40 Days of Worship: Rehearsing the Story of God

A series of 40 worship experiences for churches, house fellowships, and individuals based on Year C of the following the liturgical calendar through Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. In each service God speaks in various ways and we respond as is appropriate. We call this "dialogical" worship--a dialogue or conversation between God and those who seek to please him. A communion service in Appendix A and the Apostles' Creed in Appendix B may be inserted as desired in any service. Dan wrote and preached the messages based on scripture texts, and Renee selected all other worship components to reinforce each day's theme. We sang, prayed, and preached these services at a retirement community's nondenominational gatherings of believers and have included 40 episodes from the longer list of 52 Sundays in the year. What do you get when an investigative reporter becomes a preacher? You get "stories" and "messages" instead of "homilies" or "sermons." You get objective, investigative reporting instead of opinions. To say the same thing theologically, you get "dogma"-the core beliefs of the universal Christian faith instead of "doctrine"-the policies and opinions of various denominations. And what does the investigative reporter get? He gets to "scoop" the biggest story in history, the Story of God. He finds ways to tell this story using all the tools of the journalist to answer the questions and . He gets to apply all the tools of creative writing to bring the story alive: plot, point of view, setting, symbols, irony, theme, characters, dialogue, suspense, irony, satire, humor-all the tools God used in his Master Story to bring that Word alive for today's Jesus-followers. Add a collaborative pianist and seasoned worship leader to the mix and you receive complete worship services that, over one year, explore the whole Story of God in both worship and preaching.