Living with Questions (Essentials Blue Fall 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt (ICEWS, eb 08)

Ah, blogging. I've stayed away from blogging because it has seemed like a lot of work! Lots of thinking and processing and figuring out how to put words to what I think, which brings me to what I've discovered about myself: I've realized recently that I feel like I'm not one to think deeply unless drawn there by someone else. I want to be different, to not only consider an idea for a brief time and then move on, but rather sit with it, ponder it, weigh it and not give up on grasping hold of it until it is a part of the fabric of who I am.

For example, as I read through the course description there were three questions asked:

1. “How healthy and true are my own thoughts about God, the scriptures, the story of humankind and my faith?” From here, we ask,
2. “How healthy and true are the thoughts about God that are forming and informing my views about worship, and the how do they affect the way I lead others into worship?” Then we must ask one more important question – a question that should deeply challenge us.
3. “What does worship and its leadership have to do with shaping the theology and daily actions of the average person? How am I, as a creative leader, shaping others’ ways of thinking about God, the scriptures, the story of humankind, our faith and their daily life as a Christian?”

My tendency is to read through a list such as this and move on quickly versus actually doing the work of wrestling through each point in each question. I'm tired of living like that. I want to be able to clearly communicate my thoughts and beliefs (my theology), and the only way I can do that is if the thoughts and beliefs are actually in the fabric of who I am, have impacted me to the point of shaping me, changing me on the inside.

One other sentence stood out to me as I continued reading the introduction:
...our focus will be on re-discovering essentials – and getting those essentials deep into our souls.

I'm looking forward to discovering and re-discovering essentials and getting the essentials deep into my soul.