Henry de Jong

I compare worship service to camping. Both are recreating, and both serve to draw attention to God and to His creation. Both force you to put yourself aside and to go with the flow.

Camping is not always comfortable. Real campers know that rain is inevitable and take it in stride. When the sun shines we bask in it. When it gets cold we dress warmly and when the wind picks up we batten down the tarps. Then when the sun shines again we appreciate it all the more.

Camping is far better than going to a cottage or a resort (call me snooty if you will). Cottage living is like canned music. You make your own play list so that you just have to shuffle a bit when the weather changes. And there are 2x4's and panelling between you and God's creation. And after years of going to the same cottage you end up on the same golf course, the same beach, and the same shops. It's limiting.

In worship, some prefer the preaching to be comfortable, the order of worship predictable and the songs to be familiar, but this too is limiting. Congregations are diverse, and unpredictable, just like - because they are - God's creation. The more you can draw out of that diversity in worship the better.

The focus of worship is not having a good experience for yourself, but on experiencing God dwelling in us all. Participation by many (over time) is good. If this results in gaffes, surprises, unknown (to you) songs, awkward testimonies, and other outpourings of the human condition, then we rejoice that we can be there for each other and that God is with us all. And you can rest assured that the sun will shine lots of the time.

Jubilee Fellowship CRC has a list of "songs in order of frequency sung" on its website for liturgists and music teams to consult when preparing worship services. This list serves to guard against overusing a song, but also as a reminder of songs that the congregation knows.

You are welcome to browse it yourselves. The address is http://www.jubileecrc.org/resources/songs/JubileeSongs.html. (reminder to myself that I really should update this list, since it goes only to May of last year.)

The list is compiled by a perl program I wrote that parses a range of our MediaShout worship service files (which are nicely in xml format).

But here is a simple top ten list to get you going:

• Here I Am To Worship
• How Great is Our God
• I Lift Your Name
• Speak, O Lord
• Hope of the Nations
• I Lift My Eyes Up
• Lord Most High
• You Are My All In All
• Come, Now Is The Time To Worship

Normal is a perfectly acceptable and helpful description of worship practices in any local congregation. But "normal" should never be prescriptive. In fact, the radical nature of christianity will often prod us to go against the norm. Without, of course, destroying the real comfort of all the things that we normally do in worship.

I don't know. Around here if someone tells me that all this cold weather and snow we've been having is normal for this time of year I don't think it's meant in the sense of being prescriptive.

I'm a carpenter and even I didn't know that "normal" was latin for carpenter's square. Furthermore, I regularly use my squares to fit shelving to abnormal spaces. I'm quite content to go with the flow rather than insisting on the 90 degree standard.

To me "normally" and "ordinarily" are synonyms.