Sacramental Worship -
A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward grace. What would happen if we realized that all of worship was that sign of God's presence and love? What happens when the bleachers become the playing field?

Bill Easum  | Sally Morgenthaler | Creating Worship PowerPoint
Worship | Preaching | Background Material | Worldwide Web Links

Our passion is worship that makes a difference in people's lives - connecting them with the tender mercy and wondrous awe of God in Jesus Christ. While there is no one label for such worship, we prefer sacramental, experiential, or sensory worship to the catch-all whatever-you-want-it-to-mean phrase: "contemporary worship".

We recently attended a Beeson Institute for Advanced Church Leadership conference on "Preaching, Worship & Transition".  Bill Easum spoke at that conference, among others. Here's an outline of why he believes Sacramental or Sensory worship is the key to communicating the Gospel to people today and tomorrow. See info about one of his books, Dancing With Dinosaurs. Sally Morgenthaler also spoke at that conference and we have been putting her ideas on "making it real" in worship into action at Skyline ever since.

Check out the Creating Worship link above to see a PowerPoint presentation we used to describe how our Worship Team works together to create a transforming, relevant worship experience each Sunday that is focused on a unifying theme from God's Word. We have a small gallery of theme images we've used in worship created with Photoshop.

Please share your own ideas and resources about worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth with us.

Forms of Worship

Contemporary Worship for the 21st Century by Dan Benedict and Craig Kennet Miller. Discipleship Resources, 1994. A little dated but a nice introductory treatment of how you might go about introducing change in your church's worship style.

Transitions in Worship: Moving from Traditional to Contemporary by Andy Langford. Abingdon, 1999. Excellent resource for understanding the "why" of Praise & Worship Music as well as other practical tips for creating relevant worship using contemporary forms of music and drama. Written by one of the editors of the 1992 United Methodist Book of Worship.

Worship Evangelism: Inviting Unbelievers into the Presence of God by Sally Morgenthaler. Zondervan, 1995, 1999. Morgenthaler started me down a road of discovery of recovering old treasures in new forms of worship with her 1998 Worship Leader Magazine article, "Out of the Box: Authentic Worship in a Postmodern Culture". This book explores worship evangelism that reaches higher, digs deeper, and embraces wider than any practice we've become used to.

Out on the Edge: A Wake-Up Call for Church Leaders on the Edge of the Media Reformation by Michael Slaughter of Ginghamsburg UMC, Tipp City, Ohio. Abingdon, 1998. Ginghamsburg leads the way in understanding and practicing media integration in relevant post-modern worship. Great section on teamwork planning worship.

The Wired Church: Making Media Ministry by Len Wilson (formerly of Ginghamsburg UMC). Abingdon, 1999. Great companion (to Out on the Edge) behind the scenes look at creating great media for worship.

Digital Storytellers: The Art of Communicating the Gospel in Worship by Len Wilson and Jason Moore. Abingdon, 2002. Producers of eWorship in congregations will learn how to represent the Word as image and art in the production of digital eWorship media.

A Community of Joy: How to Create Contemporary Worship by Timothy Wright. Abingdon, 1997. Practical guide to the why's and how's of incorporating contemporary worship services into your church, written by the executive pastor of Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, Arizona. Includes good resource appendix.

So You're Thinking About Contemporary Worship by Tim and Kathy Carson. Chalice Press, 1997. How-to book for worship planners considering adding a contemporary service. Includes short but helpful chapters on many aspects of planning and creating contemporary worship. Not so much a cookbook as a guide in navigation the waters of change in worship style and presentation.

The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World: Electronic Worship and the Gathered People of God by Tex Sample. Abingdon, 1998. Interesting treatment of the way images and sounds are used to convey meaning in our culture and how these forms may be exploited to transmit the Gospel in worship.

Forms of Preaching

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Preaching and Teaching With Imagination : The Quest for Biblical Ministry by Warren W. Wiersbe. Baker, 1994. Calvin Miller called the first 83 pages of this book (Part One: Imagination and Life) worth the price of any book on preaching. Sound Biblical study of the power of images in communicating truth.  This is a great book for those who hate the idea of TV in worship.

When God Is Silent : The 1997 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching (Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1997.) by Barbara Brown Taylor. Cowley, 1998. Powerful Episcopalian preacher explores the depths of God's presence and provision in the wilderness of Famine, Silence, and Restraint. Read it if you preach for a living.

The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown Taylor. Cowley, 1993. Half devoted to mentoring preachers with humor and wisdom, and half devoted to a selection of Taylor's sermons. Another gift from a wise and gifted teacher.

The Empowered Communicator : 7 Keys to Unlocking an Audience by Calvin Miller. Broadman & Holman, 1994. Miller knows of what he speaks. Read the Cliff's Notes of a master communicator.

Ten Strategies for Preaching in a Multimedia Culture by Thomas H. Troeger. Abingdon, 1996. Explores styles of preaching that will communicate to a culture used to instant gratification and graphic forms (rather than written or oral forms) of relating and understanding their world. Great book for preachers who can't afford a video projector yet but who want to explore different styles of relating the Good News to people in the 21st Century.

 

Background Material

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Faithquakes: "For Christians with the shakes, who know that the church is the last hope for saving our families, our cities, our businesses, and the earth." by Leonard Sweet. Abingdon, 1994. Basic text for understanding why Christians have to make a shift in order to get a hearing. Based on Faith Popcorn's futuristic business study of Socioquakes in The Popcorn Report. Powerfully influential book in our ministry. Sweet coins the phrase AncientFuture, to describe what new wineskins means in a postmodern age.

The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore. Harvard Business School Publishing, May, 1999. People pay $4 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks and take their kids to the Rainforest Cafe for the experience - including feeling the mist on their faces. Read about how we can capture this thirst for experience in our own worship services.

NextChurch.Now: Creating New Faith Communities by Craig Kennet Miller. Discipleship Resources, 2000. Good chapter on "Experienced-Based Worship" in which Miller notes that people are "not coming to adopt a new set of beliefs, they are coming to be part of a conversation."

What People Expect from Church: Why Meeting the Needs of People is More Important Than Church Meetings by Robert L. Randall. Abingdon, 1992. More general treatment of church growth for evangelism. Includes chapter on "Preaching That Reaches Out" and Congregational Life That Embraces" that make good reading for preachers and worship planners exploring the possibilities of contemporary worship.

Dancing with Dinosaurs: Ministry in a Hostile and Hurting World by Bill Easum. Abingdon, 1993. Good summary of changes involved in contemporary worship as they relate to changes the ministry of evangelism in our society. See the chapter: "A Reformation in Worship." See more about Bill Easum here.

Online Resources

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Damaris Trust Study guides, forums, and other resources that relate popular culture and secular media.

The Text This Week Check a directory of links and resources that correspond to the Revised Common Lectionary. Welcome to a virtual study desk for students, teachers and preachers. Includes an art and movie concordance.

Getty Images. Great indexed site for graphics for worship.

Postmodern Church Resources from FreshMinistry equipping postmodern ministers - encouraging the emerging church

If you are looking for information and resources on Christian worship and the arts, you will find something of interest at WorshipLinks. (Thanks to Christ UMC-Salisbury, MD website for this link.)

WorshipMusic.com. Commercial site for previewing and purchasing praise and worship CD's.

Integrity/Hosannah! is a great place to cut your teeth in the Praise & Worship genre.

Maranatha! Music, another of the "Big 3" Praise and Worship Music Publishing Houses.

Vineyard Music, the third of the "Big 3"

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