A Symphony of Worship - Part One

What your brain pictures when you read the title above will definitely influence what you think I am going to write in this blog.  But what I am hoping for, is that as we process these thoughts together, new ones may emerge to challenge and stretch our thinking. 

These new thoughts might even make you a little uncomfortable.  Knowing people as we do, there are some of us who are very comfortable where we are in life and really don’t want to entertain challenging truths.  However, for all of us that hunger to know more, and want to grow in understanding, I invite you to come and explore deeper roots with me.

At some time in history, words and titles like worship band, worship leader, worship service, and worship pastor did not exist.  They were created later to describe an act, person, or position.  While I fully believe that all of these titles were designated with wonderful intentions and have served us very well in the church, I also believe that sometimes the true view and meaning of worship has been skewed because of misunderstanding and lack of meaningful teaching.

I fear that many, in their church experience, have accidently been given the idea that worship goes something like this:

          Get up.

          Get ready.

          Go to the church building. 

          Get out of the car. 

          Say “hello” to my friends.

          Grab some coffee.

          Go to the auditorium. 

          Hear some great and powerful Christian music. 

Sing, clap, raise their hands and be excited.

          Then, worship stops and the preaching begins.

And, in reality, they may have focused on worship or, on the other hand, they may not have done anything more than just have a social, religious activity that feels really good.

We need to be aware that sometimes what we do in a church service could easily be done without the Spirit of the Lord even being present. Our self sufficient tendencies push us toward the direction that if the Lord decided to not show up at our church services, we could carry on just fine without Him.

When was the last time that someone you know sat in a dry, dead church service, and during the meeting they spoke up and said, “Hey everybody our worship sounds so manufactured and artificial, let’s just stop this service and pray for the presence of the Lord before we do another thing!”  (You probably won’t need a calculator to add up the amount of times you have heard of this being done.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of churches that are not dry and dead, but then again, so very many are because they have slipped into a comfortable blur of repetition based more on self gratification rather than on worshiping the person of Christ.

When a church service is carried on that way, who is it that has the courage to speak up in such a meeting? Normally we just let the service go on and hope for better next time. Some people just decide to leave such churches (they may not even know fully why) and then try to find another church that hopefully does “church” better.

Sometimes in our zeal and quickness to grow the church, we leave off some necessary teaching from the scripture – by accident or neglect—no matter, the result is the same.

Here is an example:  Many of us have the idea that worship is something we do at the church or in a home on any given day (usually Saturdays or Sundays) of the week.  Just step up to the average Christian and ask them when do they “go to worship.”  Most of the time, their answer will prove what I just said is right.

Usually when someone brings up the idea of worship, our minds run to envisioning a place, guitars, key boards, singing, and such, or it may go to organs and choir lofts. 

Now please don’t get me wrong, I love all of this stuff too! I admire all the gifted musicians and singers that God has given us for such wonderful enhancement to our church services. Some of the Godliest people I know are worship leaders, and I really do appreciate the great effort they put into designing a time during which we can worship the Lord together.  God has gifted them in such a special way.

But understand this fact, no building, piano, drum, choir robe, or worship leader/pastor is necessary at all for worship.  The problem comes to us when we begin to think that they are necessary.

I have sat in many church services when someone in leadership got up after the singing and said “Boy, that was some great worship today!” Usually when this is said it is referring to the great singing, not really to genuine worship. That person unknowingly has just reinforced several confusing ideas to not only the young or unlearned Christian, but also to the lost.  (Sadly, I too have done this …..before I knew better.)

Some of the wrong ideas promoted are:

         

          --Worship is always done before the preaching and is apart from everything

             else.

         

          --The only way to have great worship is with a really good band and loud music.

                  

          --If I am really worshiping, I must raise my hands or dance around.

          --If I am quiet and reserved, then I must not really be worshiping.

To me, when a ministry (knowingly or unknowingly) is promoting this understanding of worship, it allows Satan to gather several advantages over us.

Some are listed here:

          --He (Satan) will tell the untaught that prayer is not worship---it is just…well

                                                                                                            prayer.

          --Listening to the sermon is not worship, it is just learning.

          --Bringing my broken, weeping heart before God can’t be worship, because there

                                                                                    is no joy or praise involved.


(Part Two Next Week)