About Richard Webb

Exile: Week 1 title slide

One of the real challenges of putting together the worship series, Faith under Fire, was figuring out how to present familiar stories in a fresh new way. On the surface, these stories of Daniel and his three friends are about what it means to be faithful in tough times. But have you noticed, at the end of each story, Daniel and his friends wind up in key leadership positions, and ultimately running the country, right behind the King–just like Joseph, and just like Esther? It looks like everytime someone tries to go after God’s people, God turns things upside-down. Apparently there’s a lot going on in these not-so-simple stories.

The problem is, unpacking these stories can get abstract in a hurry. What do the fortunes of Old Testament Israel have to do with present-day life? In response to this challenge, we came up with several strategies to help worshipers connect with the stories of Daniel and his three friends.

Keep the worship flow fresh. As we were mapping out the worship flow for each week, we decided that, instead of a set pattern, we’d let each week’s theme drive the order of worship. For example, the first week’s worship begins very somberly, with very few elements before the message. We did this to reflect the tragic beginning of Daniel’s story: being carried off into exile. But because the last word of this story is God’s protection and care–definitely something to celebrate!–we placed an energetic worship set at the end of the service.

Use hands-on activities whenever possible. One of the things I learned in education class was that, in a learning experience, the more people can engage all their senses, the more likely they are to internalize and retain what they’ve learned. For that reason three of the four services in this series contain creative rituals or activities that help them process the point of the message.

In the first week, we created a moment consisting of a video and a reflection activity that help to create awareness in worshipers of all the places where they feel pressured to give up their identity as God’s people. The video presents multiple images of “pressure points” in our culture that seek to define us after their own image. The activity that follows invites worshipers to write on a large mirror what defines them.

Get creative with the environment. Throughout this series, we’ve suggested ideas for creating environments that help worshipers connect with the part of Daniel’s story that’s focused on each week. In the third week’s worship, we’ve made extensive use of fire to help people enter into the story of Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. We suggested, if possible that worshipers be greeted with a lit kiln (these things can get very hot!) or a bonfire just outside the worship space. In the second week’s worship, to symbolize dreams, we suggested ambient music and certain kinds of video loops to represent dream sequences.

Our ultimate goal with all of these strategies is to help worship curators and preachers tell the stories of Daniel and his three friends in ways that engage, comfort, confront, and hopefully transform.

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The Last Word: Week 4 title slide

I love Communion. I look forward to receiving the Lord’s Supper every week in our congregation. But as a worship planner, weekly Communion can be a real challenge. The problem is, familiarity can breed contempt, but also boredom.

The challenge of familiarity increases with the theme for the 4th week in this series: Daniel and the lion’s den. Like the Lord’s Supper, most people have heard it all before. Once again, familiarity, etc… So how do we help people hear these two important stories again “for the first time”?

In response to these challenges our team decided to mix things up a bit. First, we moved Communion to the front of the service. In this way worshipers experience God’s story first through Communion, then through the teaching that follows.

Next, we recast the ritual of the Lord’s Supper into a dramatic reading comprised of excerpts from Psalm 13, Matthew 26, Mark 14, John 11, and 1 Corinthians 11. Here’s a portion of the Mercy Feast (Communion) Moment that explains how we attempted to intertwine the stories of Daniel and the lion’s den and Jesus’ final supper with his followers:

The purpose of this [dramatic] reading is to ground the Lord’s Supper in the actual events that led to Jesus’ betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection. In the context of this week’s service, the readings connect the experience of Daniel–betrayal, deliverance and vindication–with Jesus’ own betrayal, deliverance and vindication. Indeed, there is no place we can go where God has not been first.

Four readers perform this dramatic reading. This reading also involves the person who leads the Lord’s Supper. The four readers stand at the four corners of a very large communion table; the person who leads Communion stands behind the table. The point is to give each text a unique voice and space with the Communion leader’s voice pulling the various readings together with the story of the Lord’s Supper.

“Preparing the Environment” section of this service will help you think about what kind of Communion table you may want to construct.

We also added visual and environmental elements to this dramatic reading. Again from the instructions for this Moment:

…during this time the house lights should be turned off with only spotlights shining on the readers and the Communion leader. Multiple images of the Lord’s Supper and the Crucifixion (classic and modern paintings, photos etc.) might also be projected on screens during this time.

Through this recasting of the Lord’s Supper ritual, we hope that worshipers discover anew that God is not only with them in the “valley of the shadow of death,” but also active as sustainer and liberator.

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Trust: Week 3 title slide

I love designing worship services. Creating worship services where worshipers experience God’s transformative presence is–well, there’s quite nothing like it. But it gets even better when there are co-collaborators partnering in the process.

In this worship series, I had the privilege of working with several co-collaborators. One of them was Matt McNeece, a very gifted worship leader and composer. As part of his work on this series, Matt wrote “Mighty and Able One,” a song written to be part of the opening worship set of the third week. Using the story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and the fiery furnace, this service addresses the question of whom we trust in hard times.

Here’s the chorus from “Mighty and Able One”:

You are faithful in the desert;
You are mighty when I’m weak;
You are Holy, always able;
Bringing strength to all in need.

While he doesn’t directly reference the fiery furnace, throughout this song Matt explores how God shows up in all the places we find ourselves–both good and bad.

What stands out for me in this song is that Matt doesn’t write about how God rescues us from all the bad places, but rather, how God goes with us in those places. God is faithful in the midst of the desert and is strong when we are weak. To sing this truth is especially important in a culture that does everything possible–economically, technologically, medically, and even religiously–to avoid the pain that inevitably comes our way.

