Worship Evaluation

awful [aw-fuh’l]–
1. solemnly impressive; exceedingly great; inspiring awe. 2. full of awe; reverential.

Awe and wonder is the act of worship in response to the mystery of God. It causes us to respond with, “Woe is me…I am ruined” (Isaiah 6:5); It causes us to take off our sandals and hide our faces (Exodus 3:5-6); And it causes us to leap and dance before the Lord with all our might (2 Samuel 6:14-16).

Our need to control, predict and therefore script, however, has transformed awe and mystery into a scheduled event that is explainable and rational.  And yet, we continue to lament the fact that our worship seems lifeless.  A. W. Tozer wrote, “We cover our deep ignorance with words, but we are ashamed to wonder, we are afraid to whisper ‘mystery.’”[1]

Mystery is not just our limited capacity to fully understand and explain the entirety of God’s story; it is also the incomprehensible awe and wonder that He included me in that story. Can that ever be scripted? If the awe and wonder of God can be completely contained in and explained through our limited understanding, then he is a god who does not deserve our worship.

Michael Yaconelli wrote, “The critical issue today is dullness. We have lost our astonishment.”[2] He continues by stating, “The greatest enemy of Christianity may be people who say they believe in Jesus but who are no longer astonished and amazed. Jesus Christ came to rescue us from listlessness as well as lostness; He came to save us from flat souls as well as corrupted souls.”[3]

Taking the surprise out of faith leaves us with dead religion.  Removing the mystery from the gospel leaves us with frozen and petrified dogma.  Losing the awe of God leaves us with an impotent deity and meaningless piety.[4]

The proclamation of the mystery of our faith is this…Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again (I Tim 3:16; Rom 16:25-26; Eph 3:4-6). If that doesn’t continually inspire awe and wonder then no songs we select ever will.

Worship doesn’t invite God’s presence…it acknowledges it.  He has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light that we may declare His praises (1 Peter 2:9).  The Father is seeking the kind of worshipers who worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23).  God initiates…we respond.

God’s revelation occurs when He offers us a glimpse of His activity, His will, His attributes, His judgment, His discipline, His comfort, His hope, and His promises.  Our response is the sometimes spontaneous and sometimes premeditated reply to that revelation…worship.

Theologian Richard Foster wrote, “Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father.  Its central reality is found ‘in spirit and truth.’  It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.  Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals.  We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.”[1]

Occasionally we actually bump into God in our worship efforts.[2]  When this occurs we often arrogantly assume the encounter was based on what we sang, said, or did and how we sang, said, or did it.  When what we do or observe others doing seems to have worked, our usual response is to institutionalize and market it as a template in order to achieve the same result each time we gather.

Have we considered that God might be grieved by our arrogance or angered at our insolence when we implore Him each week to show up and show off?  We take credit for instigating God’s presence when in reality He started the conversation, was present long before we arrived, and has been waiting patiently for us to acknowledge Him.

When I was a child my family traveled each summer from Oklahoma to Tennessee for a couple of weeks of vacation with grandparents.  The 1200-mile round-trip in the 1960 station wagon seemed to take forever.  The length of the trip was minimized through the anticipation and excitement that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were expecting us.  As my grandparent’s house came into view we could always count on seeing my grandmother sitting in the porch swing expectantly waiting for us to arrive.  She had been there for hours.

The Swiss theologian Karl Barth stated that when people assemble in the house of God they are met with an expectancy greater than their own.

Churches that won’t take the risks to provide a venue for creatives to express art beyond predictable musical expressions will lose them to places that will.  The sole emphasis on music as our primary worship offering may have actually hindered worship and perpetuated worship conflict in our congregations.

Music is an artistic expression given to us so that we might offer that gift to God in worship.  But is it the expression?  Considering additional artistic options could alleviate the pressure on music to serve as the primary driver of worship renewal and consequently diminish its solitary blame for worship conflict.

