About Richard Webb

One of the things that excited me so much about curating the Beatitudes collection was some of the reading I had been doing on the Beatitudes passages in Matthew and Luke. Previously I had read those passages as “how-to” lists of what I needed to do to be blessed or happy. Dallas Willard and Eugene Peterson, among others, opened my eyes to a completely different reading of these texts; where it’s not at all about what we need to do but what Jesus has determined to do in us.

In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus is preaching to people on the margins: people stuck in poverty, oppression, victimization, and, yes, some mess-ups of their own. And it’s in the middle of all of that that he starts letting loose with these outrageous promises of peace, joy, plenty, comfort, and even the Kingdom of God! I felt this understanding of the Beatitudes needed to get out into congregations and into the hearts of worshippers.

The Worship Environment

As I started thinking how to go about curating this collection I began to realize that the worship environment could be a powerful tool for communicating the message of the Beatitudes. For that reason each narrative has its own unique environmental design.

One week the worship space is surrounded by a missions fair, full of all kinds of art, music, and ministry stations that help members see the connection between what they’ve been given and what they’re called to give away. Another week the worship space is divided up into four installations or focal points, each at a corner of the space, that serve as places for reading, teaching, prayer, and other worship activities. The point here is to create a sense of journey, which connects with our journey as followers of Jesus.

Changing Worship Flow

Another powerful tool that emerged as I was putting together this collection was the idea of changing the worship pattern with each narrative. By changing things up week-to-week the attempt is to create a heightened awareness in worshipers to each element of the worship experience. These changes are also strategic in that they are tightly connected to each narrative’s theme and are designed to work closely with the worship environment.

Weekly Communion

You’ll notice that each narrative contains the Lord’s Supper at some point in the service. That’s partially because I’m a Communion junkie; I love connecting with Christ in this way. More importantly, Communion serves in each narrative as the climax of the worship service. It is the place where we receive the promise proclaimed in the message in a very concrete way. It’s also the place where we do business with God and are energized to go and be who Christ has called us to be.

Challenges

There were several challenges I ran into as I was putting together this collection. Perhaps the greatest challenge was maintaining a “narrative arc” throughout the collection as well as inside the narratives themselves. What helped me hold the collection together was obviously a common theme (the Beatitudes), but also common elements, such as Communion, service opportunities at the conclusion of each narrative, and the repetition of certain worship songs suggested throughout the collection.

Speaking of worship songs, another challenge was finding modern worship music that addressed the thickness of the Beatitudes. Even though the modern worship tradition is over 30 years old, it still needs to broaden its palette in terms of the Biblical themes and life situations it addresses. Fortunately (especially for this collection!) that’s beginning to happen.

One of my favorite elements in the fifth Narrative of the Clayfire collection, The Beatitudes: Unimagined Hope, is the Intercessory Prayer, written by Stasi McAteer. In present-day corporate worship practices many traditions favor pre-written prayers, both ancient and modern while others favor praying “off-the-cuff” with spontaneity being the key value. Based on the Beatitudes, Stasi has constructed a community prayer experience that combines both practices into an organic and seamless whole.

These Intercessory Prayers make use of a leader who leads the congregation through a series of congregational responses, periods of silent reflection, and spontaneous silent prayer. She’s designed this element using a call-and-response form that eliminates the need for any printed material or projected text.

One of the crucial aspects of this prayer experience is the frequent periods of silent reflection following each congregational response. This silence helps the worshiper process what they’ve just heard and spoken. Before each of these periods of silence the leader asks worshipers to remember the people Jesus names in each of the Beatitudes—those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, etc. In her instructions to the leader, Stasi asks him or her to make sure the times of silence are “long enough to promote reflection but not so long that people get restless.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Intercessory Prayers (Based on the Beatitudes)

Leader: Living into the blessings and challenges of the Beatitudes requires great strength and courage. We can only reach this goal by grounding ourselves, as a community, in prayer.

As we come before God together, I invite you into the Beatitudes: into their surprising blessings, and their bold proclamation of the Kingdom. From the beginning of Christianity, our mothers and fathers in the faith have relied on these seemingly simple words to guide their lives, to help them understand God’s will, and to direct them into prayer for and suffering with the world.

I will read each phrase and invite you to repeat it. Then I will suggest a focus for a brief time of silent prayer and meditation.

