Worship stuff

Since starting college last year my preference for worship styles has gone in some weird directions. If the Daniel of my highschool years could hear these preferences he would be horrified. Here are some examples my fellow pastoral ministry majors would probably cringe at them.



Responsive readings, which I used to hate, I have begun to be excited when they are done in a service. Though often they are done with a slow-paced drone, I believe if a pastor taught his congregation what a responsive reading should be they have the potential to be powerful. When else does a congregation as a whole get to proclaim something together?



Hymns. I am starting to enjoy some hymns over contemporary worship music, some of which are cheesy, sound the same as a dozen others, and don't have any depth. This one is on a limited basis. I still find some hymns to be stale (especially when sung by my home congregation), an old style of cheesy which is sometimes worse than new cheesy, and though Dr. Sanders disagrees with me some even have some bad theology, especially on topics such as Heaven.



Communion. I have already written on this one in other posts, but I have come to really long for communion and wish I could have it on a weekly basis. I used to think like many of my fellow Nazarenes that if communion was taken too frequently it would lose its meaning and we would fall into some of the same traps as Roman Catholics. I now wonder how Christians cannot desire to take Communion as often as they can.



The Church Calendar. I am still pretty ignorant on this one, but I have an increasing interest in the lecionary and feast days and am especially upset at the lack of focus on Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. My home church didn't even mention Pentecost this past year they were too busy focusing on Mother's Day.