scripture references

There is also a label called Wisdom from the Saints, which includes various quotations I like, as well as Field Notes and What I'm Reading. Enjoy! :)

Field Notes #8: Memorial Day Off (Sorta Kinda)

I was hoping to spend this Memorial Day reading by the pool. Sadly, the weather has crushed my dreams. However, Mark is out back grilling now since the rain has let up a bit, so we'll still have our cookout in a way.

The church office is closed today, but I had already planned to be working from home, especially since I'm planning to be out of town Friday and Saturday. Plus I just have some cool ideas for things and want to work. I spent most of the morning brainstorming themes, Scripture and music for these alternative worship services we're planning for youth and young adults, and it was awesome. At one point I just stopped and thought, This is my job. I can't believe that this is my job. I feel energized. I'm doing cool stuff for Jesus that isn't a form of procrastination but is actually my job. Way cool.

We're looking at doing this new worship service (which needs a name...ideas?) on Sunday evenings every other week. I emailed a bunch of the youth leaders to get their thoughts, and I also asked them about something Val had reminded me about--planning a weekday activity of some sort for the youth. We could do lots of cool things, whether service, fellowship or formation, so I'll find out what they've done in the past and what they might enjoy. I definitely want to try and bring them to The Upper Room in Statesville when I play there on June 25.

I've also been thinking about possibly teaching a weeknight class maybe every other week. I've been feeling drawn to the Psalms as a topic, and I've already drafted an outline of a 4-part series looking at the Psalms as prayers, as music, as poetry and wrestling with the psalms of vengeance. Val is supportive but warned me these sorts of things, especially in the summer, usually draw pretty small numbers. I'm OK with that. We'll see what comes of it.

My other work item I want to start on today is sermon preparation. I'm preaching next Sunday. Egads! I've briefly looked at the lectionary texts and didn't get a whiffle (that's what some of my high school friend in youth group called a movement of the Holy Spirit), so I'll revisit them in a bit. I may even depart from the lectionary. Horror of horrors! But it's promotion Sunday, when HCUMC celebrates high school and college graduates as well as children moving from elementary to middle school and from middle to high school. I may choose something that would work well with that.

Burger time. Later I'm planning to watch Gattaca. I rented it yesterday along with Children of Men, which I watched last night (and which might get its own post someday due to one particularly moving scene). It's like I'm having my own personal futuristic dystopia film series.

Beth Nielsen Chapman: Back to Love

My dad heard Beth Nielsen Chapman perform at a conference, spoke to her afterwards and brought me back a signed copy of her new album, Back to Love. I procrastinated on listening to the whole thing, but when I did it was twice back-to-back, just for starters.

I've been describing Beth's sound to people as something like "Joni Mitchell meets the Indigo Girls meets Alison Krauss." Her style is a wonderful blend of folk, country, a little bluegrass and lots of soul. She has a truly unique voice that has a rich sound I haven't heard much before.

And her songs are beautiful! I'm talking musically and lyrically. As the album title would suggest, every song on here has something to do with love, be it love of another person or love of God. The simple, prayerful "How We Love" asserts, "All that matters in the end is how we love;" the subtly groovy "I Can See Me Loving You" (my favorite track at the moment) includes the terribly romantic line, "All I know is from the moment I laid eyes on you, you're as far as I can see." Every line is sung with genuine passion and playfulness--there are at least two laughs embedded in the vocals of this album, which just makes me smile. :) See?

Field Notes #7: "Blended" Worship, Special Songs and Special Pets

This morning was our first "blended" service at Hill's Chapel. The 9:00 contemporary service and the 11:00 traditional service have been collapsed into one 10:00 worship hour for the summer. I thought things went really well--we opened with 3 contemporary songs ("Forever," "Blessed Be Your Name" and "Sanctuary"), had 2 special songs (more on those in a minute) and also sang 2 hymns ("My Hope Is Built" and "It Is Well"). Here's a picture of Val giving the children's message--they blew out a birthday candle and made a wish for the church (in reference to Pentecost, the birthday of the church, which was last Sunday), then Val told them about the young girl, Genese, a Haitian girl whom HCUMC is sponsoring through World of God. They then lit another candle and made a wish for Genese.

The two special songs deserve their own explanation in conjunction with Val's sermon for today. The passage she preached on was from the book of Romans:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. -- Romans 5:1-5

That is a wonderful message of hope and encouragement. However, Val actually turned this passage on its head somewhat, because although those words are true, when taken a certain way they can actually create harmful attitudes. If we aren't careful, we run the risk of saying that suffering is a gift from God to make us stronger--but God does not want his children to suffer any more than a human parents wants his or her son or daughter to suffer. And God does not inflict pain or evil upon us to test our faith or to make us better Christians. Bad things happen because we are broken people living in a broken world, and sometimes trials come and seem to have no redemptive qualities or life lessons, and to reduce them to such is to trivialize the issue.

Our two special songs today set up this message. The first one was "Held" by Natalie Grant, which I played. This deeply moving song was written after a friend of hers lost her 2-month-old baby. I've sung this song before and I absolutely love it because it looks suffering right in the eye and refuses to rationalize or justify it. The anguished cries of the bereft--"to think that providence would take a child from his mother while she prays is appalling"--are painfully real, and the chorus does not try to take the confusion and anger away. Natalie sings, "the promise was, when everything fell, we'd be held." God does not promise to make everything better or to reveal some divine purpose for unimaginable tragedies; he promises to hold us in our hurt.

