wfn.org | James Costen Preaches During Morning Worship

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

2June-1997 
GA97108 
 
             James Costen Preaches During Morning Worship 
 
                           by Dee Wade 
 
Syracuse--Reducing a service of worship to words on a page is a little like 
describing a sumptuous meal to a friend who was absent from the table.  The 
experience doesn't fully translate if you weren't there to take it all in 
for yourself. 
 
    If you were at worship on Wednesday morning at the Crouse-Hinds Theatre 
at the Mulroy Civic Center, you ingested the sermon of the Rev. James 
Costen. You heard him say, "Don't confuse fad with function; don't confuse 
rhetoric with reason; don't confuse restructure with revival; don't confuse 
busy-ness with business." 
 
    Those lively words could be applied to many situations in the church. 
But Costen applied them effectively and eloquently to the matter of worship 
itself.  Playing off the day's theme, the maintenance of divine worship 
(the third of Six Great Ends of the Church as listed in the first chapter 
of The Book Of Order ), Costen's sermon title was "The Perils of Deferred 
Maintenance." 
 
    His text was Psalm 84: "How pleasant is your dwelling place, O Lord_" 
Humankind is a "worshiping species," said Costen.  He defined worship as 
the awareness "that what we know and experience at any given time is not 
all there is."  For the Christian, worship is "time when we celebrate the 
goodness of God, whose likeness we know in Jesus Christ."  True worship 
occurs "where the Gospel is preached with power and conviction." Describing 
it as an important business, Costen said, "It is only when we enjoy a vital 
worship life that we enjoy a vital Christian experience." 
 
    Costen proclaimed an avoidance of two extremes in the maintenance of 
divine worship.  Worship can become so "liturgically structured as to be 
schoolish," or it can lapse into a casual informality and become "so 
faddish as to be trite."  In all things Costen called for worship to be 
taken seriously and its planning to be undertaken thoughtfully and 
carefully.  With a verbal dart directed toward those pastors who put in too 
little time too late in sermon preparation, he said, "Saturday night 
specials are extremely deadly, whether in the ghetto, the suburbs, or the 
sanctuary." 
 
    The perils of deferring the maintenance of divine worship are many, 
said Costen.  They include a loss of fellowship, of koinonia, of the 
gathering of the people of God, allowing for the sharing of true 
friendship.  Also lost is an enthusiasm for evangelism.  "People are not 
drawn to that which is dead," he declared.  A third factor in peril is 
service, or diakonia. 
 
    True worship leads to "service inside and outside of the church. We 
learn that a genuinely religious experience can be holding the hand of the 
sick, or in many other acts of service." 
 
    Costen called those assembled to understand the church as "the church 
for others," a statement derived from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's description of 
Jesus Christ as "the man for others."  He closed his sermon with a 
statement followed by a question.  "The quality of our worship life demands 
our maintenance of it.  The time has come to do it, don't you think?" Those 
worshiping with him that day seemed to think that it was. 
 
    Helping Costen serve up the fulsome feast of worship Wednesday morning 
included Holly Haile-Davis and Elizabeth Haile, who greeted the worshipers 
and led them in an exercise of "community centering" through words, music, 
and movement.  Based on a Native American tradition, it was beautifully and 
gracefully done. 
 
    Mary Ellen Frackenpohl and James Weldon Johnson called the people to 
worship using a piece that worship leaders all over the country would do 
well to emulate.  Entitled "Knee-Bowed and Body-Bent," it was interspersed 
with sung lines from Psalm 23. 
 
    Amanda Carnie lent her rich and tone-perfect voice to God's praise as 
cantor for the day.  Lawrence Moir led the prayers of the people, and 
additional music was provided by Alice Dickerson Hatt, pianist, Kim 
Palermo, organist, and David Kim, flutist. 
 
    Also present were the members of the Trombone Quartet of S.U.N.Y. 
College at Potsdam, NY, and members of the Northern New York PresbyBrass, 
Arthur Frackenpohl, director. 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 
  mailed from World Faith News <wfn-news@wfn.org>  

--