When did praising God cease to be…
enough?
That is the question with which I’m
wrestling tonight. There are so many ideas floating around the church about
what a service should look like, whether we should even have church, and what we need
to do during our meeting times.
As a “worship leader”, you could
say that my job description is more or less to sing like a maniac and help
people enter into God’s presence. But there’s this eerie, vile thing creeping
into the church, especially in the West: needing something “else” from a
service. Heaven forbid that we simply stand before our God, like children, and
simply burst into song because we love him. People want hymns, or they don’t
want any hymns, or they want you to operate in the prophetic like some kind of
wind-up doll, or they label you a heretic if you happen to prophesy, and God
help you if you bring along a drummer.
I can see it in a congregation’s
eyes sometimes: Here we go, Worship
Leader. Plug me into His presence. What? You played THAT song? Now I’ll lose 5
minutes of my worship time. Good Lord... Ok. Now, THAT song works… Great. Whew! Glad it's over.
As if I--me, myself, the random
person at the front of the room with a guitar-- am the one to usher you into
God’s presence.
Another thing I see is perhaps the
more heartbreaking one: A congregation that actually does break out into authentic
praise, with hearts torn open before the Lord for the entire set. BUT… but,
someone comes along with the final word: “You really should have played this
song” or “it would have been better if you had done x after the bridge” or “if
you would just lead in y way we could really have entered into God’s presence.”
I mean, don’t get me wrong. I hope
that we’re all big enough receive comments and suggestions. So throw me a bone here and believe that worship leaders are people, too, and have
opinions of their own. I’m just speaking for myself here. I love leading praise and worship. But I
often wonder if we’re missing the point.
Do you really believe that the worship team is the
one that somehow produces the presence of God in a room?
Furthermore, do you really believe
that if I play chord x after bridge z God will somehow be more likely to show
up?
Will God somehow be offended if the leader doesn’t talk when you want him to and then not
show up, perhaps spending the rest of the evening crying in a heavenly closet?
See, that’s the backdrop to what a
lot of people are really saying. You want a worship team—or the poor preacher,
for that matter—to produce in your heart what reading the Word and talking to
God every day is supposed to do. I cannot create, grow, or somehow manifest
your relationship with God. Neither can any song, in any key, even if followed
by a prophetic word of encouragement. Worship comes from your heart. Worship with song just provides a special way of allowing a congregation
to express their love to God. That’s it. I’m no more in control of God’s
presence than anyone. So when people come to me, good as their intentions may
be, I often wonder what would have happened if they had simply taken five
minutes of their morning that day to praise God on their own.
Mind you, I realize that a horrible
worship team, off-key singers, and poor musicianship can seriously hinder your
experience. It’s just plain distracting… and icky. What I’m getting at here is
much deeper than that.
You see, I actually once heard a
much-lauded and acclaimed guest speaker suggest that we should all get together
and pray, and have praise services… to avoid God’s judgment. This stance,
coupled with a particular form in which to pray and worship, was to be the
model followed by God’s children.
And it broke my heart.
When in the heck was it not enough
for us to just love on our God?
For that matter, when the heck was
God not enough to love on?
I’m serious. You can blame me and
that mistake I made while playing the chorus or you can take a moment and search your own heart about why you spent more of the church service thinking about "The Office" than God. If
you are depending upon me to usher
you into God’s presence, or to “unleash the Holy Spirit” (people have told me
that, and I often want to ask where on earth he’s leashed up…), then you are in
for some serious heartache.
Perhaps I’m foolish. Or immature.
Or maybe I just “haven’t been in the ring long enough.” But I try not to come
before God with motives. I’m just silly and simple enough to want to spend time
with God, however I can get it. See, worship is the outflowing of a LIFESTYLE.
And if your lifestyle is lacking in love, expression, and affection towards
God, then guess what? Your WORSHIP will be lacking in life. You cannot spend
your week bickering, fighting, ignoring God, watching T.V., and then expect
some worship leader, or a church service, or a teaching to give you a “zap” and
get you back through the week. (And, worship leaders, this goes both ways—you
cannot lead people somewhere you’ve never been.)
But if someone really is expressing his or her love toward God in a real and relevant way for him or her personally, then who are we as outsiders to dictate that person's parameters? Do we also make a habit of telling married couples how they're supposed to romance one another?
See, my
Bible tells me that God has given us the spirit of sonship, by which we are able to boldly call him our Dad. Even in
the natural realm, there is an understanding about dads. There may be kids out
there who only talk to their dads when they want something, but that’s really a
disgusting way to live. Can you imagine if every time I saw my dad, I tried to
use a specific plan of communication in order to leave with five bucks? If I
kept trying different ways to communicate with him until I “found the
combination” and got the cash?