Clayton Schmit wrote, “In most traditions, music holds the central place as, to use Luther’s term, the ‘handmaid of the Gospel.’  Whether Christians sing hymns, settings of the psalms, spiritual songs, anthems, or praise choruses, music is the principle artistic form that shapes Christian worship.  But, many others are involved.  We gather in architectural structures, we enter rooms sunlit cobalt and ruby through stained-glass filtered light, we sit in well-fashioned furniture, we listen to literature of the Scriptures, we hear aesthetically crafted messages, we move in processions, and we view images of the symbols and historic figures associated with our faith.  When we gather for worship art is all around us, and even within us.”[1]

Just considering what is presently appropriate and acceptable is not enough.  Leaders must also be willing to educate, enlighten and encourage in order to expand that acceptability.  Robin M. Jensen reminds us that, “too often art is perceived as a kind of ‘extra’ offering, meant for those of us who can appreciate it or want to be involved, rather than something essential to the shaping of faith and religious experience.”[2]

Consider the following suggestions as places for your congregation to begin multiplying their understanding: drama, painting, sculpting, drawing, dance, mime, poetry, prose, monologues or dramatic readings, photography, film, technology, computer graphics, architecture, hair and make-up, sound, lighting, staging and props and many others.  Even though God’s creativity is limitless, we often constrict our list because of our culture and tradition…or perhaps our caution and laziness.

Harold Best stated it well; “It is the solemn obligation of every artistic leader to become the lead mentor, the lead shepherd, living a life in quest of the full richness of artistic action.  The art of our worship must thus point beyond itself.  It must freely and strongly say, ‘There is more, far more.’  Be hungry.  Be thirsty.  Be curious.  Be unsatisfied.  Go deep.  Engage your whole being.  Live in the first days of creation when nothing had precedent; when everything was a surprise; when shattering reality, not sameness, ruled the day; when bafflement and surprise danced the dance.  Go to the empty tomb and find out what resurrection means to the shriveled mind and the uncurious heart.  Go to Pentecost and learn of a new, ingathering strangeness, a purification of Babel and a highway to glory:  spiritual glory, societal glory, artistic glory.  Seek and find; knock and it will be opened.”[3]

In retail, a loss leader is the practice of offering goods or services discounted at or below cost in order to draw consumers in.  The strategy is that drawing them in will hopefully lead them to buy additional items at a higher price.

Churches are formulating final plans for meaningful Easter worship services at the end of this week knowing they will potentially impact more attendees than on any other Sunday of the year.  In an effort to entice more participation some of those congregations are planning gimmicks or hooks to get consumers in for one of the most meaningful days of the church year.

When those consumers realize that worship actually requires offering their bodies as a living sacrifice, what methods then will those same congregations need to employ to entice those consumers to count the cost (Rom 12:1)?  How will those congregations help them express deep calling unto deep worship…when discounted loss leader worship is all that they are offering (Ps 42:7)?  In this context, you get what you pay for actually means…whatever you reach people with is what you will reach them to.

King David responded to God’s command to build an altar to the Lord so that the plague on the people of Israel might be stopped (2 Sam 24:21).  At no cost to David, Araunah offered his threshing floor, his oxen, and even the wood from the oxen yokes for the burnt offering.  King David replied, “No, I insist on paying for it.  I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing” (2 Sam 24:24).

Terry York and David Bolin wrote, “We have forgotten that what worship costs is more important than how worship comforts us or how it serves our agendas.  We should not lift up to God worship or any other offering that costs us nothing.  If worship costs us nothing but is fashioned to comfort our needs and preferences, it may not be worship at all.”[1]

Why are churches that so zealously defend the Bible rarely reading its text in public services of worship?  Does its limited use convey a lack of trust in the very Word professed to be foundational to faith, doctrines and practices?  And by limiting its text to a single reading prior to the pastoral exhortation are leaders implying that a higher level of credibility is found in the exhortation than in the Word itself?  Can’t it stand on its own or must we always attempt to prop it up with our own words and actions?

Robert Webber in Ancient-Future Worship wrote, “We are nourished in worship by Jesus Christ, who is the living Word disclosed to us in the Scriptures, the written Word of God.  In spite of all the emphasis we evangelicals have placed on the importance of the Bible, there seems to be a crisis of the Word among us.”[1]

Congregations continue to struggle in their understanding of spirit and truth worship by maximizing music and depending on it alone to negotiate the worship impasse.  At the same time those congregations minimize the very foundational text from which those songs must spring forth.

