The 5 W’s + H of Worship: Why and How We Worship

Looking back at the previous posts, I would like to reiterate that really, these are just glimpses and ideas of what the What, When, and Where could look like. As I looked back, the idea of Why and How we worship really seemed spread throughout this journey through the 5 W’s + H of Worship. 

Why and How We Worship are our response to the Who, What, When and Where we worship. We worship because that is what we are made for – to glorify The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with our lives and all the goings on in our life. From the Good to the Bad, our response is our worship. It’s taking it and turning it back in praise to God and worshipping our Creator with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This is Why and How.

The 5 W’s of Worship: When We Worship

Reading through the Psalms, we find many examples of WHEN to worship. When we worship can be times of praise (Psalm 150), sickness (Psalm 38), and also times of rest (psalm 60 1-4). Worship can also be held in times of distress (Psalm 56), times of question (Pss. 44, 88) and times of rememberance (Pss. 136-137). Really there is no time to NOT worship God for all that he gives us in times of joy and times of trial, but sometimes we forget to turn our eyes to Jesus during these times. That is why the Psalms are a great starting place for these times, and are also a great resource for the words that we need but cannot express in these times when we worship.

An example of this is when I was up at Trinity Western University heading across campus to one of my classes and a dark cloud sat over the campus, but it hadn’t started to rain yet. I arrived to the lecture hall and prepared for class, when all of a sudden our professor burst into the room and yelled out, “did you see the skies as you walked into the building just now? Quick, grab your bible and let’s read Psalm 19!”. We read the Psalm aloud as a class with one voice and worshipped God with the Psalm.

So when do we worship? Again, as said earlier in “where we worship”, we worship as a reaction to God – like when we salivate when we smell or think of food. Maybe then, we worship when we truly realize God’s presence in our life, Jesus’ impact with his sacrifice for true life for us, and the way that the Holy Spirit is moving in us.

Thoughts?

The 5W’s and H of Worship: “What” We Worship

This is the second part of the 5W’s and the H of Worship (Who, What, When, Where, and Why – and How we worship). This week we had our own Wayne Park contribute this idea of What we worship. Thanks Wayne!

Walter Brueggemann suggests the following about the Psalms (The Message of the Psalms): 

Psalms of Orientation -

“Human life consists in satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke gratitude for the constancy of blessing”.

Psalms of Dis-orientation -

“Human life consists in anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering, and death. These evoke rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred”.

Psalms of Re-orientation -

“Human life consists in turns of surprise when we are overwhelmed with the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through the despair…a fresh intrusion that makes all things new” (19). 
 

Worshipping sometimes comes so naturally, sometimes it goes against what we are feeling. Sometimes it is so counter-intuitive that we wonder if we’ve forgotten how or lost the touch. Life does that to you. Which is why I think these three themes embody the spirit of worship. Yes, it is something we do in seasons of joy but it also becomes a continuous act even in the midst of Dis-orientation and Re-orientation. In one sense, our “seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering, and death” are acts of worship themselves, for in our suffering we are entering into the solidarity of the suffering Christ. This is worship. But also in our Re-orientating, when we “enter the sanctuary of God” (Ps 73:17) – in effect come back to our senses, snap to – we find the element of surprise – God is good after all.

The Five W’s of Worship: #3 Where We Worship

This is a toughie. I wonder if because we as Christians have put such an emphasis on the idea that “music+message=worship”; that sometimes worship only happens on Sundays inside of a building. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but can worship be more than this? If as Christians we are called to Love God and Love Neighbor, then maybe worship was meant to be outside of the church walls.

I know for me, sometimes I find myself watching a movie and find myself worshipping when I am challenged to think about what I believe in my faith. Other people are able to worship while hiking or biking (which is very common here in the northwest). Some people are able to worship in the company of other people.

This last weekend we had a BBQ Appreciation for the Childens ministry workers at RCC. What an amazing time for these volunteers to see how much not only parents, friends, and families appreciated them, but also the kids that they serve.

So where we worship just might be the place that we find ourselves in where we come to realize that God is truly with us and that we are working for His glory. Maybe where we worship shouldn’t be associated with physical place, but instead the meta-physical; rather, the concious realization that God is present and He is working through us.

Thoughts?

Sunday ReCap 8.30.09

Every quarter, we try to do at least 2 Service Project Sundays at Roosevelt Community Church. This is a day when we shut the church down and go out into the community serve. We don’t take an offering but we make an offering. We don’t sit in service, but we instead we go out and do service. The city is our sanctuary and our neighbors, it’s congregation.

