Showing posts with label Worship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Worship. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Great Generational Transition - Darlene Zschech
This Book facinates me and I think I will be purchasing it next time i visit Koorong. Darlene has her critques, however, i believe she may have alot to say to us about forging a way forward for current leaders and leaders to come in harmony and unity.
Has anyone read this book? I will let you know what it is like when i eventually get it and read it.
get it HERE
Thursday, August 13, 2009
11 Ways to make Church more Meanigful for Kids (from childrensministry.com)
11 ways to make the worship service more meaningful to kids...
Children's choirs. Children's bulletins. Children's sermons. Children's church. Sounds like kids in our churches today are really a part of the action, right?
WRONG!
Children's choirs. Children's bulletins. Children's sermons. Children's church. Sounds like kids in our churches today are really a part of the action, right?
WRONG!
I've asked pastors and other worship leaders how they involve kids in worship. These people usually list the standard things-bulletins, choir, sermons.
Are these the only ways children are part of worship services? Sadly, yes. The churches that break this pattern are few and far between.
And the kids are paying for it. Two-year old Morgan cries when no one speaks to her during greeting time. And 11-year-old James is really in between-too old to be part of a children's sermon, too young to join the "adult" choir. Kids such as Morgan and James need to be involved in relevant worship experiences.
In a CHILDREN'S MINISTRY Magazine survey, 60 percent of churches say they provide alternative experiences to involve kids in worship. Forty percent of churches said they involve children in the regular worship service. For both types of churches, involving children in the worship life of our churches should be a priority, a privilege, and a blessing.
But how can you make children feel part of an adult corporate worship service? Try these ideas:
*Form a committee! Not just any old committee, but one that includes children of several different age groups. Also include at least one adult who'll be the children's advocate when discussing changes with the worship committee. Some of our best ideas in children's ministry come straight from the kids themselves. Do they want to help pick hymns to sing? light the candles? be ushers? What about having a regular Kids' Sunday where kids do everything-from reading the gospel message to singing special music?
*Include children. Get kids doing things often during the service as readers, soloists, acolytes, greeters, and ushers. Give them each a job and teach them how to do it. Pride of ownership is an important part of belonging.
*Teach kids about your worship traditions. Incorporate the parts of the worship service, such as a special prayer response or offering hymn, into the Sunday school hour. Periodically, kids can learn a new part of the worship service-it's more fun when they can join in!
*Involve specific classes. Have different Sunday school classes and their teachers lead the prayers of the church during the worship service. And remind congregation members to pray for the children throughout the week as well.
*Have kids create prayers. During Sunday school, have a class write a special prayer or litany to be used during the service by the entire congregation. Then allow that class to lead the congregation in that prayer or litany.
*Use kids' artwork. Ask different classes to design bulletins to be used for the worship service. Photocopy their artwork to make the bulletin covers for everyone in the service.
*Educate parents. For the smallest children, print a brochure for their parents with suggestions about appropriate church toys and snacks. See the "Church Survival Kit" box for ideas. Although some people object to these diversions during the service, it's better to make the worship experience enjoyable for small ones. A gradual introduction to the worship service is a good way to teach children proper behavior during the service.
*Provide resources. Put your children's library books on a cart or shelf near the church entrance and encourage children who might be restless to check out a book or two to look at quietly during the service. So much the better if the books you place on the shelves correspond to the sermon message!
*Make sermons relevant. Encourage the pastor to include examples that involve children's lives and experiences within the sermon. If the pastor's sermon is about loving your neighbor, why not use an illustration about two friends fighting over a bike and how to resolve the conflict? Children have an easier time grasping the true meaning of the message when they're clued in that it also includes them.
*Use various mediums. Although children thrive on predictable routine, encourage worship leaders to vary parts of the service. A drama that retells the Bible story or even a puppet show can share God's message in a meaningful way to children and adults alike. Have the children act out the Bible story as an adult narrates.
*Revamp the children's sermon. Encourage the children's sermon leader to sit and speak on the kids' level. Suggest that he or she focus on one point at a time, using props, and citing examples from a young child's perspective. If a children's sermon is truly for children, then it must be simple and to the point. Advise the children's sermon leader to avoid abstract object lessons that often go over a child's head. Rather, check out this article: "5-Minute Messages". Or buy the exciting children's sermon book Let the Children Come by Brant D. Baker (Augsburg). These interactive messages will transform children's sermons.