John Frame offers two truths that highlight the value of God’s Word in our worship:  “First, where God’s Word is, God is.  We should never take God’s Word for granted.  To hear the Word of God is to meet with God himself.  Second, where God is, the Word is.  We should not seek to have an experience with God which bypasses or transcends His Word.”[2]

The dialogue of worship is formed when God’s Word is revealed.  This revelation causes worshipers to respond through the prompting of the Holy Spirit (I Cor 2:12-15; I Thess 1:5).  The result is a vertical conversation with God and horizontal communion with others.  This dialogue develops a community that congregations have been desperately trying to create through their worship actions.

Scripture must be foundational to our songs, sermons, prayers, verbal transitions and even announcements.  It must be frequently and variously read and allowed to stand on its own.  And when the biblical text organically yields our sermons and songs rather than serving as fertilizer for our own contrived language, we will leave in here worship with the text in our hearts and on our lips for continuous worship out there.

A Conversation Killer is a line or phrase that is either purposely used to end a conversation as soon as possible, or a comment that unwittingly ends a conversation.  The urban dictionary sarcastically refers to it as a deadversation.

Conversation is interactive communication involving two or more participants.  Even though conversation is not often scripted it may revolve around a central theme or subject.  A healthy conversation includes a balance of discussion and response, listening as well as speaking.  Meaningful conversations usually occur as a result of relationships built on familiarity achieved through repetition.  God’s revelation and our response to that revelation is a great model of a meaningful conversation…we call it worship.

Robert Webber wrote, “Worship proclaims, enacts, and sings God’s story.”[1] If we agree with Webber’s assessment then we will also realize that the conversation does not begin with us.  What we do and how we do it is a response to, not the initiation of the conversation.  God started the dialogue and graciously allows and encourages us to join Him in it.

Sociologist, Charles Derber coined the term Conversational Narcissism to classify the personality trait of one who constantly shifts the topic of conversation away from others and back to himself/herself.  Derber wrote, “One conversationalist transforms another’s topic into one pertaining to himself through the persistent use of the shift-response.”[2] Shift-response is taking the topic of conversation initiated by another and shifting the focus of that topic back to our own selfish interests.

Wondering what’s in it for us takes the topic (God’s story) and shifts its focus to a topic of our own choosing (our story).  What I need, prefer, deserve, or have earned not only shifts the topic of our worship, it also shifts the object of our worship.  When this occurs, the conversation is no longer initiated by or focused on the worshiped but instead on the worshiper…effectively killing the conversation.

[1] Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 39.

[2] Charles Derber, The Pursuit of Attention: Power and Ego in Everyday Life (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979), 26-27.

If our leadership conveys that worship starts when we start it and ends when we end it…If we expend all resources and energy preparing for and presenting a single hour on Sunday and have nothing left to encourage worship the other 167 hours of the week…If we aren’t exhorting them and modeling for them how to worship not only when they gather but also when they disperse…Then we are indeed shallow worship enablers.

Eugene Peterson wrote in Christ Plays in Ten-Thousand Places, “Worship is the primary means for forming us as participants in God’s work, but if the blinds are drawn while we wait for Sunday, we aren’t in touch with the work that God is actually doing.”

Congregations will never evolve from shallow worship to “deep calling unto deep” worship until we as leaders resolve to offer them opportunities to move from enabled dependency to intentional empowerment (Ps. 42:7).  And if we don’t help them catch that vision, who will?

Dependency is conditional or contingent on something or someone else.  It is relying on or requiring the aid of another.  Worship dependency is saving it until Sunday and waiting for someone else to initiate it.  Worship dependency focuses only on what is done for us here and has to start over every week.  Dependency can also increase worship conflict since we only get one chance at it.

Empowerment is increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes.  Empowerment equips and offers encouragement to think, behave, or take action autonomously.  Worship empowerment encourages congregants to take ownership in their own worship responses to God’s revelation at the moment it occurs.  Worship empowerment focuses on what we can do and who we can be out there and starts every day where we left off the day before.  Empowerment can reduce worship conflict since we get multiple chances at it.

Worship empowerment arises from the shallowness of dependency and leads to the full, conscious, active, and continuous participation of worshipers.  When worshipers are empowered and no longer enabled, what occurs on Sunday is then an overflow of what has already occurred during the week with an added benefit of getting to share it with others.  The weekly gathering is then expanded to a daily occurrence allowing a congregation in full assurance and with complete confidence to proclaim that Worship has left the building and will continue until we meet again.

