Let Us Adore – Anonymous
2 days ago
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Budget planning
So anyway, it's that time of the year when we look ahead to the next year and try to figure out how much money we'll need to do the projects we've either already done, or would like to try in the future. Everything is to be looked through the lens of our new Vision statement, which makes sense, and framed under one of the five components listed under "being God's Heart to this community". And then for each category of ministry, we are to have as a heading our overarching philosophy or goal. In other words, Lisa has one for the children's ministry, Chris has one for the student ministry, etc. So it was this overarching goal phrase that caused me the most need to stop and think. What is to be the overarching goal of a worship ministry? To honor God as the center of our worship and invite others into His presence? Re-reading my first blog entry didn't really help me at all. Certainly there was nothing there that could be easily boiled down into one sentence. My daughter Brooke suggested, "to open the door of communication between the temporal world and the spiritual one." If nothing else, that phrase should open the door to communication amongst ourselves! How can worship be defined anyway? We choose to adore and praise a Creator who has chosen, for reasons unknown to me, to stay (for the most part and as far as I've personally experienced) audibly silent. So what is the job of a worship ministry? Obviously to try and facilitate participants into the process of honoring our Father...but more than that....I feel that it is somehow wrapped up in the fact of helping people REALLY believe what they say they believe. How different would we live and act if we REALLY thought God loved us as much as He does....and that He really DOES have our best interest at heart? Anyway, for part of my over-arching phrase, I came up with "to help make viscerally real God's message of redemption, grace, love, power, and purpose." I had already turned that in and THEN had a moment of panic when someone told me they thought "visceral" meant "superficial. Hopefully it means the opposite. Where is that dictionery?
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2 comments:
When reading your blog there were a few medical definitions that popped into my head....transparent was one of them. Here is one of the Dictionary.com definition "affecting inward feelings". I think that's what you were going for!
My understanding of visceral means something like "out of the gut". To viscerate an animal is to cut out its intestines, so your meaning would be that we experience God throughout ourselves, which I think is a good goal. The dictionary defines it:
"not intellectual, instinctive", which is what you were saying, and "pertaining to the vicera" , an internal organ...which includes my meaning of it. I think of worship as gathering as a community of believers and allowing the Holy Spirit to connect us with God as we reflect back to Him all that He has created in us, His bride. I think we are communicating as many different things as there are worshippers--some joyfully, some with sorrow, desperation, doubt, gratitude etc.--but believers are worshipping because we believe in Him and are offering our lives to Him as our worship. Therefore, wherever we are in our walk with Christ, we can offer everything we are, and reflect His perfect grace in our imperfect state. That's how I think of worship at this moment in my journey.
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