Worship is kind of strange. In choosing not to attend Sunday morning, I have not worshiped corporately for a while. Recently I visited some friends in Portland and attended their church. For the first time ever worship struck me as kind of strange. Where else in American culture do we gather together and sing songs? Again not that there is anything wrong with this but lets face is it’s kinda weird. I say this even after having been a worship leader myself.
In reflecting on my 15 years of church experience I come away with this question in regards to worship; “Do the Mountain top experiences that we seek after in cooperate worship really lead us to be more like Jesus?” It’s hard to say, but sometimes I feel we are seeking after more and more “experiential” worship. A friend of mine would call this spiritual masturbation. (snicker, snicker) I fear that many of us (myself included) have turned worship into a self indulgent act, instead of, an act of reverence towards God. It's a fine line that we don't discuss very often.
One more thought in closing. Having been a member of worship team for 9 years, as I look back I can’t really say that that investment of time, money, and energy, made me anymore like Jesus. Yes it was great to worship and I learned a lot about worship. But, I can’t honestly say that it made me more like Jesus? I didn’t perform any miraculous healings after having been supercharged with the Holy Spirit. I didn’t feed crowds of people with little to no food. And I don’t think I loved my neighbor more after a worship service than before.
Photo Credit Magbug (Click)
1 comment:
Hey Brian-
Thanks for dropping by my blog. I've been following your blog & I've liked your reflections on church detox. Having been a worship leader too it's been a little strange disentangling from the band/stage/song list/transition/overhead slides type of corporate worship, which as you point out, is just plain odd as it relates to our daily experience of life in our culture. My years in worship bands certainly made me a better worship leader and guitarist, but most of the time the connection to actual Christ-likeness was tangential.
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