Another point: The children's sermon is just that. It's for children, not adults. If your children's sermon leader is using the sermon to subtly (or not so subtly) communicate to adults, gently correct him or her. If a children's sermon is all your church does to involve children, it's a crime to make it so heady and adultlike that kids still feel worship is not for them.
Take another look at your worship service. If you have children running cars over the pews, climbing between parents' legs, or just bored to tears, you need to do something. When you welcome and involve children in worship, you'll follow Jesus' admonition to "let the little children come to me"-for they belong to the kingdom of God.
Are these the only ways children are part of worship services? Sadly, yes. The churches that break this pattern are few and far between.
And the kids are paying for it. Two-year old Morgan cries when no one speaks to her during greeting time. And 11-year-old James is really in between-too old to be part of a children's sermon, too young to join the "adult" choir. Kids such as Morgan and James need to be involved in relevant worship experiences.
In a CHILDREN'S MINISTRY Magazine survey, 60 percent of churches say they provide alternative experiences to involve kids in worship. Forty percent of churches said they involve children in the regular worship service. For both types of churches, involving children in the worship life of our churches should be a priority, a privilege, and a blessing.
But how can you make children feel part of an adult corporate worship service? Try these ideas:
*Form a committee! Not just any old committee, but one that includes children of several different age groups. Also include at least one adult who'll be the children's advocate when discussing changes with the worship committee. Some of our best ideas in children's ministry come straight from the kids themselves. Do they want to help pick hymns to sing? light the candles? be ushers? What about having a regular Kids' Sunday where kids do everything-from reading the gospel message to singing special music?
*Include children. Get kids doing things often during the service as readers, soloists, acolytes, greeters, and ushers. Give them each a job and teach them how to do it. Pride of ownership is an important part of belonging.
*Teach kids about your worship traditions. Incorporate the parts of the worship service, such as a special prayer response or offering hymn, into the Sunday school hour. Periodically, kids can learn a new part of the worship service-it's more fun when they can join in!
*Involve specific classes. Have different Sunday school classes and their teachers lead the prayers of the church during the worship service. And remind congregation members to pray for the children throughout the week as well.
*Have kids create prayers. During Sunday school, have a class write a special prayer or litany to be used during the service by the entire congregation. Then allow that class to lead the congregation in that prayer or litany.
*Use kids' artwork. Ask different classes to design bulletins to be used for the worship service. Photocopy their artwork to make the bulletin covers for everyone in the service.
*Educate parents. For the smallest children, print a brochure for their parents with suggestions about appropriate church toys and snacks. See the "Church Survival Kit" box for ideas. Although some people object to these diversions during the service, it's better to make the worship experience enjoyable for small ones. A gradual introduction to the worship service is a good way to teach children proper behavior during the service.
*Provide resources. Put your children's library books on a cart or shelf near the church entrance and encourage children who might be restless to check out a book or two to look at quietly during the service. So much the better if the books you place on the shelves correspond to the sermon message!
*Make sermons relevant. Encourage the pastor to include examples that involve children's lives and experiences within the sermon. If the pastor's sermon is about loving your neighbor, why not use an illustration about two friends fighting over a bike and how to resolve the conflict? Children have an easier time grasping the true meaning of the message when they're clued in that it also includes them.
*Use various mediums. Although children thrive on predictable routine, encourage worship leaders to vary parts of the service. A drama that retells the Bible story or even a puppet show can share God's message in a meaningful way to children and adults alike. Have the children act out the Bible story as an adult narrates.
*Revamp the children's sermon. Encourage the children's sermon leader to sit and speak on the kids' level. Suggest that he or she focus on one point at a time, using props, and citing examples from a young child's perspective. If a children's sermon is truly for children, then it must be simple and to the point. Advise the children's sermon leader to avoid abstract object lessons that often go over a child's head. Rather, check out this article: "5-Minute Messages". Or buy the exciting children's sermon book Let the Children Come by Brant D. Baker (Augsburg). These interactive messages will transform children's sermons.
