Worship Seminar Feedback

Here is what emerged from  participants, mostly lay leaders,  at the end of a recent contemplative worship seminar led by two SoulStream partners.

What we left behind

• anxiety and having control
• boxes that I contain God in
• fear, anxiety and doubt
• cynicism with church and leadership
• my anxiety, care and burden in which I find myself taking on a yoke that’s not for me to hold
• my agenda for our community
• a yoke not of Jesus
• worship ministry as an isolated area
• anxiety and fear
• despair and desolation
• I am independent and self contained, I can survive as my own personal church
• strict structure
• destructive tension
• burden of worries, exhaustion and tension compressing my spine
• my fatigue, my striving
• worship as some kind of thing of method we learn to give to other people
• heaviness that can be so hard to release, may not even be mine to release but his to take on himself
• the box I put God in, the box I put myself in, the box I put my community in
• a fixation on outcomes

What we take away with us

• the blessings of all who came trusting for ongoing transforming presence of Christ in them
• we all need to be willing and active participants
• the makeover is to be continued
• a desire to discover and experience God as mother
• beauty, belongingness, community feeling
• a fuller sail
• the humanity of Christ
• simple songs welling up inside from my heart
• creative and non-traditional worship
• listening, chanting, constructive tension, the visio-divina experience
• God is okay with our responses
• transformation happens at the heart level
• my life is enriched by contact and conversation with others
• the waters receding from the cliffs just for a moment before rushing back, bringing life and refreshment and recreation to a barren landscape. It’s the breath taken in at the moment of death but the exhalation, the pneuma is coming
• worship is calling God’s name
• God ad I yoked together, he is pulling the heavy part of the load
• openness to worshipful transformation we experience every day even on Sunday
• notice the detail, the Lord is behind, beside and ahead of us
• renewed awareness of God’s transforming work in me today
• God desires my good, encouragement and joy in the family of God
• patience with my congregation and myself, freedom knowing that God is at work
• hope for change in family, community and church
• all encompassing nature of worship, every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something God
• God’s unimaginable abundance will never be measured or understood by me