In September 1992 the youngest of our three children, eighteen month old daughter Kristen, died on the road outside our manse, hit by a car. I was in my first year as a minister, serving in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand in Tokoroa, a town of 16000 people connected with dairy, logging, pulp and paper industries. A month later, the twenty one year old daughter of the church secretary was killed in a horrific car accident.
As you can imagine we were struggling to deal with multiple layers of grief, as a family, as a congregation, as a community. Coming into Christmas I remember the struggle of being responsible for communicating the love, joy and hope of the season. As I preached through the nativity stories I was attuned to the down-to-earth struggle of a young couple as they grappled with an unplanned pregnancy and an arduous journey away from home. I took comfort in God’s engagement in our suffering through becoming one of us, in the flesh.
Lloma, the church secretary who shared our journey of grief, was inspired to reach out to others who were feeling lost and alone over Christmas. Together our families gathered a team to host a Christmas Day dinner for people who were away from their families. The community responded magnificently. Farmers, butchers, and bakers donated food for the meal. The local newspaper featured our plans on the front page and challenged readers to invite their neighbours to their Christmas meals.
Celebrating Christmas without Kristen was painful. It wasn’t the memories of past Christmas that we grieved for – it was the lost opportunities of the future. But as we connected with our community we discovered others with similar experiences. Together we made God’s connection of fragility and joy.
An article I wrote for the back page of Journey, December 2007
Sally Morgenthaler, well known for her book Worship Evangelism and her web site, Sacaramentis, has published an article in the latest edition of Next Wave E-Zine, originally published with Rev! Magazine in June.
Sally’s books, articles and seminars have helped thousands of churches to develop seeker-friendly approaches to worship. But she is now distancing herself from the worship-focused culture that has developed as a result.
“In the mid-90s, the community church section in the yellow pages was awash with self-conscious logos and catchy taglines, all competing with each other for that upwardly mobile, savvy church shopper. Strip malls and school gyms were bursting with “churches-on-wheels”: shiny-faced set-up crews towing two-wheeled storage trailers, each chock full of sound equipment, Plexiglas podiums, informational handouts, plastic plants, name tags, and nursery toys.
But by 1998 something had shifted. The set-up crews weren’t looking quite as fresh as they once were. Why would they, playing “portable church” 52 weeks a year, year after hopeful year? Of course, they were waiting for the “promised land” — the gleaming megaplex their pastor had envisioned on those 20 farm acres south of town. The savviest start-ups reached that promised land. Most did not. By 2000 there were only a few trailers backing up to warehouse doors. The start-ups had thinned out. It was as if the “if we build it, they will come” game had suddenly grown stale. Like last year’s action toy, the bright outfits, plastic plants, oozy choruses, and pink-shirts-with-Dockers-slacks went into culture’s garage sale bin. Contemporary church plants that hadn’t reached critical mass (300 to 400) by the end of the ’90s were in deep trouble.”
Sally is concerned that most worship settings engaging in the seeker-friendly approach avoid any hint of sadness, anger or despair. Even more worrying is the tendency to pour so much energy into developing dynamic worship that members are too exhausted to spend time with people in their community. When all’s said and done, the reality is that most celebratory worship is focused on the inner world of believers rather than engaging with the everyday reality of living in the world in which God has placed us.
I heard Brett Swann from Springfield Community Oasis (Church of Christ) speaking on Friday night, talking about a new church plant in which worship services went low-tech, using canned music and dialogue rather than up-front band and speaker. It was counter-cultural for Brett and his team. But two years later the church has runs on the board for community engagement with the Christian gospel.
Years ago I dabbled with a similar approach, occasionally moving an evening worship service away from an up-front focus. The feedback was interesting. A significant portion of attenders were disturbed - ostensibly because they didn’t believe they were worshiping any longer. One visitor was honest with me. “We come to this church because there’s a good band. And when there isn’t we feel as though we’ve been deprived of the good experience we were expecting”.
Stepping away from ‘worship evangelism’ is not necessarily a step into mediocrity or irrelevance. If anything, it’s an opportunity to rethink the level of energy required to create an gathering that will be sustainable, effective (in strengthening worshiping witnessing and serving disciples of Jesus) and good news for the community.
Doctor Who is being featured in a worship service held in Cardiff on Sunday September 23, near the site of the fictional rift in time. Worshippers are being invited to compare a Time Lord with the Lord of Time during a eucharistic service.
Taste is a new cafe style worship experience for young people in Cardiff, part of the Anglican-sponsored Enter the Mystery experience. Teenagers and young people in their early 20s are being targeted for the “cafe-style” Communion service, with music and video clips from the hit series, at St Paul’s Church in Grangetown, Cardiff.
The Anglican church was used as a location two years ago for the Father’s Day episode of the first series, in which a giant reaper creature attacked wedding guests at the church.
Fr Dean Atkins, youth officer with the Diocese of Llandaff and one of the organisers of the service, said: “The figure of Doctor Who is somebody who comes to save the world, almost a Messiah figure. In the series there are lots of references to salvation and the doctor being almost immortal. We are using the figure of Doctor Who as a parable of Christ. The language used in the series lends itself to exploring the Christian faith.”
He added: “Christ is a kind of cosmic figure as well if you like, somebody who does not travel through time but all eternity is found in him. He is a kind of encapsulation of the beginning and the end, in fact he existed before time began and he will exist when time ends.”
Parish priest Fr Ben Andrews said: “I love the series, and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Doctor Who theme. Lots of people think that young people are the future of the Church. This kind of event will show they are part of the church of the present and have an important part to play in its future. We are building on the past but always looking forward.”
See the story on the BBC site, including a streamed interview with Dean Atkins.
In September 1992 the youngest of our three children, eighteen month old daughter Kristen, died on the road outside our manse, hit by a car. I was in my first year as a minister, serving in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand in Tokoroa, a town of 16000 people connected with dairy, logging, pulp and paper industries. A month later, the twenty one year old daughter of the church secretary was killed in a horrific car accident. 
Sally Morgenthaler, well known for her book Worship Evangelism and her web site, Sacaramentis, has published an article in the latest edition of 