The second song, a special piece the choir sang, is another beautiful anthem of trust. "You Are Mine" by David Haas lifts themes from the following Bible verses:

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine." -- Isaiah 43:1

"Be still and know that I am God." -- Psalm 46:10

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." -- John 14:27

Haas writes fantastically beautiful melodies. "Blest Are They" is another favorite of mine, a musical setting of the Beatitudes. Between those two songs and the opening praise tunes, I think the service set up the Scripture reading and Val's sermon very well. And of course, "My Hope Is Built" reinforced the theme--"When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay"--as did "It Is Well"--"Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, 'It is well, it is well with my soul.'"
__________

On a completely unrelated and much lighter note, I brought my two pet mice back from Charlotte with me this weekend. Here's a funny video of Lilly the Yorkie meeting Abby and Mrs. Jingles (sort of).

What I'm Reading #5: Praying the Psalms (Walter Brueggemann)

Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit, by Walter Brueggemann

OK, so I actually read Walter Brueggemann's Praying the Psalms for my Old Testament class this past semester, but especially because we didn't write a paper on it or anything (and because I loved it), I feel the need to reflect on it and share it.

(By the way, the page I linked to for Brueggemann is from Theopedia. What is that?!)

This book has 5 chapters, which broke it into manageable chunks that I read a day at a time, simultaneously completing my spring break reading assignment and discovering a new source of devotion and reflection.

The first is called "Letting Experience Touch the Psalter." Brueggemann points out that we live most of our lives between two extremes--that of crisis and that of elation. Rarely do we stay long in the place of equilibrium for which we long. But this is the truth of what Brueggemann calls "the rawness of life," and this is where the Psalmist meets us. In the Psalms, the anger is frightening and the joy seems naive at times. But this is how the Psalms touch our experience, and, amazingly enough, they are affected by our experience.

The next chapter, "The Liberation of Language," encourages the reader to appreciate and unleash the richness of the language in the Psalms. Brueggemann warns against the danger of taking the Psalms as basically positive and descriptive in nature--if we do that, he says, "the Psalms can probably be managed and comprehended and rendered powerless." Life is often unpredictable, and we are not as in control as we would like. We need to relinquish our need for control, reading the Psalms in a creative, transformative way instead of domesticating them.

To further the discussion of language, Brueggemann begins to locate it in the next section, "Language Appropriate to a Place." He writes, "Our lives always move between the pit and the wing"--the pit of Sheol and the protective wing of God. The psalms of trust are almost always located in the pit, and the very expression of hope in and reliance on God in a place of despair "is a first gesturing of transformed circumstance." One often cannot see the fruit of hope while still in the pit, but the very act of expressing that hope draws us toward that promise of redemption.

In chapter four, "Christians in 'Jewish' Territory," Brueggemann explores a touchy subject: the use of definitively Jewish scripture by Christians. Brueggemann says that it is important to acknowledge the profound Jewish-ness of the Psalms and through them to pray for the Jews, not as a condescension, but as a joining in the cries of the Jews throughout history, "for Jews are a paradigm of the deepest longings and yearnings of all humanity." Praying the Psalms is an act of seeking solidarity with the oppressed, those whom the world rejects but by whom God stands firm. Brueggemann says that we must pray the Psalms "as Jews"--not by pretending to be Jewish or by adding a sort of Christian flair to co-opted Jewish practices, but by understanding and exercising the concreteness, embodied-ness, candor, hope and passion that are distinctly Jewish traits of the Psalms.

The last part of the book is perhaps the most difficult: "Vengeance: Human and Divine." The imprecatory psalms make most Christian uncomfortable, and understandably so. However, Brueggemann says that the presence of real anger and desire for revenge is a reflection of our own brokenness--"The real theological problem...is not that vengeance is there in the Psalms, but that it is here in our midst." To avoid the psalms of vengeance is to ignore a fundamental, if embarrassing, piece of humanity: our ability to hate. When thoughts of hatred enter our minds, they seem frighteningly powerful and destructive; but the Psalms offer us an opportunity to let go of these desires, and when we express them, we find that they are not as destructive as we feared. Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointed out in his book Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible that the imprecatory Psalms never call for a person to take vengeance, but for God to do so. Brueggemann says that the act of acknowledging God's right and ability to take revenge releases us from its power. God bears our vengeance--and the crucifixion of Christ was a staggering act of God bearing his own vengeance for our sakes.

I love this book for how it demonstrates the Psalms' understanding of the whole of humanity, even our anger and despair. This helped me feel encouraged that whatever we may be dealing with, God can take it--even if that means screaming at him. God wants our whole selves, and praying the Psalms gives us a Scriptural basis for how to offer that to him.


Favorite Quotations

"While we all yearn for [equilibrium], it is not very interesting and does not produce great prayer or powerful song."

"[The Psalms] assert not that God will be or has promised to be a refuge, but that God is refuge right in the present circumstance."

"Thus the use of the Psalm of trust while still in the pit is an act of profound hope which permits new life. Expressing one's trust in God's sheltering wings is a bold assertion that the power of the pit has been broken."

"To pray with the Jews is to be aware of the solidarity with the chosen of God whom the world rejects."

"When we learn to pray these prayers faithfully, we shall all be scandalized."

"To affirm that vengeance belongs to God is an act of profound faith. Conversely, to try to keep some vengeance for self and to withhold it from God is to mistrust God, as though we could do it better than God. Affirmation of God's vengeance is in fact a yielding."