Don’t read it if you want to find the latest techniques used by up-and-coming churches, or the most up-to-date technologies, or if you’re looking for a way to keep things just the way they are, because it will surely disappoint.
However, if you recognize that providing the space and time for God’s people to worship requires an artful balancing act that culminates in the invitation, blessing and sending found in the worship service itself, read on. Informed by the likes of Walter Brueggemann, John Cage, St. Benedict, Brian Eno and Charles Finney, Mark Pierson invites us into a grace-filled conversation about what it is to create and lead worship. But instead of promoting his vision for authentic worship, he remains humbly attentive to the adage, “Do not speak unless it improves the silence.”
For ten years I have served as a generalist pastor with responsibility for all areas of ministry, but have felt especially called to focus on worship and congregational renewal. I believe that Pierson’s book has definitely improved the silence — though it might be better said that his voice has penetrated the cacophony of voices that offer miraculous how-to programs guaranteed to produce a bigger and better church. So many competing voices cry out for our attention, offering the latest approach, or the most authentic methodology, claiming to have the best traditional, emerging, postmodern, alternative, contemporary, contextual, pick-your-buzzword worship. I am grateful to finally hear a voice which offers, not a program, but a process that keeps the missional nature of congregational life at the center.
Pierson challenges pastors, worship leaders and planning teams alike to remember that preparing worship for God’s people means going beyond a routine filling up of an entertaining hour’s worth of words and sacrament. Attentive to context and mission, he reminds us to balance the need for intensely heart-rending worship with God’s missional call to share the transformative power of the good news.
As curators of worship, he invites us to embrace the art of providing whatever is necessary for God’s people to gather to bless God, to be blessed and to be sent out as a blessing. If this is your calling, and if you are yearning for a conversation partner as you explore the fertile place in which God has called you to this share this gift and challenge, hear Mark Pierson’s prayer for you:
“So make us to be the dwelling of Christ
The holy shelter in which the flame may burn;
That the story may go on and the truth be told
And mercy come to your good earth.”
(Mike Riddell as quoted in chapter 4)
AND definitely read this book.
DEBRA AVERY is pastor of Palo Cristi Church in Phoenix Arizona.
