About Ryan Marsh

“I was so moved after receiving communion from a child tonight,” a first time visitor to Church of the Beloved wrote to me in an email. “Coming from a tradition that set such rigid boundaries around who may serve communion, it was wonderful to see children empowered in this way.” Their family, who was Christian but churchless, joined our community a few months later. We try to take children’s baptismal vocation seriously and invite them to serve in any part of the liturgy they are able, whether that be reading, praying, singing, creating artwork, or sharing the bread and cup.

If this is something that you want to encourage in your community, I can’t think of a better time to start than Advent or Christmastide, as we are surprised that God would come to us as a little child! How much we benefit from worshiping together as a whole community! And there is also value in age-specific engagement with God’s story. For this reason we’ve created StorySpace: A Service of the Word for Children to accompany the Advent collection, “What Happens When God Comes Close.” StorySpace was designed for children to experience the first part of worship with the whole community and then be blessed to enter another worship space. The children then return, bringing the elements of wine, juice, and bread to set the table at offering time. Leaving and returning are important movements and some coordination is needed to time this accurately.

The themes of waiting in Advent are vital for children. You may be familiar with the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment which tested a group of pre-school children to see how long they might be able to resist eating a marshmallow for the reward of two marshmallows. The researchers were surprised to later find a close correlation between the children’s future success as adults and their earlier ability to delay gratification. The children prone to immediate gratification were far more likely to have become troubled, while the children who were able to display self-restraint were far more likely to have become competent adults. Waiting is a skill that is difficult to develop and rarely developed in relationship to God. And yet our scriptures are full of stories about people, like Sarah and Abraham, who wait twenty, thirty, forty years or longer before they see the fulfillment of God’s promise to them.

Before there was brain science, multi-sensory learning, or Montessori, the early Church was engaging all the senses in the act of worshiping the Holy Trinity. Noses worshiped to the smell of smoldering frankincense; Tastebuds worshiped to the flavors of bread and wine; Ears to the sounds of chants, prayers and proclamations; Eyes to the sights of icons, symbols and theatrical gesture. And Bodies knelt, stood, hugged, and made the sign of the cross with water, oil, or ash. Wow, what a feast for the senses! Not one was left out. Later iterations of Christian worship turned to the academy for its form. The proclamation as a lecture became the main event. The sanctuary became the classroom and the pastor its professor. Of course, this is incredibly reductionistic, but you get my point.

We’re now rediscovering just how powerful these rites are. Whereas, a monologue might result in some minimal retention for its listeners, if that same group were to engage in small group discussion about the content, the retention rate might quadruple, and if that same group were to physically enact some aspect of the content the retention rate might double again. This is where prayer stations come in. Whether you are pinning a hopeful prayer to a baby diaper, writing a “turning” prayer of repentance on a lazy-susan, or grieving to God at a wailing wall, your body will be involved in worship in a way that creates a deep connection.

As you are curating these stations, try to imagine how someone who has no clue about it might engage with it. Is the invitation to the prayer station clear? Usually people need three forms of direction: an initial verbal explanation, a written explanation in the form of a sign or projection slide, and lastly, watching someone else interact with the station. The explanations don’t need to be long, just clear. Try not to give too much direction so that there is only one very scripted way to interact with the station, but also don’t give too little direction so that no one knows what to do with it. Often times we’ll ask someone before the service to be the “first one up” when we come to prayer stations in the service in order that others can watch and follow.

Judging by the size of your community and the size of your worship space, you’ll need to anticipate where there might be bottle-necks and flow issues. Sometimes it works to offer several options at once: prayer stations on the left, coffee in the back, conversations with two or three at your seat. It ends up becoming something like a “choose your own adventure,” where people are able to opt-in to the way they want to reflect on the gospel. Prayer stations are great for hyper-introverted persons who might not feel comfortable in group conversation, and, conversely, are a good way for hyper-extraverted people to dip into a more contemplative mode of praying.

I heard on NPR the other day that some linguists and neuroscientists are proposing that the origin of human speech started with singing! Now, this makes total sense to me. There is something so primal and so vulnerable about singing. When I sing, there’s my voice. Nothing to hide it. No external instrument on which to blame my quivering notes. It’s as earnest as I can get. And that’s the way it’s always been. People of every culture sing to the their most beloved, to babies, to lovers, to gods. I can’t think of a single religion that doesn’t sing to their deity. And yet, when I look around it seems as if we’ve lost our song. Public singing in our day has been relegated to the professionals. We don’t even sing in pubs anymore! The only public singing that happens these days is before the ball game and at the seventh inning stretch. This is tragic. We got to do something about this. We gotta sing.

We’ve tried to jam pack songs into our collection, not always as stand alone elements, but mixed up with, around, and behind other prayers and readings to create a tapestry of worship. Sometimes the singing is a response to the confession like, “I need you so much closer.” Sometimes the singing is a summary of the reading, like “People Get Ready” paired with an Isaiah text. This takes a little more coordination and artistry on the musicians’ part. You’ll need to be aware of your sound and how to drop underneath the volume of the reader at the right times and not make it jerky. Although the sung version of the Great Thanksgiving is to the well-known melody, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” it will still need some rehearsal with your presider to get the syllables in the right spots. Be sure to have a cantor leading the people’s parts too.

In most cases we’ll give you alternative song options so you can choose between original music that Church of the Beloved has written, hymnody, choruses, or popular music for what might work best in your context. What’s most important is that people sing their guts out with each other to their God. That’s hard to do when nobody knows the songs. One thing that we’ve found quite helpful is to either burn a mix CD of the songs you will use for the season (you have our permission) and hand them out a couple of weeks before Advent starts. Or you can set-up an mp3 download site online (for those of you with a little technical know-how). Not only will your people feel more confident in singing together, but they’ll have seasonal music to accompany their life on the bus to school, in the shower, before sleep… in the pub? Someday.