To start, I would like to say that, for me, worship has always been a difficult concept. I have been to churches where worship was a major sound and stage production rivaling any broadway or rock show, and I have been to home churches where there was just a dude with a Casio keyboard, and everyone just sang along. Is one better than the other? Is there a right or wrong way to worship? I have come away from both types of worship with mixed feelings, mainly that I just didn’t get more from either one in particular.
Enter the phrase “worship in spirit and in truth.” I have always had a hard time understanding this phrase. Not so much the “in truth” part. It is easy to know when you are grooving to a song, and really enjoying it, right? But the “in spirit” part gives me a major case of tired-head. It was not until recently that it all came together for me.
I recently had dinner with a guy who had been directing a fairly large worship team in the Charlotte area, who stepped down after almost two decades this year from his position. His reasons for stepping down were rooted in his desire to remain true to his vision of worship, which is that it is first and foremost an encounter with God, a reaction in words and music and dance to the goodness and kindness of God. There are a lot of churches out there that spend a great amount of energy in making worship a “people-pleasing” experience, and even in my own church, we are often criticized for having a worship style that isn’t always a fan favorite. Other churches teach that worship is meant to prepare a congregation to receive the word, the proverbial plow to the rocky soil. I don’t know about that one either, or at least, I don’t know that it is the purpose behind worship, although it may be one of the benefits.
Either way, this worship leader talked about the importance of perfecting his skill as a musician, because it was important for the encounter in worship, in order to be able to “flow” in worship as he felt led. This one concept was what brought it all together for me. It isn’t the quality of the production of worship, but the quality of the communication of our worship that counts.
In order to understand this, I want you to imagine going to a friend’s house for dinner. As you prepare, you think about the things you want to talk to your friend about while you are with them, jokes you heard, concerns about other friends, things you like about them, whatever you want to talk about. I think on some level, everyone does this (some more than others).
When you knock on your friend’s door, what happens? They greet you with their own set of topics that they have been wanting to talk to you about, and probably are not all the same topics that you had chosen. So, in any conversation, there is an element of spontaneity, or there should be; I don’t want to imagine a conversation without spontaneity.
When you leave your friends house, you naturally rate your experience as a “good time” or a “bad time” based on several things such as how good the food was, how much you laughed, whether or not the conversation flowed easily, etc.
When we come away from worship, how do we rate it? Do we base it on the fun factor?
Encountering God in worship is a spontaneous conversation that we have with Him, whether a plebe in the pews or a rock-star on stage. Yes, there is an element of rehearsal and preparation that the worship team has to have, but the preparation is merely a platform on which people can have their own personal conversations with God. Worshiping in spirit is being able to have that personal conversation despite whether or not you like the worship song, and worshipping in truth is allowing your conversation with Him to be real, transparent, and personal.
Grooving to a song is great, and fun. But it shouldn’t define our experience in worship, just as a friend’s wall colors should never define your visit to their house. If it does, check your shallow-meter. At the same time, if worship is not a dynamic and spontaneous encounter with God, a real expression of your affection and appreciation of God working in your life, then it isn’t worshipping in spirit. If you are handed a script when you show up at a friend’s house for dinner, then there isn’t a whole lot of personal communication, just meaningless words on a page.
Why is this important? I think people too often misjudge the quality of a church based on the fun factor. More than that, I think people are often too self-serving when it comes to worship, and they are missing out on a real conversation with their Best Friend. I am not sure, but probably because a lot of people are like myself. They fail to realize that there is a real conversation that is supposed to happen with God. Everyone knows that Christianity is supposed to be a relationship, but few people live from a place of relationship with Him. They may live from a relationship with a book, or with a church, or with a group of people, but few actually live from a REAL spontaneous conversation with the Living God.
As horrible as this sounds, I think people today too often turn worship into a type of spiritual “pornography.” Instead of engaging in an intimate encounter with the Lover of their soul, they go to churches where their eyes and ears can be teased into feeling like they have been intimate. It would be like my wife throwing me all the procreational signals in her arsenal, and me turning on a NSFW video because I am turned on.
Why is this important enough for me to write about? The veil didn’t tear so that we could listen to a good song on Sunday mornings. The veil tore so that we could go directly to Him with our thoughts, concerns, affections, whatever, and TELL him what they are, expecting an answer back. I can say from personal experience, that His answers always give us more reason to go to Him with more thoughts, concerns, affections and whatever. Always.
I am still hashing all of this out. I would love to hear any other perspectives on this.
