I am struggling to find a balance in one area of worship in particular lately. This area is the group form of worship set to music that often occurs on Sunday mornings or during mid-week events of the Body of Christ. There are three models I want to share with you.
One is the model wherein the lights are on, the people on stage are happy and vibrant and focusing on the group worshipping with them. The worship is joyful and community-based.
One is the model in which the lights are dim, the music is highly talented, passionate even, but the audience seems to be in a movie theatre – just watching and listening.
And one model is the one that involves dim lighting and passionate performing, with or without the actual talent, but the people in attendance are standing with arms outstretched, kneeling on the floor, dancing around, or otherwise engaged in worshipping God in intimacy.
Personally, I prefer the third, as it not only incorporates group worship, but also involves a direct intimacy with God. The talent is great, as it can provide a heightened experience, but I have noticed through the years that somehow talent can take away from intimacy in that it is so entertaining. In a place where I once gathered and found deep intimacy with God, I now visit and find a non-participatory worship atmosphere has invaded. It grieves me deeply.
My struggle, and the reason for this post, is that I am finding it harder and harder to engage in the third kind of group worship in my personal life. We attend a congregation in which the first model is the one of choice, and they are really, really good at it. It works, and the people who come generally participate. We also visit a number of congregations that engage in the non-participatory form. The music rocks, you could be at a concert! But I miss the days of truly getting deep in the group setting. We sometimes visit a group that is still doing that, but that just doesn’t seem to be where God is leading us at this time. (That is another conversation altogether, perhaps for another time.)
David reminds me to share that worship can and does occur any time, anywhere. Corrie ten Boom found some of her deepest intimacy with God to be in the German concentration camp where she was held and tortured many decades ago. If I turn on a Rita Springer CD, or Kate Miner, or Matt Redman, and actually stop whatever I am doing long enough to sing to the Lord, I can enter that place of intimate worship. But for the sake of conversation, I am only focusing on the form that occurs when the Body is together in this way.
So what is the key? The difference in what ten Boom did is that ten Boom and the women around her were giving God their all. There were no special lighting effects, no instruments, and likely little talent altogether. But it was true worship. It makes me think of Paul and Silas singing praise to God as they sat in an ancient, dirty, uncomfortable, dangerous prison cell (not to be confused with the clean, politically protected, clean, fairly-comfortable-especially-by-comparison prisons we know of today).
So the call to worship is a call to enter in. Whether as a group, or as an individual. As we walk toward a new way of being the Body of Christ, as we seek a generous orthodoxy, as we reach out beyond our isolated Christian club scenes and see the world around us that needs a portion of salvation here and now, who cannot simply wait until the afterlife to get a piece of what Jesus comes to offer, as we re-evaluate what it means to be the Body of Christ in a broken world, how will we worship Him? Let us not forget to question these things as we question the rest. May we re-enter a knowlege of Him that comes only through direct interaction with Him – as a group, and as an individual. May we never forget to seek the Holy Spirit of God as we seek Jesus.
Does that make sense? Is anyone else having these thoughts or concerns? What are your suggestions, stories, ideas, successes, failures?
