Problem or Opportunity? Looking for other ways to "do" church

“Houston, we've had a problem.”

Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell to Mission Control usually erroneously quoted as “Houston we have a problem” (April 1970)

Back in August our worship coordinator and her husband (and her brother as well) moved to Madison to attend the university there. It's a common enough circumstance in our little town in northern Wisconsin: kids graduate from high school and soon after head off to college or the military. In this case, Kayla and Cody had been students at UW-Barron County, a two-year community college, and had reached the end of the line. It was time to move on in pursuit of the rest of their college degree. But in the move we lost two worship leaders, our sound guy and a deacon to boot. In a small fellowship like ours that's a tough pill to swallow but, as I have said already, it is the way of all the earth in these here parts.

Moving on

Our leadership team had prayed all summer that God would either raise up others in our midst or bring in others to fill the vacancies their departure would be creating. I can tell you, we were pretty well in earnest as we prayed but after a summer's worth of praying that request was not answered. The last Sunday in August arrived, Kayla led us one more time to the altar (while Cody made sure the sound was balanced in the booth) and Noah, Kayla's brother (and an equally talented worship leader himself), accompanied his sister. We prayed over them, commending them to the Lord's care, and hugged them all good-bye. With no up-and-coming worship leader in the bullpen our leadership team came to some decisions – or these decisions were thrust upon us.

First off, as much as we would like to do as much we could not afford to stipend anyone local to come and lead worship for us on a regular basis. What's more, I had no interest in returning to the early days of my term here at Refuge when I was the “everything” pastor – you know, led worship, preached, and facilitated youth ministry on Wednesday nights. In my 20s and 30s that was a lot of fun. The thought of returning to such a routine now in my mid-50s frankly is death to me. However, I would be willing to do “double-duty” one Sunday a month. Kayla's parents, David and Paula, wonderful worship leaders themselves, while not interested in picking up the Sundays her daughter normally would have covered were willing to do one Sunday a month as well. Two of the four Sundays were now covered but what of the other two? 

At my suggestion that perhaps on those particular Sundays we “pipe worship in” via, say, YouTube it was clear that this was “a non-starter”. We would have live worship or not at all. So, if you can't draw from your own talent pool and you can't hire someone to come in and your leaders resist the idea of any kind of remote worship experience, what do you do? “Then maybe its a gift,” replied one of our elders. Maybe the vacancies were opportunity to experience God's presence and experiment with other ways of “doing” church.

This is what a lot of us think when we think
of liturgy

Every place has its liturgy. Even us Pentecostals and Charismatics who pride ourselves in not putting a printed order of service in the bulletin have a liturgy. It's the beaten path we trod every time we gather together in the Lord's house. Liturgy in itself is not a bad thing. It's comforting to know the gist of where we're going each week (even if we complain now and again of church being same-o, same-o). But in a small congregation there are other ways to do “it” and with the blessing of our leadership team I began to plan Sunday morning gatherings with different formats.

People love ThanksBringing

The Sharing Circle

One of the first kinds of gatherings we tried was a format that we were familiar with. For many years now we've had this event in early November we call “Thanks-bringing”. It's fairly simple. We organize the chairs (for the hundredth time I am so glad we don't deal with pews anymore) into an oval and following the psalmist's command we give thanks to the Lord for he is good (Psalm 107:1). For over an hour and more people share stories of God's faithfulness that they have experienced in the past year or list for the fellowship all the things that they are thankful for. When things have pretty much run their course, we close in prayer and then the sanctuary is reordered (again) as we set up tables for turkey dinner with all the fixings. I like to think we're just following in the steps of Moses and the elders who sat down to eat in the presence of the Lord (Exodus 24). So, what if we set up the chairs Thanks-bringing-style and the week before exhort people to come ready to share a hymn, a song, a story – anything that would honor God and build up the Body? The first time we did this I called it a 1426 Gathering after 1 Corinthians 14:26 wherein Paul counsels the Corinthian believers in the following manner:

“What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.” (NIV)

Larry brought props

I was prepared for one of the shortest services Refuge has ever had but my worries were for naught. When we opened up the floor, the very first guy to stand to his feet was perhaps the most quietest of our group. And he even brought props! He no sooner finished and then maybe the next quietest of our fellowship shared the words of a hymn that means so much to her. On it went for nearly an hour and a half at which time I made a papal decision to close the gathering if only because I knew the Children's Church volunteers were more than likely at the end of their rope in the lower level. But people were inspired and encouraged and expressed the desire to do it again (which we did just this past Sunday but now named the “Sharing Circle” gathering).

