Twenty Top Tips For Corporate Prayer in Worship: Part 1

Twenty Top Tips For Corporate Prayer in Worship: Part 1

"Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness."  - Martin Luther.

"There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God." - Brother Lawrence

"Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I'll be there." – Matthew 18: 18-20 MSG

Prayer in worship is a wonderful opportunity to listen and to respond. It’s the spiritual breath of a congregation; the inhalation and exhalation of God’s blessings and our praise and requests. It is life. It is sustenance. It is power.

Even though there are similarities between personal prayer time and corporate prayer time, there are also differences. Here are a few quick pointers for leading corporate prayer in worship services:

1.    This may seem obvious but it truly is the starting point. Have a personal prayer life. This will not only help prayer to emanate from your heart, it will give you a greater flow in leading.

2.    Pray out loud sometimes in your personal prayer time. This is a wonderful way to aid with concentration, to get used to your voice and to make prayer sound more natural and conversational.

3.    Study prayers. There are wonderful prayer resources that date back through history that are rich with content and can serve as a catalyst for developing your own rich public prayer content.

4.    When you are reading corporate prayer, look for a natural and yet well projected and engaging voice.

5.    Consider the placement in the service. Is this an opening prayer, a prayer before communion, a closing prayer or other corporate experience? Your content should change to reflect that.

6.    Be aware of what is going on in the world, the community and the church. You don’t have to read every newsfeed; this is not a sermon, it’s a prayer. You can ask people you serve to let you know if there are any major events going on that should be prayed about corporately. Sometimes in the flurry to get ready we may miss a major catastrophe in the news, the community or the congregation that morning.

7.    Don’t be obsessed with yourself. The rest of the world isn’t. They’re not evaluating every word, every turn of phrase, every grammatical error. You are blessed just to have their attention. Relax.

8.    You don’t need to pray for everything in every prayer every Sunday. Be led by the Spirit of God in your prayer times and then ensure that over the course of time there is diversity in your prayers.

9.    Tie the prayer into the sermon, the sung worship time and other themes that are dominant in the service.

10.Consider purging some church phrases that have lost their meaning or impact.

This is part one of Twenty Top Tips For Corporate Prayer in Worship. I’ll be posting part two over the next few days.

In the meantime, if you are interested in joining my wife Elsa, myself and powerful teacher Hans Weichbrodt of Sweden on the pilgrimage of a lifetime to the Holy Land we would love to invite you along. This is more than just a ‘tourist trip’ – it’s a conference, a time of worship, and a gathering of joy-filled believers in the most sacred places on earth. We will also unpack the Hebraic practices within worship in order to enrich our worship today. We’re almost sold out so please visit our site today at www.breakforthjourneys.com  

Break Forth Canada 2012 Schedule

OK . .  I couldn't help myself. I'm so thrilled about the conference schedule that I wanted to post an overview for you. Remember that there are 170 classes and workshops as well with more than 2,500 people just in the worship and creative arts tracks! Plus a total of 15,000 over the weekend.


I'll come through with my promise with a post on corporate prayer in worship. Coming soon.


Arlen


NOTE: Click on the image below to see a larger version.

Break Forth Canada 2012

I know, I know. 


I promised that my next post would be on public prayer in the worship service but we're going to press on the Break Forth Canada 2012 brochure and I wanted my readers around the world to get the first glimpse. At 3:00 AM, hundreds of thousands of brochures will be rolling on the presses. 


Here is the cover of the brochure. We would love to see you here:

The Offering

The Offering:

“Take a look at your own heart, and you will soon find out what has stuck to it and where your treasure is. It is easy to determine whether hearing the Word of God, living according to it, and achieving such a life gives you as much enjoyment and calls forth as much diligence from you as does accumulating and saving money and property.” - Martin Luther

“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” – Matthew 16:21 NLT

The Offering Game: Yes, I know . . . try to look like you wrote a really, really, really big cheque . . . do a massive circuitous hand wave as you drop it in the plate . . . and then gleam at the person beside you with a visual dare, “Match that, buddy, if you really have faith as great as mine!”