Brief silence

Leader: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
All: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Leader: Remember the poor of our world, for whom the kingdom of heaven often seems distant and unattainable.

Silence

Leader: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
All: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Leader: Remember those who are in mourning, who have lost someone or something dear to them. Pray for their comfort.

Silence

Worshipers and worship planners who come from traditions more used to spontaneous prayers may be initially uncomfortable with the repetition used throughout these Intercessory Prayers. In fact, when used carefully, repetition is a powerful tool that can move worshipers out of their heads into their hearts. A lot of contemporary worship music makes use of repetition for this same purpose.

If your congregation is unfamiliar with this kind of responsive prayer (often called a litany) it’ll be important that you have the leader explain how this kind of prayer works. Also, for many congregations, silence in worship often means that something has gone wrong. If your congregation isn’t used to periods of planned silence, you’ll need to explain ahead of time the purpose of these times of silence.

In the third Narrative of the Clayfire collection, The Beatitudes: Unimagined Hope is a moment called “Ocean of Mercy,” which combines three elements: a Bible reading, a liturgical dance, and a song by Jennifer Knapp. There are also optional lighting suggestions to help enhance the sense that the dancers are immersed in an ocean.

Here’s a rather large excerpt of that Moment so you can see how it all works together

Moment Title: Ocean of Mercy

Suggestions for Use: This Moment consists of three elements: a Bible reading and a liturgical dance accompanied by a recording or live performance of “Ocean of Mercy” by Jennifer Knapp

Element 1: Reading of Luke 6:21b

Suggestions for Use: This short Bible reading sets the tone of this song set.  It should be read without comment as a preface to the following liturgical dance.

Content:  “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

Element 2:  Liturgical Dance

Suggestions for Use: To the music of “Ocean of Mercy” (see below), six dancers process from various points in the worship space and converge in front of the communion table. Each is holding a long chiffon strip of blue and moving it in such a way as to imitate the motion of water. Three more dancers process to the communion table: two of the dancers carry a third dancer who appears to be unconscious or asleep. As the three dancers approach the communion table the other six dancers surround the three in such a way that it appears that they are being “bathed in water”.  As this happens the third “unconscious” dancer gradually wakes up, gains his or her strength, and slowly begins to join the other dancers in the “Ocean of Mercy”

If possible the lighting needs to convey a sense of water in the worship space, perhaps through blue lighting and ripple effects on the ceiling and sides of the worship space.

Element 3 : Song

Suggestions for Use: This song serves as the accompaniment to the liturgical dance (see above)

Content: “Ocean of Mercy” – Jennifer Knapp (Heaven and Earth)

On of the major goals of this collection is to help us as followers of Jesus discover our role in bringing Christ’s promises in the Beatitudes to a world immersed in despair.  But in order for that to be possible we first need to experience these promises for ourselves. As the saying goes, “you can’t give what you haven’t got.”

For that reason this third Narrative and this Moment in particular attempt to create space for worshippers to experience a taste of the joy, comfort and healing that Christ offers us.

One of the key components of this Moment is Jennifer Knapp’s song, “Oceans of Mercy”. The lyrics function to both unpack the message of Luke 6:21b (Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh) and integrate that message into the liturgical dance experience. Here are the lyrics to the first verse.

River of healing, carry me
Flow through all my years
Ocean of mercy deep and free
Wash away all of my tears

Notice also that the dance revolves around the communion table. This is intentional. By centering the action around the table this Moment reinforces the notion that when we encounter Christ in his Supper we encounter the one who brings healing, joy, even laughter into our sorry, pain, and mourning.

One of the most important aspects of the first narrative of The Beatitudes: Unimagined Hope is Preparing the Environment.

Here’s an excerpt:

This week’s narrative opens with a fair-like atmosphere. The worship space is encircled with “service stations” (food pantry, Habitat for Humanity, local shelter, etc.) where people can sign up to serve in various contexts. These are open before and after the service.

In the worship space, the worship team, altar, podium etc, are in their normal positions. On the stage or surrounding the altar are piles of clothing, canned goods, new toys, etc. On the walls are large posters of people having fun serving each other. Complimenting the fair-like atmosphere is a mix of upbeat secular and sacred music that speaks of compassion, justice, and healing (U2, Charlie Hall, Coldplay, etc.). The overall message is: “when you serve, life gets better.”

