Worship In The Emerging Church

Peri­od­i­cal­ly I get a chance to sit in a live stu­dio audi­ence for a CCN broad­cast. I’ve seen Doug Fields, George Bar­na, Lar­ry Osborne, Hen­ry Cloud, etc. The best part is I can bring stu­dents and expose them to some of these lead­ers.

Any­way, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about the recent Wor­ship In The Emerg­ing Church sem­i­nar with Dan Kim­ball (he blogs!) and Sal­ly Mor­gen­thaler. If you’re going to hear two folks talk about this sub­ject it’s hard to pick a bet­ter team. You can get the notes in PDF (although there are blanks).

Some thoughts I had:

• As I sus­pect­ed, col­lege min­istry real­ly is a behind-the-scenes dri­ver for a lot of the “emerg­ing church” “post­mod­ern church” stuff. Dan launched the pre­cur­sor to his cur­rent church as a col­lege min­istry. All the staff at Cur­tis’ church (includ­ing Cur­tis) are for­mer col­lege min­is­ters.
• Dan men­tioned that he had done a sur­vey and 98% of UC San­ta Cruz stu­dents were not part of either a church or a cam­pus min­istry. Hur­ry up, Bri­an & Cecilee!
• Cur­tis Chang was also there as an audi­ence mem­ber. He wrote a book on method­ol­o­gy in apolo­get­ics (Engag­ing Unbe­lief) which I real­ly like. He also pas­tors an uber-cool church in near­by San Jose. I asked what he’s been read­ing late­ly and he said Moun­tains Beyond Moun­tains and that it had real­ly stretched his vision. I’d nev­er heard of the book, which just shows I real­ly do know less than oth­er peo­ple think I do.
• The weak­est point in the sem­i­nar was a for­ay into the realms of mul­ti­ple learn­ing styles. I find the con­cept as it is usu­al­ly expressed pret­ty bogus. I’m not sure the church should be tak­ing its lead from Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem and the the­o­ries that under­lie it. Let me rephrase that. I’m sure the church should not be tak­ing its lead from Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem. My apolo­gies to all the edu­ca­tion­al the­o­rists in Chi Alpha who will now regard me as an ene­my.
• Resources that were rec­om­mend­ed:
  • Ancient-Future Faith by Robert Weber
  • The essay Anti-Excel­lence. I will very delib­er­ate­ly NOT email this to all the peo­ple who gath­ered with me in Salt Lake City and mocked my stance against excel­lence as a core val­ue… (Sal­ly men­tioned that this and oth­er great resources were also on the Frac­tals DVD)
  • Wor­ship in the Ear­ly Church by Ralph Mar­tin.
  • TheAmericanChurch.org
  • The Mil­len­ni­um Matrix by Rex Miller
  • The Rise of the Cre­ative Class, by Richard Flori­da (I’ve heard this one rec­om­mend­ed by a lot of peo­ple).
  • When Church Became The­atre, by Jeanne Kilde (this one sound­ed excep­tion­al­ly inter­est­ing)
  • Calla­han Stu­dios (evi­dent­ly very cool church archi­tects)
  • Alter­na­tive Wor­ship by John­ny Bak­er (he blogs!)
  • Mul­ti-sen­so­ry Prayer by Sue Wal­lace
  • alternativeworship.org (Dan: “They do some crazy stuff in Europe that I would­n’t try in San­ta Cruz.”)
  • Spaces for Spir­it by Nan­cy Chinn
  • Angel House Media (videos for church­es)
• In clos­ing, I’d nev­er seen Dan before this but I’d heard peo­ple rip on his hair. I like his hair. It suits his nose. He also plays with his wed­ding ring a lot, which I do myself.