Somehow, the offering must be more than that.

It is.

The offering truly is an act of worship as we offer our complete selves in response to what Christ has done for us.

Perhaps, let’s start with what the offering is not:

1.      It is not just a convenient time to present the announcements

2.      It is not just a convenient way to pay the bills

3.      It is not a way to gain favour with God

4.      It is not a way to feel good about how sacrificial or superior we are

5.      It is not a way to increase our health or personal wealth 

Just as offering our songs and prayers to God in our public worship services is to be a communal experience, the offering in worship truly is an experience for the entire gathering of believers.   We hear the great truths of God and then respond through gifts of gratitude. It’s like breathing in and out. Both are necessary (If you don’t believe me, just try to leave out either one). Unfortunately in many churches, the only opportunity for expression is in the singing of select worship songs and perhaps standing up and sitting down on cue. Sally Morgenthaler writes, “In some contemporary churches, the worship all comes at you from the stage, TV-style. The opening 20 minutes of singing is the only interaction that worshipers get. But liturgy by its very nature is interactive."

The traditional placement of the offering in the worship service also indicates this breathing in, breathing out and its communal experience. We prepare our hearts together (served through preludes, quiet reflection and call to worship), we confess together and hear the assuring words of forgiveness in common, we respond with songs of praise, we hear the Words of scripture (often the Old Testament reading, the Epistle, and the Gospel), we hear the great news of the Gospel through the sermon, and we respond in a resounding expression of thanksgiving for all God’s gifts in our offerings.

We acknowledge that we are simply giving back to God what is His in the first place as a small gift of value to He who is infinitely invaluable.

The offering is one more way that we can involve the entire body in a common expression of worship within our services. It reduces the spectacle of ‘presentation’ from the platform and allows everyone to share of themselves.

It also allows us to drive a stake in the ground, proclaiming that that which so easily becomes our greatest snare (our wealth) will not be our greatest treasure. As we give to the work of Christ in gratitude, we proclaim that God Himself and the work of His Kingdom are our greatest treasure. (Remember: “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” – Matthew 16:21 NLT)

Try to remember to reinforce the truth that the offering is truly an act of worship. Unless we are reminded, we soon forget the higher purpose. When we forget the higher purpose we lose the act of worship. When we lose the act of worship, we lose worship itself. When we lose worship, we forget the Creator, for we begin to focus on the creature and not the Creator; we become but shallow breaths rather than God-breathed life . . . . and that is a hollow existence far beneath God’s purpose for us all.

Some points from Arlen on the offering:

·      There are many creative ways to receive offerings and not all of them involve the passing of the offering plate. More and more churches are setting up auto-withdrawal systems (EFT – Electronic Funds Transfer), a plate at the back, credit and debit card machines in the foyer as well as other electronic forms.

·      I believe that more and more churches will employ the digital wallet capabilities of cell phone giving.  

·      Micro-giving by cell phone texts is widely used when natural catastrophes happen but are generally very small amounts and the administration of setting up micro-giving can be onerous for most churches.

·      Large bins can be set up for large item collections such as non-perishable food items for those in need

·      Small offerings taken in Sunday school are a wonderful way to teach children about the principles of giving to God as an act of worship.

·      Online donations are growing in popularity. Our own ministry uses CanadaHelps to receive donations online and to issue instant tax receipts. You can see how it works here.

·      I won’t share my opinion on tithing here as it’s too contentious of an issue. If you want my opinion we can go for a venti decaf skinny sugar free vanilla latte and we can chat at length.

Next entry – we’ll chat about public prayer.

If you'd like to learn more, why don't you join 15,000 of us at Break Forth Canada 2012, January 27 - 29 in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. Many of the top Christian speakers, authors, teachers, artists and worship leaders come together for the largest event of its kind in North America. You can learn more here. 

http://www.breakforthministries.com/

Creeds to Consider

Shared experiences as a community develop our faith, our values and our culture.
In order to see this, all you need to witness is normally sane people getting caught up in playoff fever. Mobs can turn even the most meek manner accountant into a swashbuckler on steroids as he paints himself the colors of his favourite team, waves a sign made out of cardboard and bellows loud enough to wake the dead.

On a more positive note, when we stand and profess our commonly held beliefs in our worship services as one voice, it paints our tenants of faith into the wet concrete of our souls. These are set over time as a solid testament to our hearts as we are buffeted by the changing winds of relativism.  

Creeds are a blessed gift to be treasured, passed down from generation to generation until they have been loving placed in our hands.

Most of us are familiar with the Apostle's Creed. Some scholars believe that some of this creed existed as early as the second century and it evolved through the early centuries following this. Some believe that it was jointly created by the Apostles. Regardless of the exact date, it is a wonderful gift of theological consistency to the church today.  

One of the current versions of the Apostle's Creed today reads as follows:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth.
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended to hell.
On the third day He rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Christian church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen

The Apostle's Creed is rich with truth and is the most common creed spoken in churches today. However, the creed does not deal with certain Christological issues. It also doesn't clearly underline the divinity of Jesus or the Holy Spirit.

In 325, at the first Ecumenical Council gathering in of Nicaea, a gathering was held to more clearly define a common creed. With some tweaks over the few years that followed the gathering in 325, here is the Nicene Creed today:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son,* who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Athanasian Creed was a gift to the church in the year 500. It very clearly speaks about the Trinity and helps to define this critical Christian belief. Although the Athanasian Creed is a rich treasure, it is extremely long and it's doubtful that most churches would ever stand and read it together. To learn more about the Athanasian Creed, click here.

If you don't use creeds in your church, consider adding these rich treasures to your time of worship. With a short introduction on their value, history and meaning, they can become a wonderful enhancement to richer worship times, a teaching tool on doctrinal foundations as well as that common shared experience I wrote about at the start of this blog.

If you have used these creeds for a long time and want to switch things up a little every now and then, here are two other options to consider. (I apologize in advance for not knowing their origin. They have been around for decades and I'd love to know their source to give proper credit.)

 

Contemporary Creed

We believe in God the Father Almighty,
Creator of heaven and the earth.  He is our God and we are His people, the works of His hands and the treasure of His heart. 

We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, who was born of a virgin, died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, and rose from the dead.  He ascended into heaven where He rules with the Father in all power and authority.  He is our Redeemer, and we are the sheep of His pasture, receivers of His abundant grace.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life and the power of God at work in us and in the church today. 

CONTEMPORARY CREED IN QUESTION FORM

L:         In a world that emphasizes that man has simply evolved randomly from a single cell and is continually developing in knowledge and power, what do you believe?

C:        I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

L:         In a world that emphasizes the freedom to believe in whatever or    whoever you want, as long as “me” remains most important, what do you believe?

C:        I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.  He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He ascended into Heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

L:         In a world that emphasizes “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may die”, and that death is the end, what do you believe?

C:        I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy, Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  Amen.

Arlen & Elsa Salte in the Holy Land, April 2011 

Give these a try and let me know what you think. 

Your fellow worshipper,

Arlen Salte

PS - If you ever wanted to spend time in exploring worship and our faith foundations in the Holy Land, why don't you consider joining us at Break Forth Israel in March, 2012. For more information, click here:

Finding Fresh Expressions of Convergent Worship

Rev. Brad Hoefs

As I leave overseas for a month I'm thrilled to have an entry to cover my time away from my good friend, Pastor Brad Hoefs (read more about Brad below). He runs WorshipOutlet.com, an exceptional resource for churches who want to use the best of contemporary worship while also reaching back to the touchstones of the foundations of our faith. 

I look forward to blogging more when I return. I have a lot to share about the practical implementation of worship. I can hardly wait to write!

I know you'll enjoy Brad. Read on and be enriched . . .  

You might call the German Mass that Dr. Martin Luther wrote in 1526 a “contemporary version” of the ancient Latin mass.  It was written not only in German but also used sing-able hymn tunes.  Luther took the five major parts of the mass, the liturgy, translating them into German and set each of them to a hymn tune to be sung by the congregation.  What Luther was doing was providing a new way for people to express their worship of the Lord.   Liturgy, which means “the work of the people”, got a new voice, a fresh expression, through the German Mass and it continues on today as many churches continue to offer fresh expressions of the liturgy in new forms for the “work of the people” today. 

 

There is a segment of the evangelical community that are more “ancient-future” in their approach to worship. They continue to format their worship services with elements of the liturgy. However, they desire to offer the expressions of those elements of the liturgy in new ways.  If you are one of those congregations then you know the weekly creative challenge of offering up various parts of the liturgy in new and fresh expressions of worship on an ongoing basis.  Of course, this challenge is even greater if you are in a medium to smaller sized congregation because your time is spread thin but the expectations are high.  However, today there are more resources available for creatively offering fresh expressions of the liturgy on a weekly basis than ever before! 

Creatively using video with a worship service can really draw today’s worshipper into the experience of worship.  Consider using a video as the call to worship.  There are thousands of downloadable videos online today.  There is a great video called “Welcome to Our Church” which is a good way to start a service. (http://www.sermonspice.com/product/38536/welcome-to-our-church-2011) They now have a number of versions of this video.  It really sets the tone for a service. 

You also might consider using a video instead of reading the Scripture.  In a liturgical service, usually the three assigned Scriptures for the day are read aloud.  It is quite possible to find various assigned reads of the Scriptures anymore in video simply by doing a Google search.  This is a great way to incorporate video into the liturgy.

Another way to use video- would be to create your own video for the confession of faith.  In addition, at the time of the confession of faith- the congregation is led in their confession of faith by the video, which adds not only the audio but would also be adding the visual aspects to the creed!  (A downloadable Apostle’s Creed video will soon be available from www.WorshipOutlet.com )

Drama and dance/movement are both great ways to give new expressions to the liturgy.  Drama can be something as simple as doing a reader’s theater type reading of one of the lessons for the day.  Or, using dance or some type of banner movement for one of the sung parts of the liturgy.

You also might want to consider subscribing to a service, which provides you with creative liturgical websites.  For example, WorshipOutlet.com provides creative worship recourses of all types.  One of the subscription-based services that are offered is called “Worship Alive Plus!” Each week a completely new thematic liturgy is offered along with both contemporary and traditional musical options and sermon notes.  This is a comprehensive resource and is great for those who find themselves swamped weekly with little time to be creative.  If you register at WorshipOutlet, you are able to download three services free.

Giving a fresh expression to the voice of people in worship weekly is no doubt work.  But, it is this work that so blesses the “work of the people”- the liturgy weekly that also blesses the body of Christ and the Lord Himself.  So, it is more than well worth the effort!

WorshipOutlet is committed to offering different types of worship resources that connect that past with the present through fresh expressions of worship.  The resources range from comprehensive weekly thematic services to simple sermon themes with musical options.  The resources are fitting for both liturgical and non-liturgical churches.  One of the offerings of WorshipOutlet is WorshipShare which is a free virtual filing cabinet where pastors and worship leaders can share with one another their best and most creative worship ideas.  WorshipOutlet: We do the work- you do the worship!

Brad Hoefs is the pastor of Community of Grace Lutheran Church in Elkhorn, Ne.  He and his wife, Donna, are also directors of WorshipOutlet.  They along with a team of writers provide hundreds of churches throughout the world with creative worship resources.  Brad us also the found of a ministry called Fresh Hope which a network of Christian support groups for those who suffer from mood disorders- and their loved ones: www.FreshHope.us.  Brad and Donna have two grown children who are married and two grandchildren.