Reflections on Worship part 1

Have you ever walked up to a small child who is playing with his favorite toy, and tried to snatch it away from him? For some Christians, it will seem like I’m about to reach out for your favorite toy to snatch it out of your hands. I only ask that you think carefully through the subject matter and resist the urge to recoil and shout, “mine!”

I would like to make the case that by and large, much of what western evangelical christianity considers “worship” is actually not worship at all.

If I were to go to an outreach geared toward teens, and I were to ask a hand full of musicians and attendees what the ideal worship experience is, I’m going to venture a guess that the answer would sound something like, “The perfect worship experience is one where the spirit of God shows up and is felt powerfully! Where everyone worships as they see fit; some standing, some sitting, some kneeling, with hands raised and eyes closed. A perfect worship experience is one where I am not concerned with what is going on around me; rather, I get to have my close, personal, intimate moment with Jesus!” More or less, this is the general sentiment surrounding “the ideal worship experience.” An atmosphere where everyone gets a private time with Jesus, when he comes and makes them feel really good and warm and fuzzy inside.

I’m not sure how this became the expectation of what genuine worship is, but since this is now the case, it has become the goal for most worship gatherings. What we have is a generation of christians who are on the heel of a church camp phenomenon. At church camp, the lights are low, the songs are long, the tears flow, and the “spirit is felt.” This is the standard: the experience. Therefore, you often see worship leaders doing everything they can to try to recreate the church camp experience; so they light candles, dim lights, and repeat a phrase in a song until it’s almost unintelligible. As the worship “experience” has been increasingly emphasized, words have naturally lost their significance. As a result, you see songs with lyrics like “Freedom reigns in this place, showers of mercy and grace, falling on every face, there is freedom.” Lyrics that have no intelligible meaning when read aloud. But since the “experience” is the goal, it doesn’t matter that the lyrics lack sense when read aloud, as long as they contribute to the vibe of the moment when they are sung aloud.

I have personally grown up to expect this in a worship gathering. Without verbalizing it in this way, I have considered that a worship night can be rated by how I feel about it. Without verbalizing it, I have come into worship gatherings expecting that the night will become really "worshipful" at about the third or fourth song in, when I really “feel the spirit moving.” I have considered that my intimacy with God in a worship gathering is something that increases as the night takes me further into a sensation.

I am now fully convinced that this a completely erroneous understanding of worship.

It's important to understand that Christians who are after the camp experience aren't after anything unique to christianity; they think that the warm fuzzies they get are undoubtedly given by the Holy Spirit, and can only be sensed in a worship gathering. The fact is that most of the warm fuzzies sought after in the camp experience are nothing more than dopamine chemicals going off in the brain as result of singing. What camp-experience-seekers often fail to understand is that the exact feeling they experience in a contemporary worship service can also be experienced at an ordinary secular rock concert.

I'm trying to make the case that genuine worship--that is, doxology in spirit and truth--is not a sensation or experience, but rather it is a response to a cognitive grasp of a characteristic of God. I could define it like this: right worship is the expression of praise and adoration that is the upshot of God revealing himself in some way.

I would encourage you to look through the Psalms and see the clear declarations of the works and character and nature of God. They are anything but ambiguous or abstract. The Psalmists see something objectively true about the nature of God, and the response is a song that declares it! When they grasped God’s holiness, they fearfully wrote about it. When they grasped how graciously God provides, they were moved to write a song of thanksgiving. When they saw the splendor of God’s creation and got a glimpse of how mighty he is, they wrote a song about how wonderous his works are. The point of their lyrics were to offer adoration to God, and to declare truth about him in such a way that the congregation who sang the song understood why the Psalmist was moved to write the song in the first place.

I could give a couple of New Testament examples as well. In Ephesians chapter three, Paul explains the cosmic nature of the church, and he begins to express to the Ephesian church what he wants for them. In verse fourteen, he begins to explain how he prays earnestly that they would have “strength to comprehend will all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” And as Paul is meditating on this revelation of the love of Christ that he so earnestly desires for the Ephesians to understand, he is moved to express the doxology that is occurring in his own mind and heart, and he writes, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” The doxology is a response of meditating on the revealed God he is pointing the Ephesians to.

Another example of this is found in Romans chapter eleven. Paul has just concluded an eleven chapter long train of thought that is more theologically rich than perhaps any other portion in scripture, and at the end is compelled to write, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” The theologically rich content of God’s person and activity is what compelled Paul to respond with doxology.

The major distinction I'm arguing for is the difference between responding to an intelligible revelation of the person of God, and responding to a feeling. The latter doesn't require substantial lyrics, the former does. I’m not entirely sure when the transition has subconsciously shifted for most of the western evangelical church, but it seems evident that a transition has taken place.
 The proof, I would argue, is in a comparison of today’s worship lyrics to the hymns of yesteryear. The hymn writers of yesteryear couldn’t afford to write weightless lyrics with the understanding that the music would make up for what the words lacked, because most of what they had to work with was simply lyrics. Sacrificing substantial lyrics for the sake of the experience wasn’t even on their radar; it was either substantial lyrics that compelled people to worship, or nothing at all. There was no shaping the atmosphere to be conducive of an experience, their concern was to convey something of the majesty of God.

As a disclaimer, let me just say that I do believe that music in itself has the capacity to convey something of the majesty of God; after all, his creation does this without words. However, there is something special about intelligible language. There is a reason why God chose to speak the universe into existence, and why he chose to reveal himself through words, and why Jesus is called the Word rather than “the Music” or “the Picture.” It would appear that God places a high value on intelligible speech.

Let me also say that I am not insinuating that all emotion is bad. Dopamine really does release in the brain when we sing, and that is a very good thing. It is good to cry. It is good to laugh. But the common denominator for all genuine worship is a truth about God. What makes us cry, or laugh, or exude joy in a worship gathering should never be how “God makes us feel” (because there is almost no way discern whether it is God who is making us feel a certain way, or the manipulated circumstances of the environment we’re in), rather, what makes us cry, or laugh, or exude joy in a worship gathering should be a revealed truth of God.

Therefore, my challenge to worship leaders is for you to challenge your ideas. Think about your notion of worship--you favorite toy--and see if it is a concept that Scripture justifies. I would encourage you to read the songs that you choose to bring to your congregation; do the lyrics speak of the glory of God? Can they stand on their own without music and lights and “vibes”? Are they clear enough to speak intelligibly of who God is, or are they ambiguous enough to mean whatever the individual wants it to mean (which is the same as not meaning anything)? Our jobs as worship leaders is to point the congregation to God. This God is a real God who has actually revealed himself to us in intelligible, clear ways.

In closing, let me say that I understand that this notion of worship (the one I have just attempted to obliterate) is held sacred by many because of personal history. Many people have gotten saved, or have gotten serious about their walk with the Lord, or have been powerfully convicted and transformed in such gatherings. I can sympathize with this fact. It may appear that I have sought to invalidate the transformations that have taken place in your lives. Let me assure you, I have not. Who am I to limit how God can and cannot move in the lives of his children? I have no doubt that God works in real ways in such environments. But this doesn’t mean that we should automatically assume that such environments are to be recreated, or even to be considered ideal. I once heard the testimony of a man who got saved after reading a bible tract that was thrown out of a moving car into his face! How awesome it is for God to display grace through such silly circumstances. But these circumstances should certainly not be sought to be recreated on the sole basis of one man being saved in them; I am convinced that taking target practice at strangers from a moving car with bible tracts is not the most ideal method of evangelism!