Course Objectives and Goals

Indiana Area Extension Course of Study School 2013

COS 413: Worship and the Sacraments

Tim Burchill, Instructor

This course examines the sacraments, rites, and liturgy of the United Methodist Church and the pastor’s role as worship leader.

Objectives include:

1.    Examining the theology and practice of the sacraments

2.    To finish the class having written a sermon series revolving around the most common questions lay people ask:

a.      The sacraments of communion and baptism

b.     The church year; our unique Biblical/United Methodist emphases

c.     The role of worship in discipleship, evangelism, and missional living

d.     The written material for this class is designed to be half essay and half sermon—an extremely organized, substantial, and slightly more formal sermon—that can be easily adapted to the local church setting.

3.    Examining the United Methodist pattern for worship and its historical and theological grounding. To better understand our American Wesleyan tradition, the “faith family tree” our practice of worship springs from, and how those inform what we do during Sunday morning worship.

4.    Reflecting and developing practical tools for Christian marriage, services of death and resurrection, baptism, and adaptation of great thanksgiving prayers as well as adding a healing component to the service of Word and Table.

5.    Exploring your personal worship style, the manner in which you model worship, your strengths and weaknesses in leading worship, your ability to teach your flock why we worship the way we do, and how to adapt your gifts and passion for worship to the needs and the appropriate expectations of your local church.

6.    Becoming a more confident, informed, and intentional United Methodist leader of congregational worship. 

7.    Developing the strategies and practices that allow you, as a regular leader of worship, to deepen your own ability to worship in a richer, fuller, and more life-giving way.

Other Important Considerations:

         I expect that this will be a challenging course. I have worked very hard to balance the academic expectations of the Course of Study with the practical application of worship in the local church setting. One way I strive to do this is to make your writing assignments adaptable to a sermon series that you can carry back to your congregation. I also plan to put many of the resources we use in class onto a CD-Rom so that you will have a variety of worship resources at your fingertips. I also try to include some self-evaluation tools that can be used throughout the course to get a better sense of what kind of worship leader/pastor/follower of Jesus you are, and how to better use that knowledge in sacramental worship.

I added accountability with brief quizzes at the beginning of each session, not to catch you up or make you sweat, but simply to make sure that you are keeping up with your assignments and have come prepared to class. The quizzes will not be particularly difficult if you have read the assignments. I am a busy pastor as well and I am bringing in a whole new raft of relevant books and resources that I will struggle to fit in and teach as much as you will take the time to study them. I figure we can learn together (and from each other), but I won’t have patience for those who are not making a full effort to thoughtfully engage the material.

I am an ordained elder but I have a heart for bi-vocational local pastors. I believe you to be the heart and soul of what makes our connection work. I also believe you are the ministry heroes who do everything you can to balance family, work, and pastoral ministry. I realize that not all of you will be excellent writers, even though you may communicate quite effectively in other ways. I don’t want you beating yourself up with grammar and spelling and such, but I strongly suggest you have someone who does have those skills proofread your work before you turn it in. I have been told over and over that the standards for our Course of Study School are the highest possible—that we are offering a seminary equivalency. So I do expect a reasonable amount of care in preparing your written work.

For those whose grade is important to them there are a variety of extra credit opportunities that will help raise your letter grade. Each session we’ll have a fun in-class debate around some issue related to our reading. I would like those who plan to participate to let me as soon as possible if they want to participate and it will be a first come, first serve basis. I’ve included scripture readings for each of the sessions. I encourage you to include them in your daily study/devotion for the length of the class. If you find others that work as well, please share them with the class for extra credit as well.

I have set up a simple ‘blog’ on which I will make these and other materials available to you (cos413.blogspot.com). It would be worth signing up so that you can leave comments or ask questions. There are two chapters, from two books, that we will be using—one from Schnase and the other Hickman. It is not necessary to purchase those books, if you do not already have them. I can email you a PDF file of each chapter upon your request. Copyright law allows me to copy up to one chapter per book for educational purposes. And therefore if you need them, do not hesitate to ask via email: tim@andrew-umc.org. In regard to contacting me, always put COS 413 in the subject heading. That way I won’t miss your email in the vast quantity of messages that come through my inbox.

Finally, I want you to know that as soon as you register for the class and your names are given to me I will be praying for you every day throughout the duration of our class. I will be asking God to give you that elusive balance between family, church, work, and Sabbath. I will also be asking that the time you invest in these assignments offer tangible blessings to you during, and long after our time together is done. If there are other pastoral or personal concerns you would like me to be lifting up, I encourage you to share them with me. I’m going to be praying for you with or without them, so please feel free to pass them along.