Want to get to know someone? Watch them at play. Where are they playing? What are they playing? How do they play? What makes their eyes light up, their defences drop? Sometimes I wonder where Presbyterians are the most playful—and self-revealing. I’m not convinced that it’s when we worship… Was that a logical leap? Blame it on the New Year’s egg-nog. Or blame it on our Presbyterian thesaurus that doesn’t put “worship” and “play” together. Hmm… it just might be that Presbyterians are the most playful—and the most self-revealing—on a committee. Planning, visioning, steering, standing, ad hoc—it doesn’t matter. Sign us up.
I got to watch about forty Anglicans at play one weekend last October. I was there to give a plenary session on world music in worship and a workshop on leading congregational song with an instrumental ensemble. Steve Hopkins gave the other plenary session, on liturgical change.
We began the Friday night session with singing, complete with praise band. The electronics outweighed the people, the sound system was way too big for the room, the hello’s and intros were perfunctory, and it was wonderful. People sang, danced, prayed, drummed and played until way past none of your business.
Did I say that they were at play? What we were at was worship: passionate, loud, Spirit-filled and vital. Even though the conference explored what some might label as “free-form” worship, two things struck me: the leadership (varied in age) shaped a biblically grounded, articulate and dramatic liturgy; and everyone was hungry and thirsty to sing together. They sang the theme song: Gordon Light’s Outside the Lines in about fourteen different styles. They sang South African freedom songs in four parts, with dancing. They sang hymns, psalms and spiritual songs, some of them composed on the spot. They learned all I brought, and I had to dig out some more—and they sang those, too. When all was said and sung, it was a two-and-a-half day feast of imaginative worship. Appropriately, the weekend conference, organized by Joyce Wilton for the Diocese of Niagara, was called Imagine Music and Word.
It was Steve Hopkins (who works with Fresh Start, a program for congregations in transition in the Diocese of Niagara) who summed it up for me. In between many bon mots about leading change in congregational life, he offered this: “We can’t plan our way into the future, but we can play our way there.”
I wish you a playful year.