Can you imagine how hurt my dad
would be?
So why do
we do that to God?
We treat church service as some
kind of chore that ranks morally above taking out the trash but emotionally
below doing homework. As long as we “get it out of the way,” we’re set, and we
can more or less be kinda sure that we won’t go to Hell when we die. But
really, we’re not sure why we go and we sit in our pews confused but unwilling
to confess it, wondering why we’re singing to an invisible Old Man somewhere up
in the sky.
Or perhaps you’ve found yourself on
the other end of the spectrum where people are watching your every move and if
you don’t dance like a spider monkey on crack cocaine then you haven’t
experienced the Holy Spirit. (That may be an exaggeration…) But I’m referring
to services where there’s an unspoken count going of “manifestations,” and we
look down our charismatic noses at those who are sitting still as if they don’t
know the first thing about God… As if prophetic utterances or miracles were in
our hands to deal out and understand.
Church, I beg you. As someone who
has been through just about every church knothole backwards and seen things
from both sides of the stage more times than I can count, I urge you: can we all take a
deep breath here?
I don’t care if you sing so loud that the people in front of you go deaf. And honestly I don’t care if you just sit in your chair the whole
time. I’m not impressed if you speak in the tongues of men and angels. And I’m
certainly not impressed by your theology, or your fancy prayer models, or how
long you’ve been in the ministry. It doesn’t move my heart if you roll around
on the floor laughing. And I’m not awed by your holiness if you sing only
hymns.
But you know what really wows me as
a worship leader? What makes my heart skip a beat and reminds me why I drag my
tired body on stage, why I waste hours writing chord charts and organizing
power point presentations?
It’s when I see some idiot on the
fourth row, completely unaware of what’s going on in the room, singing his guts
out to God. He may be clapping to a different time, and he may never be able to
play an instrument on this side of Heaven, but what I see coming out of that
heart brings me to tears. Because I see someone who has looked past the walls
of ministry models, who isn’t coming to pick God’s pockets while he’s in his
presence, and who has long forgotten that there’s anyone else in the room at
all. This person has realized the simple truth most churches spend their
Monday morning meetings trying to cover up: even if (God forbid) the guitar player was off key, and the pastor’s
jokes were corny, and the kids at the back wouldn’t shut up—even then, God
would still be God, no one’s salvation would get revoked, and we could rest
assured that eternal damnation is probably not going to fall upon us.
If God is your father--if you
proclaim that to be truth--then I dare you to come before him as a child and
not as some cookie-cutter church member or ministry leader.
Not so that you can look around the
room and slap other peoples’ hands and inform them of what things “are great,
but…”
Not so that you can click your
heels together three times and get what you want…
Not so that you can check “church”
off your to-do list…
Not so you can one-up someone
else’s “experience” of the Holy Spirit…
But simply
because you have discovered this amazing, mind-blowing, fantastic,
earth-shattering love. And because being able to set aside time and come before
him makes your heart skip a beat. Because you stopped caring what time service
will be dismissed. Because, even if God doesn’t say or do anything that you can
chalk up on your “prophetic encounter” wall of honor, you love him just the
same and know that he loves you. Because you know that your Dear Friend is not
a wind-up doll that will mechanically respond to your ritualistic practices.
Over and
over again, I read in the Bible where it says to give praise to the Lord “for
He is good, and his love endures forever.” And I could be wrong, but I think
that’s about as good of a reason for praising as we’re going to get. I love God
so much, and he loves me so much, that I honestly couldn’t care less about what
you think of me when I’m singing to him. You think I’m too expressive? You
think I’m not excited enough? I’m not
up there so you can give me a pat on the back, or because I have some magic
power to make God appear. (He’s in
you, remember?) I'm singing to my Dad. And I have never, in my entire life, seen a parent hush a
toddler by saying, “Shut up, Timmy. Daddy only likes it when you sing in E
major.”
I promise
as a worship leader to always be striving to play with excellence, and master
my craft, and to improve as a musician. But I will NOT compromise on how I come
before my Daddy. That ground is untouchable. He’s MY God. He’s MY true love.
He’s MY best friend. And HE’S the one I’m singing to, not you.
So let’s
all do ourselves a favor and worry more about what God thinks, and whether or
not whatever the heck we’re doing is honestly the simple outpouring of a heart
overwhelmed by the love of our Father.
"another fine bit of writing brought to you by yours truly"
