spiritual formation — Clayfire Curator

Holy Meals and Mangled Metal

by Guest Blogger | September 6, 2011

This post was written by Kevin Rains.

My worlds collided and united on February 5th, 2011.

I have owned an auto body shop in Cincinnati for the past 8 years and during most of that time I was also the pastor of a network of house churches and an intentional community. No matter how much I’ve learned or even taught that “all work is sacred” and “we’re all ministers” the world of the body shop and the world of ministry have remained apart. I had no embodied experience to bring them together. Until that day in February.

As part of my doctoral studies I’ve been working on a curriculum for spiritual formation for our communities called FORMED. One of the monthly modules of the FORMED curriculum is on work. This module coincided with the body shop buying another building (that used to be a transmission shop) for expansion so we decided to host the FORMED gathering in this new space… this chaotic, greasy, dirty, space.

We went about the business of planning for the 40 or so people who were coming. Setting up chairs, hanging cloth from the rafters to soften the space, converting an old office space into a child care room and just generally getting all the old transmission parts moved out of our way. But right in the middle of all this was a frame rack that we had recently purchased for the expansion. A frame rack is typically the largest tool in a body shop. It took up almost 300 square feet of floor space and weighs in at several tons. And it was right in the middle of the space we were creating for this gathering. It was completely in the way.

And then someone had the idea. “What if we made this our table? What if this became the gathering place for our meal?” One of the presenters that day was a local urban farmer and he had already volunteered to design a meal of locally grown food as part of the gathering. So the frame rack that was “in the way” now became the centerpiece of our gathering. With some beautiful fabric, string lights all around and candles adorning both sides it became the locus of a shared meal, hospitality, gathering, prayer, learning, nourishment and worship. In short it went from a grimy tool that untwists and straightens metal to the Lord’s table, a place of communion and community. And for me it became an icon of the intersection of my work and my worship.

I once heard Tim Keller say that all work is bringing order out of chaos and that is one of the primary ways we reflect the image of God who did just that at creation. (see Genesis 1:1-2) In the body shop I’m daily reminded of the chaos that still surrounds us as cars are towed in with leaking fluids, bent metal, broken plastic and shattered glass. And it’s amazing to watch the transformations that occur! Frames are straightened, new panels are welded on, plastic is repaired, glass is replaced, and cars are painted and buffed to look better than they did before the accident.

This is true of your job as well. From dentists who fill damaged teeth, to plumbers who get leaky pipes in order, to educators who transform the chaos of teenage minds into ordered learning of biology, to administrative assistants who take the chaos of their boss’s email inbox and calendar and wrangle it into something manageable and meaningful. And you do it too wherever you work!

Here are a few ideas to help you curate worship in the workplace:

1. Have your small group members bring an icon of their work to your meeting and let each one explain how that represents what they do and how they bring order from chaos. Pray a blessing over each person as they hold the symbol of their work. This could also be adapted to a larger gathering as well.

2. How might you include blue collar tools and talent in your next experiential worship gathering beyond just setting things up or building something for it?

3. How might sharing a meal with your co-workers foster community and worship?

Kevin Rains is the owner of Center City Collision, an auto body shop in Cincinnati. He is also finishing up a doctorate in leadership and spiritual formation at George Fox University. His dissertation is centered on developing a curriculum for spiritual formation that is both communal and missional. This developing project is called FORMED. He also blogs regularly at The Kedge. He lives with his wife, three children, two dogs and seven friends in the Brownhouse.

Categories: Formation

Soooo… the Trinity

by Jodi-Renee Adams | June 14, 2011

My then eleven year old daughter – a bright and imaginative girl who I’m quite certain came from the same Divine imagination that created unicorns and Portuguese music – finally asked me the mysterious question that everybody eventually asks and nobody completely answers: “Sooo… one GOD but three… huh?” We sat and talked long enough about this great and magical idea of the Trinity to make me think she needed to play more video games. Eventually she and I both left the table realizing that it’s not about getting it, but maybe about realizing that we can’t; just look for GOD in faith, realizing that there’s more to GOD than we can quantify, qualify or understand. I thought that was a parenting score, if I may say so myself.

