So,
This past sunday i decided to reverse the order in which we regularly 'worship with'
So, we started with hello's and then some announcements and then BAM! Can you please turn with to....
and so the sermon began....
I went for approximately 25min and i found a few insights:
1. People were more attentive and actually said to me afterwards that they were not so 'sleepy' LOL....what does that tell you, it is a hard life waking up to get to church by 11am for many....
But on a serious note, i found that most people were really quite 'ready' for the message. People seemed to be a little taken back by the fact that we had 'begun the message' already. In fact! Some people had not even arrived (actually several had not arrived, and this is even after we started 5 minutes late and had 5 min for announcemnets).
2. It was difficult to transition into 'worship', my message was about being filled with the Holy Spirit and so there was opportunity for a good transition as we began worship, but it didnt happen as smooth as i would have liked. We talked about this and it seemed that this could have been vercome if we had someone begin to play the keys towards the end of the message to provide some space to then enter into worship instead of BAM! straight into it! I think it worked well to finish on a mode of singing and worship and this was a positive.
3. People really didnt care or freak out, i mean sure, it was different, but the people didnt revolt and think we had 'lost the plot'
4. The benefit to starting first is that it may keep people on their toes and MAYBE, i said maybe turn up a little earlier.....or maybe not. I think it will help us not to get stuck in a rut, especially when it comes to the 'flavour' of our service.
Overall, a great experience....and i will do it agian in the near future, i do think it really helps if the sermon can be on something that 'fits' with starting first eg On worship, On tithing, On apathy in worship Etc.
I will leave it there for now....
Peace people (who ever is still reading)
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Man, I'm so glad that you tried something different. You can have a gold star!
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I was interested to read about your experience. And I agree that its important to 'flow' the service. Often I think all the hard work of preaching can just fly out the window if you don't transition well and give people an opportunity to respond immediately in some way, even if the crux of the sermon is practiced outside the service.
I'm all about the FLOW of a service. In fact, its part of the 5 Concepts that I rave about for our worship team. What are the others? Well I'm glad you asked...
S - Scriptural. Our services need to be based on The Word, and that doesn't just mean the sermon. I mean we need to sing songs that are biblically correct, especially with word from the Bible (thank you Israel Houghton!) and have readings to support the direction of the worship/sermon.
T - Tradition. We should try and involve lots of the Church's tradition. So maybe we sing a Psalm, or have a reflection time, or anything else that represents over 2000 years of the people of God.
U - Unique. Our worship shouldn't just be a copy of what another church does. The songs don't need to song EXACTLY the same. We don't have to have the announcements before the message just because "that's the way we've always done it."
F - Flow. We are taking people on a journey on Sunday morning and that journey needs to be crafted and shaped for people. We need to allow times of celebration and times of silence, feelings of community and the feeling that God is speaking just to me.
F - Fun. That's right baby, Fun! In Christian Schwartz's book about developing healthy churches, he noted that healthy churches had a sense of fun in their services, where people felt free to laugh out loud. Plus, if its not fun... you probably won't want to do it.
Just some thoughts. Sorry its so long!
Most excellent thoughts copland. My experiences concur with every one of those.
ReplyDeletepersonally the 'journey' aspect is something I value: it helps answer the 'why' of what we do.
When people get that, then (hopefully) they want to be there at the start, because each Scripture, thought, activity is building towards something, and not necessarily is the sermon the climax (totally agree). I have preached messages that needed to be spoken early because they were all about response;
so in song, or silence, give the opportunity.
Godo stuff guys.
p.s. Can I borrow your STUFF copland?