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Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative helping Christians to faithfully live out their faith in their work. We recognize most of life is not lived in black and white but rather lived in the gray, lived in the nuance.
You can find more, including complementary spiritual exercises, at www.collaborativeorlando.com/nuance.
Worship is a place to actually bring your work to God, to bring your stress, your questions, your laments, your joys, and your victories, all of it, to actually bring your work into worship and talk to God about it.
Speaker 2:Does the worship of the church on a Sunday actually prepare people for the work of their lives? Well, today, friends, we are joined by doctor Matthew Kaemingk and reverend Katie Roelofs, coauthor of the new book Leading Worship for Workers, How to Design Liturgies for All of Life. Matthew and Katie, thanks for joining me here on Nuance.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us today. We're glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Tell me where you're where where are you coming to us from?
Speaker 3:I'm coming to you today from my home office, which is in Maryland, just North of Washington DC.
Speaker 2:Okay. And Matthew?
Speaker 1:I'm out in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2:Now you were in Houston when you were with Fuller. Right?
Speaker 1:I was. Yeah. I was serving as the dean of the Fuller campus there in Houston and enjoyed some good barbecue out in Texas and it was a it was a good stay. But I'm I'm enjoying the the beer and broths in Saint Louis now.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, friends, this is part of my introduction of Matthew. He's a public theologian and ethicist who did serve at Fuller Theological Seminary as an associate professor of faith and public life and the director of the Mao Institute, but recently appointed as professor of public theology at Utrecht Utrecht. Pronounce it for me.
Speaker 1:That's really good. Yeah. Utrecht. In The Netherlands. Utrecht Theological University.
Speaker 2:Utrecht Utrecht Theological University in The Netherlands. He's written extensively on faith and public life and is also the co author with Corey Wilson on a previous book, Work and Worship Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy. Now Katie Roelofs is a minister in the Reformed Church in America and has spent nearly two decades in worship and music ministry. She previously served a congregation in Washington DC and now works as a worship consultant and the managing director of the Worship for Workers Initiative, which produced the book we're gonna talk about. She helps to connect churches in their liturgy and daily vocation.
Speaker 2:Well, let me welcome you, our listeners and viewers to Nuance. We're a podcast that explores what it means to be faithful in the public square for Jesus. Now, today's conversation is primarily geared towards worship leaders, pastors, music directors due to the very resource we will discuss. Yet, I'm gonna make sure our conversation is for everyone. That you, if you're not in one of those roles, can it can take something away from this.
Speaker 2:I mean, we all as Christ followers are in worship or so I hope we are, right? Maybe a little more regularly than we should be. And so but I know that what we'll discuss will help you be a better worshiper or maybe even come up with some fresh ideas to share with the worship leadership at your church. So I don't know who wants to go first. Y'all tell me about this project, Worship for Workers initiative.
Speaker 2:I mean, how did it come together and and what does this book represent?
Speaker 3:So after Matthew and his co author Corey Wilson wrote that first book that you just held up and showed, the Work in Worship book. I don't know how this cohort came to be. Matt, maybe you want to say more about that. But there was a cohort that was launched for pastors, worship leaders, a room full of people who wanted to sit and talk about this book, dive into some of the specifics of it theologically, but then shift more into a practical mode of what this what this looked like within the actual church.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Go ahead. If you have more you wanna say about the actual Yeah. The work that started.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, there there's a there's a variety of different origin stories. I think one for me is I walked into a worship service one time and there was a young guy with a guitar welcoming everybody into worship and he was strumming his guitar and he said, know, guys, welcome to worship. We're so happy you're here. I know you all have a lot on your minds.
Speaker 1:You've got jobs and projects and errands and all of these responsibilities from your whole week. But, know, for the next hour, we're just gonna worship God and I just want you to leave all that stuff, you know, from your week. I want you to leave that at the door, you know, because we're we're just gonna be focusing on God for the next hour. And it it really crushed my heart that that he said that because he was, you know, reinforcing this problem in worship that Katie and I care so deeply about which is worship is a place to actually bring your work to God, to bring your stress, your questions, your laments, your joys, and your victories, all of it to actually bring your work into worship and talk to God about it. And so I think, you know, and and Katie, I mean I mean, as a as a worship leader in Washington DC, I mean, was a big question for you as well.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 3:Certainly was. Served a church in Washington DC really as my first major church job and walked into a church that was 70% federal employees of the government.
