for Trinity Sunday (May 30)

Names

Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31 (Wisdom calls)
Psalm 8
Revelation 5:1–5 (2b “we boast in ... the glory of God”; 5b God’s love poured into our hearts)
John 16:12–15 (13 “‘When the Spirit of truth comes, ...’”)

The opportunities for playing with names are almost limitless. Encourage silliness as well as reverence and the concept of names reflecting relationship.

• Invite participants to share the names, titles, and nicknames used in their families and friend circles. Pet names can be an especially rich source of relationship, but be prepared for the affection-bearing putdown. It’s probably best not to allow participants to reveal the pet names of those not present, especially for young children to reveal what they’ve heard their parents call each other.
• Ask participants to share the secret names they call themselves, even if each only whispers it to one other person. Such names can found special bonds.
• The Hebrew name for Dame Wisdom is Hokhma. You can talk about how unwieldy that is compared to Sophia.

Musical ideas: “Tell Me Your Name” by Carolyn McDade (1998; on her CD “We Are the Land We Sing”)
“The Name Game” from the 1960s (“Banana fanna fo fanna,” etc.)

For starters

Megachurches ... praise bands ... “emergent church.” There seems to be a lot of experimentation going on these days, but most Worship practices still pretty much follow familiar patterns and use the language developed by adults over the millennia. They’re carefully scripted by professional theologians and designed like a school lesson plan, to make a predictable change in the feelings and the thinking, and if you’re lucky, the lives of a more-or-less passive audience. They may teach, preach, soothe, or arouse, but none of them are designed for very much listening, especially to the children.

Timbrels Worship is meant to reverse that direction. We have the Revised Common Lectionary to walk us through most of the Bible over three years. That’s a place to start. But what if that was the only thing firmly planned for a community gathered to worship? What if the person responsible for facilitating the gathering came with some ideas for music, prayers, and activities, even some props, according to what reading the Lections in advance made her/im think about? And what if, when the Scriptures were read, the grown-up, heard-it-before-and-thought-it-through community stayed quiet and asked the children first what songs or games or dances or stories they thought of? That will be participant-driven, minimally structured, Timbrels Worship.

Yes, this kind of Worship service will be hard to control, and the outcomes will be impossible to predict. It will not satisfy the needs of everyone in a community. It is not meant to replace the scripted Worship service. It is meant to complement that Worship practice, and over time to enrich it by engaging the community, and especially its children, in expressing their faith experiences together. In particular, it is meant to let the children show the grownups what they already, intuitively understand about God, instead of letting the grownups mark out the acceptable boundaries for a faith journey. It is meant for shared exploration. It is meant to let the Holy Spirit write the script, and maybe to write it in crayon.