Worship-shaped Christians = Worship-shaped churches | James Henley

Sep200909

Church & Ecclesiology, Culture, Society & Mission

Comments

Worship-shaped Christians = Worship-shaped churches

I was pointed towards a really interesting blog by David Muir on the Share blog – part of Fresh Expressions: Worship-shaped churches? Get real and get over them! (HT: Jonny)

David makes some really interesting observations about both the established way of being church with worship at the core, and the new model that is emerging that has mission as its core value…

Such [mission-oriented] churches will find worship hard – as hard as the worship-shaped churches find mission. Worship will not be the emotional powerhouse that it is for worship-shaped churches. But it will also not need to be. ‘Gathering for mission’ is what will give a mission-shaped church energy, and will keep it on track as a mission-oriented church.

This makes a lot of sense – and is clearly an issue a lot of “missional churches” are struggling with. For myself and The Lab, I really like this dream of being refreshed and energised by mission rather than by worship.

The challenge is that for a lot of Christians, worshipping God is about being filled and energised (spot the hidden irony) and to break into a new way of being and doing church means needing to break out of this old way of thinking that says “how will I be fed spiritually?” I long to see churches that are energised and empowered simply through the act of joining in God’s mission together – what an amazing picture.

Sue

I think the mistake that the church has made is to allow worship to be purely about singing and music rather than everything we do as in Romans 12. If we believe this verse then whatever we do that is in God's will is worship. So the sign could easily read "Go and worship".

blog comments powered by Disqus

Recent Activity

Published The Alway Project.

— March 10th via Lab Blog
Found him. Phew. [jameshenley]

— March 10th via Twitter
Hunting for Brueggemann... [jameshenley]

— March 10th via Twitter
See you Wednesday from 6.30pm for Foodface at St Paul's! http://bit.ly/a0WnnN [thelabnewport]

— March 9th via Twitter
Published This is Logorama, which just won the 2010 Academy Award for Best....

— March 9th via Lab Blog

Categories

MySQL server version: 5.0.90-community collapsCat options: Array ( [title] => Categories [showPostCount] => [inExclude] => exclude [inExcludeCats] => [showPosts] => [showPages] => [linkToCat] => [olderThan] => 0 [excludeAll] => 0 [catSortOrder] => ASC [catSort] => catName [postSortOrder] => ASC [postSort] => postTitle [expand] => 4 [defaultExpand] => [debug] => 1 [postTitleLength] => 0 [animate] => 1 [catfeed] => none [catTag] => cat [postDateAppend] => after [postDateFormat] => m/d [showPostDate] => [useCookies] => [postsBeforeCats] => [showTopLevel] => 1 [customExpand] => [customCollapse] => [number] => 4 [includeCatArray] => Array ( ) ) postsToExclude: Array ( ) CATEGORY QUERY: SELECT t.*, tt.* FROM wp_terms AS t INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy AS tt ON t.term_id = tt.term_id WHERE tt.taxonomy IN ('category') AND t.slug!='blogroll' ORDER BY t.name ASC CATEGORY QUERY RESULTS Array ( [0] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 3 [name] => Biblical Studies [slug] => bible [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 3 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 8 ) [1] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 68 [name] => Blog Series [slug] => series [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 78 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 0 ) [2] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 4 [name] => Books [slug] => books [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 4 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 7 ) [3] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 5 [name] => Church & Ecclesiology [slug] => church [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 5 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 31 ) [4] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 7 [name] => Church Discipline [slug] => church-discipline [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 7 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 68 [count] => 3 ) [5] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 12 [name] => Community Stories [slug] => stories [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 12 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 35 ) [6] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 15 [name] => Culture, Society & Mission [slug] => mission [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 15 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 36 ) [7] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 8 [name] => Current Issues [slug] => current [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 8 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 24 ) [8] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 91 [name] => Faith & Consumerism [slug] => faith-consumerism [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 106 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 2 ) [9] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 10 [name] => Film [slug] => film [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 10 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 17 ) [10] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 11 [name] => Games [slug] => games [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 11 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 3 ) [11] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 80 [name] => Groups, Relationships & Learning [slug] => relationships [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 95 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 3 ) [12] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 92 [name] => Lent 2010 [slug] => lent-2010 [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 108 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 68 [count] => 0 ) [13] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 14 [name] => Links [slug] => links [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 14 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 19 ) [14] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 90 [name] => Mission and Learning [slug] => mission-and-learning [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 105 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 68 [count] => 2 ) [15] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 69 [name] => Missional Viewpoints [slug] => missional-viewpoints [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 80 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 68 [count] => 5 ) [16] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 16 [name] => Music [slug] => music [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 16 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 2 ) [17] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 13 [name] => Personal [slug] => life [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 13 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 37 ) [18] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 17 [name] => Reflection & Contemplation [slug] => reflection [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 17 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 54 ) [19] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 18 [name] => Resources & Media [slug] => resources [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 18 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 19 ) [20] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 19 [name] => Revolution of God [slug] => revolution-of-god [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 19 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 68 [count] => 3 ) [21] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 29 [name] => Talks/Sermons [slug] => sermons [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 30 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 3 ) [22] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 73 [name] => Twelve Days of Christmas [slug] => 12 [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 87 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 68 [count] => 12 ) [23] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 1 [name] => Uncategorised [slug] => misc [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 1 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 0 [count] => 20 ) [24] => stdClass Object ( [term_id] => 30 [name] => Video [slug] => video [term_group] => 0 [term_taxonomy_id] => 31 [taxonomy] => category [description] => [parent] => 18 [count] => 1 ) ) POST QUERY: POST QUERY RESULTS
Biblical Studies
Blog Series
Church & Ecclesiology
Community Stories
Culture, Society & Mission
Current Issues
Faith & Consumerism
Groups, Relationships & Learning
Personal
Reflection & Contemplation
Resources & Media
- Books
- Film
- Games
- Links
- Music
- Talks/Sermons
- Video
Uncategorised