One of the things we talked about a lot at seminary was the lack of healthy, biblical lament in church and, thus, the lopsidedness of our worship. We had a few times of lamentation in our seminary community chapels, but I have yet to see it attempted much, at least not in an intentional way, in a church setting.
But my friend Jon Kramer has blazed a bit of a trail (in our denominational tradition anyway) and recently led a contextually appropriate and, from what I can tell, very healthy and authentic lament service at his church (following another tragedy in the church) and anyone who is interested can see his comments, and a copy of his talk, here. For any of you who have talked about this with me in the past this is a head's up: Go read it, save it, print it off, frame it.
I feel for that church at this rough time, but thank God they have a pastor willing to help them begin to understand how to walk through it together, rather than, as Jon says, all feeling like they have to go off to some Shack somewhere to deal with it alone until they are ready to come do the "shiny happy" again. Oh man, that's gold.
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