An Interview with Karl Digerness
On Tuesday, September 17th at our 23rd Street and Wednesday, September 18th at our Sutter Street, City Church is hosting a service to sing, pray, and reflect on your own and with others. We talked with Karl Digerness, City Church's Director of Worship Arts, about the heart behind the service.
Why this prayer service?
There are three primary reasons...
First, we do it to deepen and develop our prayer life within community. We operate out of an undergirding philosophy that at the heart of prayer is communion with God. Silence, singing, speaking, meditating and listening are all ways to experience this deeper communion. The prayer service also provides a different outlet for folks to pray. It isn't the same as a weekend service, and our hope is that people from all different backgrounds and traditions will feel comfortable with the format.
We also do this because it is part of the devotional and obedience aspect of prayer. In praying for and with one another, we bear each other's burdens, learning to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice both within the church and around the world.
Finally, we link prayer to our understanding of the church year. At this time of year, coming home from vacation and settling into the routines of autumn through spring, we meet in this "ordinary time" to remember that God's timing is not our own; that the calendar of this world is not the calendar of the New Kingdom. The seemingly mundane act of meeting together in prayer and reflection are important parts of understanding ordinary time.
Other prayer services will be tied to specific events within the church calendar--we will meet again, for instance, in early December to signal the beginning of Advent, in January for Epiphany, and so on. But now, we find ourselves in ordinary time. We honor that by gathering together to pray.
You talk about the importance of the mundane. What might that call out in our prayer lives?
The novel and the new, especially in this culture and city, can become the very things which signal value to us. Novelty can be very clearly and closely tied to the perception of value. The Apple announcement yesterday highlights that, and we see that for some, their new products weren't "new" enough --their stock dropped 5%. There is a widespread mindset that people are called to be amazing! All the time! And it sets people up for disappointment.
What we really need is to cultivate a value of obscurity.
We need to pursue a cruciform understanding of success, of what life is really about, that God has chosen the weak to lead the way. We are so often yoked under the pressure of novelty and advancement (which can be good things) that we turn them into idols and marks of achievement, and this translates so negatively into our understanding of the Christian life. It doesn't take long to see that God works through the mundane and the daily.
Ordinary time is the longest period of the church year. The mundane growth process is long and arduous, but the wonderful thing about the church year is that it's not linear, it's circular.
What will the format of the service look like?
One thing we are committed to is respecting the hour of the service and not taking more time than that. This service is slower-paced than the regular weekend service. It is a wonderful time to rest and take yourself out of the world's calendar for a moment. It may be the only time that day or week or month that you have been still before God. We will begin with a responsive reading, and will spend some time in song and some time in silence and some time praying together.
Join us this week for the Prayer Service:
Tuesday, September 17 | 6:30 - 7:30 PM | 23rd St | 3261 23rd St
Wednesday, September 18 | 6:30 - 7:30 PM | Sutter St | 2460 Sutter St
NO CHILDCARE WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THESE SERVICES