Collective, Comprehensive Worship Renewal: A Conversation with Alareece Collie and Morgan Kochenower of Frederick Seventh-day Adventist Church
Best Practices for Adventist Worship (BP): Frederick Seventh-day Adventist Church is in the midst of an intentional worship renewal process. What was the impetus behind the endeavor? Is it part of a broader strategy and vision?
Alareece Collie (AC): As a pastoral staff, we took a close look at where we felt God was leading in the next two years and came up with the church's strategic plan. Sabbath tends to be the time when you most often encounter people in your church community. So the worship experience is something that we want to be engaging but also foundational for our interactions with our community for the rest of the week. If you've been doing something for a long time in a certain way, there is a tendency to stop asking why it’s done that way. So, we wanted to take a fresh look at worship in our church. Our congregation is also changing—it's growing and it's becoming more diverse. We wanted to ensure our worship reflected our growth and diversity, and that it had a meaningful spiritual impact. We not only wanted people to be spiritually fed when we gather on Saturday but also feel that they can contribute to worship so they can grow holistically. We didn't want to be on autopilot but instead, look at our worship practices with fresh eyes.
Morgan Kochenower (MK): Yes, Pastor Alareece and I recognized that God was making us hungry for something more and it started with Him. He brought a greater plan to light as a first step and the Worship Service was one part. As a Pastoral staff, we started having a conversation about having/desiring greater personal and professional growth in our walks with God and each other. As a result of that, we wanted to expand that growth mindset to include other people so that we could start fleshing out a vision/mission and meaningful strategy on how we can accomplish it. While worship tends to be synonymous with what happens on Sabbath during a church service, we knew that the heart/core/foundation is what happens in our walks with God and each other, so we really wanted to focus there and build out. We thought the healthiest way to do that was to take time to do some soul-searching. So we got some key people from a cross-section of the church and did NCD (Natural Church Development). It was a time of prayer, reflection, and discussion. It gave us a lot to think about, and one of the key areas that came to light that we needed to work on was our Sabbath morning worship service.
BP: The difference between worship and the rest of life is often a difference in degree, not kind. All of life is an act of worship. God is always present with us. But gathering for worship is an opportunity for us to be more present with God and one another. It sounds like you wanted to make the most of that opportunity when people are physically and otherwise present. It sounds like there wasn't a precipitating crisis, but rather, a desire to be even more intentional about how you gather for worship as part of a broader mission and strategy.
MK: Absolutely, We want Sabbath to be a time of relief, refreshment, and encouragement. We remind people every Sabbath that we have hope in Jesus. We want Church to be a place where people find a support system that will be Christ-centered.
BP: I know you ended up bringing in an outside consultant to help. How did you arrive at that point in the method?
AC: When we developed our strategic plan, we conducted a Natural Church Development survey. In the survey results, worship was identified as an area we may want to pay a little bit more attention to. So we convened a group of about 12 to 15 active participants who hold leadership positions in the church and got their feedback. Then, we as pastors worked with a consultant to develop a two-year strategic plan. We brought it to the board and then engaged the worship team. We have a variety of roles on the team. For example, we have someone who schedules the elders to lead the garden of prayer, we have another volunteer who schedules children's stories. And then, we decided we would benefit from an outside perspective. We wanted to have someone help guide us through the process of discovering why we do what we're doing, what the purpose of worship is, and even what worship truly is. So we decided to work with a worship consultant, someone who would work with us as a team and also facilitate a dialogue with the broader congregation so that our whole community could be part of the conversation, learn about worship, and grow.
BP: So you provided a training weekend for the church. And this was open to everyone, and not just the worship team, right?
AC: Yes. The worship team met with the consultant before the training weekend. That was foundational because they are the core leaders for this area of ministry and we value their perspective. And then we could open up the dialogue to the larger congregation. Everyone was invited to participate in the training gatherings, and the consultant also preached about worship during our main Sabbath morning gathering.
We had shared the strategic plan with the entire congregation. It is essential that we don’t just make changes as a leadership team, but that the congregation is not only aware of what we're doing but also why we're doing it so we can all contribute and work together. It was important for them to know because it was a part of the strategic plan and because we as a congregation, not just the leadership team, want to be more reflective in this season about worship at Frederick Church.
BP: It sounds like there was an intentional engagement of pastoral staff, a broader group of leaders who are involved with worship ministry, and the entire congregation. Also, it’s evident that this was not simply a linear process that started with the pastors but, rather, through surveys and strategic planning, the wider church community was engaged from the beginning.
AC: Yes. And the worship training weekend was, of course, not the end of the process. Now, we'll debrief the weekend as a leadership team. We’ll reflect to see if there are changes we might consider implementing. We don’t want to move too quickly, but collectively as a group discuss and pray about things we can do to make our experience more impactful for people.
MK: Yes, this process was very collaborative. We were very intentional in two ways: asking meaningful questions and listening. We wanted to facilitate a productive conversation that moved individuals and our faith community forward in positive and healthy steps. Taking a bird’s eye view, this is an organizational approach we try and take at every level because we have found that it fosters greater relationship, investment, and excitement and in turn, makes our worship experience richer. We have been doing little things for a while that we are really benefiting from now, and it’s because of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I praise God.
BP: If you're going to make changes, it's essential to be thoughtful and understand why you’re making them and how you can make them effectively. It's also essential to understand why things were being done the way they were being done. It’s been said that you shouldn’t change inherited traditions if you don't understand their purpose and function. There are shortcomings but also a lot of embodied wisdom in the way that things are. Only when we appreciate that wisdom, can we creatively make improvements with integrity.
As you look to the future, what is your hope for worship at Frederick over the next year or two?
MK: As a Pastoral Staff, our prayer for our Worship Service is that it would be an upper room experience where the Holy Spirit is being prayed for, poured out, and received. Our prayer is that we would not come to worship because we are members but that we would come because we are responding to Jesus, declaring His glory and majesty, and basking in our salvation through Jesus. Our prayer is that while we are responding to His invitation into His presence, we would fulfill the first commission given to Abraham by being a blessing to everyone around us and fulfilling the 2nd commission given by Jesus to go into the world and bring people into fellowship with Him, which means we are inviting others—our family, neighbors, co-workers, strangers—into Jesus’ presence every week to receive transformative power from on high. There will be tangible steps, processes, conversations, and meetings that I look forward to being a part of as Pastor Alareece leads out.
Ultimately, we are humbled to see how Jesus continues to lead us and reveal Himself to our faith community and through our faith community.