In her book, "The Worship Architect," Constance M. Cherry explains the foundations of a worship service, both generally and specifically. We just read chapter three of this book for my Worship Arts class, and Cherry highlights many interesting and helpful concepts of worship. In this chapter, she talks more generally about the different strategies of creating a worship service, formal vs. informal worship, and she introduces the fourfold order of worship. All of these things I found simply and practically profound, but I will only highlight a few for this blogpost.
The first thing that stuck out to me in this chapter was the introduction of formal vs. informal services. I come from a church background that is formal and very structured, Cherry would say my church takes a "Fill-in-the-blank" approach. This is what I am used to, and so I never really realized the beauty of this structure. Creating an order and structure is part of being made in the image of God since a big part of God's character is order. However, reading this chapter, Cherry seeemed to indirectly say that infromal worship is the inferior, or even wrong, way to worship. This part just didn't sit well with me because I have experienced and even led many "informal" services and the service of worship went just as well, sometimes even better, than formal services. Now, I put informal in quotation marks speaking to my example because it was never fully unstructured. There is usually a basic outline and idea for how the service will go, but it is very open to how the congregation is responding, how the band is responding, and how we see the Spirit is moving. I think I gravitate more towards that sort of structure when I lead, but I very much appreciate and enjoy the beauty and freedom of lots of structure too. I just felt that maybe Cherry presented informal worship too harshly.
To add another part of the chapter I found interesting, I really liked her explination of the fourfold order of worship. I like the simple, basic, but powerful outline of worship she gives through Scripture and the early Church. Seeing a worship service as dialogue with the four aspects of gathering, Word, Table, and sending were really impactful. It seems really simple as an idea but I think that's why I found it to be so profound. Learning that all worship is are those four things in dialogue with God, it gave me a sense of freedom and lightening of the burden of leading. To me, leading worship can seem very daunting and super serious, which is it, but it's like I can't mess up. But, having the mindset of worshipping as a conversation eased some of the pressure. It is still a serious and purposeful calling and task, but it is less intimidating after reading this chapter.
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