Saturday, August 28, 2010

Budapest Worship

Nicole Roorda Henry put this up on FB, and I am grateful. Nicole is one of those people who has never lived that near, but has crisscrossed our lives in so many places that she is close to us. She has taught in Central Europe (now teaches at Nashua Christian, where one son and many friends attended), and keeps better track of these things for us.



If you prefer it in Hungarian, it's here.

I posted before about Festival Worship, which I believe is the ancient model of worship that will be used by the next few generations far more than we have for the last few centuries. I did an entire adult studies series on it this year and promised to post parts of it. Then I found out I'd forgotten and promised again. Maybe this time.

4 comments:

Erin said...

A Christian flash mob. I love it!

Assistant Village Idiot's wife said...

Nicole is home with the kids right now. I loved the grandmother out there dancing with all the young kids.

james said...

I've never attended an Aladura service, but I understand they're heavily into dancing also.
This group seemed to be skewed young. Does the celebration worship you're thinking of tend to partition the activities by generation? No reason it couldn't...

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Yes, skewed young. I think full festival atmospheres usually developed over centuries, and so found something for everyone. What the new festival emphasis might bring, I don't know. But if things develop, these too will age...

My current guess is that a variety of festivals, complemented by quite basic regular worship, supplemented by a rather boundaryless online network, will be the coming model. Liturgical services, with their predictability and accessible (once it is learned) participation, may continue to hold up. Lengthy hymns and complicated readings - a style more like my own - may not thrive. One needs to be in that culture a good while to feel comfortable with it.

I am concerned that community may dilute into fellowship, partly because of the entertainment drive, but also because the loose boundaries of a congregation encourages even sincere believers to let some slip through the cracks. I also worry about the future of shared study. It certainly seems possible online in some form, but I don't know if it actually will.