You have probably seen them, too: the blank stares, the nodding heads, the camouflaged yawns (tight lips for ten seconds followed by glassy eyes)—the signs of worship.
Watching this litany of lethargy unfold all too often, have you ever asked yourself, Why do they keep coming back? I have.
Let’s admit it; worship can be boring.
That’s an offensive statement, isn’t it? To label worship “boring” is close to tagging God with the same adjective. Our theology screams that God is the transcendent King, who makes his entrance with attention-getting claps of thunder or the cooing of a newborn from a stable. But he always gets our attention. You can’t yawn at a burning bush.
No, God isn’t boring—but I’ve been.
Learning Worship from a Master
About six years ago I decided not to be content to ho-hum my way through worship the rest of my life. Even though I’m a classical Pentecostal (yes, chandelier swinger, pew vaulter!), I saw as many bored Pentecostals as Presbyterians. No denomination, I discovered, had a corner on the yawn market.
I wanted more than yawns on a Sunday morning. So when I have a spiritual dilemma, I preach a series of sermons on the subject (one of the perks of the job). I found a lot of worshipers in Scripture, but most were unbelievable because they seemed to worship so well—until I rediscovered the psalmist.
Besides “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name” (Ps. 103:1), I also found, “I remember . . . how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul?” (Ps. 40:4, 5). Now there was a worshiper just like me! The psalmist evidenced all the agony and ecstasy of my humanity.
As I proclaimed this Word to my congregation, the fog started to clear over the Sunday morning landscape: Before I knew it, my theology of worship had begun to take shape. It later infected my listening (but often dozing) congregation.
My sermons taught me, first, that we enter worship to do something for God, not the other way around. Coming from a narcissistic world, my question had been, “What can I get from God this morning?” The comment we hear from people who don’t warm our pews a second time is, “Pastor, I just didn’t get anything out of the service.”
I accept that I can have a bad day in the pulpit, and someone may not want to come back to test his skills of endurance. But listen to the selfishness behind that statement. The self-centeredness of a you-deserve-a-break-today world has seeped into the crevices of our worship. We make demands of God with the same insistence that a VCR replay the Super Bowl or an automated bank machine spit out twenty-dollar bills.
As I approached worship with this new intent to give and not get, the unmarred delight of the woman who poured expensive perfume over the feet of Jesus was mine.
Second, the psalmist taught me that worshiping a changeless God in a changeless way is an admission of dishonesty. The dishonesty begins by ignoring the fact that even though Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, I’m not.
If I’m developing abdominal distress over moving the Gloria Patri from after the offering to before the Scripture reading, I’m being dishonest about my need for change. Our congregations need change to breathe new life into suffocating worship settings.
The psalmist is alternately quiet, loud, singing, dancing, playing instruments, and generally bonkers about being there for God. You cannot call the Psalms predictable. Was predictability putting my congregation to sleep?
Third, I found creativity in the psalmist’s worship. When I read, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” (Ps. 139:17), I heard a challenge from the greatness of Divinity to the inherited creativity of humanity.
Worship without creativity is like inviting a congregation to come and chew on Kleenex for an hour. God wants to give us new ideas, but those ideas are couched in the mind of the Holy Spirit. And it takes time to know the mind of the Spirit.
The very awesomeness of God calls for variety in adoration. When we catch a glimpse of God passing by, the pursuit of him will consume us.
After discovering this theology of worship as I worked through the Psalms, I decided to act it out. It was time for the walking on water part. Or was it thin ice?
Easing Innovation into Worship
The idea of change is an immense threat in any congregation, and we clergy know that better than anyone else.
The first thing to begin changing in preparation for any innovation is the minds of the congregation. Since Scripture is the genesis for cognitive restructuring, for a period of eighteen months I spaced out three series of sermons on worship before attempting any experimentation. It was “business as usual” while we periodically consulted Scripture on how to worship.
The first series from the Psalms emphasized giving instead of getting in worship. The second set of sermons was a rediscovery of the glory of God from the prophet Isaiah. The final group of messages on creativity in worship, was taken from chapters four and five of Ephesians.
To be honest, I had been serving this congregation for almost two years before I preached my first series on worship. The church needs at least two years of exposure to a pastor’s personality and ministry to build a “trust quotient.” It would have been ecclesiastical suicide for me to push worship renewal with Bekins boxes still stacked in the garage.
Even after the biblical rationale for innovation is established, there are inappropriate eras of congregational life to pursue changes in worship. For instance, during a power struggle between pastoral and lay leadership over church expenditures, don’t suggest that the congregation come forward during the offertory this Sunday to put their offering on a Bible—which the pastor is holding.
In times of staff stress, or during periods fraught with other types of changes, or while weathering seasons of turmoil over church structure, I wouldn’t tinker with the worship machinery. I’d look silly with soot on my face from the backfire.
Very simply, the level of trust in the worship leader determines the openness to new ideas in worship.
With a genuine sense that my congregation did trust me after three and a half years of ministry and three sermon series on worship, I took the next step: asking the staff to evaluate weekly the content and methodology of our worship services.
