A few weeks back, I began publishing a series of posts on “Re-Thinking Worship”, and talked about how my perspectives of worship were being expanded beyond the typical worship-leader sing-along format. (If you want to read the series–seven posts thus far–you can find them under the “worship” category in the right sidebar of my blog.)
Since that time, we’ve been conducting a bit of an experiment in house church, encouraging people to bring an offering of worship to the Lord all their own, and allowing the rest of us to respond to it. We’ve done about one of these per week, and it’s gone quite well. Some people have read a poem, or a prayer; we’ve had a couple of teachings. Probably the most innovative offering so far was a 7-minute mixed-martial-arts demonstration. Amazingly, each of these offerings has elicited a worshipful response from all of us, each unique; each of these offerings has prompted a discussion revealing spiritual truth. It has been so refreshing to take this out of the box.
Today we’re doing something a little different; a written liturgy to celebrate Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know how it goes….
Wayward Son
Musician. Composer. Recovering perfectionist. Minister-in-transition. Lover of puns. Hijacker of rock song references. Questioner of the status quo.
I'm not really a rebel. Just a sincere Christ-follower with a thirst for significance that gets me into trouble. My quest has taken me over the fence of institutional Christianity. Here are some of my random thoughts along the way. Read along, join in the conversation. Just be nice.
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Kudos to you Jeff for promoting a diverse worship environment.
I think that the danger for house churches is to become mini-traditional-churches replete with rigid liturgy and sacrament celebrations. Not that either is wrong but when communion is celebrated using mini-cups then maybe house church is not all that different 🙂
I think that the beauty of house church is finding new ways to express the traditional.. and you seem to be heading that way.
Interesting, Jeff.
do you ever have visitors to this community? Are you part of the Emerging Church?
I also live in Broken Arrow, OK
KB,
Doing house church for 8 years, I can attest that it is just as easy to fall into ruts as it is in traditional settings.
We use wine glasses bought at the dollar store. 🙂
M-I-T,
Based on what I’ve seen and read, I wouldn’t use the “emerging” label to describe us. Not nearly liberal enough. 😉 But we have gained some useful truth from some, not all, of the writings from that stream.
It’s been awhile since it’s been updated, so there’s some dated information there…but if you want to know more about us, go to http://www.thepraisehouse.org.