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Liturgy, Music, and Space
This is last segment of a 3 part interview between Isaac Wardell and Glenn Lucke
Deeper than contemporary conversation
GL: You’re hosting a conference this March. Tell us about it.
IW: Over the past three years, I’ve visited over a hundred churches around the country, everything from conservative reformed churches, to broad evangelicals, to Anglicans.
Generally, we’ve done very short events, in the form of a workshop or an evening hymn sing. Consistently, the feedback we’ve gotten is people asking for the institutional means to start fleshing out these concepts in their own congregations. So this year, we’ve spent the last 7 or 8 months writing a 12-week curriculum for Sunday Schools and small groups, and taught it at our own church. During March 29–31, 2011, we’ll be presenting this curriculum for free and teaching pastors and church musicians how to teach it, at a conference in St. Louis, MO.
Our hope is that we’ll have many folks attend whose congregations are wrestling with difficult worship questions, who are looking for something richer and deeper than the old traditional/contemporary conversation.
The curriculum and the conference are both named “Liturgy, Music, and Space.”
The conference will also feature some presenters and musicians who share this vision or have been influential to the development of the curriculum—Nicholas Wolterstorff, Bryan Chapell, Kevin Twit, John Hodges, Greg Thompson, and also musicians, The Welcome Wagon.
The conference is very inexpensive, with discounts available for employees of smaller churches. Our hope is that we’ll have many folks attend whose congregations are wrestling with difficult worship questions, who are looking for something richer and deeper than the old traditional/contemporary conversation.
Jesus doesn't need a dramatic entrance
GL: I told a pastor about the Liturgy, Music and Space conference and the pastor asked me how participating in this conference would help him and his worship leaders lead the congregation in connecting to Jesus. What would you say to this pastor?
IW: At a very fundamental level, I’d say that to talk about connecting to Jesus is to talk about worship. That is, that corporate worship is one of the most basic means we have of loving Jesus with our bodies, our words, and hearts.
But to be a little more specific, here’s a way to think about it: In evangelical circles, there’s often an enormous amount of emphasis on what I’ll call “Damascus Road” experiences with Jesus—that is, experiencing Jesus dramatically in our lives and seeing our lives’ fundamental trajectory reordered by Jesus’ lordship. These are often conversion experiences, or re-dedications in which we can point to a specific moment when we connected to Jesus in a pivotal way.
Many of us have a tendency to watch and wait expectantly for Jesus to appear in our lives dramatically, even to the extent that we do not notice that he is walking with us, teaching us, shaping us, even in the mundane experiences of our lives, and in the regular act of worship.
And, of course, these experiences are a wonderful gift from the Lord that we all affirm together. However, one of the ways we sometimes neglect Jesus’ work in our lives is what I’ll call “Emmaus Road” experiences with Jesus. Many of your readers will be familiar with the Gospel account of Jesus appearing to two of his followers after the Resurrection—walking with them, talking with them, and ultimately breaking bread with them—without them being aware of his presence.
Many of us have a tendency to watch and wait expectantly for Jesus to appear in our lives dramatically, even to the extent that we do not notice that he is walking with us, teaching us, shaping us, even in the mundane experiences of our lives, and in the regular act of worship. It’s our hope through talking about this aspect of knowing Jesus that we’ll actually awake congregant’s sensibilities to seeing Jesus at work constantly in our churches, both in the excitement of “revival” moments and also in the stillness of our weekly prayers and confessions.