The 5W+H of Worship: Who We Worship

This is the first of the 5W+H (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How) Worship series. My  hope is that this will help us think a little more about worship in the church and be able to discuss it here on this forum. Some of the W’s+H may come up a bit repetitive, but I think that we will be able to work around that. So let’s start with Who We Worship.

At Roosevelt Community Church we worship The Holy Trinity, or the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Throughout the Bible, there is really only one moment when the Trinity is all in one place together. It is in Matthew 3, when Jesus is baptised and the Spirit falls upon him and God announces that Jesus is his son, “whom he is well pleased. But throughout the Bible we see major moments of God showing up to talk to His people, and then we see His faithfulness when He sent Jesus to walk among us and die for our sins. We continue to be led by the Holy Spirit as we listen for what God has for us.

So the Trinity is a “Three in One”, which is something that some people seem to stumble over this, as it is hard to think that all three of these parts of the trinity fit into just one part. They are seperate, but they are one; however, the power is equal in all of them. 

Sometimes we tend to stray away from God and our worship goes away to other things (money, hobbies, interests, etc). This is far from what God calls us from, as He commands our worship. In the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, God asks for us to have no other God’s before Him, not to bow to any idols made by man, and not to misuse the name of the LORD. Right off the bat, we are told who to worship: God and God alone!

Any Thoughts?

Minor Prophets Make for a Major Summer!

Wow! I can’t believe the summer is almost over! Here we sit on August 25th and I haven’t blogged all summer. Well, let us turn over that leaf. Here we go into a new season and I feel refreshed from the unusually HOT summer we’ve had here in Bellingham, Washington this past summer.

This summer we went through the Minor Prophets and RCC has had an awakening to new and refreshing ideas about God and his plans for us. We tend to skip over the minor prophets on our way to the New Testament, but our hope is that with these sermons we can help you to find your story through the Minor Prophets.

Go to www.rooseveltcc.org and click on “Sermons” to catch up!

 

See you soon!

Muse Ministries

Sunday Service 6.23.09

So it was Fathers Day this past week. Something that I like that Pastor Baron does is he acknowledges all men in the congregation and not just the fathers (he also does this on mothers day for women) with the prayer that they grow up to be the man that God needs them to be. Wow! what a giant prayer! To be the man that God needs us to be. Godly men to mentor the generation following them and to learn from the generation who came before us. Let this be our prayer not only for the men of RCC, but also of the world – that they would find and become the man that God needs them to be.

This summer we are going through the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament (this week was Joel. You can hear Baron’s sermon here). Talk about tough! Not only does Baron have to come up with a way to explain them in a context that we can understand, but the musical worship is tough to try and coincide with the message. There really aren’t too many songs that speak of “The dreadful day of the Lord”. So with that being said, we can only draw people into musical worship through songs that ask God for and understanding of Him. Songs that explain that we are there for Him and to learn from him. So the setlist, though short looked a little like this:

Meet with Me (in the Key of G)

Open the Eyes of my Heart

The Lord is Gracious and Compassionate

We trasitioned into “Open the Eyes…” straight from Meet with Me. I think it may have been a little too high for most people, unfortunately. “Meet with Me” and “Open…” have similar themes to them, but sometimes I struggle with the lyrics of “Meet with Me” personally. It seems so demanding of God saying, “I’m here to meet  with you, come and meet with me”. It may just be me and my pesimism. The good thing is that the song is very singable and has lyrics of truth: “As I wait, you make me strong…As I stand, and sing your praise – You come and You fill this place.”

“The Lord is Gracious and Compassionate” is one we don’t normally do, but one that I remember from college minstry at the INN. It went over well, except that the lyric on the screen said, “As far as the east is from the west, that’s how far he has removed HIS transgressions from us”. Whoops. Hopefully not too many people noticed, but it’s kind of hard to miss if you’re paying attention.

Well, that’s all for this week’s service recap. Hope all is well.

Muse Ministries

Service Project Sunday 6.7.09

At Roosevelt Community Church, we like to do a service project 1-2 sundays a quarter (Every three months). Living in Washington where the weather can be rainy most of the time, the summer is an optimal time to do these. What a Service Project Sunday consists of is RCC closing down the service on Sunday to go out and do service. The city becomes our sanctuary and our neighbors the congregation.

So on this day, June 7th, 2009, we had two service projects that the congregation could choose from: 1) Our ongoing ministry at Evergreen Rehab Center (led by Sam and Sue Mattix this week), and 2) Teaming with the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association and cleaning up a path that connects Verona Street and Kentucky Street. This entailed cleaning up litter through the trail, clearing out shrubs and bushes which blocked a lot of “questionable” activity in the woods along side the trail, and helping to maintain a graffiti wall which was donated by the business for the neighborhood to freely leave their artistic expressions on. Here are some pictures from the day -