Speaker 2:Wow. How many of that were military versus the blob?
Speaker 3:Almost no military.
Speaker 2:Wow. Okay.
Speaker 3:A couple we'd get military chaplains that would cycle through, but largely not military. Wow. All of the different departments, the alphabet soup letters that you have to look up to be able to piece together. I feel like there's very few churches though where you get the experience where 70% of your congregation is doing one thing or another. And I learned very quickly that if worship didn't speak to the reality, to the daily lived reality of this subset of our church, they would go with something missing in the end.
Speaker 3:So I was kind of born into this almost by getting a first job in a congregation that spoke this vocationally conversant language. And so I've kind of walked right into it and had to learn over time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So like the I mean, just lastly, I'd say, Kase, is the book is born out of a complaint about the first book. Mhmm. The first book was very theological and theoretical
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And a lot of pastors and worship leaders saying, okay. I want Sunday morning worship to really impact the lives of my people, their daily life. Give me something practical. Give me I can do on a Sunday. So that was really the the ultimate birth of this book.
Speaker 2:Well, I confessed before we started that I have the new book, but I can't find it. I ripped my office up, maybe it's at home. But Matthew, if you'll hold it up.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm holding up the first one, leading worship for workers, which is the theology. Wait. Sorry. No. No.
Speaker 2:No. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I'm holding up work and worship, which is more of the theology.
Speaker 2:And then you're holding up the one today that is much more, like you say, a practical a handbook. I mean, it has got an incredible amount of liturgical resources in there. Now I was honored to be a part of the the formation or at least the greater conversation to get to this work. Tell us I mean, remind everybody how the process worked to get to this publication.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, Katie and I had been working together, building this website of resources of songs and prayers and blessings. We partnered with a group called Porter's Gate, which created a number of amazing worship
Speaker 2:albums I for love Porter's Gate. We'll put that in our notes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So and those songs really took off. And and the resources on the website, you know, with ideas for sermons, ideas for benedictions for workers. Mhmm. If you wanna if you wanna bless nurses, here's a prayer you can put together.
Speaker 1:You know, if you wanna bless teachers as the, you know, as the school year begins. So we have this website of resources that Katie was building, and we wanted to pair all these resources with some instructions
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:On how to use them in worship. And so this was really kind of the missing piece of the puzzle. You know, we've got songs about work. We've got prayers about work. We've got notes about how to preach about work.
Speaker 1:But really, we we needed a workbook that could kind of pull it all together. And and, you know, I think for me, I I personally really needed to write this book with a practitioner. So as a theologian, theologians, you know, we can kind of float up into the clouds, and Katie has has a good practitioner, you know, sort of discipline for me Sure. Bringing me down to Earth. Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That was important.
Speaker 3:I'll jump in on that and say that as the resource website was growing, one thing we heard from people, we got a lot of feedback from people saying, These resources are great. Some of them don't really work in my context. So could you help me be able to figure out how this works in my church? Right. Because we're sold.
Speaker 3:We love this idea. But that prayer that you posted that doesn't quite work for me, how can I do it? And so that challenged us to kind of go take a couple steps backward in order to work forward again. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And do some of the teaching work to say, okay, what does this look like? How do you practically do these things? Mhmm. Not just write prayers, but how do you gather people over time in such a way that it forms them to recognize their vocation and their work within their worship.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So a couple steps back in order to be able to to teach and to educate people and help them be able to contextualize some of these things for their own churches.
Speaker 2:That website is worshipforworkers.com. Worshipforworkers.com. It'll be in our show notes. Well, for a number of years, we at the collaborative have had a Labor Day prayer service. This would be on the Wednesday before Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 2:And I would generate a number of the litany's and and and the liturgy and that sort of thing. So you better believe I I would have loved a resource like this. Now, let me ask you, right in the book, gathered together in the sanctuary, workers will hear almost nothing about one of the most consuming things that they've been doing all week long. To your point, Matt, in terms of what that leader said that day, why has work why has it been so absent from worship?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a great question. I think there's a a wide variety of answers that we dive in into the book. One is just the training of of pastors and worship leaders tends to be very Yeah. Theological, spiritual That's true.
