Creating Missional Worship

CREATING MISSIONAL WORSHIP

Fusing Context and Tradition

Tim Lomax

Church House Publishing

Church House

Great Smith Street

London SW1P 3AZ

ISBN 978-0-7151-4464-0

Published 2015 by Church House Publishing

Copyright © Tim Lomax

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored or transmitted by any means or in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without written permission which should be sought from the Copyright Administrator, Church House Publishing, Church House, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3AZ.

Email: copyright@churchofengland.org.uk

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the General Synod or The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England.

Typeset by Regent Typesetting

Printed in England by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Context versus Tradition?

2. How Does Context Shape Worship?

3. Why Is the Context of the Worshipping Community Important?

4. How Much Weight Should We Give to Tradition?

5. Avoiding Worship Wars: How Might Context and Tradition Be Held Together?

6. Creating Missional Worship – Building Blocks

7. Building Blocks for Missional Worship in Practice

8. Fusing Context and Tradition: An Opportunity in Mission Not to Be Missed

Appendices

1. A Service from the Grace Community at St Mary’s, Ealing

2. Mothering Sunday: A Sample All-Age Worship Service

3. Ash Wednesday: A Sample Service

4. Evening Prayer: A Sample Service

5. Adoption Sunday: A Sample Service

Sample Service Plan Template

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

There are so many people to thank. This book couldn’t have been written without the gifts, creativity and wisdom of those who have inspired, guided and created worship alongside me over the years.

Thank you, Mike Moynagh, for your friendship, encouragement and insights – I cannot begin to say how much I have learned from you. Your commitment to the hopes articulated in this book has enthused me, and your ideas and the conversations we have shared have sparked so much within this text.

Thank you, members of the Liturgical Commission – the encouragement, creativity and discussions we have shared have forged a greater desire in me to serve God by shaping missional worship through his church.

Thank you family, friends and colleagues, for your constant support.

Thank you to those who read the book in draft form, and to Thomas Allain Chapman and Tim Hone for their excellent and insightful editing.

Thank you to my wonderful wife, Kate. Where would I be without you – without your endless supply of love, patience and support? We have shared so much of this journey in missional worship and every moment is a precious memory – from the tears of frustration to the roaring laughter.

This book is dedicated to my three beautiful children.

Introduction

Rowan Williams once said that ‘mission is finding out what God is doing and joining in’.¹ If this is true of mission then it’s surely true of worship. What greater way to honour God, give him glory and tell of his praises than by spotting what he’s doing and joining in? In this way worship is about getting caught up in the dance, movement or even conversation² of the Trinity who reach out with love in and for the world. It’s about serving those who are not yet part of the church community because we join with God to share his inclusive offer of grace. It’s about declaring through word and action the praises of him who welcomed us at the table of the feast, because the feast is spread for all. It’s about honouring the personalities of the Triune God through everything we do, our daily activity in every corner of life, because that’s the way members of the Trinity treat each other.

Worship and mission are inextricably linked, like two wheels on the same bike. We don’t have to have one without the other. In fact, we can’t – mission needs worship and worship needs mission. But somehow we’ve lost sight of this, or maybe we’ve given up on the idea, because worship has been seen by many to hold mission back. And it’s understandable. Worship has become associated with ‘church – the club’, ‘the in crowd’ – on our terms, on our turf. We’ve worshipped to suit ourselves, to feed ourselves, to comfort ourselves in decline. We’ve worshipped in ways that have become more and more out of touch with the contexts in which it is offered. Mission has become an add-on programmed activity in addition to the worship of those who are already members of the church.

But what if we can do both together? What if worship more truly glorifies God by reaching out to those who haven’t yet experienced his love at work in their lives? What if we have more to praise God for when we see him working in the lives of those who have previously had no connection with church as well as those who already have? What if worship is actually participating in the missionary life of God? What if we can have missional worship and worshipful mission?

As worship draws creation into the conversation within God, the world is caught up in the divine mission.³

This book articulates something of the passion I have for missional worship, and I hope it engages with those who share this passion. I hope too that for many readers it will help spark a fresh commitment to facilitate worship that serves the many people in each and every context, including those whose faith lies dormant. This book is for worshippers, missioners and followers of Christ committed to serving him in every part of life; leaders, readers and teams (lay and ordained); courageous mainstream churches or church plants of all traditions looking to rediscover or reimagine their part in God’s mission through their worshipping life; and fresh expressions of church who are faithfully meeting people where they are and looking to help them engage with God in worship.

For my hopes to become a reality, mission and worship need to be held together – the bike needs a chain to drive both wheels. We need an approach to enable the worshipping life of the church to remain faithful to its heritage while reaching out to its context. We need worship that embraces the valuable resources of tradition while also engaging with culture and local people. To create missional worship we need a fusion of context and tradition.

