Building Community through Prayer
Prayer and Scripture
In the past year I had been praying a lot about how to build community with my worship team at Aldrich Presbyterian. We never seemed to have a good time to do it.
We had been spending so much time in the Scriptures before doing anything musical we didn’t have much time for anything else. At the same time I had been praying about trying to figure a way to incorporate more prayer into our worship rehearsal. Again, time was a factor.
Then one day God gave me some insight. I felt like God was suggesting that we focus on the Scriptures one week and the next week we could focus on prayer. That was a phenomenal idea.
This would give us one full hour focused on one thing before taking time to work on the service.
On August 16th, 2011
This night was the first time we would spend a full hour talking about prayer, sharing our prayer needs, and spending time in prayer.
One of worship team members actually asked me if we could simply do our prayer time in silence. I replied with a quick no. Why?
First, I didn’t want us to be distracted by our phones or text messages. Secondly, I wanted us to pray out loud so that we could encourage one another. And that’s exactly what happened.
I heard prayers from our worship team members that I hadn’t heard before. People were vulnerable, affirming one another, and encouraging one another in prayer. It was great.
And it seemed like after our prayer time like we had a greater sense of team, of community, and fellowship.
Questions for you
How can you incorporate more prayer with your worship team? How can you encourage your team to pray out loud more? What is the value of praying out loud? How can you encourage your team to pray in their heart language during this time?
How have you seen God build community through prayer in your church?
Blog post by Peter Kihyun Park
© 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.
Applying what we’ve learned and more…
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means when we don’t apply the things we’ve learned from other cultures and what it can imply if we don’t.
I think sometimes we make excuses that we can’t express our worship like other cultures do. And, yes, sometimes those expressions do require a bit of skill and a background in that area. However, when we’re talking about allowing the congregation to be involved in those expressions we can still allow them to incorporate elements of it.
Otherwise, we are unknowingly hindering other expressions of praise and not allowing people to grow. And in some sense we’re also saying, for example, that only Korean people can pray in the style that Korea people pray.
My friend Josh…
A good friend of mine, Josh, who’s Caucasian and grew up in the Dominican Republic, says that he will lead his family in praying in the Korean style. What does that mean?
I won’t go into all that it means here, but part of that means that everyone is praying out loud at the same time. This can get very intense in Korean prayer meetings.
Final thoughts….
All that being said…it’s not necessarily about learning how to express worship in other forms or honoring one another, at least it’s not a primary reason. We are called to be in unity and to love one another. It’s one of the most important things that Christ taught and modeled for us.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important for us to apply what we’re learning from believers of other cultures, but it’s important, if not more important, to remember why we are doing it.
When we don’t apply what we’ve learned from believers of other cultures, but feel that we can only incorporate something when that particular ethnic group, age group, gender is around….is this not a form of tokenism. In a sense, isn’t this a form of tokenism and exclusiveness?
Blog post by Peter Kihyun Park
© 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.
Traditional Kachin dance
This video is brought to you by a good friend of mine, Wally Brath, on a month long mission trip to Myitkyina. Where is that?
It’s the capital city of Kachin State in Myanmar. Maybe you’ve heard of Burma.
Something to consider…
After watching this traditional dance you have to wonder how this would resonate with God if it was intentionally used to praise and worship Him? Think about that for a moment.
Folk dances have traditionally been performed by people with little or no professional training. This is probably because they’re used most often at social functions, although sometimes it has been used in religious ceremonies as well.
Questions to consider
How would you incorporate traditional dance into the worshiping community? Would you have to set the dance to Contemporary Christian Music? Or could a new song arise within the worshiping community while using traditional instruments?
Scripture Passage
Read over the story of David acquiring the Ark of God in 2 Samuel 6:1-15 as you meditate over those questions. It may even be a good idea to read the previous chapters as well.
Blog post by Peter Kihyun Park
© 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.