Worship

A Mennonite scholar recently wrote in regard to the American Church, "We are both in the world and of it." He meant that we are no longer just in the world out of necessity, to minister and to work, while maintaining a palpable identity as the people of God. Instead in our engagement with the world, the ideas of the world have become our ideas, the behaviors of the world have become our behaviors, and the values of the world have become our values. And now we have transported what we have learned into our homes and churches.

If this is indeed the case, we as churches have some serious reckoning to do. If we are truly taking our cues from what we learn and absorb in our culture, what we believe to be true is certainly skewed and inaccurate.

One example of this, in my estimation, is our attitude toward worship. Worship is by definition abandoning our souls, bodies, minds, and voices to the praise of God. It is freely and actively offering whatever we have to the Lord. It is necessarily (other) God-centered.

Unfortunately, we have learned from our culture that life is to be me-centered. Life is about a headlong pursuit of personal happiness, pleasure, and fulfillment. We find vestiges of this throughout worship.

Relatedly, our culture has taught us that we deserve to be entertained. So when we show up somewhere as a group (like a concert or movie), someone else is responsible for running the program and we simply sit back and watch. In this we have been taught to be passive observers and active only in either applauding what we like or criticizing what we do not. Our culture expects this response because things like concerts and movies are a product to be consumed and consumers who pay money have a right to be distinguishing about the products they purchase.

And now we take this approach with worship. We have so long taken this approach to our worship, in fact, that I do not believe we readily see it as being culturally formed instead of Spirit breathed or even incongruent with God's desires for us.

There are enormous and myriad problems with this consumer approach to worship:

1. It assumes that worship is a product that has been created to be consumed by people. We come to worship to get something.
2. Very simply, it makes our being pleased the focus of our gathering. This is a violation of commandment numero uno, "You shall have no other gods before me."
3. It assumes that we are doing God a favor by showing up at worship, giving a whole hour or two of our precious time. We might even pay attention...for a minute.
4. It assumes that worship should conform to cultural standards in regard to entertainment (sitcom length, action, technology, movement, concert-strength music, comedy, etc.).
5. It assumes that worship has something to do with personal preferences and, really, that is what matters. I can even get a new worship experience elsewhere if I am not pleased with the one currently being served me.

I wonder what worship would be like if we were to strip it bare of anything that reeked of our culture? I wonder what worship would be like if we only did those things that had biblical precedent? I wonder what worship would be like if it was centered on God instead of us? I wonder what worship would be like if we showed up for a single purpose: to proclaim our love for the One who has saved us.

Dreaming...

Jeff