Worship 101 What is Worship

We gather for worship every week. It the central activity of a church. But what IS worship really? How is worship structured and planned? Join Pastor Katie and Keith as they explore the big picture of what is worship before we explore the specific pattern of worship at St. John in Mars. 

Learn more about St. John Lutheran Church at stjohnchurchmars.org or follow us on Facebook.

Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to Facets of Faith, our Worship One O One series. Once again, we've got Keith with us, and he's gonna kind of help guide us in this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

So, Pastor. Very simply stated, what is worship?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I mean, I think that's a really fair question to ask because we say that we gather for worship, and I was talking to a group of confirmation students, not ours, a different group, and I was trying to get them to help me plan worship. And the first thing I asked them is, what is worship? The deer in the headlights look I got, because they're like, oh no, that's what we do on Sunday mornings. But worship is the praise and thanksgiving and celebration of all that God is and has done and is doing in our lives. Um, worship is the time when we are bold to be in the presence of God as a community. We are bold to invoke the name of God in prayer and song and all that stuff. And worship ultimately is the central core of what it is to be church. To be church is to worship God. And everything else kind of stems out of that as a periphery to the church's purpose of being. So worship can take many, many forms. We talked last week a little bit about the creative ability of liturgy. And so in your home churches, you might have noticed that liturgy has many different shapes and structures. Um we follow one particular structure that's considered traditional, I guess you could say. Um, but that doesn't mean it's like the right way. It's just how we have formulated worship here at this congregation.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

So worship as defined maybe with a capital W, I I I think it I want I I do not want to imply that, oh, you can only worship God on Sunday from 9 to 10. No. Worshiping God can be done anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yes. Um worshiping can happen anywhere, but I always like to add the caveat of worshiping involves the the gathered assembly. Um so you sometimes hear the phrase of like I can worship God on a golf course. Um you can pray and you can be connected with God on the golf course, but I think worship needs a community element because we worship and we praise and we give thanks to a God who is a God of community. And it's hard to do that when we are totally by ourselves. Um there are times like there's a piece of scripture where Jesus says, go and pray in secret so no one knows what you're saying, but then what does he immediately do? He says, our Father. And so he already got this idea that even in prayer and worship, we're never alone. We're always part of the gathered assembly. And so by collecting together, whether it's on Sunday mornings or Friday evenings at messy church or Thursday evenings at a service of hope and healing, or gathered together in the park, we're collecting together as the gathered assembly with those near and those who are far in our heart, far away or in our hearts, and we are gathering together for praise and celebration and thanksgiving and uh supplication or asking our God.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Good, thank you. So as we worship collectively together, there are different types of worship, and you mentioned you know what the air with the air quotes traditional. So when I when when my wife and I and my family were looking for a a church, we visited many different churches, and some of them felt right, some of them didn't. We obviously eventually um uh settled on St. John Lutheran Church here in Mars. So reading, I guess, reading my mind a little bit, what is it about our worship that is different than other people's worship, or I should say maybe what is it about our worship, the way that it flows from beginning to end, that made me or us in the in the pews feel comfortable. There has to be a a road.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

There is. Um, and I use the air quotes on traditional, not because it's a bad word or not because it's an incorrect word, only because traditional is one of those words where, depending on your context, it means a million different things. And so you can't call a service traditional and know exactly what you're walking into. Um, same thing with the word contemporary. These are words that we use, but they don't always have clear definitions, and so they're hard to use in these kinds of spaces. Um but because I use the word traditional, there is a certain roadmap that most churches who follow what we call a traditional service tend to follow. And um I break the service down into five chunks. We start off with preparation, and then we move into gathering, and then we move into the word, then move into the meal, and then move into sending. So those are the five chunks, and a lot of uh traditional churches and actually a lot of liturgies in general follow that basic roadmap uh every week. Uh what those different elements look like, that's where it gets really different. And that element or those five steps actually come from writings we have from first and second century. Um, there's a first century writing called the Diddy, D-I-D-A-C-H-E. Uh, you can look it up, it's a neat document, um, but it gives some structures to worship. There's an early church leader in the second century, his name is Justin. Um, he did a lot of writing on the patterns of worship, and they had that kind of five-fold structure. And then my guess is what makes this service feel comfortable to you and to a lot of other folks is that it's very similar to other churches that have the traditional liturgy that's been around for a long time. So the Catholic Church follows a very specific liturgy, which is again that work of the people, that pattern of worship, the words, the motions, the songs of worship. Um, and the Catholic Church has a very specific pattern that they follow. And our pattern, because it's based off of what Luther wrote, is right in line with what the Catholic Church does. And Episcopalians follow a very similar pattern also, um, because they also are going back to kind of that time frame of when worship was very structured and very um uh what's the word I'm looking for? Regimented. Um and so because we hearken back to that and we have that kind of similar route, it makes us feel more comfortable in each other's spaces, which is neat. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

