AGENDA

1. Review Fall Conference impressions (FC was just last weekend)

2. Talk about Derek Webb concert at FC & different people's reactions

3. Share worship songs we brought:

     a. What do each of us see as a "Good" worship song?  Why?

     b. What do we each think a "Bad" worship song is?  Why?

     c. What challenges us as a worship song?

LEADER'S COMMENTARY

We spent about twenty minutes talking about Fall Conference that had to do with unpacking the cultural context of things during the conference.  One of those things was concerning the 'concert' Derek Webb did and how it was received by different people at the conference.  Many people from an African American ethnic background that grew up in the church were confused as to the nature of the "concert" because "concert" in that cultural context means praise and worship where DW doesn't really write that sort of music or give that sort of concert.  The equivalent would be showing up at church to find the pastor's sermon replaced by a lecture on the economy or global warming, physics or some other issue and then leaving wondering - what the heck just happened in my church? 

That debrief led us to conclude that there were at least two different types of worship cultures present and possible three:

• TYPE Ia - contemplative & meditative
• TYPE Ib - submissive & reflective
• TYPE II - highly expressive & energetic

Strangely enough during our time of sharing what songs we like and dislike in terms of how worshipful we thought they were for each of us we found that these "Worship Types" more or less dictate our 'tastes'.  All of us seemed to relate more to Type I sort of worship and not as much to Type II.  However, there were times in all of our lives that we did relate to Type II - it may be we are in a Type I season of life or just naturally lean more toward that for one reason or another. 

It did seem that the degree that we thought something was worshipful or not was directly related to how much we related to the "spirit" (one might say emotional state) the song was connecting with.  That being the case I gave our team the following assignment:

NEXT WEEK - write something, anything: poem, song, part of a song, mealody, etc...  that you think connects to your current spiritual position with God - be prepared to discuss.

I hope that as we continue to test the waters around our little islands of "spirituality" that's our personal faith - we'll better understand what makes us great worsihpers and therefore better how to lead others to that spot.