Speaker 1:And ecclesial. So worship leaders and pastors just are not trained to engage the working lives of people.
Speaker 2:So They
Speaker 1:tend to engage, honestly, the the family life and the personal life. And we've, in many, you know, American churches, the faith has been suburbanized. So preaching and worship speaks to what happens in the home rather than what happens in the city or in the factory or the office. And the other thing is just work has become so complex. So, you know, five hundred years ago in the Middle Ages, you could, you know, sing about agriculture and everybody was in agriculture.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Well, do we have songs about federal workers? Come on, Katie.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's actually a quote from in the book that there's there's a sore lack of songs for federal employees to come with.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's that. And yeah, and I think a lot of pastors and worship leaders are just nervous to talk about work. They feel distanced from it. They feel like they're not qualified.
Speaker 1:They imagine that if they talk about work, need to provide solutions or answers to all the questions people have rather than just providing a space for them to bring their questions to God. And so, you know, when we you know, pastors really do think sometimes like, I I just don't understand the world that these people are in. And then that that paralyzes the pastor, and then the pastor doesn't say anything at all.
Speaker 2:Sure it does.
Speaker 1:And so what we really try to do is not create worship that ties everything up in a nice bow, but just invites people to to bring their questions to God and and let the worship do its work.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm. So Katie, I'd like to ask you a question in in two parts. So talk to us from the perspective of being up on the platform or the chancel in leading worship, and then talk to us as what your research and your own experience from the congregants perspective out in the pews. I mean, this silence, this lack of focus on work, how have you experienced that from the chancel to the pew?
Speaker 2:And I'm revealing my Presbyterianism, so maybe from the the stage to the folding chair.
Speaker 3:That's a great question. One quick thing to note first too is we included an audit section at the beginning of this book. There's two of them. There's one that audits your workers, gives you a better view of when you're standing in the front and you see all of the faces in front of you. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We don't often think about these people as workers. We don't think about what it is that they carry with them into worship. We don't wonder what was behind the tears or what's behind the smiles on a Sunday morning. That's true. And so this audit encourages a deep dive into knowing your congregation through a vocational lens.
Speaker 3:But it also gives a separate audit section for wondering how your church got to where it is in terms of why work doesn't belong in a sanctuary or work does belong in a sanctuary. There's several different categories that we gave, but like just an audit section that we encourage people when we wrote it. We said, don't skip this section. It's actually really important because this helps you to be able to focus on your people in your specific congregation.
Speaker 2:That's helpful because like when I'm upfront in leading, we will a lot of churches will do a prayer for the teachers and students right before school. That one's kind of a a gimme, an easy one. But I know from a pastoral leadership perspective, I'm sometimes hesitant to pray over certain industries because I don't know that I'll get to them all. Any advice to what to do to make sure that if you're gonna tackle this and say, alright, one Sunday a month, we're gonna intentionally pray for a certain industry. How do you not leave people out?
Speaker 3:I'll make the case that you probably will at some point in time. And when that person comes up to you and says, I haven't been prayed over yet, then you say, great.
Speaker 2:You're right. Let's add that.
Speaker 3:Here we go. Then let's have a conversation about that. How can I pray for you this week? Opens up doors for pastoral conversations that maybe haven't been available to you in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah. My my wife is also a worship director, and she would always so she did this monthly. And so when she would get that, hey, you left me out, she would just go, guess what? You're next month. So
Speaker 2:Oh, look, hold on, we'll get to you, we'll get to
Speaker 1:But if you're doing it every month, you can always include more. Sure. And another thing that some churches do is they they've developed testimony. So this is a, you know, an ancient Christian tradition of offering your testimony, and normally when we use the word testimony, we think of like, well this is when I was saved. But testimony in the terms of a worker interview.
