Worship Seminar Feedback
Here is what emerged from participants, mostly lay leaders, at the end of a recent contemplative worship seminar led by two SoulStream partners.
What we left behind
- anxiety and having control
- boxes that I contain God in
- fear, anxiety and doubt
- cynicism with church and leadership
- my anxiety, care and burden in which I find myself taking on a yoke that’s not for me to hold
- my agenda for our community
- a yoke not of Jesus
- worship ministry as an isolated area
- anxiety and fear
- despair and desolation
- I am independent and self contained, I can survive as my own personal church
- strict structure
- destructive tension
- burden of worries, exhaustion and tension compressing my spine
- my fatigue, my striving
- worship as some kind of thing of method we learn to give to other people
- heaviness that can be so hard to release, may not even be mine to release but his to take on himself
- the box I put God in, the box I put myself in, the box I put my community in
- a fixation on outcomes
What we take away with us
- the blessings of all who came trusting for ongoing transforming presence of Christ in them
- we all need to be willing and active participants
- the makeover is to be continued
- a desire to discover and experience God as mother
- beauty, belongingness, community feeling
- a fuller sail
- the humanity of Christ
- simple songs welling up inside from my heart
- creative and non-traditional worship
- listening, chanting, constructive tension, the visio-divina experience
- God is okay with our responses
- transformation happens at the heart level
- my life is enriched by contact and conversation with others
- the waters receding from the cliffs just for a moment before rushing back, bringing life and refreshment and recreation to a barren landscape. It’s the breath taken in at the moment of death but the exhalation, the pneuma is coming
- worship is calling God’s name
- God ad I yoked together, he is pulling the heavy part of the load
- openness to worshipful transformation we experience every day even on Sunday
- notice the detail, the Lord is behind, beside and ahead of us
- renewed awareness of God’s transforming work in me today
- God desires my good, encouragement and joy in the family of God
- patience with my congregation and myself, freedom knowing that God is at work
- hope for change in family, community and church
- all encompassing nature of worship, every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something God
- God’s unimaginable abundance will never be measured or understood by me
Responses