Another point: The children's sermon is just that. It's for children, not adults. If your children's sermon leader is using the sermon to subtly (or not so subtly) communicate to adults, gently correct him or her. If a children's sermon is all your church does to involve children, it's a crime to make it so heady and adultlike that kids still feel worship is not for them.
Take another look at your worship service. If you have children running cars over the pews, climbing between parents' legs, or just bored to tears, you need to do something. When you welcome and involve children in worship, you'll follow Jesus' admonition to "let the little children come to me"-for they belong to the kingdom of God.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Great new song!
Here is a video clip of a great new song. The words are great and the music is quite simple (though you can easily make it more complicated if you have more accomplished musicians) and the whole song has a great groove. The sheet music is available here. Hope you like the song!
Monday, July 6, 2009
God loves a Cheerful giver!
This is a clip of an offeing time at a churhc in the states...makes me wonder how many of our people feel this joyful about bringing their tithe to the church. This made me smile....it should be a joyful time!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Why Young adult leave church...Part 2 of 5
Part 2...
#2 Reasons
Post-Christian Identity
If you are a young adult believer living out your faith at the beginning of the 21st century, you find yourself in a unique social position. You are living within a culture which has known, and now discarded Christianity as at best an irrelevance or at worst a mistake. This is a relativley new situation when we compared with the people of God in other times and places in history.
Biblical faith has almost always been about being in a minority. The Jews found themselves a small minority, often overrun by their militarily and culturally powerful neighbours. The early church also found themselves in a similar position; as theylived out their faithin the shadows of the Roman Empire.
Beingpart of a marginal community is always difficult, it does not matter if that group is ethnic, cultural or religious. Holding a different worldview to those around you is tough, it raises all kinds of questions of identity and belonging in the mind of the member of the minority culture. All minority groups face the reality of assimilation and syncretism with the larger and more powerful cultures that they live in. As humans we love to fit in, we love to be on the larger, winning team.
However many minorities find themselves strengthened by their minority position. Often this is achieved by having a sense of mission, a cultural sense of purpose, in which the minority group defines itself by the ‘justness’ of itscause in contrast to the surrounding culture. However many young adult Christians are experiencing a kind of creeping doubt over the ‘justness’ of their faith; they hear the culture’s critique of Christianity’s contribution to the world and it start’s to make sense to them.
The early church lived in a pre-Christian culture, otherbelievers in the world today live in cultures that are Islamic, Animist, or Buddhist; however we live in a culture which is primarily Post-Christian.
Western culturehasbought the suit of Christianity,put iton, worn it around town for a bit, and now has returned it to the store, unhappy withits purchase, and is seeking a refund. Dan Brown swims in a sea of money because his book The Da Vinci Code, although historically ridiculous, connected deeply with the sense that many have today that the church in its union with worldly power has more damaged than blessed the world. Many intelligent and earnest people today in the secular West believe that the church is an agent of evil.
Many Christian young adults feel that they are living on the wrong side of Christian history. When they sharetheir faith with their secular friends they are reminded of paedophile priests, fundamentalismand the Spanish inquisition. When they share their faith with their Muslim friends,inevitably the Crusades will enter the conversation.When they share their faithwith their Jewish friends,oldpainful stories that have been past down for generations , memories ofghetto’s, pogroms and’Christian’ Germanyengineering the Holocaust, will be heard again.
Christianity is perceivedin the popular imagination as being intellectually ludicrous, our behaviour and opinions are seen as bigoted. Whilst obviously I disagree with these assessments, they are a daily reality for manyyoung adultstrying to live out their faith in the secular world. I recently spoke with a young adult who works in a secular welfare job, she had only been in the job a few days and had not informed her co-workers that she was a Christian. Her colleagues were masters of politically correct language, who were at great pains to avoid using any language which could be seen as prejudiced. However when news came that a new position was going to be filled by a Christian, her colleagues could not contain their rancour, openly speaking of their disappointment and disgust that a Christian was going to be working
with them.
This sort of culturalintolerance around faith creates a great tension in the believer. I am constantlyapproached by young adults who are trying to reconcile theirfaith with thedisquiet that they feel over Christianity’s disputed historical track record.While Christians and historians will debate this, it is stilla daily issuefor many young adults today who live, study, work and operate within secular culture.
