The thought occurred to me today that scripture, psalms, whatever, are like a self-contained movie.
A movie's got sound and music tracks, it has a story line, it grabs the viewer and pulls them in, it creates an experience that's akin to real life, it changes people, it's multi-dimensional, it hits all our senses.
Since we believe that scripture is life, that it's supernatural, that it's written from the very finger of God, why shouldn't it be seen this way?
Thus when folks come together, it takes a collective effort to wrap one's hands around any given chunk. Everyone contributes their insight and suggestions. And the end result should be: all of the above.
Unfortunately we tend to approach it mainly as literary. Two-dimensional. In the Methodist Church, worthy only as responsive reading and for preaching purposes.
It seems to me that we're looking at the bible with too many filters on our ears and eyes. In super-reality, it's just itching to burst out with life, just like a great movie does. An operatic movie, a music video, a documentary--all rolled up into one.

If you want to hang your hat on one certain fact, it is this...I will be misunderstood.

Friends, our church model is broken.
What's church? A music formality joined to a speaking formality.
Same old, same old, decade after century after millennium.
But when we look at God's ways, what we see is freshness, new every morning, never the same thing, paradox, unpredictable, creative, flowing water, mystery, deep.
How can a group of people (= fellowship) who like control and predictability, tap into God's ways?
Here's a suggestion. It's the tip of an iceberg.
Take a portion of scripture. Let's say, a psalm.
Everyone has to, or should be strongly encouraged to, participate. (We need you.) Break it down. What's this mean? What's that mean? What's the pattern emerging? What's its application to the future, to my life, to the immediate context? Take your time working through it. After all, this IS church. Not neatly partitioned into music and lecture. Integrated, for once.
Back and forth we go. It's a conversation with people and with the Holy Spirit. Everyone is needed to play with God.
Then let's make it memorable. Let's make it outrageous. Let's summon up the powers of creativity and wrap this scripture up in an experience.
Think a DJ spinning his discs, adding this rhythm, bringing in this voice, repeating that line, scratching that record. (I don't like the secular parallels but it will have to do.) Make the scripture sing (as it has been and will forever be sung in the 3rd heaven). Add movement, as God likes dance too. Not some sort of trendy hip-hop movement but something simple that anyone can do. Anyone, old or young, wheelchair-bound or mentally handicapped. Everyone's welcome here, everyone's NEEDED.
Scripture as opera. Scripture as Broadway. Scripture as audio-visual-physio-emotional-psychological-psychical.
Scripture as Jesus presented it...real experiences with his disciples in tow, mixing it up with the world. An argument with the Pharisees. Here's a naked women writhing in the dirt, cast there by her Pharisaical accusers. Here's a lame man, a leper, someone whose blind eye drips mucous and flies (on which Jesus puts his hands before touching mine).
The bottom line...the old church model specialized in being forgotten. Week after week goes into the books as yet another unremarkable, totally bland cacophony of words that evaporate into the ether, wasting everyone's time. Yet we repeat this pattern over and over and over. Why? Perhaps because they know deep down inside that what they are presenting isn't worth remembering anyway!
What I'm proposing is bringing together people who love God, who want to break away from predictable formulas to something that's more in the moment, while pooling resources and searching the scriptures for all the energy that's bound up in them.

I wonder if...there are some posts (ie, books) in the bible that are less "filtered" than others. Meaning, the writer's personality either got more in the way of God saying something or less in the way. Perhaps those writers who earned appellations (eg. David being a man after God's own heart, Daniel being a friend of God, John being the disciple whom Jesus loved) were those most apt to put down on paper exactly what God said, regardless of whether they understood it or not.
If this is true, the Psalms is thus a treasure trove of things past, present and future. David dutifully recorded it all. Surely he had to scratch his head many times and say "I have no idea what I just wrote!"
On the other hand, and I say this gingerly, the book of James may be an example of a writer whose personality just plain got in the way. Martin Luther thought that book shouldn't have even been canonized. Many have seized upon James to justify their proud works over someone's "mere" faith. Confusion and contention stem from James's writings. That's not to say that James shouldn't be in the bible. God has been able to "overcome" James. But it certainly hasn't made things easy for the Church following on the heels of James!
That's why I see James as a sort of spiritual "smoke detector." Depending on the slant someone takes, I can then figure out where their heart is, what their orientation is regarding leading by the Spirit vs. leading by the Flesh.
So I can't relax when I read James. But I can when I read David. Or the prophets. Or John. Or Daniel. Or...