Some weird thing happened to my computer a couple of weeks ago. I was working, doing something, and all of a sudden, down the screen, written over top of the document (or Web Page, I can’t remember which) appeared lots of writing, text, from one corner to the other, top to bottom. It kind of reminded me of one of those scenes in ‘The Matrix’, when the program began breaking down and you could see the source text behind the ‘illusion’. In fact, for all I know, that’s what I was seeing – the ‘code’ that lies underneath of the neat, orderly arrangements that is usually all we see.

I just re-booted the computer and it all went away. I still don’t know why it happened, but it apparently it didn’t do anything permanently bad to my computer, thankfully! It did remind me that computers are complex things, and that there is much more going on ‘behind the scenes’ than we typically think about.

That came to my mind when preparing the message for this weekend in which, for many years, we have taken time to honor and recognize people who work ‘behind the scenes’ here, helping us, as we gather together week after week, year after year, to ‘meet with God’ in worship. These are people entrusted with the difficult task of working with some very powerful tools – i.e., music, visual arts, dance, drama –to use them in such sensitive ways that the focus of their work is not on themselves, but on God. That, friends, is a real challenge!

This evening/ morning, we’re exposing the ‘code’ so to speak. We’re taking a look ‘behind the curtain’, just to share how grateful we are to all those who participate in the ministries that enable us, that lead us to focus on the presence of the living God in all our services of worship. We are grateful to you – and you see the names in our bulletin – for using your gifts and talents, your creativity, your commitment, your time, and your hard work to honor God, and to bless his church. Thank you!

 

Since we are taking the time to look backstage today, so to speak, I was also thinking that today might provide a good opportunity to do a similar thing with the structure of a worship service itself. To look at what worship is actually about. And, amazingly enough, I opened up the Lectionary for this weekend, and discovered that the first reading was Isaiah chapter 6, one of the most wonderful, powerful scenes of worship that we can find in the Bible!

I spent three days this past week at our Annual Conference office participating in a training class towards certification as a Natural Church Development coach. I’m going to be able to use this training not only in leading us into some new ways of looking at our own church, and the process of disciple making which is already happening right here (and I’m very excited about!) but I’ve also been asked to consider working with a few other churches in our Conference, over the next year or two, to help them interpret the results of their NCD surveys and to implement their action plans.

[So many have been praying for a revival within this Conference, and our denomination, and folks, I think this may the beginning of something that God is going to bless! The Florida Annual Conference, The Dakota conference (N & S), the North Carolina conference and others have all taken on NCD as their default tool for congregational development. There was a representative in our class from the New England Conference, sent by his bishop to begin the process up there. And churches are responding in NJ and all over the country.

Now, that’s a good thing! In Florida, where this has been happening for about 10 years, it’s a serious commitment for the churches that ‘sign on’ to NCD. There are expectations and requirements. They sign a six year covenant for each participating church! But they are reporting an astounding 100% rate of turn around, i.e., moving from declining or stagnant churches into growing churches – 100% of the NCD participants are growing!

And I should tell you, that the Greater New Jersey Conference leadership, as well as the NCD national leader who was brought in to teach this class are looking to First UMC to lead the way for our Annual Conference, first by example, and later to possibly become a ‘teaching church’. It’s a great honor, and a great responsibility. And it’s all about making disciples, and that’s why we’re here. This is not going to change our direction in ministry at all, it is going to help us focus it better. And I’m very happy to tell you that this is something given to us by our Annual Conference Leadership. You’ll be hearing more about all this soon enough.]

 

One of the things that I remember from when I first read the Natural Church Development book by Christian Schwartz, a German scholar who did an amazing amount of research on what makes churches healthy (or, unhealthy) was his conclusion that the style of worship in a church has virtually nothing to do with the vitality or health of that church as a whole.

In other words, in researching millions of people in over 60,000 congregations all around the world, Schwartz realized that a church can have vibrant, wonderful worship within a contemporary format, or a traditional format, or a blended format. And likewise, a church can be unhealthy using those exact same structures! The forms have virtually nothing to do with the health, or life of a congregation.

 

I’ve always believed that, but it was good to see that affirmed by such solid scholarship! And as many of you, I’ve appreciated throughout my life the depths and treasures of all the different types of worship styles “out there” – including some that we don’t offer at FUMC. (Yet?)

