In her book Finding Words for Worship ( Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.), Ruth Duck writes: “instrumental music, visual art, and the architectural space create expectations for worship before any words are spoken. An opening hymn involves a congregation in praising God. The first spoken words also help to set the tone and express the purpose of corporate worship: forming and renewing our relationship with God and one another through acts of praise, prayer, proclamation and commitment.” (p62) According to Duck, the call to worship has the function of raising the question “why are we here?”, and enables the congregation to acknowledge the presence of God among them.
At Cityside, the first formal part of the service is a call to worship. There are many aspects to this ‘call’. On the one hand we invite God to be among us, which is not to say that God is not present until we start the service. Rather, we voice some hope or desire that our worship will enable for us a more intense awareness of God in our midst, and a hope that God will act to transform and renew us through the shared experience of the service.
As well, we call ourselves and each other to worship. We acknowledge that the service does not happen in isolation from the rest of our lives. We each arrive at church carrying within us the scramble of events and interactions and feelings that have been part of the rest of the week. When we call each other to worship, we do not require people to leave their real lives behind and to focus on God instead. Rather, we often take time to notice how we are feeling, and what issues we bring into the space. And then, assisted by the action or words chosen by the leader, we place those feelings and issues into the context of our shared faith, and hope for them to be stilled, stirred, or transformed through our encounter with God and each other.
In practical terms, the call to worship clearly demarcates the beginning of the service. People need to know that we’ve ‘started’. The call to worship should also signal the transition of consciousness from ‘normal’ life into a different experience of time and space. The Cityside Services Handbook offers the following suggestions to leaders of this part of the service:
‘Introduce yourself by name. Then offer a scripture reading, popular song, recorded music, reflection, video clip, poem, hymn, drama, piece of art, story, ritual action, or whatever… what you do should be clear and decisive in calling the congregation together to worship God’.
The call to worship normally includes, or is followed by, prayer for God’s presence and blessing for the rest of the service.
Examples of Calls to Worship from Cityside’s morning service:
1. A reading from the section from The Last Battle by C.S.Lewis, where Aslan meets the young servant of Tash. (Gabrielle McClean)
2. Poem readings. These have included:
George Herbert — “Easter Wings”, “Love (2)”, “Prayer (1)”
Gerald Manley Hopkins, particularly “When Kingfishers Catch Fire”.
T.S. Eliot, mainly from Four Quartets.
John Donne, “What if this present were the world’s last night?” and other Holy Sonnets
Dylan Thomas “No Man Believes”, “ This bread I break”
Several prayers from the collection “God of a Thousand Names”.
Carmina Gadelica (great Gaelic poems collected in the islands of Scotland from old people in the 19th century, before they were lost forever – found in Gaelic and English translation): http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/corpus/Carmina/
(Mike Reeves-McMillan)
- A QUIET PLACE
Create in me a quiet place, Lord.
Hush the babble of my mind
the racing of my pulse
that my heart may be able
to sense your ‘still, small voice’.
Slow me down, Jesus.
I need to take time
to see the beauty of creation
- the exquisite intensity
of your care —
that I may come to appreciate
and be thankful.
Teach me to listen, Father
to the cries of those in need
to the questions of the confused
that I may learn compassion.
In this unquiet world
Help me to find a quiet place
and a quiet time.
Lord I need to hear
the counsel of your spirit
the poetry of your love
so that I may have
something to share
with those who cannot hear you.
(Mark Laurent)
- Tape recording, using the Cityside telephone list, with different voices calling out the names of the people on the list in the midst of ‘household sounds’ – water running, doors opening and closing, plates scraping, some music, etc. People could hear their name being called individually…thus locating the call to worship in the context of our life together as a community by reminding us that we call each other (on the phone…), and call ‘into’ each other’s places – for meals etc. – and call one another to worship too.
(Jolinda Milbank and friends)
- A vocal call reminiscent of the Muezzin’s call to the Islamic faithful was performed on a couple of occasions. The leader sung unaccompanied a simplified version of a Michael Card song ‘Shema’, which takes the words of the Hebrew prayer: ‘Hear O Israel the Lord your God is One…’
(Fergus McKinlay)
- A small tree was placed at the front of the church. People were handed pipe cleaners and invited to mould them into a shape that represented how they were feeling at the beginning of the service, and to come and hang that shape on the tree.
(Kirsten Malcolm)
- Spring reflections – The leader of this part of the service was pregnant at the time, and she shared with us how being pregnant had enhanced her sense of the smells around her. We were invited to think about the smells of Spring, and then to reflect on the appearance of a dead branch and a budding, blossoming branch. Then she read the Joy Cowley poem ‘Smallness’ ( p50-51 of Psalms Down Under, Catholic Supplies Ltd., Wellington, New Zealand, 1999) about the ‘small self’ and the presence of God in nature. After this, a track was played: a rendition of Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ by the Jacques Loussier Trio (The Jacques Loussier Trio ‘Vivaldi: the Four Seasons’ Track #1) and a tray of fragrant flowers was handed round, so that each person could take one, and smell it, and reflect on some aspect of what had just been shared.
(Kirsten Malcolm)
8. A CALL TO WORSHIP
Scattered thoughts in text, with apologies to Time Magazine, NZ Consumer Magazine, Tennyson, and Arthur Amon
When the Lord first spoke to Hosea he said
Go and get married
Your wife will be unfaithful
and your children just like her
In the same way my people have been unfaithful to me
Be near me when my faith is dry
And then the flies of latter spring
That lay their eggs and sting and sing
And weave their pretty cells and die
I was astonished to read about the various infrastructure and social deficiencies that plague the nation today. I thought that only the so-called developing countries – other countries of somewhere, some when else — experienced such….places where refugees come from.
