Richard outlined to us what worship is and what aspects of worship we would be concerned with. We became aware of structures and formulations that generally underpin a Sunday service, but we worship because we are called to worship.
Mark 12:30 (New International Version)
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Worship should be heartfelt, spiritual and mindful; it should involve the whole service, the whole congregation and our whole lives.
We looked at different types and forms of prayer. For example we considered prayers of confession and atonement (types) and at various ways of arriving at suitable prayers for a given occasion. We talked about where to track down existing prayers, about writing our own, either from scratch or modifying existing prayers, and about extemporising our own prayers. For all of us this involved exploring in areas we had never visited before. We thought about how hymns might be read as prayers, and how hymns have been written as prayers. Richard led us to certain psalms which are particularly useful as prayer or starting points for prayers.
For some of us just the term "extemporise" was unfamiliar. We considered how our personalities might guide our choices. If making the prayer up as you go is not for you then cross extempore off the list. Some of us found that, if we wrote out the prayer but then spoke it freely, that worked well. Richard himself always (or almost always) makes his prayers up, and we noted that this has the advantage that the spoken words flow well. We also learned that some prayers that read really well in the head are actually quite hard to read out loud. A diversion was created here in which we considered how to make texts easier to read. Big print helps: in a computer age the bible readings can be downloaded from the internet and printed in as large a type as anyone would require. This could also help by excluding passages that would otherwise be skipped over (verses 1-7 and 21-35 for example).
Readings should best be introduced, and it is sensible to check with the preacher that the introduction stresses the aspect of the text that they will preach to. It is surprising how seldom guidance is given in this regard.
One of our exercises was to make notes in a real service and see, for example, how well the hymns fitted the rest of the service. Were proper connections between different parts of the service made clear or just assumed?
We all learned so much from this short course that we recommend it to anyone wanting to look further into worship, whether or not they would like to become Worship leaders.
Mark 12:30 (New International Version)
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Worship should be heartfelt, spiritual and mindful; it should involve the whole service, the whole congregation and our whole lives.
We looked at different types and forms of prayer. For example we considered prayers of confession and atonement (types) and at various ways of arriving at suitable prayers for a given occasion. We talked about where to track down existing prayers, about writing our own, either from scratch or modifying existing prayers, and about extemporising our own prayers. For all of us this involved exploring in areas we had never visited before. We thought about how hymns might be read as prayers, and how hymns have been written as prayers. Richard led us to certain psalms which are particularly useful as prayer or starting points for prayers.
For some of us just the term "extemporise" was unfamiliar. We considered how our personalities might guide our choices. If making the prayer up as you go is not for you then cross extempore off the list. Some of us found that, if we wrote out the prayer but then spoke it freely, that worked well. Richard himself always (or almost always) makes his prayers up, and we noted that this has the advantage that the spoken words flow well. We also learned that some prayers that read really well in the head are actually quite hard to read out loud. A diversion was created here in which we considered how to make texts easier to read. Big print helps: in a computer age the bible readings can be downloaded from the internet and printed in as large a type as anyone would require. This could also help by excluding passages that would otherwise be skipped over (verses 1-7 and 21-35 for example).
Readings should best be introduced, and it is sensible to check with the preacher that the introduction stresses the aspect of the text that they will preach to. It is surprising how seldom guidance is given in this regard.
One of our exercises was to make notes in a real service and see, for example, how well the hymns fitted the rest of the service. Were proper connections between different parts of the service made clear or just assumed?
We all learned so much from this short course that we recommend it to anyone wanting to look further into worship, whether or not they would like to become Worship leaders.