“Come and gather beneath the tree of life. Come and gather beneath the tree of life—root of wisdom, branch of peace, fruit of healing and release. Come and gather beneath the tree of life.”—Tree of Life by Marty Haugen
Music is an important part of worship. The music can come from hymns, liturgy, or contemporary worship songs. I enjoy leading new music and I like to push myself to learn new music.
During the month of November, we will begin to learn a “new to us” liturgy for the 8:30 worship service. The liturgy is called “Tree of Life” and it was written by Marty Haugen (who also wrote Holden Evening Prayer) and Susan Briehl (who served as campus pastor at PLU and served as a codirector at Holden Village). As we have done in the past, we will introduce the liturgy slowly over several weeks until we finally have all of the liturgical pieces in place. I remember back to the interviews with the call committee five years ago when we were considering a call to Bethesda and I remember being asked about liturgy and worship. And I remember “warning” the committee that we would learn new liturgies. The truth is that I get bored with singing the same liturgy over and over again. A change helps me to focus back in on why we worship, who we worship, and how the liturgy shapes us as God’s people. This will be the fourth liturgy that we have learned over the last five years. And moving forward, we will be able to move between liturgies with the seasons of the church year.
I hope that you are excited as I am to learn a new liturgy in the coming month’s.
~ Pastor Steve