Making Worship A Spiritually Nurturing Experience

5/10/04

Most of us read this step of The Jesus Connection process and think, "No problem.  Our worship is spiritually nourishing."  I remember coming into a congregation a couple of years after a pastor who promoted himself as a strong spiritual leader.  I found that the consensus of the congregation was that he was indeed a strong leader and an entertaining speaker, but they had not experienced his leadership or preaching as very spiritual.  What have we done lately to measure others' response to our worship leadership and preaching to see if it is congruent with our own impressions?  In our heart of hearts do we aspire to be entertaining or to preach life transforming grace?  Do we hope that our hearers will experience a warm tingle down their spines, or that they will leave worship fueled to serve? 
     I think it is important that we clarify for ourselves what we want to have happen during worship as we begin the process of leading our church through a time of change.  There are certain Sundays when we put special effort into our sermon and worship preparation because we know that there will be a lot of people in attendance.  It is critical that we do this as we begin raising the possibilities of spiritual transformation of congregation and structure, and enter the sabbatical time.  Every Sunday is a big Sunday when we are asking people to put off the habits of prior congregational experience and look new at how they should be church.
     How can we maintain that kind of intensity week after week?  We can do two of the things that are core to what we are as The Jesus Connection.  We can work on our own spiritual health as pastors, and gathering people with gifts for worship to help lead the ministry.  Since I have caught this vision I have been more serious and focused on my own spiritual health than at any other time in my life.  There are always distractions in pastoral ministry, that's the nature of the work, but because of this focus I find myself coming back to what is core in my ministry as preacher and teacher of the congregation.
     The first call we sounded as we began our process was for a worship ministry team.  For the last five years we have had eight to twelve people involved in planning and leading worship.  This has not only become one of our strongest groups in terms of the spiritual life aspects we share together, but as a team has taken responsibility to ensure that we have spiritually nurturing worship.  Having multiple ears helps with the feedback issue as well so that we have learned what has been helpful and what has been puzzling for our congregation.  The feedback we are receiving is that there is an entire new atmosphere in our worship... That our church is more "spiritual."   I think that is good news, and one sign that our team is fulfilling its mission to provide a spiritually nurturing worship experience.
 
Loren Olson - First United Church, Little Falls, Minnesota