So, this message on worship isn’t about style… or formats. It’s not about ‘how to do worship’ as far as structures, etc. That’s because true worship goes much deeper than surface things that have more to do with our culture or personal preferences, or our upbringing than they do with approaching God. And I think we get to the heart of that in this wonderful passage – Isaiah 6: 1 – 8.

So, using Isaiah’s experience as a guide, I’d like to suggest to you that there are three things – three ‘moments’ – that need to take place in order for a worship gathering to be considered solid, biblical worship. Now, these things will happen in different ways to different people. Sometimes they will even come unexpectedly – meaning, at times we’ll a bit surprised by them. But all three of them happened to Isaiah on this day that became so important to him that he never forget it.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.”

 

The first of these three moments that make worship ‘worship’ is this: a Glimpse of God’s Majesty. ‘Seeing’ the holiness, the awesomeness, the ‘otherness’ of God is a key to biblical worship. Now, frankly, if this isn’t happening for us, if we’re not catching a ‘glimpse’ of God in worship, if our spirits are not being lifted beyond this room, beyond ourselves, then you can be sure that the other two moments aren’t going to happen, either. It all starts here. In worship, we meet with God.

 

Natural Church Development identifies and measures eight characteristics of healthy churches. You might remember that we took an NCD survey two years ago, (and we’re going to do another one later this summer to check our current health). One of those eight characteristics is called “Inspiring Worship”.

Now, as I said, this past week I spent 20 some hours in a class made up of about 15 United Methodist pastors, a few lay people, two District Superintendents, and five Conference Staff people. So we could talk honestly about our church. And we did!

The teacher of this class was also a UM pastor, who is doing some dynamic things down in the Florida Conference, and is also an NCD consultant working exclusively with Annual Conferences in the States. So, he’s seen a lot of UM church profiles. And he told us that overwhelmingly, in UM churches, the ‘minimum factor’ (i.e., the lowest category of the eight) is almost always either Passionate Spirituality or Inspiring Worship. (Now, since you’re trying to remember, or you weren’t here two years ago, those two actually were the highest scores on our survey). But what he told us after that was very interesting. He said that automatically, pastors tend to assume that either a high or low score in ‘inspiring worship’ is directly related to us, it’s due to something that we either do or don’t do in our worship leading.

We spent a lot of time in this training understanding the process of walking through these scores and finding out what they mean. Asking the question “Why are we like we are?” And there are some patterns that emerge over time, especially within churches of the same denomination. The truth, he said, is that the scores in “Inspiring Worship” are not usually about us (pastors) – they are about you! The #1 reason underlying a low score in “Inspiring Worship” is when people come to church out of a sense of duty. “I gotta’ go to church… they need me there.”

You know, like “Time to make the donuts…” You see the problem? If we’re coming to worship out of duty, if we’re coming because we feel we have to, we’re not here to meet with God! We’re not coming expecting to be filled, or fed, or inspired or challenged, or moved, and we can be sure that we won’t be! (And that’s not happening here for the most part, according to our inventory, this is one of our strengths as a church, which we should celebrate, and make sure we keep that focus.)

But we need to realize how significantly the attitude that we bring into worship effects what we ‘get’ out of worship. Isaiah went to the temple - ‘to church’ – one day ready to meet God. And he did. He “saw the Lord.” And what he ‘saw’ moved him, it changed him….

 

 

He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. 2Hovering around him were mighty seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with the remaining two they flew. 3In a great chorus they sang, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty! The whole earth is filled with his glory!" 4The glorious singing shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire sanctuary was filled with smoke.

 

There’s a guy named Jon Mutchler who remembers May 18, 1980. That was the day Mount St. Helens erupted. He had just started his first year at Western Washington University and remembers standing outside the Performing Arts Center looking south toward the eerie red skies, lit up as the sun shone on tons of airborne volcanic ash.

He writes:

“My wife heard the blast standing outside her … home and thought something large had fallen and crashed inside the house. The explosion, like a nuclear bomb, was heard as far away as 600 miles.

 

 

Can you imagine being right next to it? Standing near, as many did, at the head waters of the Toutle and Cowlitz Rivers which in short order flooded with debris from the mountain's blast?

 

 

A number of men and women were rescued within a few miles of the mountain, and they testified to the most amazing thing. They did not hear the explosion! Some, a mile or two away, thought that the darkened sky from the immediate blast was cloud cover and rain. How could that be?

