We started the day today with bagels and juice. It was Ken's turn to drive Mark's Cutlass Salon to the Mall of Ameri... I mean the Church of the Resurrection. Mark wanted to make sure the windshield was shiny and clean, so he sprayed it, and washed it, and sprayed it, and wiped it off. And then wiped it off again. As we drove away, some of the left-over water dripped down the window directly parallel to the middle of Ken's face. That was annoying. It was at that point we realized the car had no windshield wipers.
Anyway, we found the church (although we doubted ourselves a couple times) and got there just in time for an emergent worship service from Dan Kimball, Tim Keel (pastor of Jacob's Well), and the Jacob's Well band. The band led a typical song like "God of Wonders" and then did a song that contained the lyric "I'll scream it at the top of my freaking lungs". Lynette and I agree... Must. Do. Song. I'm just not sure where.
The service was good. There were seven prayer stations and each represented a different portion of a traditional Jewish wedding. They compared the traditional Jewish wedding to the church being the bride of Christ. Very cool.
Ken and Dave both elected not to go through the ridiculously enormous prayer station line. I wish they had. It was really great. I, being good ol' analytical prefectionsit me, got mad when I went to the stations and saw that prayers weren't in the font I had chosen. Oh yeah, these were the prayer stations I worked on earlier in the week. I forgot to make sure the font was embedded in Word when I saved it on the UM Publishing House computers. So, I think it was Arial and Courier I saw the most. They were all supposed to be the ever faithful Papyrus.ttf. Oh well.
The room we were in was not condusive to an emerging worship experience. Later in the day we used their second (of three) sanctuaries for lunch. That is where we should have had the emergent service. So many things about the giant room we used goes against so much of what the emergent movement is all about.
After the service (Dan would probably prefer I called it a gathering) I went to Dan's workshop on emerging worship. I've read the book and I don't think he really covered much that he didn't in the book. That's not to slight his workshop as much as to say how informative his book is on its own.
Marcia McFee really impressed me with her workshop, "Layering the Verbal, Visual and the Visceral for Experiential Worship".
Everything else today was excellent as well. We closed with a gospel service from St. John's UMC in Houston. The music was superb. More interesting lyrics in this set: something about cow dung. Anyway, working at Cokesbury I heard a lot of urban gospel music. Some of it was good. Most of it wasn't (or at least didn't break any new ground). The two guys from St. John's that soloed were amazing. They did a song I now want to do. I can't find the lyrics anywhere on the net. They were something like, "We're watchnig and waiting and anticipating the moment that you will arrive... something something something... and we recognize you're already here." Good song. In and out of major and minor keys... really excellent melody.
I'm not articulating well how the day went... I'm tired. Gotta go to sleep. I'm hoping the kitten that woke me up every thirty minutes last night won't wake me up tonight.
Anyway, we found the church (although we doubted ourselves a couple times) and got there just in time for an emergent worship service from Dan Kimball, Tim Keel (pastor of Jacob's Well), and the Jacob's Well band. The band led a typical song like "God of Wonders" and then did a song that contained the lyric "I'll scream it at the top of my freaking lungs". Lynette and I agree... Must. Do. Song. I'm just not sure where.
The service was good. There were seven prayer stations and each represented a different portion of a traditional Jewish wedding. They compared the traditional Jewish wedding to the church being the bride of Christ. Very cool.
Ken and Dave both elected not to go through the ridiculously enormous prayer station line. I wish they had. It was really great. I, being good ol' analytical prefectionsit me, got mad when I went to the stations and saw that prayers weren't in the font I had chosen. Oh yeah, these were the prayer stations I worked on earlier in the week. I forgot to make sure the font was embedded in Word when I saved it on the UM Publishing House computers. So, I think it was Arial and Courier I saw the most. They were all supposed to be the ever faithful Papyrus.ttf. Oh well.
The room we were in was not condusive to an emerging worship experience. Later in the day we used their second (of three) sanctuaries for lunch. That is where we should have had the emergent service. So many things about the giant room we used goes against so much of what the emergent movement is all about.
After the service (Dan would probably prefer I called it a gathering) I went to Dan's workshop on emerging worship. I've read the book and I don't think he really covered much that he didn't in the book. That's not to slight his workshop as much as to say how informative his book is on its own.
Marcia McFee really impressed me with her workshop, "Layering the Verbal, Visual and the Visceral for Experiential Worship".
Everything else today was excellent as well. We closed with a gospel service from St. John's UMC in Houston. The music was superb. More interesting lyrics in this set: something about cow dung. Anyway, working at Cokesbury I heard a lot of urban gospel music. Some of it was good. Most of it wasn't (or at least didn't break any new ground). The two guys from St. John's that soloed were amazing. They did a song I now want to do. I can't find the lyrics anywhere on the net. They were something like, "We're watchnig and waiting and anticipating the moment that you will arrive... something something something... and we recognize you're already here." Good song. In and out of major and minor keys... really excellent melody.
I'm not articulating well how the day went... I'm tired. Gotta go to sleep. I'm hoping the kitten that woke me up every thirty minutes last night won't wake me up tonight.
