“I feel alive”: something we exclaim after an invigorating dunk in cold water, soaring through the air on a hang glider, or feeling the rush of wind as we tip over the edge of that first big hill on a roller coaster. Funny how none of these involve sitting quietly and contemplating deep and heady things. As much as I love a good theological or philosophical rabbit trail, sitting and cogitating, as my grandmother would say, has a way of drawing my focus away from the body instead of toward it. And it seems that to feel alive, we have to be in our bodies, feeling and experiencing the world around us with our whole selves.

Now, given all of this, you may be thinking that we’re attempting a fool’s errand if we want to help people feel alive in the context of worship. Certainly, most of our worship spaces are devoid of ice-cold water, hang gliders, or loop-di-loops. But perhaps that’s not necessarily the point of worship. Worship is about pointing to God, who made us alive, who created and redeems us, who gave us the whole of ourselves and gives us grace to experience our aliveness in God and with one another. We don’t have to produce a spectacle to manufacture feelings and hype in our congregation. Honestly, nothing we could say or do or create can come close to encountering the Triune God who gives and sustains life for all creation.

Now, you might be thinking, then why try? And that’s a completely understandable question, but possibly not the best question. We’re not in competition with God here, nor are we trying to get God’s attention. One of my all-time pet peeves is when a worship service begins with, “Let us invite God into the space.” God doesn’t need to be invited! God is already there because God is all-present. There’s no place we can go that God is not already there. Gathered worship is about attuning us as individuals and as a community to recognize God in our midst and to learn to follow what God is already doing. We don’t need to manufacture spectacle or hype up emotions. We just need to be honest about God and bring the best of ourselves in worship of God—both in planning worship and in the communal act itself.

During this series, we offer a prompt each week to help your community write down and tell the story of your church, alive and being made alive in your particular community. You might want to put the prompt on your social media page(s) earlier in the week or present it after the sermon, giving everyone paper and a pen and holding space with quiet music while people write their responses. Invite congregants to keep the paper to themselves or to place it in the offering plate if they are willing to share it with the community. Gather any shared responses and find a way to share them with the church, either on social media, in a newsletter, or even incorporated into the sermon the following week.

For week 3, the writing prompt is: How have you encountered God in the fullness of who you are—body, mind, and spirit—in this church community?