When we are at a loss for words we must be reminded that a text has been prepared for us in the Psalms.  When disaster threatens to consume us, the psalmist gives words to express our most profound despair.  When our hymns and songs fall short with clichéd platitudes, the psalms provide hope beyond unexpressed emotions.  John Witvliet reminds us that, “when faced with an utter loss of words and an oversupply of volatile emotions, we best rely not on our own stuttering speech, but on the reliable and profoundly relevant laments of the Hebrew Scriptures.”[1]  Walter Brueggemann writes that, “By not using these psalms, we have communicated two messages to people:  either you must not feel that way (angry with God, for example) or, if you feel that way, you must do something about it somewhere else – but not here.”[2]

We have been conditioned to believe that it is more spiritual to avoid expressing grief or despair in worship.  Our public questioning of God is often considered irreverent or maybe even blasphemous.  Our song selections and sermon topics have conveyed that church must always be a happy place and that a positive appearance is less threatening.

If authenticity is a goal of our worship we must honestly and publicly admit that circumstances of life can contribute to hopelessness, cause us to cry out to God in despair, and even demand answers.  We must persistently remind one another that God expects our language of lament and is not threatened by it.

In An Open Letter to Worship Songwriters, Brian McLaren offers the following commentary, “Pain should find its way into song, and these songs should find their way into our churches.  The bitter will make the sweet all the sweeter; without the bitter, the sweet can become cloying, and too many of our churches feel, I think, like Candyland.  Is it too much to ask that we be more honest?  Since doubt is part of our lives, since pain and waiting and as-yet unresolved disappointments are part of our lives, can’t these things be reflected in the songs of our communities?  Doesn’t endless singing about celebration lose its vitality (and even its credibility) if we don’t also sing about the struggle?”

Authenticity grants us permission to admit that events can shake our faith.  Catharsis begins when we understand that asking and even singing our difficult questions is acceptable and that God can handle our anger and despair.  Freedom to cry out to God in worship will only be realized when a community becomes more comfortable with the belief that a transparent life is not narcissistic or self-absorbing.  In fact, this honest transparency is a life of humility enabling worshipers to realize they are not struggling on their own in the resolution of this despair.  Martha Freeman reminds us that, “Tears can enhance our vision, giving us new eyes that discern traces of the God who suffers with us.  There is comfort in those tears.  They bring fresh understanding that God is nearby, sharing our humanity in all its bitterness and all its blessedness.”[3]

“You say you want a revolution
Well, you know, we all want to change the world
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know, we’d all love to see the plan
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out.”
                                     Revolution, Lennon-McCartney

Change is often necessary as a congregation considers meaningful worship in response to shifts in cultures and contexts. In the rush to do something fresh, leaders often plunge into the stream of radical worship change without reflecting on the past and present circumstances that framed existing structures and practices. And since most guys like to blow stuff up, the initial reaction when things don’t seem to be working is to completely destroy those existing practices for the prospect of future aspirations.

A revolution is the forcible overthrow or renunciation of an existing system or structure in order to substitute another. It is the repudiation and thorough replacement of what presently exists without considering that it still holds value for some. This radical and pervasive change most often occurs suddenly without giving consideration to the potential fall-out. And in a revolution…one side always loses.

In an effort to initiate worship change, well-intentioned leaders often push to do something…anything different than what they perceive as not working now. This absence of wisdom and leadership acumen often causes unnecessary transitional pain and relational conflict. The automatic assumption is that worship change always requires incorporating something new. But maybe the adjustment most congregations actually need is not a revolution but instead a reevaluation of present structures and practices and the realization that the only new necessary is to do what they are already doing…better.

A reevaluation is the consideration or examination of something again in order to make adjustments or form new opinions about it. It is to determine and assess significance, worth, and value with renewed resolve and vision. This reexamination allows a congregation to consider change through a unified process of rethinking, revisiting, and reinvestigating. And in reevaluation…all sides are considered.

Reevaluation may also help a congregation realize that the only new really essential to worship health may reside in the revitalization of the attitude and resolve of the leader…which wouldn’t require blowing up the existing structure or practices of the congregation. Assisting a congregation through worship transition with minimal pain is accomplished by continuing to accent what a congregation does best and by reclaiming lost worship focus with a deeper congregational involvement.

Reevaluating worship offers a congregation the opportunity to consider again how they can add to rather than take away from where they have been, ultimately impacting what they hope to be.