So I can’t explain the Trinity, obviously, but I’ll be perfectly honest: I’m glad. I dread the day that we can tidily box the essence of GOD up into neatly labeled compartments with the smug demeanor of people who “get it.” Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. This is not to say, however, that I’m coming from what may seem like the other pole of “don’t care to over-think this so I’ll just lump everything in the Jesus bucket.” If you are unfamiliar with this particular bucket, I urge you to listen to your local Christian radio station’s music for a small taste of it. Everything about the essence of GOD, every act, every purpose, every title seems to actually be “Jesus.” As best I can tell, this is far more a trait of Christian culture than it is of any particular denomination, but since Christian culture pervades across those lines, a little thoughtful inventory wouldn’t hurt any of us.

So why does it matter? That seems to be the first and most obvious question. Why does it matter – what we think of – or maybe even if we think of – the Trinity in our prayer and our worship?

Let’s start here at the seeming impossible – defining the Trinity…or at least paying homage to the identity and essence of the Trinity with our limited language. The Trinity is all that is in the very essence of GOD’s identity about community, interdependence, and risky love. The Trinity is about the creative impulse, new life, rebirth, the tension of true beauty as it appeared in the dawn of time, worked out through the cross, and appears now in our now-and-not-yet world. The Trinity is about restoring what is broken, returning what is lost among the seen and unseen. The Trinity is about co-creation and collaboration. About turning expectations inside out, turning over tables and over turning hearts. And all within the interwoven desires and work of GOD-the-Mother-and-Father, Christ-the-Son, and the Holy Ghost, each with their respective roles and essences. To steal shamelessly from the evangelical theologian Stanley Grenz in Theology for the Community of GOD:

The ‘Father’ functions as the divine program for creation. The Son functions as the revealer of GOD, the exemplar and herald of the Father’s justice, love, and grace for creation, and the redeemer of humankind. And the Spirit functions as the personal divine power active in the world, the completer of the divine program.

Not the most poetic explanation (ah, the poetic theologians… so jealous the Lutherans have one) but a solid and expansive one.

What does this mean for worship? For prayer? For the daily inhaling of all that is divine and sacred?

I’m throwing this out there for consideration: If we aren’t acknowledging the essence of the Trinity – creative, redeeming, moving, relational, mysterious, inconvenient, interdependent, giving of salvation – then it would stand to reason that we are worshiping an artificial god that we’ve created to satiate our felt needs. When we make our worship all about the Jesus we can relate to – our brother, redeemer, savior – or when we attribute to Jesus all the welcome work of the Trinity without the more dangerous invitations of the Spirit or the bigness that is the GOD-head, we create our own safe, comfortable, satisfying and wholly incomplete god — our golden calf. We practice a kind of self-help that may have some beautiful therapeutic value and even some possible overflow to our neighborhoods and relationships, but ultimately we fail to participate in the radical transformation in our own lives and in our communities that comes when we abandon the Jesus-GOD and embrace the interdependence and overturning life of the Trinity and the Trinity’s co-creative work.

This is more than creative praxis or scholastic theology. This is about thoughtful participation in the ongoing Story of GOD and celebrating that in our worship. But even greater – it’s about seeking to undo our limited understanding or overly-concrete expectations of GOD and purposefully moving into a collaborative life with the Trinity. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I encourage you, even I beg you, to consider the mystery and the great overturning that is waiting in this kind of life, in this kind of prayer and worship.

How do you honor and acknowledge the Trinity and the work of the Trinity in your worship? In your prayer? How do you empower those you serve to see the world through this lens?

