Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Worship, Reconciliation and an Invitation

By Marcia McFee, Ph.D.

“Jesus is a rock in a weary land…”  This sung phrase rang out in the midst of over a thousand delegates to the United Methodist General Conference and the many hundreds of visitors to the quadrennial event.  Anyone who has served as a delegate to these kinds of denominational legislative meetings knows that “weary” is an appropriate description at many points during a 10-day gathering where reporting, debating and voting seem to take center stage.  And so it was for the April 2008 gathering for which Mark Miller and I designed and led worship.   [Keep reading to the end for our “Invitation”!]

The phrase “between a rock and a hard place” is one which connotes an inability to move or to even wiggle one’s way out of a the tight spots in which we sometimes find ourselves.  I have to say that I waited until the eleventh hour to say “yes” to the daunting task of directing worship for such a highly charged event.  A context fraught with political maneuverings was not my idea of a seedbed of spiritual possibility.   I anticipated that the debates and disagreements within our denominational community would perhaps squeeze our best liturgical intentions into places too tight for the Spirit to find room to move.  But what I hoped to find was that it is in the fissures of community–the painful cracks and divisions–that ritual is needed the most, that the Spirit does its best work, and the steadfast “Rock” of which scripture speaks becomes powerfully present to the “hard places.”  And so I agreed to take on this liturgical task–partly out of a love for my life-long United Methodist denomination, my Wesleyan theological grounding and the opportunity for ritual crafting that is my art, but perhaps also because I wanted to put my hypotheses about the power of ritual to the test. 

I certainly cannot say that liturgy at General Conference effected some great aligning of the factions who struggled mightily over various hot-button issues.  The diversity of theological viewpoints and biblical interpretation that fueled debates over sexual orientation, and therefore ordination and church membership, became clear whether we’d sung and prayed together well or not.  Budget concerns and deep cuts to funding vital ministry brought tensions between interest groups and anxiety about the effectiveness of the church whether or not we’d felt the Spirit move among us in that morning’s worship.  I certainly cannot say that liturgy ended conflicts or brought about unilateral peace–even a perceived one.  Our ongoing struggle with how to be a global church with integrity, honoring all members, fairly distributing our resources and energy, and dealing with widely diverse contexts made us weary whether or not we’d sung each other’s songs with great fervor.  But as the word “reconciliation” can be broken down into its roots, we did, day after day, simply “come together again.”  We returned.  To each other.  To our Common Table.  To God.  And by many reports from participants, this made a difference for how we did our work.  Perhaps it formed us as people who keep at it, keep working, keep trying to find ways to come together and be together because we’ve seen in our worship “how good it is.”

Ritual is powerful.  The question is “to what are we being formed?” Vital, meaningful, embodied and deeply inspiring expression is essential to spreading any message–indeed, the way a message is expressed is often one of the main factors to attracting listeners and to being heard.  But progressive churches have (rightly) been reticent to adopt wholesale the strategies and resources of new worship expressions coming out of more theologically conservative traditions.  How can progressive churches enhance their message of hope and liberation by utilizing cutting edge and diverse ways of worshiping that connect with and move present-day worshipers and emerging generations while remaining true to, and strengthening, their theological principles? 

Mark Miller and I have been working with this question for decades and General Conference worship taught us many lessons.  [Here’s the invitation!]  We decided that we wanted to offer a time to share those lessons and other topics in a retreat setting with a relatively small group of worship leaders (pastors, musicians, visual artists, etc).  There are some spots left for “The Art & Technique of Sensory-Rich Worship” that will be held January 13-16, 2009 in my hometown of Lake Tahoe.  There are great flight deals going on right now so check out the information on the website and plan to come share a fun, interactive and deeply meaningful time with us.

Retreat Link:  www.marciamcfee.com/elevation.htm

The beginning of this article is borrowed from a longer piece written for Liturgy Journal.  You can download it in its entirety.