Appetizer Worship

I was reading a couple of articles on Worship this morning in conjunction with my recent “mega church” experience. I realized that my whole life, and maybe for you too, I have always seen worship as the appetizer and the sermon as the main course but maybe it isn’t that way. See, I can listen to Podcasts and probably glean more information than when I am in a service. I have ADD tendencies so listening while I am washing dishes or folding clothes or driving my car actually helps me internalize the message. But worship is different.

There is something special and irreplaceable about corporate worship. I used to think I liked the worship best because I am a musical person but the more I think about it I believe it is because I am a spiritual creature that desires the language of heaven to rain down on me. I don’t hear a lot about God preaching sermons in heaven but I do know that the worship is on-going so it must be super important. This makes me angry, angry because we are being ripped off by commercialism and consumerism when it comes to worship in churches.

I was reading an article this morning by a pastor, Trevin Wax, and in it he talks about the importance of worship leading us into study. He also says that you can measure the temperature of a pastor’s teaching style by the kind of worship that proceeds it; casual worship=casual message. He goes on to say, “Christians need to sense the weight of God’s glory, the truths of God’s word, the reality of coming judgment, and the gloriousness of God’s grace. Trying to package the bigness of God into most casual worship services is like trying to eat steak on a paper plate. You can do it for a while but at some point people will start saying, ‘I want a dish.’”

Well I want a dish. To me this is becoming the key ingredient in my fragile belief I still need to belong to a “church.” It is why I cannot forsake the gathering together. I cannot get what corporate worship gives any other way. Singing to a Christian CD while I am alone is a kind of worship but there is something about the voices of saints singing in one accord that has power. Have you ever been to a Chris Tomlin concert? They are pretty worshipful to begin with but at some point in the concert, as a particular song builds to climatic worship, he cuts the instruments, drops his mike, and the stadium sings out in one beautiful voice. It is a moment that, even now, brings tears to my eyes.

The importance and richness of worship is summed up well by another pastor, Tullian Tchivijian,  in his article, This Is The Way It Ought To Be, he says, “We, too, ought to experience God with the totality of our being in worship. Worship services ought to inform the mind intellectually, engage the heart emotionally, and bend the will volitionally. God wants thoughtful worshippers who believe, emotional worshippers who behold, and obedient worshippers who behave. God-centered worship produces people who think deeply about God, feel passionately for God, and live urgently in response to God. Therefore, when we meet God in worship, we should expect a combination of gravity and gladness, depth and delight, doctrine and devotion, precept and passion, truth and love.”

I think I would like to find a church that just did worship and prayer and that was it. I would like to see the pastor leading worship and prayer. I would love to hear the Holy Spirit speak through him as it is impressed upon him to speak. Or maybe interspersing expository, verse by verse teaching nested within the worship. I would leave that kind of service rejuvenated and charged, with a glowing countenance and desire to live like Christ in a more real way. I would imagine feeling more authentically bonded to my fellow worshipers through the shared experience than I would through greeting time or small group functions. This kind of church would be way less about the programming or the pastor and his style of teaching and so much more about his surrendered spirit as the mouthpiece of God.

I know that is way extreme and probably just indicative of where I am right now. I didn’t  research the theology of that concept or anything, after all, Jesus did do a lot of speaking with no worship. I’m just saying we have allowed the “church” to become a quantitative creature and have measured our success on sociological benchmarks and changed our approach as we deem necessary to enable the corporation to run in the black. In the process worship has become a marketing tool to entertain and impress us. It has become the appetizer when God intended it to be much more like the main dish and the sermon the dessert: something short and sweet and that wraps it all up.