One Hour, how do you hit the ground running?

See if this sounds familiar.

I hit the snooze bar too many times. My spouse hit the snooze bar too many times. We are running ten minutes late. Breakfast was burnt, cold, or didn't even happen. I have indigestion because I ate my burnt/cold breakfast too fast. I had an argument with my spouse/kids because they are the reason we are late. My spouse/kids had an argument with me because I am the reason we are late. We hit every red light on the way to church. Because we are late, we had to park at the very back of the parking lot, making us even later. As we walked into church and took our seats, it felt like every eye in the place was on us. How embarrassing! Did the pastor up front glare at us for being late? Wait a minute, I put on one black and one navy sock. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Selah

And now ... we expect you to instantly place all these distractions aside and allow yourself to have one hour, oops, 50 minutes of intimacy with our creator. Cue the Mission Impossible Theme!

I think the largest distraction we face entering a time of worship is the time it takes to get to church. So how do we, as environmental creators, take a congregation from the hectic process of getting to worship, to actually worshiping God in spirit and in truth?

In our worship tradition, the Call to Worship is one of the first elements. It's purpose is simple, "call people to worship." We use anecdotal stories, scripture readings, video clips, or other things to achieve that purpose. The trick has become to remember the purpose , and keep it fresh.

I grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, a liturgic worship tradition. It is one of the most beautiful worship services, but it also presents a great challenge. Every week the prayers and the patterns are predictable. This can unintentionally allow the congregation to "going through the motions"or "doing church on auto-pilot". Our minds wander so easily.

I had the privilege of attending mass recently, and watched this phenomenon in action. That was until the priest, for what ever reason, stopped at the end of a prayer and personally expounded on the prayer he just recited. It was amazing to watch the congregation look at each other, as if to say, "Wait a minute, that is not part of the normal worship. What is he saying?" Those statements by the priest brought the words of the prayer home. It caused the congregation to engage in the process more then they were seconds before. Those words were the ones being talked about in the parking lot and I am sure around the supper table that night.

What that priest had done, in effect was to call his congregation to a greater depth of worship by getting their attention. He didn't let them just go through the motions. I really appreciated that. How do we make sure that the call to worship, a standard element of our worship times, doesn't become something that people just sit through, but that engages them, and call them away from the distracted process of "Getting to Worship"? How do we keep our call to worship doing it's job?