Speaker 1:So you bring up, you know, a school teacher and you ask them, well, how have you seen God move in your school, in your students, in your classroom? You bring in a construction worker. You know, how are you seeing God move in you as you work on the construction site?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And you just just develop a a rhythm of bringing workers up and letting them tell their testimony of what God is doing. And it it helps your congregation develop a grammar. Yeah. A narrative for talking about God in the world. And I tell you what, congregations listen to their peers in a way that they don't in the way that they don't
Speaker 2:listen Yeah, to their that's right.
Speaker 1:And they they will really pay attention. And there's something lovely about the awkwardness of talking about work in the sanctuary that can actually be really helpful in training your your congregation to start speaking this way.
Speaker 2:Now, we share a Calvinistic theological foundation.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:I would assume probably a Kuiperian perspective.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Are there traditions? If you come across certain church denominations or theological streams where bringing up work is wrong, offensive, not appropriate, seen as unhelpful Or is it people just don't think about it?
Speaker 3:All of the above.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, I think you can find problems in every denomination. Every single denomination fails to do this. And every denomination brings unique gifts to this. So Pentecostals can have and can do beautiful things with work and worship that Calvinists really struggle to do.
Speaker 1:So I'll give you an example. Like in Africa, is there's these amazing practices of blessing and anointing a person's marketplace shop, where like the pastor will anoint and like pray over their shop, you know, or they will dance forward the offering of the work of their hands in
Speaker 2:a Pentecostal
Speaker 1:church. And a Calvinist church would never do that. So I would say that each worship style has its has its, you know and and theological tradition has its problems and its sort of charisms or its gifts that it can it can bring to this conversation. But, yeah, Calvinism really helps.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. You know? Well, I may have shared this on the podcast before, so pardon me, listeners and viewers. I was many years ago in Madagascar. We had a wonderful relationship for about ten years with the largest Protestant denomination on the island, which was was Calvinistic.
Speaker 2:And one day, we went out to a church that was kind of, I guess, the suburbs of the capital and I was guest preaching and I was with the leader the the president of the denomination. Well, all of a sudden, after the offering had been taken, a man who I presume was an elder in the church stands up and be he's standing on the floor of the sanctuary looking back down the aisle and begins an auction and starts to do like you would hear in an auction house in a farm or an agricultural setting, like And people were bringing up to him vegetables and animals and it was just so mind blowing. I thought, oh my goodness, I could just see this at First Preser Orlando. Well, after the service, I went, I said to the president who was a dear friend and that and who is still is, I said, you've got to explain this to me. What did I just witness?
Speaker 2:And he said, well, in a in people that don't participate in the cash society, you know, this is their fruit, this is their product to give. And so every Sunday, there's a small auction, people in the church will buy that because they need groceries or they need a newly woven purse. And then the money that they give goes into the offering plate. I was like, oh my goodness. That is so cool.
Speaker 2:And would so shock American Calvinist. Okay. But I still haven't heard. Are there any traditions that push back and don't want a work in in in a theme or include in including that?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I think some with very strict liturgies that are very set, it can be it can be pretty hard.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then, you know, I mean, I think some who are very resistant to any kind of planning,
Speaker 2:You know?
Speaker 1:In order to connect worship and work, it does require a little bit of planning
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And thought. And then I guess, you know, anyone that's, like, very focused on performance, you know, including workers who are not performers up on stage, that makes it really hard Yeah. Yeah. As well. So, you know, a plumber giving his testimony might not keep it to two minutes.
Speaker 1:Sure. Might not be the most funny, charismatic speaker. That's So like, if you really emphasize performance, that's gonna be tough. And if your liturgy is very strict and can't can't move, that's also tough. I don't know, Katie.
Speaker 1:What else what else would
Speaker 2:be Yeah. You're nodding, Katie. Areas.
Speaker 3:I think it's also particularly difficult for congregations who don't view worship as a dialogue between the people and God. That if it's only a one way communication Mhmm. And it's not an actual dialogue that's happening back and forth between God and the people Mhmm. It's a lot harder to see the relevance of this and to be able to make those connections. That's one of the premises of the book is that when workers arrive, that they have something that they offer up to God with the expectation that God speaks back to them.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 3:And so those who don't engage in worship in that dialogic fashion, I think, are going to have a hard time conceptually and theologically wrapping their heads around this.