Image © iStockphoto

Categories: Formation

How Does Creation Care Figure into Your Worship Curation?

by Eric Herron | May 16, 2011

Mark Pierson claims that “the reason we come together as a church community is to sustain people in their following of Jesus Christ in the world.” (The Art of Curating Worship, 20-21)

This then must also be our motivation for curating worship. We design things in such a way that people leave the gathering better prepared for following Jesus than when they came in. But what about the “in the world” part? We do, indeed, follow Jesus in the world. And our world is crumbling (as it has been since the beginning).

Even if you don’t believe in global warming, you need only pick up your daily newspaper. Steven Bouma-Prediger in his book For the Beauty of the Earth lists off some actual headlines from one local southwest Michigan newspaper:

“Phosphorus in Macatawa Watershed Up”
“State Lost 854,000 Acres of Farmland in ’80′s”
“Zebra Mussels Move into New Waterways”
“Rust Dust Falling on Core City Neighborhood”
“Future Uncertain for Gray Wolf” (p. 39)

Chances are, you local paper contains similar headlines every day.

As curators, if we are to “sustain” people to follow Jesus in the world, we would do them a big favor to include in our worship design some help along the lines of caring for God’s creation. The way I see it, this can come in two primary forms. First, we might ensure that the messages conveyed through our worship – whether verbal or non – include a theology of creation care. Second, we might also take care in our actual curation to be responsible with the materials we use and the waste we create.

How does your church handle environmental concerns? How exactly does Creation Care figure into your worship planning? Have you found some unique ways to help people repair the world as they follow Jesus in it?

Share some your personal thoughts in the comments section of this post. Also, take a moment to register your vote in this week’s poll:

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Categories: Q of the Week

Holy Tuesday: a Riddle, a Paradox, an Invitation

by Jodi-Renee Adams | April 19, 2011

Chrism. An anointing. The parable of the Ten Virgins. Covenant renewals. All of these things are tied together in history with the rich scarlet thread of Holy Tuesday, or Great Tuesday. Just a few days ago, we were waving palm branches and shouting “hosannas” in the sanctuary. The day was a paradoxical reprieve from the solemnity of Lent. Christ is the Messiah, Chosen One. The Savior we demanded, though perhaps not the one we were expecting or even wanting. We celebrated en masse, with a kind of special abandon we tend to reserve for our Christian gatherings. Now we move into the depths of Holy Week, retelling the riddle-stories Christ told, meditating on the veil that seems to grow thinner with each day, embracing the sobriety of this particular journey.

The theme for this day centers on the parable of the Ten Virgins from Matthew 25.1-13.

God’s kingdom is like ten young virgins who took oil lamps and went out to greet the bridegroom. Five were silly and five were smart. The silly virgins took lamps, but no extra oil. The smart virgins took jars of oil to feed their lamps. The bridegroom didn’t show up when they expected him, and they all fell asleep. In the middle of the night someone yelled out, ‘He’s here! The bridegroom’s here! Go out and greet him!’ The ten virgins got up and got their lamps ready. The silly virgins said to the smart ones, ‘Our lamps are going out; lend us some of your oil.’ They answered, ‘There might not be enough to go around; go buy your own.’ They did, but while they were out buying oil, the bridegroom arrived. When everyone who was there to greet him had gone into the wedding feast, the door was locked. Much later, the other virgins, the silly ones, showed up and knocked on the door, saying, ‘Master, we’re here. Let us in.’ He answered, ‘Do I know you? I don’t think I know you.’ So stay alert. You have no idea when he might arrive.

This story always confounded me. And what did it have to do with Holy Week? The easy and obvious answer: the oil representing my good works. My morality. My separateness so that I was ready for the second coming of Christ. But… Jesus never acquiesced to the obvious and easy.

