At my parents church, worship is a show. It's a very well done show. The musicians are exceptional. The lighting is good. The last time I was there, they had a pretty good multimedia crew. The pastor is funny and witty and yet totally scholarly when he throws the Greek around. It's a good show. You leave church thoroughly entertained.
It is interesting to me when I think about worship to look at the New Testament. There is one place where it is mentioned that Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn (the last supper) and the apostles sang hymns in prison. Paul says that we should greet each others with hymns and spiritual songs. So that's it. There are a lot of mentions of prayer. We're told we should do it away from the eyes of others. Interesting. We're told to do it without ceasing. Fascinating.
We all know that music has this amazing ability to lift us out of a funk. Sometimes all it does is legitimize the funk that we're in, telling us that are sadness and anger are valid. Sometimes it totally elevates us. Music is powerful. Music can also be manipulative. We can put lyrics that get into our souls to catchy beats. one of the reasons so many emerging churches are reviving hymns is because of how shallow and flowery praise and worship music can be ("Jesus is my boyfriend" music, as one of my friends said). We can mask bad theology with great tunes. On the other hand, music that often gets at the heart of justice and mercy sometimes has swear words in it. (GASP!) That's the music most of us listen to Monday through Saturday. Granted, in our younger days we all like escapist music, but for most of the folks I hang with, as they get older, they look for more substance in their music. They don't always find it in church. They find it in folk, blues, hip hop, jazz, and rock music. (Secular music!!!)
I didn't mean to go on and on about music, but music is the first thing people think of when they think of worship. One of the core verses that shapes my thinking on worship is Romans 12:1. The sacrifice of our day to day lives is our acceptable act of worship. Worship is, after all, how we express God's "worth-ship". (that's the etymology of the word). We worship those things that are valuable in our lives and there is no better way to show God that He has value in your life than living a life modeled after Christ's.
Is there anyway that the elements of worship, particularly prayer and music, can be more a part of our daily lives? A more authentic part of our daily lives? The odds are if a "secular" song speaks to you for some reason, there is some truth to be found in it. I'm not saying that we should communally sing every song that comes on the radio, though that would be fun. But I shouldn't just be thinking about God when I sing a hymn or praise song. Again, the assumption here is that my relationship with Christ is central to my life.
One of the more interesting blogging expereinces I had was on my old blog and it sort of centered around this same subject. If you were not a party to that dialogue (or simply blocked it out!) you can check it out here. I'm sure no minds were changed in that conversation, but I continue to argue that we as Christians are too focused on the worship experience. I'm not denying the power of the worship experience. This summer I was reminded of how powerful and moving worship experiences can be. Still, the high we receive from those worship experiences can be as addicting as any drug. We can allow ourselves to be fooled into believing that God is absent if we are not on that high. I am not for the abolishing of worship gatherings. I don't think I'd gain any support for that idea. I would like for worship to feel more authentic, less artificial.
I don't know how to do that, but it is what I think we should be going for...
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