I have no problem with immigrants
And in that time he will send angels out to the four corners of the earth to gather God’s chosen people from one end of the world to the other
Break break break
On the cold grey stones O sea
And I would that my tongue could utter thoughts that arise in me
Great sites on the Web
The onion
The onion is always funny. The news almost never is. The onion is the best satire that money can buy and it’s absolutely free. Don’t believe me. Log on. Millions do and they can laugh all the way to the bank
Tears streaming
Skins peeling
The onion
Don’t cry she is not dead she is only sleeping
She lights her lamp and sweeps her house and looks carefully everywhere
Until she finds it…she calls her friends together
I am so happy I found what I thought I had lost
Let us celebrate
In the same way the angels celebrate…
The Lord said to Hosea
My people are like a half baked loaf of bread
Our research shows that over the 12 months to the 25 of February the top selling category was wine at $312 million of supermarket spending
The next was bread with $253 million of sales
Remember these things as often as ye buy them
Pak ‘n Save has been the cheapest supermarket chain in our surveys since 1996
Except in Dunedin
He placed a garden in Eden
And about the flowers, it was written:
They promptly hum
Remember spring that faded
We trapped it in these silent clothes
Summer and the sun lies over us calling each by name
Autumn, winter
They are strangers
But we have our shadows
The Lord said to Hosea
I will love my people with all my heart
They will blossom like flowers
They will be firmly rooted like trees in Lebanon
And the sun will shine on the good and the bad.
For am I not like them – but bigger?
(Derek McCormack)
9. WHAT HAVE YOU BROUGHT WITH YOU?
“When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.”
1 Corinthians 14:26
Is church something we do,
or something we have done to us?
Perhaps sometimes it’s both.
This morning, “What has it got in its pocketses?”
Questions — You may bless someone else by giving them the opportunity to share the truth they know.
Answers – You just might hold the key to unlock someone’s door.
Thankfulness – The world is starved of good news.
Pain – Tell me about your hurts, for it makes me feel less alone in mine.
Stories – Everybody loves them, and we all have them.
Laughter – Brings healing and is a fountain of youth.
Blessing – This is what we were made to do.
Need – “It’s more blessed to give than receive”, so we’re doing someone else a favour by allowing them to help us out.
Money – It’s interesting how coy we can get about this one…?
Time – Far more valuable than money or talents.
(Mark Laurent)
10. Thinking-aloud meditations…why do I still believe? Why have I come to church today? What is worship and why might we want to do it? I don’t feel much like worshipping, maybe you can call yourselves to worship and each other and me too.
- Mihi — an indigenous Maori cultural form of self-introduction. The leader introduced herself in this form, and identified Christianity as her turangawaewae – her ‘place to stand’. She then invited us to ‘mihi’ to God, to look back at where we’ve come from and recall our journey in the context of God.
(Marion Deeble)
- The leader stuck large pieces of white paper up on the wall, provided pots of paint and brushes. She played music and invited people to come and paint an image that indicated their sense of self as they came to worship.
(leader unknown)
- Listening to music: a variety of CD tracks have been used. Also, people have sung to the congregation and encouraged us to sit back, listen, and reflect.
- Sometimes we use responsive readings and prayers from different sources. Material from A Wee Worship Book (Wild Goose Worship Group, Glasgow: Wild Goose Resource Group, 1999) from the Iona Community or other Celtic prayer sources would be common.
15. Congregational singing, using a hymn or song of praise, or a Taize chant of invitation such as ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’.
16. A Call to Worship.
In the Church Calendar today is not a very special day.
It’s the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Yes that’s right. It’s one Sunday past the seventeenth and it’s one to go til the nineteenth.
But someone in our family has just turned eighteen, and so always one for the strange connection, I thought I’d look to the lectionary to see what it directs our minds to for this eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
And it takes us to a reading in Mark Chapter 10.
About a rich young man — already this was right on the money, for the eighteen year old in my house, who has just reached the age of adulthood, is indeed a young man, and while not rich, when he is out shopping with me on my credit card, he has rather rich tastes.
There was a rich young man who came to Jesus saying, what must I do to be saved?
Jesus says — don’t you already know what you must do?
Oh, I have done all that, says the rich young man. Since I was a little boy I have been meeting all the requirements.
Now perhaps, cause it doesn’t say in the gospel, perhaps Jesus looked quizzically at him, maybe with a smile, maybe with a raised eyebrow.
Why has he asked what he should do if he has met all the requirements? So you think you know but it doesn’t feel quite right, it feels like you need something more?
Then Jesus says to him — the reason why you feel that you might not be saved is that you have something that is too precious to you — it is stopping you from knowing salvation. You need to hold it more lightly.
There may be a sense in which I come, or some of you have come, this morning to ask what must I do to be saved? Because, sometimes you think you know, but then it doesn’t seem like that’s it. Maybe there’s something stopping you, or me, from knowing salvation.
And so here we are and maybe we will meet an answer as we worship today — maybe there will be an unblocking of our view and we will see again, or for the first time, something that makes our salvation clearer, more real, on this eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
(Derek McCormack)
17. Psalm for the 21st Century
Come to the Lord, all you people
Worship him with music and with song
Worship him with the tambourine and with the piano
Worship him with instruments and with actions
Worship him while playing the guitar
Worship him while jogging
Worship him as you’re doing the dishes
Worship him with your computers
Worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness
Tell him you love him by doing His will
Let your praise to him fill up your mouth and your stomach
Your hands and your time
May it flow into your eyes and your nostrils
In your wild enthusiasm to do his will.
(Adrienne Wood)