At our recent simple church gathering in Kiev, we had an opportunity to meet Julie, an American missionary. I really like these thoughts that Julie wrote in a recent blog. 

worship in the simple church...

I've been wanting to write this entry for a week or so but have been gathering my thoughts (i.e. procrastinating as usual and not blogging).

There are two topics in one here:  Simple Church and Worship.

Simple Church is one of the expressions for a new/old way of doing church:  Church that goes beyond the weekly meeting, or the pastor-audience model;  a more participatory gathering which helps people be disciples from the A to Z of life.   In a simple church (or 'organic church' as Neil Cole calls it), your regular meetings may more likely be a family-style meal than a Sunday morning hour or two consisting of 5-7 worship songs, a pastoral prayer, offering collection, and sermon.  Ideally the meeting would reflect Ephesians 5 or Colossians 3 passages that talk about the church (the believers) ministering to one another and bringing glory to God through Spirit-filled and inspired sharing, teaching, singing, exhorting and giving thanks.

But what I think may be the most important part:  a 'simple' church is meant to be simple in order to be about the business of making disciples.  Often our churches drain our people (or that 20% or less who lead in the church) of their time and resources on programs that may or may not effectively make disciples.  The resources go back into an institution (which exists for its own sake) instead of fueling a movement (which exists for others).   A lighter structure may be helpful in keeping things moving--much like less gas is needed to keep a motorcycle on the road than a Hummer--and it can still get you where you need to go.  The simple church is supposed to be about 'going.'

The 'model' itself - if it is a model - isn't what makes the difference.  You can meet with a small group all you want and have it be neither church nor a disciple-making entity.  But for the sake of part two here, I just wanted to lay out a few basics.  For more, see www.simplechurch.com.ua where some folks in Ukraine are working to apply simple church principles to the context there.

'Part two'.

I wanted to talk about worship.  Worship-leading and the whole science (or art?) of worship in the church has been greatly influenced by the church-growth and seeker-sensitive initiatives.  We tend to make choices about the kind of music we need and the kind of leaders who should be up front based on the 'audience' we'd like to attract to our church.  The questions we ask ourselves tend to go like this:  Are our Praise & Worship songs in the current "Top 40"? is this the style that people in our demographic target group listen to? are the worship team members the right age to relate well to the congregation? etc

I can't make fun really, since I'm always looking for something new and fresh to sing - and preferably something that sounds a little bit like U2.

And in about a month I'll be leading worship for a conference in Europe using primarily modern songs written by English-speakers containing only 3 chords.

But I'm getting a little off-topic and talking about style when I want to talk about intent, purpose, and all that . . .

The question is:  if we want to make disciples, if the Church's task is to GO and make disciples and then BE disciples when we are together, then I think some of the worship questions might be:

-- How do you lead worship in a way that teaches others the habits of worship?  (How do you lead believers in worship?  how do you help nonbelievers 'see' and to some extend comprehend what's going on as the believers worship?  how do you temper 'excellence of performance/modelling' with meeting people where they are - spiritually as well as musically?)

-- Is the phrase 'LEAD worship' even fitting anymore if we are talking about a simple, organic church where 'everyone has a hymn . . .'   Do you need a worship leader?

-- Do people need to be taught how to participate in a participatory church meeting?

-- What kinds of music lend themselves to being useful in a setting where you want everyone to be as able to participate as possible?

These are some of the things I've been thinking about and I wanted to get them down in writing and perhaps even start a conversation with you (since that's what a blog is kind of supposed to be!)

So - what do you think?

Julie's website:  http://allmanack.typepad.com/