What terrific stuff, Tony. In fact, why not start some sort of — dare I use the word —liturgical resources site, where your templates are placed.

You could have an attached blog recording how people went in using and adapting these suggestions. Call it something like ‘104 family gatherings a year’—assuming in the title that people go to church twice a week, and turn it into a diary based on what your local gathering does. People can drop in and offer their comments and suggestions.

Just a thought. Now that I’m not working just across the corridor, it’s harder to drop in and mention these things!

Ok, I won’t use the ‘W’ word, but can I say that what you wrote was Wonderful.

Di

Ard - this article of Tony’s might be useful:

Worship III: The gathering-thinking afresh about church

It’s the third article in a series of three, but only this one is online. The third article assumes his previous two, as you can tell from his opening paragraphs.

You know I’ve got to put in my two cents here, don’t you?!

It’s unfair to run my mouth off when you’ve still got 80% you want to say, but nevertheless: why? Too many whys left unanswered.

For instance - why two Bible readings? (and yes, I know, it could be as many as four, depending on other components, or even more if the songs are closely tied to Scripture) But still - why two? In a hypothetical world which had an OT, a MT and a NT, would we have to have three readings? Why do they need to be read together? Must OT always precede NT, or vice versa?

I know you’ve got answers to all this and more besides, of course. It’s patently obvious that this outline has been carefully thought out. But I want to see more on the why.

To borrow from current cultural fads: we wnat a template like this to be used by masterchefs, not mastercooks. The chef understands the recipe, and knows how to adjust it for circumstance; the cook slavishly follows every detail, and discovers that their oven burns the whole thing because these things are not simply transferable into every context.

Otherwise, I should be quiet and go listen to Mark Driscoll pastor me

HI All

Thanks for the feedback. Some very quick responses:

1. This is just one recipe (and only one so far—stay tuned!) for a 75 minute meeting. Or perhaps I should say the first 75 minutes of a gathering, the second part of which is informal over morning tea. With that sort of time to work with, things need to be pretty tight and punchy—hence only 8 minutes in this one for a 14:26, Dannii. The recipe could be varied of course (e.g. 25 minute sermon, no question time), allowing more time for 14:26. Or you could extend the meeting to 80 or 90 minutes.

2. Ditto, Craig, with the songs, although there could be up to four songs in this one (if the response to the readings was a song, and if the 14:26 was a solo item from a congregation member).

3. I quite like the recipe analogy, Anthony. Perhaps a beginner might ‘slavishly follow every detail’ but I doubt any cook (or even chef!) with a bit of experience would feel the need to do so. I think the helpfulness of the recipe is that it gives a proven and thought-through starting point. A really experienced and gifted chef probably doesn’t even need a starting point—he or she could just look at the ingredients and come up with something brilliant. But for a lot of people, just throwing the ingredients together results in something bland or weird-tasting. I rather suspect this is more common in church life than we would like to admit.

Sorry I haven’t got time or space hear to answer every why. But to take one your raise—theologically speaking, I have reasons to want us to read OT and NT as a regular practice. Having two readings, one from each, as a matter of general pattern, is a good way to achieve this. But it’s a recipe not a law. And you needn’t do them together! (So in this template, why not separate the readings with a creed or psalm or song if you’d like to?)

4. Further on the recipe theme, it is also needs to be variable according to local produce and the season. So yes, Anthony, this particular template reflects my own context. For example, where we are, people value their time and have reasonably high expectations about how things are run. It needs to be well done. There might be some contexts culturally where things like prompt starting and finishing times are less important. Also, in our context, the kids program runs for 90 minutes, providing a 15 minute child-free window for talk, catching up with newcomers and so on. So I’m big on keeping it to 75 minutes. 

5. Gordo, an excellent idea. (And I still miss you not being across the hall.)

TP

Pushing back a little at you Tony - yes, the local context of the church is indeed a major factor, I agree. There are some pragmatic things that are absolutely unavoidable about this (there would, I suspect, not be a single parent on the planet who would want to have a kids spot as the last time in the service, for example!).

However, I think I’d want to argue (continuing the recipe analogy) that the key ingredient in any given week is the passage upon which the sermon is based. I can think of examples of passages where the ‘one’ reading might run for several chapters (and so you’d break it up through the service, perhaps). Or where the sermon passage simply dictates the second reading (say, for example, a prophet referring in detail back to some part of the Law).

So I’d argue for more freedom around the Bible readings. Yes, more than one, otherwise our choice of sermon series becomes almost determinative of how God speaks to us (or worse, what he’s allowed to speak to us about). Yes, we should read from the whole Bible, not just the NT, or the gospels, or the epistles. But to say one must be NT and one must be OT, week in, week out, seems too strong (and I know you aren’t saying this, but hey, it’s a public conversation, so I’m trying to cover everybody…). The flow of Biblical theology is never so binary as this, so why should our Bible reading practices be so proscribed?

I guess I’m reacting to the idea that theology should drive us to make sure we check two boxes: OT and NT. I think I’d want to check two different boxes: a sermon reading, and a systematic reading - but that’s a personal preference. I’m wary of a local context that would make it impossible to ever read parts of Isaiah, for instance: if we couldn’t stand a 28-week series on the book, and couldn’t string together enough NT sermon series to fit in reading Isaiah as the second reading, then what would we do?

Enough on that one from me, though. As a separate question, perhaps for a later post…this 14:26 thing. I confess I’ve always read that verse a little more negatively…kind of as a concession to the ah, vibrant Corinthian church. To what extent do you think the first part of the verse is merely descriptive and the last sentence more prescriptive? Or is it all somewhat prescriptive? I ask because this is an area I need to work on, and I’d be delighted to reuse your thinking for some of that work!