Our suburb's little newspaper had an article today about a church in our part of the Denver area. Since about 2000 people come to its three "celebration services," the article's author surmised, "[They] must be doing something right." There's a person on staff (not the pastor) with the title of "celebration architect." And, running concurrently with the three services (er, celebrations) is a separate service for the high school students, and another separate service for the middle school students. The author then wrote, "[This church] is a great place to get connected..."
So, let me get this straight. Because there are lots of other people there, it's a good place to "celebrate" every Sunday. (Or Saturday evening at 5:05 if you prefer.) If I enjoy myself during the celebration, I have the celebration architect to thank. And, I can get "connected" better if I don't celebrate with my teenagers.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Not coincidentally, I had planned to share Jim Jordan's fifth thesis on worship in this post. Go here to see my first post in this series.
5. Worship Should Be Beautiful
Jordan says, "We are called together to glorify and honor God." How do we do this? First, we offer our best to Him. We don't offer the most familiar, or the easiest, but the best. Second, "[W]e should first use the resources of Christian tradition in God's worship, not the latest fads of popular heathen culture." He continues, "The tradition of the Church is the believer's first culture, and his national culture is secondary...If we don't know the tradition, we need to learn it and become at home with it."
This thesis is obviously closely related to Jordan's thesis #4 mentioned in my previous posts. We shouldn't apologize to unbelievers or new Christians for our use of traditional liturgy and/or ancient church practices.
Wait a minute and I'll check with the celebration architect to see if he has any good ideas about this!
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