From a musical standpoint, Matt’s melodies are easy to learn but still interesting enough to be sustainable through several singings. While the overall style of the song leans toward a “WorshipTogether.com” sound, it’s flexible enough to be adapted to a variety of settings. This song works well with everything from solo piano or guitar to full band.

Listen: Mighty and Able One [with strings and pads]

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Mirror Egg Reflections by LollyKnit on Flickr

A major challenge for any worship curator is to create worship services where things “stick”: where ideas, stories, and experiences stay with the worshiper beyond the service itself. In order to make that happen, throughout the Faith under Fire series, I’ve put together several activities designed to help worshipers experience first-hand what they‘ve heard through proclamation, music, and prayer. Here’s an example of one of these activities, which comes from the second week’s worship service.

Confession Activity

This activity is designed to take place during Communion distribution, just prior to worshipers receiving the bread and wine. The purpose of the activity is to help worshipers reflect on what holds them back from trusting that God’s dreams are bigger than the circumstances that confront them. The bread and the wine serve as God’s response to what holds them back.

At mirrors set up throughout the worship space, just before they receive Communion, worshipers are invited to take a post-it note, write down the things that keep them from taking their problems and challenges to God, and stick their notes on the mirror in front of them. Immediately after, they are invited to receive the bread and the wine. The leader may want to emphasize that, not only do these things keep us from taking our challenges to God, they also begin to obscure our vision of who God is and what God is able to do.

As you read above, this Confession Activity is placed immediately before worshipers receive the bread and the wine, with absolutely nothing in between.

Through this activity, worshipers experience right in front of their eyes, so to speak, how God responds when they come clean with their stuff. Through confession and communion, worshipers are enacting 1 John 1:9 – “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

But the point of this Confession Activity is not just about “coming clean” in general. It’s about coming clean with the fact that we have this tremendous but massively underutilized resource right at our fingertips: prayer, nothing less than conversation with the Creator of the universe!

That’s where this narrative comes in. This narrative deals with the question of exactly who is in charge of our lives and our circumstances. Daniel responds to this question with the only resource he has at his disposal: prayer. So what keeps us from praying? Why do we need to have our backs up against the wall before we take our pain and anxiety to the one who can actually do something about it?

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Faith under Fire series slide

The book of Daniel deals with two important themes: how God’s exiled people respond to the pressures of a hostile culture; and how God works through his apparently powerless people to challenge and subvert the mighty empires of this earth.

In many ways the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed and enacted life finds itself most at home in circumstances of exile. Jesus defined his Kingdom not by geographical boundaries or any visible form of government, but by how his followers lead their lives as God’s faithful people, particularly in the face of hostile resistance.

Daniel teaches us that the ability to lead faithful lives is deeply grounded in the promise of God’s faithfulness and deliverance, in the present and at the resurrection. In this way, we as followers of Jesus are also the people of the lion’s den and the fiery furnace.

This Collection consists of four weekly Narratives. Here’s a quick summary of each.

Exile: Week 1 title slide

Week One: Living in exile: What defines us?

Week one opens with the fall of Jerusalem and Daniel and his friends being exiled into Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar attempts to turn them into loyal Babylonians by changing their names and their food customs. Daniel, however, refuses to eat the king’s food and instead asks for a “clean” diet for him and his friends. God then blesses Daniel and his friends with superior health and wisdom. As a result the king appoints all four as court advisors. The point? God walks with his people, even into exile.

Who's in Charge: Week 2 title slide

Week Two: Who’s really in charge here?

At the time of Daniel, dreams were understood to hold the key to knowledge and power. Week two poses the question of just who is the author of dreams—the Babylonian gods or Yahweh? The story opens with a dream from the King that no one can interpret. The stakes are high. If someone doesn’t interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, all his advisors will die, including Daniel and his three friends. Daniel responds by praying for mercy and wisdom and receives the interpretation of the king’s dream. As a result Daniel’s God is vindicated as the author of dreams and Daniel is appointed chief of the royal advisors and governor over the province of Babylon.

Trust: Week 3 title slide

Week Three: Whom do you really trust?

Week three focuses on what it means to live faithfully in impossible situations, especially before God comes to the rescue. Nebuchadnezzar has erected a huge statue (possibly of himself) and has demanded that all his key leaders to bow down to it. Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refuse to go along, and at the command to bow down remain standing. Furious, Nebuchadnezzar has them thrown into a super-heated furnace. But, when he peers into the furnace, he sees them still alive—standing together with a fourth person! Nebuchadnezzar then orders them out of the furnace and issues a decree practically promoting the worship of Israel’s God! Daniel’s three friends were ready to give their lives to maintain their identity as God’s people because they knew, like the early Christian martyrs, that God gets the last word, even over death.

The Last Word: Week 4 title slide

Week Four: Who gets the last word in your life?

Week four focuses back on Daniel. By this time Darius is king and plans to appoint Daniel as prime minister over the entire Persian Empire. Daniel’s rivals manipulate Darius into decreeing that, upon pain of death, no one shall pray to anyone except the king for 30 days. Daniel violates the decree and is thrown in to the lion’s den. But God protects Daniel, and when Darius discovers that Daniel is alive, he frees Daniel and makes the worship of Israel’s God one of the official religions of the Persian Empire. Throughout the book of Daniel God works through his conquered and exiled people to radically transform an entire empire and its king.