Rev Karen Campbell chats to Grace and Sam about God disrupting worship in the Bible, and how the disruption of today is bringing down cultural barriers in her local church's worship. She brings her experiences as an ethnomusicologist, missionary and theologian to her current role of Pastor at Church of the Servant, Grand Rapids, a multicultural city church.

Reflection Questions:

1. Karen gives the example of art, instrumental music and the Psalms coming together for their Wednesday night "Dark Times, Deep Grace" evenings. This flowed from the gifts available in their context. What could be an equivalent kind of space you could create with the people and resources you have in your community?

2. Karen explores a number of examples of God disrupting the "comfortable" worship of people in the Bible. Are there particular Bible stories which strike you as relevant: the Israelites in the wilderness, the exile to Babylon (Psalm 137), Sabbath, Jubilee, Jesus disrupting the worship of his day, Peter's worship being disrupted (Acts 10:9-16)... or something else? Explore a passage that seems timely for you.

3. Grace reflects back that "Sabbath is a controlled excercise in disruption... God is giving us an invitation every six days to enter into this disruption, I wonder if in the past we'd entered into that more if in some area's we would have struggled a bit less." There is talk of this making us flexible, supple, to "fathom" or stretch out. Does this help you explore Sabbath differently?

4. There is conversation about cultural dominance. What culture is dominant in the style of your gathered worship? Who is at the margins of your gathered worship? Are there people groups, spiritual styles, educational preferences, languages or other aspects that you could create space for? How could we break cultural idols and move towards more multicultural, inclusive forms of worship?

 

Resources

Church of the Servant