With increasing involvement in local worship services, I’ve been giving some thought to what I see as prime values for a worship program. One factor going into my thinking is the ‘perfect’ worship service I visited last fall. I’m sure it wasn’t truly perfect, but from my point of view as a visitor, it appeared that everything was done with excellence. The musicians were top-notch; the service had good flow; everything was planned and the execution of that plan was impressively smooth.
Excellence. That has been a buzzword pulled from the business world into the church. I find it to be a word of pure discouragement. If ‘excellence’ is the standard for all church work, then I need to step aside in my bumbling and let someone with greater skill take over. I work very hard at what I do but I realize that I have many areas of weakness (as those who know me best will readily confirm) and would not easily find a place of service in an ‘excellent’ church which was closing in on ‘perfect’. As I left that ‘perfect’ worship service, I realized that if I lived near that church, I would not be a member there. Not only because I myself am not perfect, but because I care deeply about other people who aren’t perfect. I would want to be part of a church where imperfect people would feel comfortable and have opportunities for involvement in the worship program.
All that to say that ‘perfect’ or even ‘excellent’ is not my primary concern when thinking about corporate worship.
So, if not excellence, what are my top values for worship? That has been the question on my mind. I’ve come up with four aspects to my answer.
1. Worship needs to be about worship. It seems like this would be intuitively obvious, but I am from a generation where worship became so overshadowed by personal testimony in what was called "worship services" that it took me years to define worship in my own mind. Worship needs to conduct those present into the presence of God Almighty and remind us of who He is – our God – and of who we are - His worshippers. If we have not humbled our hearts in the presence of God during the time we are together, we have not worshipped.
2. Worship needs to be orchestrated. We come together to worship. The task of the worship leaders is to conduct worship in a way that brings those present into the presence of God. This takes planning and practice.
3. Worship needs to be participatory. Leaving everything in the hands of professionals is too exclusionary for my tastes. Sure, there are those who prefer to sit in their pews and worship with high-quality music. However, there are others who prefer to participate in the worship service, even though they may not have the skills to be part of a program of ‘excellence’. Those who crave high-quality programming can join the audience at the ‘major league’ program down the street. I want to be invest my time on the farm teams where professionals get their start. I see a continuing need for training camps for those who haven't made the big-time yet. It seems that God often looks past the acknowledged frontrunners when choosing servants to do His work. I want to be where God is working.
4. Worship needs to be responsive. I’ve written previously about my aversion to the phrase, “It’s not about you.” The truth is, worship requires worshippers. We need to listen to those who are interested in being part of our worship services in order to discover the path to the throne of God for them. Is it music? Is it silence? Is it scripture reading? Is it corporate prayer? If music, what style of music? We need to hear what they say regardless of age, gender, culture, and personal baggage and incorporate what we hear into our programming, not to allow any one voice to control the whole program but to let every voice count.
Responsive, participatory, orchestrated worship. If we approach excellence now and then, that would be wonderful. But let’s not make excellence our primary aim. There are many more 2nd-string than top-notch worship participants. Perhaps a better aim would be to develop the full potential of those who choose to be involved in the worship program, both those who take up instruments or voice to lead music and those who respond with humbled hearts to the felt presence of God.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. Any thoughts on the subject?
3 comments:
I find your post particularly interesting since I'd just read an article at Relevant magazine's website with this in it:
"As Rob Bell says, 'If you find the perfect church, don’t join it, because you’ll ruin it.'"
Also, the buzzword that gets to me most in connection to church/ministry has been "potential". Wrote something about potential in a short story once, and how it's often the limitless ceiling that seems to constantly make us feel small and far from it. So I suppose for me "potential" is being reminded that I'm nowhere near "excellence".
Your description of worship sounds exactly like liturgical worship. The services in the Book of Common Prayer have all those elements in them - every time (even though the services vary in many aspects).
Thank you, Nate and "anonymous", for your comments. I appreciate them.
Your comparison of "excellence" with "potential" is interesting, Nate. I guess I don't have the same baggage with the latter that I do with the former, perhaps because I don't remember anyone ever telling me that I wasn't living up to my potential. I have identified more with an old "Captain Kangaroo" sketch where the busy bee said in response to criticism, "The best I can do is the best I can do, and I'm doing the best I can do." Yes, there is always more that could and should be done, but I'm not haunted by the idea that I have the capability to do more if I just tried harder. That would certainly be an intimidating thought. Rather, I'm bothered more by the thought that there's a minimum competency level that is beyond my reach because I am somehow inherently deficient in areas where others easily excel. The best I can do doesn't measure up to that minimum standard.
On the other hand, the Bible indicates that God's strength is sometimes best demonstrated in areas where we are weak. That's not a reason to quit working on those areas of weakness, but it's a comfort when we once again fall short of either our potential (as defined by others) or the minimum competency level for the area in which we are weak.
Liturgical worship. Yes, that would likely fit my criteria for worship. I'm in a setting where that would be a huge shift and would require careful introduction with deliberate responsiveness to the voices of those impacted by the change, but I wouldn't be surprised to see us slowly move in that direction.
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