conversations with morgenthaler: part 1

August 6, 2007

As I mentioned yesterday in my announcement about the abandoned: worship as life seminar at MoBap in September, I have had the privilege to be in conversation over the last couple of months with Sally Morgenthaler, who has been consulting me as I build this brand new Worship Arts major.

I can’t think of any expert and thinker that I would want more to ’speak into’ this new program. It has been a great honor to engage with Sally in this way and I’m excited to state again that Sally has graciously agreed to let me post some of her answers to my questions during our consulting conversations here on this blog.

In many ways, this will give you a taste of the types of things Sally will be talking about at abandoned. Also, some of our first conversation is what led me to speak about my topic, “Keeping the Sacred Space Sacred: Caring About the Right Things as Worship Leaders and Worshippers.”

In Part 1 of this continuing ‘Q & A’ series, Sally talks about her growing concern about production-driven churches and the impact the worship space has on our corporate worship:

Have we trained our people to care about the wrong things? Particularly, high production at all costs?

Sally: This describes so many of the large churches – over 1000 – that I have worked with and seen over the last few years who ironically have stopped growing, many of them are in denial that they are actually losing ground – they are saying that they are at least maintaining – where the last few years that is hard to even say that because the losses are becoming pretty evident.

The really savvy leaders are asking the deeper questions. However most leaders, especially if they are of the baby boomer variety, even young boomers, old X’ers who were trained by boomers, are going for the band-aid – let’s get a VJ machine, let’s get another screen, let’s increase the production value - thinking if they increase the excellence factor – the cool factor – that it will fix whatever problem.

It is a paradigm that is all about ‘people come because it’s a good show’ and if people aren’t coming, the show isn’t good enough. That is the paradigm that came of the 90’s which really came out of a pretty strong 80’s performance paradigm. It got entrenched in the 90’s. Many churches added praise and worship choruses in the 90’s. Make it good, if you are slacking, make it better.

What impact does the worship space have on worship?

Sally: Buildings are us. Buildings determine what we do and how we do it in worship. They are not neutral. If all we have is a box and a stage, it is driven by a broadcast value. Those churches are built for presentation. They are not built for interaction. They are not built for anything that would come close to a mystical experience.

Short of going back and asking how the environment impacts the worship and how we are helped to engage with God at a different level and with other, all we are left with is to tweak what they were built for which is performance.

To ask the question is very scary for many large churches. Because then we have to say, “We have the wrong kinds of buildings…”

It is an identity issue if a church’s identity is performance. When someone says ‘let’s create some intimacy’ it doesn’t jive with a performance mentality.

If a church is going to spend more money on technology to increase the excellence to bring more people in, that fits into the performance value. Making a room smaller, taking the stage and eliminating the distance – which is a huge issue for emerging culture – doesn’t feed the performance identity.

Posted in church, emerging church, leadership, pastoring, q & a, quotes of note, sacred space, worship