Issue 02 Preaching for the planetBlog | Practising Innovation: How can worship be orderly and controlled yet open to the Spirit?
Practising Innovation: How can worship be orderly and controlled yet open to the Spirit?
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 09.03.15
Since the Church began there has been a tension in worship between being open to the Spirit on the one hand and being well-organised and prepared on the other. Today those of us planning worship services still ask: how can we be open to the Spirit whilst being well planned and produced? Are those two dynamics mutually exclusive?
My own denomination, The Association of Vineyard Churches, has to regularly revisit this issue. Sometimes our worship strays too far into esoteric expressions that people find hard to understand and access. Other times we end up straying too far into programming and planning, and find that we are missing out on an experience of the Spirit. Of course this all depends on our definitions; what are the ‘all things’ of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14:1) and what does ‘decently and in order’ (1 Corinthians 14:40, NRSV) mean? 1 Corinthians 14 provides key guidance for us on how the Spirit interacts with our planned worship activities.
ALL THINGS DECENTLY AND IN ORDER Paul reminds us that the purpose of our worship is not to talk about God abstractly but to experience his presence, to encounter him as his people, to be ‘built up’ by him1. In worship, both