So, here we are, three days into Holy Week, meditating on this story, wanting to be one of the five who were prepared (but, if you grew up like I did, you were also guiltily and secretly dreading the dullness that role might entail). Yet here, on the cusp of one of the most mystical and magical events in all of time, the story opens itself up to us. The element: oil. Oil symbolizing engagedness, awareness, life-stewardship, wonder turned into grateful response, beauty, soul. Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel said:

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

My guess – the five lazy virgins weren’t immoral, or bad, or indulgent. They were indifferent. The practice: anointing. Anointing the sick, the soon-to-be baptized, the priests and shepherds of the people, anointing a world in the birth pains of an “on earth as it is in heaven” age, the seemingly ordinary moments of real life.

What does this story and these practices mean for us? What does it mean for our worship? No easy answer (ah, Jesus would be so proud) but one thing to consider: we don’t just curate pieces of liturgy or songs or images. We curate a collective anticipation of the kingdom. In doing so, we gather our jars of oil. And then we engage with all of our being – our imaginations, our bodies, our service, our wealth, our relationships, our time, our words, our paradoxical lives. This is our anointing on the Church. And on the world.

How do you intend to engage with this Holy Week? How does the image of anointing the world with your soul and the in-breaking kingdom inspire your worship?

The pervasive breath of GOD breathe on you as you act as story-teller and image-bearer this week.

Categories: Formation

Worshiping Together = Spiritual Formation?

by Jodi-Renee Adams | April 12, 2011

Being part of this online community immediately assumes that we are all interested and perhaps a little knowledgeable about corporate worship, even if we don’t use that particular terminology very often. If somebody asked us a question about corporate worship, we could probably answer with some amount of articulate idea and certainly no small amount of passion. I wonder what about this particular part of our identity gets you the most excited? brings you the most alive?

I’m confident that I would learn a great deal from sitting around with you over some good wine or strong coffee and talking about the personal story that informs your understanding of “corporate worship.” But what would happen if I asked the question “what is the difference between worshiping together and worshiping at the same time?”

There’s something inside this question that is waiting to infuse our gatherings with something vibrant and regenerating, something self-perpetuating and earthy. If we moved into an experiential understanding of the difference between the two ideas, I think it would radically change the consumer-church concept most of us have to wrangle. It would start to give a creative resuscitation to our life in the “in-between” as kingdom people.

No doubt, the term “corporate worship” is something that we’ve taken for granted. We may have even substituted the language for something less formal sounding: community worship, worship gathering, worship service, etc. As far as defining it goes, of course it means the act of worshiping with other believers, right?

What if that’s the definition that’s limiting us? What if we’ve taken for granted a framework that is actually incomplete? Some of the accusations leveled at the contemporary worship culture seem to reflect this faulty framework: individualism, sentiment, narcissistic song-writing, sub-culture artistic reflections, sensationalism, presentation-driven idea, etc. Then on the polarity, we encounter worship reflections that feel more like team-building exercises with odd arts-and-craft projects and awkward pronoun replacements in our hymns and praise songs.

There are some basic assumptions in the framework of “worshiping at the same time” that are eating away at our gatherings. Some of these assumptions are contributing to the declining numbers of worshiping believers and some of them are the driving force behind the media power-house of contemporary Christendom. It’s entirely possible to have a thousand people in a room all together singing a song about a personal and individual encounter with Jesus. Or a personal and individual liturgy about how God is going to improve the situations of my life. If all thousand people are engaged in singing this song or praying this prayer about their personal and individual experience, does that make it corporate? Does it make it worship?

First off, we need a very basic ecclesiology. We all would agree that we are the Church, that the Church is a living, breathing organism constantly giving birth to new life. We are the Bride of Christ, the Body, a temple. We all would agree that church is not a place but an identity. I think we also would all agree that the Church needs to gather to remember and reaffirm this deep-soul identity and to give thanks for richness, mourn our darkness, lament and grieve over devastations within and without, celebrate life, and bless God for the work that is constantly happening around us in a co-creation with humankind – an affirmation of God’s goodness, power, beauty, and unknowableness. This we can all stand in agreement on.

