while today

Somewhere along the way, I went from being a child in the worship assembly to worshipping in the assembly. It was a learning process. The first step to learning how to worship is being in a worship assembly. I had my mother to thank for that, but being in the room where people are worshipping is not yet worship.

My first step was participation in singing. I learned to follow along in the songbook, and then, I began to sing as well. Songbooks have a learning curve to them. The person opening a songbook for the first time may need some help in being oriented to it. I had some advantages in that I had learned to read music. It made it easier. If you don’t read music, the easiest beginning point is to sing along with the melody. Many people can eventually learn a part by ear. In time, I tried to think about what I was singing. What did it mean?

How do you participate in a sermon? You listen, obviously. But my own experience suggests that’s not always easy to do. I remember as a teenager being very, very sleepy in some sermons. One Sunday it hit me. I liked the preacher. The bits I was hearing were meaningful. I realized the problem was I had stayed up until 1 a.m. (I suspect that the total cure for staying up too late is adulthood.) But I became more aware of my part in the sermon event.

Sermons also have a learning curve. When you first begin to worship, you may not know where books of the Bible are. That makes it initially difficult to find readings. A lack of Bible knowledge may make some things harder to follow. If we deal with the Bible in too simple of a way, the danger is the church will be biblically illiterate. That is one of the issues of our time. Hopefully, lessons can be accessible, but still challenge us to grow. I try to give outlines with the scriptures we will look at on it, so someone could always look up these passages again privately. The good news is that as we work at this, we become better at finding Bible references, and our knowledge of the Bible grows.

During a sermon, I want to have my Bible open. I like to have some means of making a note if I want. I take occasional notes, but most importantly, I’ve learned to mentally follow the lesson. As we grow in our knowledge of the Bible and our experience in worship, we grow in our ability to meaningfully and actively listen.

Worship is a learned experience. It needs our participation. We must be mentally active and not passive. It is something that we grow in our ability to worship and our appreciation of worship.

We live in the age of entertainment. Most of us spend hours every week being in the audience of some performance via television, and that experience may distort our view of worship. Søren Kierkegaard noted the problem in the nineteenth century. His parable is worth considering.

It is so on the stage, as you know well enough, that someone sits and prompts by whispers; [he is hidden;] he is the inconspicuous one; he is and wishes to be overlooked. But then there is another, he strides out prominently, he draws every eye to himself. For that reason he has been given his name, that is: actor. He impersonates a distinct individual. In the skillful sense of this illusionary art, each word becomes true when embodied in him, true through him—and yet he is told what he shall say by the hidden one that sits and whispers. No one is so foolish as to regard the prompter as more important than the actor.


Now forget this light talk about art. Alas, in regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatergoers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. But the speaker is not the actor—not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatergoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart. The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if he is not, he is at fault) stands before God during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he is to say, but the actor’s repetition of it is the main concern—is the solemn charm of the art. The speaker whispers the word to the listeners. But the main concern is earnestness: that the listeners by themselves, with themselves, and to themselves, in the silence before God, may speak with the help of this address.


The address is not given for the speaker’s sake, in order that men may praise or blame him. The listener’s repetition of it is what is aimed at. If the speaker has the responsibility for what he whispers, then the listener has an equally great responsibility not to fail short in his task. In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers; but at the devotional address, God himself is present. In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to: hence here the customary audience is wanting. The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener … is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.*

The leaders of worship are prompters. Those in the assembly are the actors on the stage of life and eternity prompted by those who “whisper” the word, and God is the true audience.

*Thomas C. Oden, editor. The Parables of Kierkegaard, pp. 89-90.

It was a wonderful experience having Psalom sing last Sunday afternoon. Konstantin had a wonderful way of getting us to sing along with Psalom as well. The quartet is a ministry of Konstantin Zhigulin. Konstantin is a musician by background. When he became a Christian in 1994, he began composing hymns for use in Russian speaking congregations. These hymns are sung widely in churches of Christ in the Russian — speaking world. The music is so beautiful and encouraging, two American Christians – Mark Shipp of Austin Graduate School of Theology and Jeff Matteson, former missionary to Siberia — began translating several of Konstantin’s hymns into English, so that they could be shared with American churches. But as Konstantin said last week, his main emphasis is the development of congregational a cappella singing in Russia.

Psalom had two albums available last week. I know quite a few of us purchased the CDs and the song book last week. Some of you may wonder whether it is still possible to purchase the CDs and also how you might keep in touch with this ministry.

Psalom has a web site:

www.psalom.org

The site provides information about Psalom. There are some samples of their music under “MP3 audio.” They have some videos of performances in Russian under “Videoarchive,” and there is ordering information for their CDs under “Contacts, Donations and Store.” Their album “Peace to You!” is available at iTunes and also at Amazon.com as an mp3 download. That album was not available last week, but it is also in English. By the way, the songbook that was available is based on that album.

I hope that we learn some of Konstantin’s hymns. It was a wonderful experience having Psalom here. And thanks to all of you who made the fellowship possible. Konstantin had mentioned he was uncertain about eating prior to singing (fearful that we might all be sleepy), but he said he got it. The meal is about family, spiritual family, and he appreciated that Psalom received such a welcome.