Speaker 2:I love how you put that because you're right. So many think they're coming for entertainment. They're coming to receive what the performers have to offer As opposed to, no, it's this back and forth flow.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Also, congregations that sorry.
Speaker 1:That I was just gonna say ahead go ahead.
Speaker 3:Congregations that prioritize individualism are also going to have a hard time with this. Where the worship experience, for lack of a better word, I dislike that. But the worship experience is about God and the single person.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That doesn't breed more of a corporate and communal type of feel because then you are going to get that, well, they prayed for the plumbers this morning, and I'm not a plumber.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 3:an inability to be able to identify and share in the burdens and the joys of those around you. Mhmm. Sorry, Matt. Go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, on those same lines, if worship is always happy and positive, that can actually be a blocker for this because sometimes work really sucks. You know? Like like work is not always I'm, you know, changing my business for Jesus, and everyone's coming to church, and I'm just sort of conquering, you know, the hospital or the school for Jesus. Like sometimes work really stinks.
Speaker 1:And so churches that can't handle sad things
Speaker 2:or
Speaker 1:can't can't handle hard things or lament, they're gonna have a hard time actually engaging work and workers in a real way because they're gonna sort of force workers to be happy about their Yeah. You know, you know, and and put on a happy face when sometimes work really stinks.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. They have an allergy to honesty.
Speaker 2:Oh, Katie.
Speaker 1:There it is.
Speaker 2:There it is. Like, that's your next book where you're the single author and that's I like
Speaker 3:Church has an allergy to honesty. Oh. Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna pick that up. Nobody's gonna want that.
Speaker 2:Okay. In the book, you write, God delights when his people gather together to worship in the sanctuary. God also delights when his people scatter out into the city to worship his name through their daily work. So I appreciate and Calvinism certainly does this, but you're helping people to reorient that worship isn't just that one hour in that building. So what does it mean for Christians to see work as a form of worship?
Speaker 2:Talk to the non worship leader listening. What difference does it make when they see their work as worship?
Speaker 1:So I think you have to I mean, all of this depends upon Christians understanding that their work is worship. And I think you have to start with Adam and Eve in the garden, walking with God, working with God, and lifting their work up to God. You know, throughout the Old Testament, I think people just pass over this very strange and weird practice where all over the Old Testament, people are lifting up their work to God as if God cared, you know. Katie Katie and I have kids. Case, I don't know if you have kids,
Speaker 2:but like Oh, I'm so poor. I love my kids, but
Speaker 1:So but I mean, anyone with kids understands this. When when the kids build a Lego set or they draw something, the first thing they do is they lift it up. Mhmm. And show it to you. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Because they're excited about what they built. And throughout the Old Testament, people are lifting up their work to God in worship. Yeah. And we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. We don't lift up our work to God in worship. And there's something deeply human. I mean, Adam and Eve were created to do this. And so, you know, we talk about gathered worship on Sunday and scattered worship throughout the week so that Sunday morning should be the beginning of a whole week of worship.
Speaker 1:It's not it's not a moment for worship, but it's meant to be sort of this launch for us into the city to continue our worship.
Speaker 3:And beyond that also, it's important for people to realize and to recognize over time that the sanctuary, that work that you do in the sanctuary has consequences for how you live your daily life. Mhmm. The sanctuary is not the place just to give you the warm hug and keep you there. It is always meant to shape you and form you, help you rehearse the liturgies of your daily life. So there's always going to be an outward dimension and like a forward momentum to it that what we do in the sanctuary, it should change us.
Speaker 3:That should have consequences for how we live our daily lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And that's where I could see this book being helpful even for your devotional life, not just a tool for a worship leader to utilize. But even for your devotional life, we have a dear dear man in our church named Buzz Allsley. No.
Speaker 2:Not Buzz Aldrin, as he's been mistaken for. He kinda
Speaker 1:I was looks like excited there
Speaker 3:for him. I know. That's what I thought that's where I thought you were going to.
