God continues to shape and mold our ministry. Most recently, we have made some important changes in our worship. I'm entirely uncertain how many people have even picked up on these changes to this point. However, that is fine. One might say, even expected. The issue that needed to be addressed was this. Through prayer and study, I really believed our worship was too focused on the self, rather than on God. Consider for a moment that statement. If worship is focused on the self, then is not the self the focus of our worship? Clearly, no church would suggest that we should be the focus of our own worship, yet that tendency manifests itself in thousands of churches every weekend. We are so concerned with being "relevant" that we adopt a marketing mentality to all that we do. Our messages are centered on the self- "How to have a successful marriage," "How to be financially free," "How to … this" "How to … that." The Gospel message in many churches seems to be plucked right from the self-help aisle of your local Barnes and Noble. Believe me, I understand that as I point this finger there are three more pointing back at me. I stand accused, as do many teachers of God's Word. But, it doesn't stop there, either!
Often our entire Sunday morning experienced seemed to be structured with little more in mind than serving those who were there. Moreover, this was in a church that was not trying to be "seeker-targeted." We simply seemed to drift into this mode more often than not. If the message was about relationships (again, who is the focus here?), we would have an amusing sketch to accompany the theme (and entertain the people, perhaps?). If the theme for a series was the Kingdom of God, maybe we would have a knight periodically appear throughout the series and provide some "relevant," but comic relief (Yes, we really did this). More often than not, whatever creative element we implemented in worship had little if anything to do with God.
Please understand, as some of our creative arts people may very well read this, that we all blindly went down this alley and I was the blind leading the blind. However, something started to nag me about worship. If worship is, essentially, the praise of God, why did so little of our worship seemed to be focused on him? It really started when I began doing a very pet peeve of my own. I started to refer to the music AS the worship. We would have just finished a particular planned element when I would say, "Okay, let's worship now." So what were we doing before? How did music become the only expression of worship on Sunday mornings? The really scary thing to be about this was that it was accurate. Little else that we did felt like worship. In fact, it was not. God was not the focus.
So, we have begun the task of changing this. Yet, it is not a simple fix. I now firmly believe that unless we are intentional we will continue to slip back into the comfortable fix of making ourselves the focus. Why? It's original sin. It's what comes naturally to us. We make ourselves the center of all our endeavors. In the words of the theologian Paul Tillich, we make ourselves our "ultimate concern", which means that I make "me" more important than God. I make "me" my own god. I make "me" the focus of my worship.
Now we are conscious of this constant pull away from God and back to ourselves as we plan worship. We are starting to say to one another, "Hold on. Are we making ourselves the focus, again?" Rather than designing services around a theme, we are designing worship to lift up an attribute or characteristic of God. We are intent on putting God at the center… and we need to be.
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