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If the church is to bring together hard living spirituality and participation in congregational life, then forms of worship which speak directly to the lives of hard living people will be paramount. Such worship will be oral in style, will give music of a certain kind a central place, will provide preaching that is "down on the ground," aimed directly at the day-to-day struggles they face and that speaks assurance and a message of hope. Such worship will be open to opportunities for participative intercessory prayer, testimony, will be informal in style, and receptive to a wide range of dress and clothing.
Now, let's see how that translates into english:
* INFORMAL WORSHIP = Letting the congregation participate in offering prayer, Scripture reading, and leading the service. Sing a lot, use short sermons, be celebrative, free and not locked into order and form. Biblically centered, but based on common life experiences.
* ORAL WORSHIP (Some can not read well because of sight problems, borderline literacy, or retardation.) = Pastor asks questions and the congregation talks back while he preaches, puntuated by "Hallelujah, Yes, Amen, & Praise the Lords" or using the 23rd Psalm for an affirmation of faith, repeated from memory.
* PREACHING = Non-judgmental, uplifting, not vindictive, and inspirational. Use a comfortable, storytelling style, go out to the people. Try to show what was going on then (in the Bible) and what's going on now (the world). Take a word of HOPE and try to show people how to take power. Ending is a more passionate sermon that separate clearly the ways of a lost world and the one way in Jesus Christ.
* PHYSICAL MOVEMENT = Where people get up, walk around, share (testimony), hug, and make others feel accepted and loved. Tying a prayer on a Jesus tree, passing the peace, sharing what the gospel has meant to them.
* PRAYERS = Prayer is usually offered 'on the spot' when a concern comes up, during sharing. Not generic, specific requests for each need: jobs, sickness or abuse, children, loved ones or drug addiction of a family member. They want prayer by name, even the children ask for prayer.
The hard living struggle more:
* with believing than with knowing,
* with assurance than with explanation,
* with trust than with doctrine,
* with hope than with the idea of history, and
* with a providential God more than with theodicy.
* MUSIC = First, an old gospel number, then praise hymns, Christian radio songs, But let the hymn of preparation be a new one, a contemporary hymn, taught in oral fashion by lining it out (Sing a line and then have them do it until WE work our way through it), and the last one an evangelistic hymn like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms".
* SONGS = Sung with feeling, sing-a-longs, employ transparencies and an OH projector or material that is "easy to sing", let the congregants pick a hymn, or give a central place to children in worship. Maybe rewrite the words to secular songs using the Christian message, some people even take drinking songs and turn them into faith classics, use your imagination.
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