Ryan Marsh describes a pre-worship moment in the Clayfire collection for Advent, “What Happens When God Comes Close.” View More about this collection.
As both a curator and worshiper, I think a lot of the “oomph” of liturgy is in the practicing of real life in the safety of a loving God and community. In the liturgy we get to try out doing things that are even more terrifying in real life–like confessing our weakness, like listening, like singing our guts out to God, like sharing a meal with strangers, like holding our money (and life) as a gift and then giving it away… Now you know what I mean by terrifying, right!?
So, when collaborating together to plan the season of Advent we wanted to dedicate a part of the service to waiting, not simply talking about and theologizing about waiting, but to actually waiting. We wondered, “What if our community had a shared experience, even if it was slightly contrived, that we could later reflect on.“ Beginnings seem really important and we wanted to be intentional about how we set the tone for the liturgy, so we came up with “The Waiting Room” as the entry space. We racked our brains for all the experiences of waiting in life… for the light to turn green, for water to boil, for the weekend to come, for the test results to come back from the doctor, for a spouse or a child to come home from war, for a baby to be born, for a parent to pass on… Then we drew on some of the “waitings” to inform our communal waiting.
A few things that we’ve tried over the last three years at Church of the Beloved haven’t made the cut, like watching water boil or paint dry, and still there are other ideas that remain untried, like the life-sized hour glass or watching for the first three stars in the evening sky. In the end we settled on four scenarios: 1. alarm clocks; 2. take a number; 3. the wailing wall; 4. congrats! Each Waiting Room is designed to compliment the theme of the specific narrative. The more we attempted The Waiting Room, the more we realized the waiting really is an act of worship. Waiting is sacred. Waiting is sacrifice. Waiting transforms us and deepens us, sometimes in ways we aren’t ready for.
Granted, this may be a stretch for many congregations out there, but come on! What’s the worst thing that could happen? Give this a try. Go all out and your people will certainly remember this.