So how do we how do we keep it fresh? How do we keep it engaging? There are times when, you know, I'm sure that you look out in the the sea of faces and you're like, nobody's listening to me. Or maybe you maybe you're thinking, everybody's listening to me, I'm getting it right this time.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

I have never, ever, she says with the most dripping sarcasm, looked out and seen people with drooping eyes and making notes on their bulletin. No, never. Um, so the answer is it's hard to keep it engaging. Um we've had, we asked our confirmation students not too long ago the bold question of is worship ever boring? And those poor kids were so scared because they wanted to say yes, but they felt like that was the wrong answer. Um so sometimes worship can be a little boring because there's a lot of things that stay the same. Um and things stay the same because when things stay the same, we internalize them better. We begin to have those words reverberating and echoing in our heads and our hearts throughout the week. And then when people take the bulletin home, they can sing the bits of liturgy, they can read along with things again, and it's very familiar and comforting. Um I always like to remember a story when I was babysitting and I couldn't console a small child, and the only songs that popped into my head were liturgy, were songs of communion and things like that, because I sung those every single week growing up. Um so that's why things stay the same. But your question was, how do we keep it fresh? And I just told you basically it's hard and we don't. But we try to, and we try to by shifting the words a little bit every now and then. Um, here at St. John, we change things seasonally. So we use different music seasonally. Um when we talk about liturgy music, I should clarify that first. Liturgical music is the music that is the same every single week for a set time. That's different than the songs or the hymns, which are different every single week. So the liturgical music, we'll change that every season. We'll change the words we use in say confession, forgiveness, and things like that. Those change seasonally, which helps keep some level of freshness while maintaining some of the um the repetition there. And then every now and then I like to just see what I can do that's a little different. Um I had great fun in Easter and we during the Thanksgiving for baptism. Instead of just looking at the water, I decided to throw it up in the air, and then I got a small child to come up and throw it in the air or in my face, as the case may be. Um little things like that I think help a lot in by inviting people to participate in many different ways that helps them stay engaged, things like that. Um that's what we try to do. We're always looking for new ways, though, to kind of keep it fresh and engaging, but still familiar and comfortable. It's a hard balance to hit.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Correct. So I know that um, you know, fresh and engaging, right? To kind of jump off there, uh, as part of you know, our discussion last week, um, and as being in uh one of the folks responsible for worship planning, we talk about the hymnals, right? And we and we pull sometimes we pull some new hymns out of the purple book, which sometimes is great, and then other times if we get a little bit too feisty, we pull too many new songs, and then nobody sings. Because nobody knows, yeah, not everybody knows how to read music, and so then sometimes our desire to keep things fresh and new can maybe sometimes backfire because okay, great, we have a bunch of new stuff, but we've lost that that connection with with the the folks that are participating, but but that but then we put a barrier in place.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Right, but then if you use too much of the traditional stuff, you wind up with uh music and worship that feels out of context to the current culture, and you wind up with words like Ebenezer that we don't know what it means. And you invite everyone to sing that word and expect them to just magically know it. Um so it's kind of a a tricky balance point. And honestly, I'm not sure we're ever gonna get it right. I think we're always gonna be dancing a little bit on either side of the line.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Well, I think as one of the as you defined worship and the term liturgy, feedback from the congregation, from the folks that are participating, are is is is critical. It this isn't your service to manage and run and dictate to the congregation. You lead it. And we should be open to receiving feedback that, hey, we too much new music this week. We're like back off a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, I mean I'm just kind of making faces. I know I'm a terrible poker player. If you want to win a lot of money, ask me to play. Um because my face gives me away in ways I don't even know. But I was making some faces at some of the words because I'm not gonna disagree because having a congregational level of um involvement and uh ownership over the service