“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mark 12:30) should center our experience of God. From Christ, we learn that biblical worship involves the Experiential Worship shows you how to create a place where worshipers come face-to-face with the Father. Index included for easy reference. Ideal for churches of all sizes.
The author does an excellent job of articulating the opportunity for improved worship through the biblical lense of the greatest commandment: “love (worship) the Lord your God with all your heart, souls, mind and strength.
This is a book about multisensory, experiential worship. It concentrates on breaking apart “love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” and figuring out how to engage each of these elements in worship.
Strength = the body; accomplish this by engaging all the senses in worship, sacred space Mind = Intellect; engage the mind through symbolism, story, and parable Soul = Emotions; use art and creativity to engage the emotions Heart = Will; give an opportunity for response (symoblic or actual)
Quotes:
All biblical anthropologies envision the human being as an integrated whole, not a collection of separable components. (p.41)
Experiential Worship is not so much about providing once-in-a-lifetime experiences for people as it is about providing regular opportunities for authentic encounters with God. (p. 45)
when we are engaged on a physical level, we experience God more completely. I am beginning with the physical dimension of Experiential Worship because I believe it is the aspect Protestants and Evangelicals have forgotten most. (p. 57)
The Psalms, our biblical guidebook for worship, continually invites us into various physical expressions of worship. (p. 60)
Sometimes there is power in addressing the senses through the absence of input ... Silence can be as meaningful as a beautiful song. (p. 69)
We read his words in the Sermon on the Mount about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, forgetting that he was speaking on a hillside surrounded by the very lilies and birds of which he spoke! (p. 60)
Developing worship that engages the mind involves learning to use the whole range of metaphor in our communication as Jesus did. (p. 95)
We sanitize the scriptures for use in our services, but the Psalms call us to rediscover emotional honesty as a vital part of authentic worship. (p. 116)
Emotions can connect our intellect with our will. (p. 126) Worship is a deliberate decision to offer ourselves to God. (p. 150)
each worship experience that we plan will invite people to a very specific response of the will. (p. 151)
His call included symbolic as well as functional acts that would help people experience more deply the message of God's transforming grace. (p. 151)
Guilt trips, pressure tactics, manipulation to coerce people's wills are not the ways of jesus.
Assuming that one person, such as a pastor or music minister, has some kind of special conduit to the Holy Spirit by virtue of his or her title or position is to miss the whole point of Pentecost. (p. 177)
climbing down from our ivory tower, locking the door, and throwing away the key are the first steps toward implementing Experiential worship. This means recovering the biblical model of collaborative creativity. (p. 183)
the truth is, the Spirit can lead us ahead of time in a planning meeting and the outcome is usually far more effective. (p. 202)
Bob Rognlien develops a unique paradigm for designing church worship services by looking at four different worship tradition “streams”. He discusses engaging and transforming the whole person in worship in a direct encounter with God – strength worship (the body), mind worship (the intellect), soul worship (the emotions), and heart worship (the will).
As an adjunct professor in teaching “Biblical & Historical Perspectives of Worship,” students have loved this as one of the textbooks I use. May all our worship services be rooted in Scripture, centered upon Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit!