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| A WORD FROM THE PASTOR |
| The Community Church of Mountain Lakes United Church of Christ |
One of the things that I love about the Community Church of Mountain Lakes is its openness to creativity and variety
in worship. The basic outline of worship is pretty traditional, and yet, there is room for innovative elements that bring a
more contemporary feel and connection to the worship experience. This is definitely one of Community Church’s
strengths, an openness to both the traditional and the progressive or innovative.
In the recent Faith Communities Today report entitled “FACTs on Worship: 2010,” Dr. Marjorie Royle writes, “All in
all, a quality worship experience is important for congregations that want to grow. Particularly in Oldline and
Conservative Protestant families, congregations that provide a solid worship experience, including worship that is
joyful, inspiring, and full of a sense of God’s presence, are more likely to be spiritually vital and growing in numbers.”
The study found that congregations with innovative and contemporary worship styles are significantly more likely to
have grown in the last five years.
While the American church may not be as central an institution as it once was in United States’ society, people in our
culture are still looking for meaning and an experience of the holy in their lives. The challenge for us in the church is to
make worship relevant and meaningful to those outside the church today. The FACT study showed that congregations
that included contemporary worship elements had a significantly higher percentage of young adults ages 18 to 35 than
those that did not. (This is the age group that is often underrepresented in U.S. churches.) What’s more, congregations
in which worship was described as innovative were also more likely to be described as spiritually vital and alive. That’s
a pretty clear indicator of what works, that is, of what young people are looking for.
The age range of our membership and Sunday worship attendances shows that we are on the right track. Worship at
the Community Church is vital and creative. I am thankful for the creative energy of our Worship Team. They are
phenomenal!
In the coming months, I will be working with the Worship Team and the boards of the church to investigate and
eventually try out some innovations we haven’t yet tried or which aren't being used currently. These will be
innovations such as worship using a particular style of music or the use of media technology in worship so that worship
becomes more of a multi-sensory experience. God comes to us through all the senses with which God created us. By
making worship more multi-sensory, we will be inviting God’s spirit to touch our lives in new ways and thus enabling
ourselves and others to know God more fully.
I ask that you hold the Worship Team and the church boards in prayer as we discuss and innovate, as we plan and
prepare. May we all be led to discern how we might reach out to both the younger and the older members of the
communities around us with a meaningful message of the peace and unconditional love that comes from the Holy One
we worship. Also, please let me and other congregational leaders know when you find certain worship elements to be
particularly meaningful or spiritually vital.
This is both a challenging and exciting time for the church as we endeavor to discern how to reach out to the neighbors
around us in meaningful ways. I am thankful to be here with you doing this work together at the Community Church of
Mountain Lakes.
Blessings,
Rev. Dr. Debra Duke