is absolutely important. However, my role as pastor is to manage the worship, is to ensure that it is an honest reflection of the theology of the Lutheran Church, is an honest reflection of scripture and and all of that, because it's my job to make sure that we are worshiping in a way that is fitting with um who we are claiming to be as a church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Well, we have guidelines. Yes. I mean we actually have the um, you know, the like the the seasonal guidelines and the actual um what's the word I'm looking for? Like it's not it's not liturgy, but you know, when we do worship planners, so you know we we have okay, these are the readings for for this week. And there's uh there's like a reading A and a reading B, but there's we don't get to just pick. Right?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah, so what you're you're referencing the liturgy, or not the liturgy, gosh, I did the same thing you did, the lectionary. Um and we briefly talked about that a few weeks back. Uh and so the lectionary does kind of give us a basis for everything to help us stay grounded in scripture, and really all of liturgy helps us stay grounded in scripture because when you go through our service, much of the words that we say throughout the service, confession forgiveness, um, up through the readings, up through the Eucharistic liturgy, the sending, a lot of that is based in verses from scriptures or images from scripture or references to scripture. And so scripture's grounding us all the time. Um but then when it comes to picking hymns and things like that, there are times when certain hymns might not be like pastorally sensitive to the topic at hand or might be distracting to what we're trying to focus in on these particular readings and things like that. And so there's it's again, it's a balancing act of I don't dictate worship. You're you were absolutely correct. I do not dictate worship, but no one dictates worship. And so it's a conversation always of balancing everything. Which means again, you're never it's like when you have three kids. I was told I don't have kids, but I was told as soon as you have three kids, you are guaranteed at any time one of them is unhappy. Someone is not perfectly thrilled with the way worship is going. And so it's a conversation. So you're trying to kind of balance out the needs of the congregation and the wants of the congregation so that worship can be the voice of everybody together and not just one person or party.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Right. So one of the things that I had really no idea when I really first started becoming, you know, a more active participant in our church was the hymnal was more than just, oh, that's where all the songs are. Like that's only a portion. I mean, we have the entire small catechism in in in there. We have all of the um uh uh settings that are in the beginning part of the book. Like, I mean that that it's the hymnal almost doesn't do it justice. It's it's sort of a playbook, if you will. I I I don't know. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Yeah, so the the hymnal, so the hymnals, the reason it's called a hymnal, I'm gonna dive deep again, sorry guys, but the reason it's called a hymnal is because back when they first had them, that is all that was in there, was just the songs. Um and so the name just kind of stuck. But then as printing became cheaper, as people became more literate, the hymnal grew into what it could be. And so we have, I don't have some of the older ones, but some of them then start to have the language of liturgy. And there's initially maybe one liturgy offered in there. And then um it grew to being, well, if we have the liturgy in there and we have the hymns in there, we could do other teaching documents in there too, because then we can get hype people buy their own hymnals, they can use this at home. So we start including um little essays, extra prayers, the small catechism, all that extra stuff. Ten commandments are in there. Yeah. So it becomes more of a resource than than other than people might realize it's that's better than playbook resource.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

That's a better word. I like that better. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Well, and actually, one a couple predecessors ago, I actually have a copy here of the the hymnal. It's called service book and hymnal. And that's kind of a nod to that it includes more than just the songs. Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

So then what is the uh before you go any further in this explanation um or in this you know in this series? And what what is the frequency at which the hymnal is um sunset and replaced with a new one? I know that we and worship planners have been you know flirting with this new purple book or dark blue, whatever color you want to call it. Um, and it has new songs, and that's great, but is that just you know, some period of time for um artists to get together and come up with new songs, or is there like an every five years, like every five years you get a new book?