As I write this introduction I am in a coffee shop on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. I am surrounded by people. A few people to my left are having a sales meeting. Behind me, interviews are being conducted for staff for a new hotel in the town. To my right a young mother is bottle-feeding her baby and near her a young guy is watching videos on his phone, thanks to the wonders of Wi-Fi. A coffee shop is a fusion of the traditional pastime of coffee drinking with a contemporary context, for people whether they are working, resting or even a combination of the two. In this environment there is much going on. Visitors can expect the same products time and time again. The extensive range of products becomes familiar. The tradition of coffee drinking (or whatever beverage takes your fancy) is experienced by many. But this is fused with contemporary life. People come to this oasis of refreshment for different reasons. They also come with unique personalities, experiences and needs. This happens effortlessly, it seems, because it has become such an integral part of society.

The fusion of context and tradition is key to this book. But not with regard to coffee drinking. I have something much more transformative in mind, life-changing, world-changing even – the fusion of context and tradition for missional worship. Through our liturgical texts and frameworks, rituals and traditions, worshippers can expect to become familiar with and shaped by our extensive range of worship resources, which they experience time and time again. As they engage with traditional worship resources that enable them to connect with and offer praise to the Triune God of mission, they become embraced by a church community, a spiritual oasis of refreshment. But for worship to be truly missional it also needs to be fused with contemporary life – a world of work, raising children, streaming videos. And so within our inherited liturgies God inspires us to bring worship to life within our context, our culture, the world that we inhabit.

I hope this book will assist churches, whether big or small, struggling or thriving, to forge a way forward that enables their daily, weekly and monthly worship (in church buildings, schools, parks, cafes or nightclubs) to be missional – to embrace local people just as they are, to meet their needs and to enable them to see how God is weaving their lives into his own story of saving grace. I hope too that readers will be inspired to create Trinitarian worship by expressing the relational life and dynamics of the Trinity – of a Father who is actively seeking us out in love through the life of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Within this book you will find a model for creating missional worship. That model is built on the fusion of context and tradition. However, my aim is for the book to be a resource that inspires fresh thinking, gives examples to be adapted and principles to be applied in your own context. Wherever possible I have given examples that flow from thoughts or theories. Creative ideas, praxis, resources and services all serve to paint a picture of missional worship that fuses context and tradition.

Chapter 1 outlines something of the debate that is going on regarding context and tradition, and why harnessing both is important.

Chapter 2 explores how context shapes worship.

Chapter 3 explores why the context of a worshipping community is so important.

Chapter 4 looks at the question, ‘how much weight should be given to tradition?’ and the role that tradition plays in worship.

Chapter 5 asks how we might keep the marriage between context and tradition alive.

Chapter 6 examines valuable building blocks for creating missional worship.

Chapter 7 explores the building blocks for missional worship in practice.

Chapter 8 explains why this approach is an opportunity in mission not to be missed.

I invite you to read this book with an open mind, to put aside any notion of restrictions in worship, liturgies and traditions and to imagine how worship might develop missionally where you are.

Notes

1 Archbishop’s Presidential Address, General Synod, York, July 2003. http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1826/archbishops-presidential-address-general-synod-york-july-2003

2 Michael Moynagh, Church for Every Context, London: SCM Press, 2013, p. 353.

3 Moynagh, Church for Every Context, p. 354.

1. Context versus Tradition?

It has to be acknowledged that there is a serious debate raging regarding the issue of context versus tradition when facilitating and creating worship in the church today. On the side of context, to what extent should worship be clothed in or emerge out of the culture of the day, and to what degree should the local context shape or impact the worship? From the perspective of tradition, how far, if at all, should church communities or fresh expressions of church stray from the traditions of the church and the liturgical heritage that has been formed over the centuries? These are very real questions being faced by church and worship leaders on a daily basis. As a result the Liturgical Commission of the Church of England spends a considerable amount of time engaging with this issue or with related concerns.

How should worship be shaped in order to enable those being embraced by the community of the church to encounter the Triune God of hospitality and mission? Should it be shaped more by the traditions of the church or by the context which people inhabit?

Selling out to the context and simply re-creating contemporary culture will lose the rich resources of tradition. Too much contextualization, and

The Lord be with you

and also with you.

can become:

Nice to see you,

to see you nice.

– worship so trendy and accessible that it’s empty of Christian content and meaning.

However, if we retreat to the margins of society in order to create a traditional church culture, this can create a worshipping community wholly out of touch with its context.

The Lord be with you

and also with you.

can become:

The Lord be with you

if only you knew that.

In this case the liturgy is used in worship within the context but the people of the local community can be totally unaware of and disconnected from church. The church might believe that the local community are welcome to services of worship, but little is done to reach out into that community, to share in God’s mission or to demonstrate his love.

On one side of the argument, we have some churches who could be accused of selling out to culture. On the other side are those traditionalists who preserve worship which is out of touch with the world in which people live. At the heart of the issue is a question of balance. While there are not many who would argue that worship should be distanced from its context or that it ought to remain untouched by the liturgical traditions of the church, in practice a gulf has