 

 

They were in a "zone of silence." Scientists explain that the incredible upward thrust of the exploding mountain also sent the sound of the event upward into the atmosphere where it bounced back to earth (several times), but in intervals outward and away from ground zero.

 

So although people like old Harry Truman were right next to the disaster (on Spirit Lake's shores in the volcano's shadow), they wouldn't know of the eruption unless they were looking at the mountain at that moment.[1]

 

Likewise today it is possible to be in the presence of the Awesome God and not be aware. God is here, but God respects our free will. God will not force himself into our lives. But he will reveal himself to anyone who is seeking him in spirit and in truth. “Anyone who seeks me with all their heart, will surely find me”, is God’s promise to us all (Jeremiah 29:13).

If we are seeking God in worship, we will ‘find’ him. I use the term ‘glimpse’ because I’m talking about something that is very difficult to describe. It’s not necessarily a vision like Isaiah’s, or a voice, or even an ‘image’. It’s a sense, a feeling, an inner ‘knowing’. A glimpse seems more appropriate – but the point is that at some moment of true worship we will know that we are in the presence of the Holy God. The singing that Isaiah said ‘shook the foundations of the Temple’ was in response to knowing the presence of Almighty God in that place.’ This is worship.

Now the second moment is related to that first one. When we ‘see’ God, an amazing thing typically happens. We also tend to see ourselves. As we are. And we realize that in the presence of this awesome, holy, pure God, that we are miserable, broken, and in desperate need of grace. We can’t keep up a pretense of ‘having it all together’ when we’re in God’s presence, and know it. But we also understand that the Grace we need is freely given to anyone who asks. So the second movement in worship is a moment of grace.

Isaiah sees God, and here’s what is next:

5Then I said, "My destruction is sealed, for I am a sinful man and a member of a sinful race. Yet I have seen the King, the LORD Almighty!"

 

6Then one of the seraphim flew over to the altar, and he picked up a burning coal with a pair of tongs. 7He touched my lips with it and said, "See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven."

 

In true worship, there will be a moment when we realize that in spite of our unworthiness, God loves us, and we are cleansed by the Blood of Christ.

I read a powerful story by Mark Buchanan about Pastor Paul Yonggi Cho from Korea. Yonggi Cho is pastor of the largest church in the world. Several years ago, as his ministry was becoming international, he told God, “I will go anywhere to preach the gospel—except Japan.” He hated the Japanese with gut-deep loathing because of what Japanese troops had done to the Korean people and to members of Cho’s own family during WWII. The Japanese were his Ninevites.

 

Through a combination of a prolonged inner struggle, several direct challenges from others, and finally an urgent and starkly worded invitation, Cho felt called by God to preach in Japan. He went, but he went with bitterness. The first speaking engagement was to a pastor’s conference—1,000 Japanese pastors. Cho stood up to preach, but what came out of his mouth was this: “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” And then he broke down and wept. He was both brimming and desolate with hatred. At first one, then two, then all 1,000 pastors stood up. One by one they walked up to Paul Cho, knelt at his feet and asked forgiveness for what they and their people had done to him and his people. As this went on, God changed Yonggi Cho. The Lord put a single message in his heart and mouth: “I love you. I love you. I love you.” See, that was grace. And it came in a context of worship. Isaiah would have understood that.[2]

 

And finally, in true worship, having seen God, and tasted his grace, we are then sent out to share what we have been given with a world that is desperate for love, and a word of truth.

⁸Then I heard the Lord asking, "Whom should I send as a messenger to my people? Who will go for us? And I said, "Lord, I'll go! Send me."

In worship we meet with God. In meeting God, we see our need for grace, and we receive it. (God has provided all that we need.) And then, to use Henri Nouwin’s phrase, we are sent into the world as ‘wounded healers’, to minister the same grace and love and power that we have received in Christ Jesus.

May the Grace of our Lord keep us so focused on him, that all of our worship here at FUMC, no matter what the style or format, whether in small gatherings or in large groups, whether in mornings or evenings, holidays, ordinary days – even summer days! – it would all continue to be so focused on the living God that we will all ‘taste and see’ that he is God, and with Isaiah, we will all respond to the Lord’s request for people to go into a hurting world with God’s gift of love saying, “Lord, here I am, send me.”

 

 

 

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