SPEAKER_00 17:21

It's really not that structured. Um so a lot of our listeners who are familiar with Lutheran services might be familiar with what's the called the Green Book or the LBW. Um and the Green Book is actually really fascinating because it's a joint effort between Missouri Synod, ELC, well, yeah, ELCA was just forming, um, and other denominations too. So this is actually a very ecumenical book across different Lutheran churches, which makes this a really fascinating resource to have.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

And so is there anybody else on can you define the word ecumenical?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Oh, that's a great word to define. Um we'll also define liturgy at some point. I can using that word. But ecumenical means different denominations coming together in a shared effort, shared purpose, shared something. So ecumenical just means different denominations are working together. Okay. So the that was the and this came out in 1978. I'm starting with this one only because this is the first one I'm confident on the copyright date. I don't remember when SBH, the service book and hymnal, came out. So 1978, we got the green book, and then I have a stack of hymnals next to me. And then at some point, I mentioned earlier that liturgy is very contextual, cultural, all that kind of stuff, and flexible. So it shifts with the times, and as more new music becomes available, as language is changing and evolving with the times, um, there comes a time when there's an effort or an impetus to just come out with a supplement. Something not to replace the whole one, because to replace an entire hymnal is a massive project. And so they come up with a little one that's got a couple of extra liturgies, a few new songs, but not the whole kit and caboodle. So after the LBW, we came up with the with one voice. And this is the blue book. We like our colors. We like to name things by colors. And this, I want to say, came out in the late 80s or early 90s, something like that. But then after a while, it became clear that, you know, this green book was getting older. A lot of the language was getting um uh maybe not as common parlance anymore, and so we needed to freshen it up again. And so another massive committee came together, this one not included in the Missouri Synod, but another massive committee came together and said, How can we be refreshing the hymnal so that it's still useful, but it's speaking in language that people can use every day? And that's when we came up with the cranberry book, the ELW, the Evangelical Lutheran in parentheses book of worship. Um Evangelical Lutheran worship. And this it's called Cranberry because the SBH, the service book and hymnal was called the Red Book, and people remember the Red Book, and so to avoid confusion, we came up with another word for red. So this one came out in early 2000s, something like that. And then once again, as time has gone by, people are like, well, now there's all this another new round of music and new language and things like that. So then we came up with the purple book, and the purple book is called All Creation Sings, and once again, this is like the blue book, a supplement. It has a couple of liturgies, a few new songs, but it's not meant to replace the cranberry book. And then just to show how nuts I am with hymnals and liturgies and things like that, there's also this one, and there's also this one and this one. We love to come up with worship resources, and they don't always follow a nice clean pattern. They just come up when there seems to be a need for some fresh language, some fresh songs, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Which we have talked about in some of the songs that we sing. Um, I remember having a conversation at Worship Planners once where you were talking about an Ebenezer, and I asked, What is an Ebenezer? And we found out it was a rock, right? Some form of rock. Yeah. That was fascinating about the hymnals. So my last question then is Liturgy. So that's another fancy $5 church word. Um, and I'm almost ashamed to admit it. Like, so, but specifically, what does it mean? Like if I was to Google search it, what does the definition of liturgy tell me?

SPEAKER_00 21:42

That's fair. Just like the church loves to name things by color, we also like to use big fancy names and words that people don't use in common language, despite what I just said about worship being contextual and using common language. Um, but liturgy, quite simply, is the work of the people. Um, and that's a tricky thing, partially because uh we sometimes forget that liturgy is the congregation doing things together. So next week we're gonna talk about specifically what liturgy looks like and how that all came to be. Um but that's kind of how the church developed the resources to lead us in liturgy, which is the work of the people, how we worship, the not only the words we say, but the actions we do and the way we sing things and all that stuff comes together as liturgy, the work of the people in worship of God. So speaking of, join us next week as we dig into all of that liturgy stuff, the shape of liturgy, the songs of liturgy, the movements of liturgy, all that kind of stuff. Until next time, this has been Facets of Faith and a Worship 101, and we can't wait to see you next week.