What happened and and How During March and April 2015, I Tweeted to likely accounts (like @C_of_E, @247Prayer and other church related organisations national and local) and then invited, by personal message, known Christian contacts related to my Facebook account. These were invitations to go to a survey hosted on Qualtrics.com where 14 questions were […]
worship
the kinds of things that will help apprentice liturgical leaders
Liturgy and “Vain Repetitions”?
I have sometimes had conversations with Christians from ‘free’ churches who dismissed my involvement in liturgy that involves set prayers. Informally, they often say something like, “We should pray from the heart. You can’t really mean a prayer that someone else has written”. If there is a scriptural backing for that stance it is usually […]
Sanctification for Ordinary Life | Reformed Worship
In a useful article, James KA Smith writes, responding to the question of why corporate worship has a place in Christian life given that all of life is supposed to be worship. If we are going to be caught up in God’s mission of remaking the world, thereby sanctifying ordinary life, we need to be […]
Worship as (performance) art
A useful looking online book whose subtitle says what it’s about: a theology of liturgical expression. When Christians gather for worship, they engage in a dialogue that runs in several directions. God speaks to the people; people speak to God; people speak to one another. … Because much of what yearns for expression in these dialogical […]
‘Multifaith spaces’ set for scrutiny
The project’s “theological associate”, the Revd Dr Terry Biddington, Anglican Chaplain to the Manchester Higher Education Community, said that he had sympathy with those who held that multifaith spaces in a single room were “radical impossibilities”. “The unspoken grammar” of a space in which to worship, with the accompanying actions, dress, and artefacts, meant that […]
Goffman: Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
I set quite a lot of store by the recognition that liturgical leadership has an element of ‘performance’ in it, even if only at the level of ‘learning to be yourself in public’. So Goffman’s famous work has a contribution to make to our reflection on leading worship. It is useful, then, that someone has […]
Celebrating Eucharist
Here is an electronic copy of Celebrating Eucharist by Bosco Peters – FREE NO CATCH. Click on the link to view or download a chapter. This material and these resources may be used if attributed “From Celebrating Eucharist by Bosco Peters (www.liturgy.co.nz)”. The book was initially published by DEFT and is now available from bookshops […]
The Importance of Being a Worship Leader – Student Leadership Journal – InterVarsity.org
This could be a helpful metaphor to help worship leaders think about their role(s) …trying to think of a way to describe my worship leading, “hospitable” is what came to mind. At first, she said, it seemed like a strange word to use for a worship leader, but then she realized that if worship is […]
Leading Worship – Celebrating Eucharist
This could be a discussion starter. “For the community to celebrate as a unity there needs to be a person who focuses and coordinates the community’s action” (page 515). This is the role of the presider: focusing and coordinating. In order to help this sense of focus, there are certain elements which the presider will […]