From the Pastor: Worship Ways: The What, Why, and How of Union Church Worship Opportunities

Dear Beloved Family,
You will likely have noticed that worship ways during Sunday mornings have been changing over the last few months. All of the same elements are included, but reflection, flow, and spiritual support have taken a greater focus.
New elements have included the inclusion of contemporary poets as “seeds” for our meditations, musical underpinnings to prayer, the opportunity to reflect and pray with prepared questions, and an overall more seamless flow to the service.
Why all the effort? Mostly because as your pastor I have become poignantly aware of how important a time of sanctuary and spiritual depth is in a time when our culture, the news, and the needs are so fraught with agitation.
I became concerned that our worship was only allowing a passive view of other people worshipping (mainly me, or the musicians, or worship leader), with too few opportunities for us all to experience worshipful moments together, and do invite everyone present to actually worship themselves, with a variety of forms offered for that purpose.
Clearly, not every form feels worshipful to every person every week. All the more reason, though, to provide a broad spectrum of experiential engagement with the divine. Over these last 10 weeks we have striven to engage all the ways of learning and acting. We have been offering physical embodiment of prayers (like bringing and blessing food for hungry neighbors, or kneading bread dough as I spoke about being stretched and developed in Jesus’ claim of being the Bread of Life.). We have offered directed prayer questions every week based on the biblical texts that can be used in the sanctuary, or later in the week at home. Every week there is space in the bulletin for notes to self, drawings, or answers to the reflection questions, if the kinesthetic act is helpful to connecting heart and head. And we have included a variety of “prayer stations” to invite a deeper, focused image or activity around the challenges found in the biblical texts.
The feedback we have received has been very helpful and very positive. There have certainly been great changes for me, breaking habits decades in the making. Like many of you, I’m learning to see afresh and respond in new ways, learning alongside of the congregation what is helping us come close to God so that we may come close to the servant-work we all aspire to.
It is my hope that as our worship patterns evolve, that they give some space, some power, some renewal, for the work the world demands of us. If you are managing the aging of your parents, the loss of your love, work that is demanding, or despair at the state of our community, it is my fervent prayer that the “Good News” of Christ’s way can be made tangible, visible, realized in our midst to give you strength.
If nothing more comes of our worship ways than 10 minutes to yourself in the silent company of supportive souls in which you might order your thoughts, I will count that as a great blessing. My prayers, expand, however, that what we are doing will widen the aperture of the holy from merely what I have been inspired by to what each of you can bring to our work.
For ultimately, if ministry and ministering reside only in a single pastor, your designated holy worker, then the spiritual power needed to equip ourselves in the current age will be too constrained. When doing work that matters, it matters that we are grounded in sanctuary of time and place in which to deeply prepare and engage the questions and hopes that call to us.
Moving forward, there is now a small group of volunteers who are bringing their gifts to this work. We are trying to work in longer thematic arcs in order to give us all time to digest a few teachings over a longer time (see the article on the September Sermon Series), and to integrate additional sights, sounds, and actions to connect ancient words to our current reality.
Working this way is far more demanding and requires more time, practice to get things right, and talented writers and musicians. Already it is time to be planning for Advent (yes, already!). If you are feeling called to join a worship team, I would be very glad to speak more about that with anyone who is interested. Our long-term hope is to create teams that can help plan and implement series or seasons of our worship.
While we are engaged in this “holy experimentation” I hope that if you are asked to stand or walk or read in some new way during worship that you will accept that invitation to step into a new possibility and see what unfolds for you in that experience.
As we build a beloved community in our own midst and in the world at large, we will need the connection to each other and to God that I hope worship is offering, and I’m indebted to the many of you who have already allowed yourself to be drafted into creating opening for the Holy Spirit to wing across our hearts. Thanks to you, and the prayer and presence opened by your work, there have been hair-raising, bone-chilling, heart-lifting, life-changing moments given breath and life.
In all our worship, silent or raucous, with word or music, may we find that very heart of God so we can hear the call to Life and offer that gift to all in need.
With many blessings,
Rev. Kent

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