58.4 Shared Space

Introduction
I have experienced many flashes of beauty in worship over the years, moments that make the hair on my arms stand up or bring tears. We all know the kind. Usually, they accompany the celebration of sacraments, a critical turn of phrase in a sermon, or a time when voices join to sing God’s praise.

Many Ways to Pray: Consenting to Shared Space as Worship
My grandmother Ruth’s favorite word was “togetherness.” When she said it aloud, it was never just a word but rather a monument to the effort she put into gathering her family, flung across the world for a time, into a single space.

Explorations of Nature and Neurospicy Childhoods: Moving from Inclusion to Justice in Spaces of Worship
Worship finished and I stepped into the light-filled narthex. With the postlude still swelling in air, a parent caught me on the way out. “Weren’t the stars a great idea? My son never sits still and pays attention in worship, but he was happy to cut and paste shapes for an hour!”

Reimagining Church: The Gifts and Challenges of Online Ministry
A ninety-year-old church elder reads a Sunday Call to Worship while her cat appears from offscreen and walks across her Zoom box, landing contentedly in her lap.

Courage to Pray: Daily Prayer in Congregational Life
It was a short time into the pandemic when I first heard the opening sentences for the morning prayer liturgy in the Book of Common Worship (BCW). A former seminary classmate invited me to join an online prayer group working to connect church musicians and pastors in that uncertain moment. I was intrigued.

The Work of Our Hands: The Music of the Spheres
I went to graduate school at Louisiana State University (LSU), and most graduates of the stained-glass program there major more in full-bodied color than in the narrative.

Reimagining Accessibility with Young Worshipers
Sonja Dziekciowski and I (Alexandra Jacob) work together collaboratively as part of the Families, Youth, and Children staff in our congregation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Over the past four years of working together, we have sought to strengthen our commitment to accessibility in worship and faith formation for our community’s youngest worshipers.

Worship with Creation
On Friday night the Sabbath began when my grandmother lit the candles which, in every Jewish home, traditionally begins the twenty-four-hour Sabbath.

A Guide for Visual Literacy
Visual literacy is the ability to access and understand meaning conveyed through images. As the church struggles to reassert its relevancy following pandemic-induced changes, might artful imagery be embraced as unselfconsciously and enthusiastically as hymnody?

Together in the Kingdom: Ideas for Inclusive Worship
There are many questions and myths/beliefs about the place for people with disabilities in our faith practice. How we hold the truths of disability and healing leads to our perspective about how our practices can support people with disabilities.

On Liturgy: Shared Space
Accessibility and sustainability are words that bring to mind all kinds of images. From a liturgical perspective, accessibility can be linked to the ways that people feel welcomed to the table. Accessibility connects to the practical side of life as well, such as the ways people are able to enter your building, and beyond that be able to functionally use the building space.

On Music: Creating Sacred Spaces
On a warm summer night, God intervened in a way that was beyond comprehension. During a time of worship, I felt God’s presence, and the fullness of God’s love became indescribable. It was not just in the words of the hymns or the warmth of the prayers but in the overwhelming sense of belonging in a space where love for God and for one another was palpable.

On Preaching: Known, Called, and Empowered by God
One of my favorite parts of preaching, particularly as a preacher who regularly uses the Revised Common Lectionary, is that I get to return to passages over and over and discover anew their blessings and revelations, holy reminders of how God has been, is, and will be present with creation in the most intimate and enduring ways.

On the Arts: Photography in Worship
Photography literally means “writing with light.” Photographers see; we see what others do not see, capture it in our viewfinder, and make a picture. The picture freezes time, magically preserves the moment, and though a still life, is yet alive.

Imagination in an Age of Crisis: Soundings from the Arts and Theology
The arts have been eschewed by the church at various points throughout history, but the church has also been a great patron of the arts. This back-and-forth relationship is probably because artists are often edgy; we point out things that might be uncomfortable, nonconformist, or even blasphemous.