Wednesday, December 07, 2005

What is Emergent Worship aka Finding Neverland/Peter Pan

Remember johhny depp in Finding Neverland? I'll come back to that at the end.
Convergent is very popular style of worship in the emergent churches. The best way for me to explain it is to think of the new 05 Mustang. A reach back into the past to a classic, but... Here's our version of it. So, you'll regularly hear hymns but sung and used in different ways. Sometimes it will be "technoed". Kind of like what David Crowder did with his sunsets and sushi album. In some ways, you could just borrow a term from the 90s and simply say that its a "Blended" service, but blended now would mean traditional, contemporary, and emergent.

The one thing that you'd probably like is that there's a lot of worship. The awesome thing about the postmodern "Seeker" vs the 80s seeker is that the postmodern seeker is already sold on the supernatural/paranormal. In many ways, worship is now an evangelistic tool.

There's always an object lesson. Weekly, for example, we have elements that resemble the typical Good Friday service: object lessons (painting, communion, etc. something that will engage the congregation) but not as heavy.

We teach/preach in a more "socratic" style. Thus, while exegetically researched we'll almost never ever say now on to verse 3, now on to verse 4 etc., but it is exegetically researched, just not delivered in an exegetical manner. The good news for people like me is that the speaker doesn't have to be excellent, but he does need to be real, down to earth and very good, but not excellent. Its very important that the speaker doesn't come across as a know it all or as a motivational speaker type.

I think that's about it. Its a bit hard to describe but its certainly different and yet, like the old mustang, not all that different.
Now...remember Finding Neverland. Remember the adults didnt get it and so he reserved seats for children and brought them in to see Peter Pan. The kids got it because it was designed for them. It (Peter Pan) wasnt designed for the adults, but once the adults saw how the kids were responding to it...they started to like it also. Emergent is exactly this. It isnt designed for everyone, but once even the critics see what is taught and how the new generation is worshipping....they like it too! Come and see.