Speaker 2:Well, he's an elder and he's about he's late eighties and he is just the most humble, sincere man. Well, there's this hilarious story where about twenty five years ago, he went to the Magic Basketball game with friends who got in. They were on the floor on the fancy seats and you had to sign in when you as you went to your seats and the attendant thought he was Buzz Aldrin and sent word up to the booth and all of a sudden, the camera goes on him, his face is on the board. Ladies and gentlemen, we are thrilled to be honored by Buzz Aldrin. Well, everybody stands in cheers and Buzz says, you know what?
Speaker 2:I didn't wanna embarrass Buzz Aldrin. So I stood up and I started waving to everybody.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:And if you know Buzz, it's just so funny that he never would have wanted that attention on himself, but he was he was worried about Buzz Aldrin's reputation.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:Okay. I don't know how we got on this. Oh, sorry. Sorry. That's one of my notorious rabbit trails.
Speaker 2:Buzz touches my heart because he will come back during the week and have his bulletin with him. And he will pray the litany and the prayers that are printed. We don't usually print too many. But he hangs on to these and uses them in his devotional life. And I've I've really impressed upon me.
Speaker 2:These are these are more than just throwaway items for an order of worship, but it can be a tool for such things. Tell me, what's your hope for this work? What would you love to see in churches in five, ten, twenty years?
Speaker 3:I think my deep hope is that nobody needs a cut copy and paste work and worship liturgy that they can find that I've crafted or Matt's crafted or someone else, but they they gain the tools and the conviction within themselves as leaders to do this work naturally for themselves.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. So that the worship that's being planned for God's people, the sermons that are being written for them Sunday in and Sunday out, that they have leaders that are passionate about it and are able to do this Mhmm. On their own, and it becomes just the language of the church.
Speaker 2:And we probably should have said this upfront. Every worship style has a liturgy. Even if you're in a very contemporary format with guitars and drums, there liturgy means that order of things and that intentional movement. So don't just hear liturgy and think Roman Catholics and robes and such.
Speaker 3:I I think of liturgy as its proper term, which is it quite literally means the work of the people.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:It's not
Speaker 3:what's printed in order of worship, it's God's people engaging and showing up and being a part of the worship that is that is happening with their God.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Matt, what would you love to see five, ten years?
Speaker 1:Well, I think we're I think we're already starting to see it in already, like, pretty amazing and creative ways. Katie and I are constantly getting emails from churches around the country who are doing very creative things to bless the workers in their congregations. And workers are actually picking it up, as you suggested, and and doing really fascinating things. But I think we would love to see a cross denominational movement of churches who are picking this up and making it their own.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I think we're already seeing that. And, you know, I think Katie and I are honestly we're we're trying to be really responsive with this Worship for Workers project. And so every year, we kind of take stock of the questions we're getting and the requests and the invitations that we're getting and and trying to be responsive to where pastors, worship leaders, and workers are. And one of the things we're looking into right now is the development of spiritual practices for workers in the workplace. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So, you know, the the development of prayer workplace prayers and workplace rituals to to practice the presence of God throughout the week. Yeah. You know? This particular book is focused on what you can do on a Sunday morning, but we're starting to look, you know, beyond that to help congregations think about worship throughout the week.
Speaker 2:So Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's it's it's been fascinating. Every year, something new comes.
Speaker 2:Now for those that may not like the printed prayer, they would like more free form approach. Do you have resources? Suggestions for them?
Speaker 3:There are plenty of templates in the book that are exactly that. There are templates saying a typical prayer of lament includes four different things.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:It can sound like four words. Honestly, it can sound like four words. Or it can sound like fully scripted things. But here are things that we think you should consider. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Different sections and different movements. We structured it so that to highlight the movement of liturgy, the work of the people, the movement of the order of worship. So for people who don't like scripted, they like extemporaneous, there's something for them in this book too.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Mhmm. Give me an example of where you've seen creativity out there that's been sparked by your work.
