Rory Noland - Transforming Worship: Planning and Leading Sunday Services as If Spiritual Formation Mattered

R ORY AND I GO WAY BACK. We met when we were both on staff at Willow Creek in the late 90s, early 2000s, but it was on a trip to Israel with fellow staff members that we first connected meaningfully around our shared interest in spiritual formation. I was serving as associate director of spiritual formation at the time, and he was serving as music director, and our first conversations had to do with sharing our own longing for more in the spiritual life as well as a shared desire to care for the souls of team members engaged in the relentless week in, week out schedule of producing excellent, culturally relevant church services and ministries. After we returned home, our conversations continued and even as my journey led me out of that context to found the Transforming Center and Rorys journey led him to found Heart of the Artist Ministries, we stayed connected in our search for the more in our spiritual lives. Eventually Rory joined our two-year Transforming Community experience that proved to be the beginning of a fifteen-year journey of collaboration around transforming worshipone of the great privileges of my vocational life.

From the Transforming Centers earliest days one of the basic, non-negotiable elements of our shared practice has been fixed-hour prayer and worship. The first time a few of us gathered on retreat over twenty years ago, we began with an evening prayer service. We prepared a simple sacred space with a cross, a candle, and an open Bible placed on a simple altar. We entered that space quietly and lit the candle to signify Christs presence with us through the Holy Spirit. Then, guided by a simple liturgy, we prayed the prayers provided for us beginning with these words:

From the rising of the sun to its setting,

Let the name of the Lord be praised.

YOU, O LORD, ARE MY LAMP.

MY GOD, YOU MAKE MY DARKNESS BRIGHT.

Light and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord.

THANKS BE TO GOD.

We read a Psalm responsively followed by a Psalm prayer that gave us a way to affirm and respond to its message. There was a Gospel reading followed by silence to create space for God to speak to us personally through the chosen Scripture. We prayed some of the oldest prayers of the churchincluding the Lords Prayer, written prayers of intercession that helped us offer our shared concerns to God, and spontaneous prayers as well. Some of the prayers were prayed responsively, others in unison, and I remember losing myself in the beauty and simplicity of it all. No bells and whistles needed.

Instead of having to think really, really hard about what to pray, those of us who gathered simply gave ourselves to the beauty and substance of words that expressed deep longings and powerful praises we might never have been able to find words to say. Instead of getting caught in the egos attempts to say something profound to God (and to the people around us!), we rested from all of that and actually prayed. Instead of listening to someone elses interpretation or application of Scripture, the Gospel was read without comment so that we could actually listen for what God was saying personally to us. Rather than being led by the up-front gyrations of an overly enthusiastic worship band, there was a sense that we all participated and did it together, having been relieved of the need for a lot of fanfare. After the Scripture reading, this small group of us settled into a silence that was so rich and satisfying that I remember losing all track of time until someone finally nudged me to remind me that it was time to go on!

That simple service lasted all of twenty minutes, and yet we emerged awake and alert to God in the depths of our beings, having given him our whole selves in worship as much as we were able. Even though I had been in church all my life (I am a pastors kid, after all) it felt like my soul had finally come home to a way of praying and worshiping where there was space for a transforming encounter with God in the depths of my being.

That was over twenty years ago now, and we have been praying and worshiping that way ever sincewith one notable difference. Until Rory joined us in our second Transforming Community, we had not had anyone to lead us in the musical elements of our worship, so our prayer services were made up of words and silence. Even though several of us knew Rory to be an amazing musician, composer, and worship leader we refrained from asking him to serve with these gifts until he had completed his Transforming Community experience. But as soon as he had completed his two-year experience we asked whether he had any vision at all to add some additional worship elements to our fixed-hour prayers.

To our delight, he had already been thinking about this possibility and said yes. And what emerged was a wonderful partnership in which he and I had the opportunity to work together in continuing to develop what we now call Transforming Worshipa way of worshiping that has emerged organically from our life together in community. Partnering with Rory in developing and leading worship services has been one of the most unexpected joys and privileges of my life in ministry.

Over the years as we have planned worship and then reflected on our worship, Rory and I have had countless conversations in which we have attempted to identify characteristics of transforming worship we believe transcend style and can be applied in any worship setting. For us, transforming worship has always been highly participatory