As I was curating this Collection, even through the emphasis is on Christ’s promise of real hope, I realized that there are a couple of ways this collection (and this narrative in particular) could backfire. Because the Beatitudes focus on such powerful issues as poverty, hunger, justice, and persecution, the whole collection could easily become a five-week experience of guilt and shame.

Most of us have learned the hard way that when you use guilt and shame as motivation tools you get, at best, short-term compliance, but more often than not, strong resistance against what you’re trying to accomplish. So it’s crucial that the last and loudest word of this collection be the Unimagined Hope Christ offers us in his Way of life for us—definitely not a grocery list of “nice things we gotta do.”

Because the worship environment is the very first thing worshipers experience, it has the power to establish the tone for the entire collection. And the tone is precisely this: “when you serve like Jesus, life gets better—better than you can possible imagine.”

This is why I’ve recommended that the environment be set up to feel much like a fair. With the mix of energetic music, positive visual art, and evidence of ministry already happening, the goal is to engage otherwise hesitant people and invite them into a life that’s larger and richer than they’re presently experiencing. In fact, that’s the goal of the entire collection: to extend Jesus’ invitation to a life of “Unimagined Hope,” not so much found in what we receive, but in what we give away.

View More about this collection.

Until recently most people thought of the Beatitudes as Jesus’ blueprint for a happy life. In fact, one famous preacher even preached a series called the “Be Happy Attitudes.”

In the last few years Bible scholars have taken a fresh look at the Beatitudes and discovered that Jesus is up to something quite different than offering his followers “steps to happiness.” Instead Jesus is announcing unimaginable good news beyond their wildest dreams.

This collection focuses on how Jesus reveals the “upside down” nature of God’s Kingdom and character in the Beatitudes. Contrary to popular opinion, God’s realm is not reserved for the religiously successful, the self-sufficient, the comfortable, and the self-righteous.  Instead, God’s Kingdom is wide open to the cast out, beat up, messed up, and the failures of the world. In short, all of us.

But Jesus’ proclamation of good news is not without its sharp edge. Particularly in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus concludes the Beatitudes with a blunt warning to those who choose to stand on the comfortable sidelines: “The comfortable life of self-orientation and religious achievement is a dead end. True life only is found by following me.”

This collection consists of five narratives. Here’s a quick summary of each.

Week One: “Blessed are you who are poor…” – There’s a new world coming!

In the Beatitudes, Jesus promised the abundance of God’s Kingdom to those who have nothing. Jesus also taught that his Kingdom is not about the accumulation of stuff, but about the startling abundance found in the new community of Christ’s people. The early chapters of the book of Acts give multiple examples of this abundance. Imagine the surprise God’s people experienced in discovering that they were the fulfillment of God’s promise to the poor!

Week Two: “Blessed are you who are hungry now…”  – God’s solution to hunger

In this narrative Jesus addresses the daunting issue of hunger. It’s been said the Church in North America alone could eradicate world hunger in a single generation. So what keeps us from doing that? Perhaps because we’ve fed so much on the wrong things—money, status, power, security—that our own spiritual starvation has incapacitated us. The solution? Feasting on that which truly satisfies: Jesus, the Bread of Life.

Week Three: “Blessed are you who weep now…” – Pain does NOT get the last word; Jesus does!

Throughout the gospels, Jesus constantly turns weeping into joy through his healing love: restoring the widow’s son to life; healing the paralytic; giving life and dignity to the woman at the well. Jesus calls us as his followers to bring that same healing to the world around us. Perhaps many of us find this so difficult because we have not received his healing for ourselves.

Week Four:  “Blessed are you when people hate you…” – When the world pushes back

When Jesus’ people begin to embody his Kingdom to the world around them, not everyone is happy with the justice and shalom of God’s new world.  So how do we respond to those who oppose God’s Good News? In a world full of violence and downright evil, God calls us to be a community of compassion, truth, forgiveness and non-violent resistance. In short, the embodiment of the Kingdom.

Week Five:  “But Woe to you…” – The disaster of a self-centered life

In this final narrative Jesus warns all who would trade the free promise of God’s Kingdom for seemingly easy short cuts to temporary comfort and security. He exposes the dead-endedness of a life focused on ourselves. This warning is crucial in a time when much of what passes for Christianity is often nothing more than a thinly-disguised self-improvement and self-security project.