Speaker 3:Got back from a trip this fall to a church up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They had engaged with us on a number of different fronts and then started a year of very intentional learning around work and worship. And some of the things that they came up with were stunningly beautiful. They took clay from their surrounding community. They're largely agrarian.
Speaker 3:They're largely farming. They took clay from their own soil, their own native soil, and gave it to a potter who made communion elements. And on each of those communion cups that go to the individual people in the church, there are small etchings that represent the vocations of the congregation.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 3:So as they pick up their own little chalice for communion, they're holding not only the native soil in their hands, but the work of the potter's hand with an etching that reminds them of the work of someone else in their community. Thought that was particularly that was particularly beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think on on my side, you know, one of the things Katie and I have talked about is the slow death of the offering plate, you know? Yes. That now that people are, you know, giving online digitally, we still have this time of offering and people are passing an empty plate around as sort of like a zombie ritual that, you know, no longer totally makes sense.
Speaker 3:That's your next book title, the zombie ritual.
Speaker 1:The zombie ritual. So the living dead, living, you know, tithing plate. But I think one thing, you know, we've seen churches start to do is use that offering time as a time for everyone to to offer the work of their hands Mhmm. Before the Lord. And so, you know, one thing we've had churches do is write down on a piece of paper a a trumpet, an ash, and a tear from your week.
Speaker 1:So a trumpet is sort of like a victory from your week
Speaker 2:k.
Speaker 1:At work or school. You know, an ash would be like a a confession, and a tear would be sort of a lament. But offer those things and to see the plate filled up with prayers from a week of work, basically, is a way to reenvision and honestly resuscitate the offering practice. And frankly, that
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Is closer to a biblical theology of offering than just giving your money. Yeah. Yeah. Because as Romans twelve one says, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. God doesn't want just 10% of our money.
Speaker 1:God wants our whole selves. And so when we offer our trumpets, ashes, and tears, we're giving our whole selves instead of just a portion.
Speaker 2:Well, since COVID or I guess I should say COVID killed the offering plate for us. Was it radio killed the or video killed the radio man?
Speaker 1:The radio star?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Radio star. Well, it took us out on plates. Couple observations with that. One, I did not realize how much people, especially parents, appreciated the plate for the sake of discipleship of their children in stewardship.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Also though, I did not realize that, like, 90% of our budget was already coming in electronically. That the plate offering you know, we're a big 4,000 member church downtown, so this may not be true for all size churches, but very little of the offering that came in was coming in by cash or check. So what worries me and concerns me is we will sometimes go a little too quick in the liturgy. We will kinda gloss over the offering moment. We'll throw up a slide, hey.
Speaker 2:Here's the QR code and here's the text to to give kind of options. We do now have boxes on campus if you wanna put in something physical. But I have been disappointed at times when we've gone a little too quickly and you miss that component of the liturgy of worshiping. So I really I like that idea. That's good.
Speaker 3:Some people have started just simple practices of either like a small card that gets put in the plate like
Speaker 1:what Matt
Speaker 3:was saying or even if it's as low hanging a fruit as a slide that goes up while the plates are being passed, inviting people to a moment of vocational silence.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:As as we give our monetary gifts today, think about the vocational gifts that you want to offer up to God today. What's one thing that you did in your work this week that you offer to God as your pleasing sacrifice today?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so good. Well, that is a great segue into our conversation next week. Friends, we are going to continue this conversation but get even more practical and specific as to how worship can look, if you're planning that or even if you're participating in that. Matthew, Katie, thank you for being here today.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Looking forward to next week.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:Friends, you can learn more about their project and explore liturgical resources at worshipforworkers.com. And you can also find a link in our show notes to their new book, Leading Worship for Workers from Baker Academic. Well, thank you for spending your time with us here today. If this episode encouraged you, share it with a pastor or maybe a worship leader that would be inspired to work some of these concepts in. We at The Collaborative, we create content and unique experiences for Christ centered professionals in the public square.
Speaker 2:Come visit us at wecolabor.com, wecolabor.com, to explore our content. Leave your email, and I'll send you our journal on faith, work, and culture called zeitgeist. Many thanks to today's episode sponsor, the Stein Foundation. I'm Case Thorpe, and God's blessings on you.