But who is “the Church?” There are different levels of seeing this beautiful, living being: first is the local community, the church we gather with for worship and serving our neighborhoods. Honestly, even getting our worship brains around expressions of the local community concept takes a bit of work and collaboration. The second level is the universal church – the body of believers that live right now from all around the world. The brother in the Turkish house church, the sister in the Anglican gathering in northern England, the wise mother in the Quaker community. All of us who claim to be disciples of the Nazarene Rabbi, regardless of race, creed, gender, or orientation make up the universal Church. The third level – the mind blowing and exciting level – is that we are part of the mystical Church, the Church comprised of all of the Christ-followers who have ever lived and who are building the Church now. This is comprised of all of heaven and all of earth. This is Hebrews 11 and 12… you have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. The entirety of the mystical Church worships together whenever we celebrate the resurrection and the powerful implications of this Missio Dei – the Mission of God.

The first aspect of corporate worship means taking our place in this mystical Church, losing our urgency to fulfill our own felt needs in worship so we can, in reality, have our soul-holes filled. It’s definitely the “something bigger” that so many people are aching for! If we gather and take our place in the mystical Church, it changes the context and the tools a great deal, but ultimately it forces us to ask the question what story are we telling? If we enter that mysterious paradigm and try to bring our own stories, the “me and Jesus” story, it will feel painfully and almost ridiculously small. With this small shift, our concept of corporate worship has already changed too much to allow for a self-focused story line.

So what is the narrative of God? What is God’s story?

God’s story begins with the Triune God, the essence of community, breathing life into humankind; creating paradise-beauty, pleasures of mind, body, soul and heart, and a love that means we were profoundly and truly seen. Then came the Fall, the great division that broke humans from their God and also tore the foundations beneath man and wife, brother and sister, parent and child. It is here that God begins his passionate pursuit of the Beloved, all of his creation. With subplots and dramas that rival anything written, God is in motion to win the hearts and minds of humankind and ultimately, to restore the entirety of creation. We looked for God and found him in strong men and women, in soulful art, in mysterious rites, in magnificent temples, in family bonds. Yet it was still incomplete. So God came as one of us. He turned our concept of holiness, greatness, and justice upside down. He died a criminal’s death and came back to physical life on a dew-soaked morning three days later. On that day, all of creation changed it’s trajectory from degenerating and effort-driven to restorative and grace-infused. We became not just recipients of God’s grace, but agents of his ongoing redemption, this process of renewal for the planet, for relationships, for souls, for lives, for minds and bodies. We suffer with those who suffer, we speak for those who cannot, we create beautiful windows into heaven with our art and music for those who are struggling to see. We live as the Body of Christ and look for God at work out there. This is God’s story. Entering into it “on purpose” changes us almost despite ourselves.

It means losing ourselves in the vast greatness of this living and eternal mystical Church so that we can truly and unshakably find ourselves. It means having a strong sense of where Christ is in the here and now – and my guess is that he’s not really listening to Christian music or hanging out at the local Christian bookstore. My guess is that he’s holding a sign on the street corner, standing in the shadows of the porn-shop door, gathered at the immigration rally, sitting in with the hot jazz trio, inked on the pages of a Tolstoy novel, captured in the provocative black and white images of the international photo-journalist.

This has great implications on our worship gathering. It changes how we define participation, how we define intercession, confession, celebration, good art… spiritual formation. It changes how we approach missional communities, life with friends, our own personal prayers. It might even change us.

O God, for whom all times and places are your habitation, be our God for we would be your people. We praise you for life’s intangibles. We praise you for our collective dreams and the ability to bring them to pass. We unite our hearts to pray for your Church. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So I have to ask you again: I wonder what about corporate worship – this formative part of our identity – gets you the most excited? brings you the most alive? gives you the most frustration?

Categories: Formation