A teenager, a college grad, a middle-aged couple
and a couple of grandparents - a GREAT small group

Small Group Sunday

A few weeks later we tried another way of doing church: what if instead of preaching the Word we broke into small groups and studied the same text together? In twenty-six years of pastoral ministry I had never preached from Haggai and my hunch was that most of them had not read Haggai in many a year. This would guarantee that we would be a little bit off balance together as we approached the text. I gave them their “homework assignment” the week before (which was to read Haggai in its entirety - all 38 verses of it) and then prepared a small group study for the following Sunday. Knowing that over half of the congregation trickles into the worship gathering during the first twenty minutes of the weekly service I asked my daughter, who had happened to be home that weekend, to lead a short worship set at the beginning of the gathering. After our preliminaries of offering

and announcements, I then instructed them in what we were going to do. We would subdivide into groups of 5-7 people apiece and each group would be responsible to pick both a facilitator and a reporter who would be responsible to report back to the large group when we were done. We ended up with seven small groups and each group studied Haggai 1:1-15 following a series of questions I had prepared (and, if I'm honest, had lifted almost entirely from the Serendipity Bible that sits on my shelf in my office.) In addition I had written up a brief introduction to Haggai 1 to help set the context of the study.

Admittedly, it wasn't a home run but we didn't strike out either. For nearly 45 minutes our fellowship was studying the Word together, sharing their thoughts and listening to one another. During the large group debrief following the small group time it was clear that some of my questions missed the mark and at the same time different personalities glean different perspectives of what they read. The same thing happens in preaching. Over the years several times I've had different individuals share with me something God had spoken to them during one of my messages – something that has nothing to do with the text – but they leave encouraged and blessed. After each group shared their findings I made some summary comments and then had them pray for one another in their group and then called it a day.

Did we have guests on that day? We did. In fact, we had four of the Belizean guys who frequent our fellowship when they are working in Chetek. I don't know what they got out of the study but in each fellowship they were being spoken with and prayed for. I call that a win. We read the Word, we meditated upon it, we listened to one another and then we prayed for one another. Sounds like church to me.

There's more in there than I recall - or knew!

We tried this format three times this past fall and worked our way through Haggai. Each time we did it, I tweaked the format a little. I'm still not satisfied that we have arrived at an acceptable “Small Group Sunday” liturgy for us but I think its worth trying again. As much as we would like people to do this sort of thing outside of Sunday morning reality is – for us, at least – people's lives and schedules do not allow it. They're working (a lot), they're raising their children, they're attending their kids' athletic events and whatever free night they may have they're pretty much spent and would rather spend the night in and not go to someone's house for an evening of fellowship. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think we're going to come up with a time outside of Sunday morning that works for a lot of us. The culture is against us.

A classic

Movie Morning

The third kind of Sunday morning format that we tried this past fall arose out of the same question we leaders ask ourselves about any other gathering we do: “Why do we do church?” As I understand it, the purpose of coming together regularly is to hear the Word and encourage and pray for one another, looking for creative ways to “provoke one another on to love and good deeds” (Heb 10:24, NIV). What if we saw the message and discussed it afterward? When the youth center we helped start back in 2000 closed a year or so ago, we ended up with the theater popcorn machine from the place. So on the first Sunday in Advent, we set the pop-corn machine up in the back of the sanctuary and one of the guys made up several batches of popcorn. We then watched a Veggie-Tale cartoon followed by the twenty-three minute claymation classic Martin the Cobbler, a short movie based on Leo Tolstoy's Where Love Is God Is There Also. The first Sunday of

every month is Communion Sunday for us and we keep the family together (i.e., no Children's Church on that Sunday). So I deliberately chose something admittedly on the light side for our first go at this. A few in our midst absolutely loved this way of doing church. It spoke to them of what “church” is – the family of God gathering together in God's living room to enjoy his company as well as everyone else's. There was no whining but some people obviously thought this kind of thing was better for a “fellowship gathering” as opposed to a “worship service.” We may be talking semantics but experience has taught me that once people

egress our building on Sunday morning the likelihood that we're going to come back that night for a “time of fellowship” is slim and none. And besides a visual culture has a hard time of hearing an oral message no matter the skill of the preacher. In this case, this little film was a meditation on Matthew 25 and what it means to minister “to the least of these.” Upon reflection, this isn't a children's message; this is a life lesson that God wants to inscribe deeply on our hearts.

Grateful for the team we have

This guy too

We didn't use these formats every Sunday. There were Sundays we did church the way we are accustomed to doing it. But at the end of three months of this sort of experimentation admittedly there is a general feeling of disorientation about us. Its sorta like the first Sunday the pews went out and the chairs came in. Mythological

Pangaea opened up and no one quite knew where to sit for awhile as some of the former “continents” (i.e., pews) were not just in another place – they were altogether gone. Eventually people claimed different parts of the sanctuary but for a brief time people felt off balance. Some love the variety of it all. A few want to know when things will get back to “normal”and if I'm ever going to, you know, preach-preach again ('cause I really didn't work unless I preached?) I appreciate this group so much and their willingness to roll with the different settings we have served up to them lately. They really are wonderful people. Maybe one of the best things to arise out of this season we find ourselves in is that the elders feel compelled to pray together more regularly than we have been doing. And only good can come from that.

So things are a bit messy around here, the chairs are out of order and so is the order of service but what of it? If we are “shaking things up” for some kind of notoriety or because we're bored and we're trying to inject a little spontaneity into our weekly gathering, ultimately I think we will be disappointed. People will figure out soon enough we're just trying to be trendy or something. But if the goal is to foster community, know one another better and therefore love one another more truly how can God not be pleased with that sort of thing? Maybe in a culture like ours that resists people making connections with one another one of the best things we can do is help cultivate a healing community of faith.