Note: I just found this in my IWS folder on my computer, I meant to post it the first week of August. Even though it’s a little late, I hope this report encourages Dr. Eric, my fellow IWS’ers and blog readers.
The weekend of July 30/31 was exhausting. I attended a wedding, led worship with my youth group for all 3 church assemblies, then went to the big church picnic at the YMCA. The coolest thing though, was the 20+ kids i
n my youth group who got baptized in the lake that day. IWS (the Institute for Worship Studies, where I'm working on my masters degree) was a big reason for that. Here’s the story.
Josie Lovell is baptized as we sing "Nothing But The Blood" . Yes, that's my guitar out in the lake. No, it's not good for the guitar. Click on the photo for high res.
At our first IWS class this June on the Biblical Foundations of Worship, Dr. Eric Bolger talked about the meta-narrative, “story of God” and how that appealed to the post-modern mind. “Shouldn’t that be the ‘reality’ of God,” I argued, “I don’t get this ‘story’ business”, not buying this new fangled post-modern jive. Patiently Eric explained the language in a way my “rational” mind could understand. My fellow students helped me see how antiquated my “modern” worldview was. OK – I’ll try this story stuff, but I was not super convinced.
Immediately after the IWS weeklong intensive I was scheduled to be at our annual youth retreat (about 150 kids on this one). Usually I help organize and lead the worship, but the theme of the retreat was to be “Holy Ground” and it was all about worship, so I was slated to do a lot of teaching also. Inspired by my IWS teaching, we incorporated a lot of multi-sensory worship experiences such as mood lighting, candles, art stations, and journals. In each worship session I gave a “seed thought” around an aspect of worship, using ideas from Eric’s class – telling the story of God, explaining the Trinity as a community, how the Psalms help us understand God through times of orientation/disorientation and reorientation, etc.
The first night the seed thought was from Exodus 3 when Moses encountered God in the burning bush. Our worship response was to take our shoes off, for we were on “holy ground”. (Holy ground is wherever the presence of God is manifest.) The next night following the seed thought on John 4:24 (the woman at the well), we had large punch bowls filled with water. As a response to the teaching, the students filled their cups, but instead of drinking “the water of life” for themselves, they gave it away to someone else. The last night our seed thought was on Christ as servant/leader when he washed his disciples feet, our response was a foot washing service. (Try organizing that for 150 teenagers! Thankfully it was quite reverent)
Traditionally on the last day of the retreat we would give an invitation to receive Christ and maybe 3 or 4 would respond. This year for the final session I felt the youth group as a community should do the teaching. Reflected in their artwork were many images of the cross. “Why is the cross important?” I asked them to explain, and as a community they took turns telling the story of salvation through Christ as I passed the microphone from one to another then another. “If there are kids here who are not “part of the community”(saved) what would you want them to know? What would you want to say to them?” And the youth told their friends the story of salvation and reconciliation – Jesus life, death, resurrection and coming return.
As a response to the invitation of God we made a big circle (the kids were all sitting on the floor). Anyone who wanted to join the community of faith (those who had never been baptized before) could do so by coming to the middle of the circle. We prayed. Kids went to the center. We prayed more. 17 kids ended up in the center of the community. Then our youth pastor Anthony Chaboya said “if you feel you want to respond to God and want to get re-baptized, you can.” Another 17 or so kids responded. Over 35 teen-agers joined the center of the community to be baptized!
At the retreat, we felt the actual baptizing was something we should do as a church family, so we waited until we could involve the families. That’s why a couple of weeks later (July 31) we had a big baptismal party at the lake. Several other folks choose to be baptized with the youth also.
Youth and others lined up to be baptized. Click on the photo for high res.
I’ve been on most of our retreats and while they’ve all been wonderful and we have a very spiritually alive youth group - I’ve never seen anything like this. The concepts I learned at through the IWS community - Eric Bolger, my fellow classmates and alumni, made a huge impact for the kingdom. God invites us to find our place in his story. He invites us to join his community. That’s the gospel in today’s language – maybe that’s “postmodern”, maybe not, all I know is - it works. And that’s the rest of this story.
