e*r Week 1

Moving on to Essentials Red 2010… Worship History

Question:

Become present for a moment to the ways that the gifts of time and space in your own worship history have formed you. Do you recall times and places that were meaningful to you in your own worship story, from the time you were a child until now?

For our first discussion post, discuss how these worship languages may have formed you as a Christian, as a worshiper, and as a leader. Feel free to integrate the other languages of worship into your post that are ahead in the course.

Answer:

I grew up in a Christian home and have been immersed in the church since my beginning. My upbringing was in a mainline denominational church as well as the Christian school it operated. I even attended a Christian college.

Sunrise services on Easter mornings, candlelight services on Christmas Eves, the reading of the Christmas Story from Luke 2 before opening gifts, Christmas and Easter choir cantatas, Good Friday services as well as baptisms, baby dedications and Communion, have all served to retell God’s story throughout my life. There was never an opportunity to forget.

Ritual was paramount in my church experience and as a result, I fostered a great relationship with religion, but a very skewed relationship with Father God. I needed some readjusting as I became an adult and am thankful that the way it was does not necessarily determine the way it will be. I am now in a place where I enjoy the richness of what was formerly ritual.

Time and space profoundly impacted me a few years ago when I was in a season of extreme brokenness. Music had fallen silent and I believed I would never lead worship or play guitar again. A specific song found me in a specific time (August 2008) and place (Perdido Key Beach, FL) and they are forever connected. As I revisit that beach or retell the story, the power of what God did that day becomes present yet again.

There is power in the remembering of His might acts.