For many young adults who are trying to find a place in the world, to operate and ‘fit in’ within culture, the dislocation felt becomes too much,faith is left behind as identity and belonging islooked for outside of church walls.
#2 Reasons
Post-Christian Identity
If you are a young adult believer living out your faith at the beginning of the 21st century, you find yourself in a unique social position. You are living within a culture which has known, and now discarded Christianity as at best an irrelevance or at worst a mistake. This is a relativley new situation when we compared with the people of God in other times and places in history.
Biblical faith has almost always been about being in a minority. The Jews found themselves a small minority, often overrun by their militarily and culturally powerful neighbours. The early church also found themselves in a similar position; as theylived out their faithin the shadows of the Roman Empire.
Beingpart of a marginal community is always difficult, it does not matter if that group is ethnic, cultural or religious. Holding a different worldview to those around you is tough, it raises all kinds of questions of identity and belonging in the mind of the member of the minority culture. All minority groups face the reality of assimilation and syncretism with the larger and more powerful cultures that they live in. As humans we love to fit in, we love to be on the larger, winning team.
However many minorities find themselves strengthened by their minority position. Often this is achieved by having a sense of mission, a cultural sense of purpose, in which the minority group defines itself by the ‘justness’ of itscause in contrast to the surrounding culture. However many young adult Christians are experiencing a kind of creeping doubt over the ‘justness’ of their faith; they hear the culture’s critique of Christianity’s contribution to the world and it start’s to make sense to them.
The early church lived in a pre-Christian culture, otherbelievers in the world today live in cultures that are Islamic, Animist, or Buddhist; however we live in a culture which is primarily Post-Christian.
Western culturehasbought the suit of Christianity,put iton, worn it around town for a bit, and now has returned it to the store, unhappy withits purchase, and is seeking a refund. Dan Brown swims in a sea of money because his book The Da Vinci Code, although historically ridiculous, connected deeply with the sense that many have today that the church in its union with worldly power has more damaged than blessed the world. Many intelligent and earnest people today in the secular West believe that the church is an agent of evil.
Many Christian young adults feel that they are living on the wrong side of Christian history. When they sharetheir faith with their secular friends they are reminded of paedophile priests, fundamentalismand the Spanish inquisition. When they share their faith with their Muslim friends,inevitably the Crusades will enter the conversation.When they share their faithwith their Jewish friends,oldpainful stories that have been past down for generations , memories ofghetto’s, pogroms and’Christian’ Germanyengineering the Holocaust, will be heard again.
Christianity is perceivedin the popular imagination as being intellectually ludicrous, our behaviour and opinions are seen as bigoted. Whilst obviously I disagree with these assessments, they are a daily reality for manyyoung adultstrying to live out their faith in the secular world. I recently spoke with a young adult who works in a secular welfare job, she had only been in the job a few days and had not informed her co-workers that she was a Christian. Her colleagues were masters of politically correct language, who were at great pains to avoid using any language which could be seen as prejudiced. However when news came that a new position was going to be filled by a Christian, her colleagues could not contain their rancour, openly speaking of their disappointment and disgust that a Christian was going to be working
with them.
This sort of culturalintolerance around faith creates a great tension in the believer. I am constantlyapproached by young adults who are trying to reconcile theirfaith with thedisquiet that they feel over Christianity’s disputed historical track record.While Christians and historians will debate this, it is stilla daily issuefor many young adults today who live, study, work and operate within secular culture.
For many young adults who are trying to find a place in the world, to operate and ‘fit in’ within culture, the dislocation felt becomes too much,faith is left behind as identity and belonging islooked for outside of church walls.
Starting Church with a Sermon...my story
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)
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)
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Emerging Nazarenes 'White Paper' (long but a GREAT read)
it is self explanatory when you read it...
http://ragingbhull.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/emerging-nazarenes-white-paper/
Peace
http://ragingbhull.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/emerging-nazarenes-white-paper/
Peace
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Israel Houghton, Michael Gungor, Freddy Rodriguez
Michael Gungor - Wrap me in you arms
Freddy Rodriguez - Nothing Compares
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Visitors
Posts
