Christian: I ran across a website today that explained in great detail practices and beliefs of the Neopagan religion Wicca. After setting aside the fear ingrained in me regarding such occultic practices, I was very intrigued by the perspective and feelings of Wiccans. One in particular caused me to seriously think about the way we order our church services in Christianity. On this web site, the Wiccans explained why so many teenagers are running away from Christianity and embracing Wicca instead. One of the reasons cited explained that in Wiccan ceremonies, everyone actively participates in every aspect of the meeting, unlike Christian churches. The ceremony is a communal effort through and through. I was genuinely drawn to that notion. I want to be a part of something like that! It got me thinking...have we given the impression that a certain number of people are involved in the spiritual aspects of our services and the rest of us come to passively attend or help out in medial tasks? To what extent do we allow for each other to actively be involved in a spiritual sense in our church services?

Faithful:  In my opinion, we certainly do need more interaction and involvement in church amongst ALL believers.  The key regarding this is to do it in such a way that you are opening doors, not closing them.  I think much of what happens when people in the church try to involve other people is that there is a sentiment that "Well, this is my job, and that's their job.  I'm not going to do their job, and they had better not do mine."  Rather than establishing boundaries when including people, an extra effort needs to be made to be inclusive.  I've been doing a bit of brainstorming on the topic, and here are a few off-the-top-of-my-head ideas.   Take them or leave them, but at least put your brain in gear and think.  :)   (Some might be contradictory, but hey, you get what you pay for with brainstorms)

1. Consider organizing in such a way that there is a regular rotation to do all sorts of things involved in a service.  For instance, if your church has a "prayer team" that regularly prays with people after/during the service or whatever, then do what you can to a) expand the number of people in the prayer team and b) make sure everyone knows that if they feel like "joining in" or whatever, to PLEASE do so.   After all, the goal is to promote inclusion and involvement, not separation and competition.
2. Congregational readings?  I know this is sort of out-of-vogue in many churches, but perhaps if it were brought back and done with passion (which is my greatest criticism... the stuff is read like it's meaningless), it might add a greater feeling of unity among the church.
3. Keep It Simple.  I think we try too hard.  Do what's natural.  God uses the natural world to achieve supernatural results.
4. Think outside the box.  Last I checked, God doesn't live inside of boxes... so why do we?

Hopeful:  It seems to me that issues such as this rely greatly upon the audience. A person would be hard pressed to prove that one level of participation in church is better or more spiritual than another. This would seem to be dependant upon the demographic that would be participating. In general, though, I would agree that church should be made more participatory if only to make it more enjoyable. This might even discourage the napping that so many do in those Sunday morning meetings. Who knows.

Faithful:  Heh, too true.  It would be nice if the church would give at least some thought toward the matter, though.

Christian: I think it would be cool for evangelical churches to have a liturgy of sorts...recited readings and prayers, etc. (If people in the congregation don't want to participate, that's their choice.) I don't think the spiritual "deadness" or drudgery necessarily has to come along with the package. After all, take another look at the Wiccans--they have spells that they chant together...they all say the same thing together...no music...just words...and for them it's not drudgery. Why can't we do the same thing in our churches?

There is one difference--Wiccans believe there is something "magical" that happens when they say those words. But in our churches, we don't believe in formulas. Although, we do believe that when we exercise faith in unity, we "get God's attention," so to speak. So the question remains: Is there a way we can exercise faith together during a larger percentage of the service time than just singing a few songs? Why don't we recite prayers together and declare God's Word together? If we don't do this, I might as well stay home, kick in a praise and worship CD, open up the Bible, listen to a preacher on the radio, and pray for awhile on Sunday mornings instead. Why do we meet together anyway? To go out to eat with our friends after church (before noon, preferably)?

Hopeful: I think that there are good and bad points to the idea of recitations. As Christian mentions, popularly accepted Christian belief (aside from the Catholic "Hail Mary," etc) is that these recitations do not have any power just from the fact that they are recited. I think that there is generally a good deal of audience participation in a church service, though. You can almost view a song service as a recitation put to music. Again, I believe that a good portion of how this is approached will have more to do with the demographic in question than anything else.

The purpose of church is probably as much for the fellowship with other Christians as anything else. This is not a bad thing, just not a very commonly recognized thing.

Christian: Sure, the song service is a recitation of sorts, but it's only one facet of the service. The majority of the service is still out of the perimeters of the congregation. I understand Hopeful's concern with demographics, but I'd say that almost all of the people who wouldn't want to participate more are those who have been in our churches for quite a long time. So should we tailor our services to them, when they're only concerned about their comfort and anonymity in church? Or should we tailor our services to those who want to be part of a body and work together to achieve something when they meet? Let the lazy meet together however they feel comfortable...perhaps those of us who would like to see a shift in overall participation just need to start something ourselves if church people won't budge? But who wants another denomination starting up? I guess we could have our own Saturday night service or something instead...

So what do you think?