We made an agreement that no one would be threatened by this honesty. It didn’t work. I was the first to spin into dejection after hearing an “honest” appraisal of my sermon. There was more ego woven into my servanthood than I wanted to admit.
The staff decided to broaden the base of this evaluation with the addition of laity. Bad idea. Often laity exceeded evaluation of the worship to air their own agendas for the church—like repainting the ladies’ restroom. One worship committee meeting ended with, “You know, Pastor, I think the whole atmosphere of our worship services would be improved if we didn’t have to pay these huge salaries to our custodians.” Definitely a bad idea.
“Never say die” was our motto. The ministerial staff came to the conclusion that not everyone had the spiritual gifts to plan and execute worship. We needed a support group, not a committee, to take on this task. Since I’m specifically responsible for the weekly worship, the staff prayed with me about a hand-picked (my hand) collection of staff and laity.
I looked for people who had demonstrated spiritual maturity, creativity, loyalty, and a reputation for honesty. I found two staff people and three parishioners who agreed to give me honest feedback and new ideas.
The first meeting of this group was given entirely to prayer. We took time to allow the Holy Spirit to germinate ideas within us. And the ideas have flowed. The generosity of inspiration from the Holy Spirit still surprises us.
Practice Makes Perfect
We have worked at change. Calls to worship have come from the pews, the platform, the balcony. Children have been used to receive the offering and even to offer prayer for adults. Drama has intruded into the core of sermons, and calls for commitment to Christ have been made at the beginning of the worship.
I need to underline that this has been an attempt at spiritual creativity and not a corporate ego-trip into the bizarre. We firmly believe that a call for creative worship is a call from the Holy Spirit for us to do our best to be there for God.
One Sunday morning I was preaching on joy as the mark of the Christian. We coordinated the choral music, call to worship, testimony, Scripture, and even the offering with this theme. But my worship “kitchen cabinet” suggested we needed some way of acting out the emotion of joy after our encounter with the Word.
My text for that Sunday was Luke 2:21-35. In this passage Simeon sees the Messiah, whom he has waited for all his life. The joy of holding this eight-day-old infant was the joy of any believer who has discovered new life in Christ.
The sermon concluded with an actor slowly ambling across the platform dressed like the first-century Simeon. Without a word of dialogue, this gifted man mirrored the unrestrained joy of Simeon discovering the Christ. The real tears, trembling uplifted hands, and beaming face said what all of us were feeling.
The choir slid into this emotive scene with the first verse of “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” Then the congregation came to their feet in applause—not for the actor, but, in a special, clean way, for our Lord. We joyously concluded the worship by joining with the choir in their triumphant hymn, and then responsively read Psalm 150 (complete with tambourines, cymbals, flute, trumpet, and harp).
We sang ourselves out of the sanctuary. We worked at our worship, and our worship renewed us because we had been there for God.
And God has been there for us. This pilgrimage has resulted in a rediscovery of the supernatural worship gifts (1 Cor. 12, 14), the ministry of physical and emotional healing, and the importance of public confession of faith in Jesus Christ.
Yet we often fail.
One Sunday evening we opened the service with the associate pastor at the podium reading one verse at a time of Psalm 103. I was in the aisles with a microphone, asking for impromptu responses from parishioners with the lead, “How do those words make you feel about God?” Dead silence. Pursed lips. I was left red-faced, a Johnny Carson with no one to play “Stump the Band.”
I hadn’t taken enough time to prepare the congregation for what was about to happen. Nor did I establish a biblical rationale for asking such a question. So I admitted my mistake, coiled my microphone wire, and retreated. Being publicly candid with the congregation didn’t leave them knee-deep in guilt or anger. We all agreed this man-with-a-mike was a bad idea whose time had (unfortunately) come.
My willingness to openly embrace my misjudgment reestablished my credibility. I find most of the congregation accepts my original intent.
Notice I said most. There are those who legitimately question my motives. Others abhor change because someone once moved the communion table to the side of the pulpit and the sanctuary has never again felt the same. And there are some who just cannot stand unpredictability. It keeps them on the edge of their pew (which can make a bad impression after a while).
But I need my detractors. They keep me honest. I carefully listen when criticism comes, because they may be right. And if so, I need to admit it.
That’s the way I survive. If I fail when implementing new expressions of worship, I don’t have to pack up. My congregation, through years of trust, has come to accept a certain level of humanity in this “man of God.”
And this “man of God” will not filter out his humanity by dishing up the same portions of gospel gruel every week. That fare makes coming to worship a very unappetizing proposition.
Yes, I sometimes still spot camouflaged yawns followed by glassy eyes—but the boredom is gone.
Cal LeMon is pastor of Evangel Temple Christian Center, Springfield, Missouri.
TEACHING ADULTS TO PRAY OUT LOUD
Some time ago, I invited a particularly compassionate church member to join a prayer group and was startled when she declined. “I could make excuses,” she explained, “but the truth is, I just don’t like praying out loud with other people.”
At various times since then, others in my church have expressed the same reluctance, and I confess being initially dismayed and frustrated with them—until, in a moment of humbling grace, I remembered that praying out loud had been uncomfortable at first for me as well.
Many Christians, I realize, were taught to pray aloud at age four (or even earlier) as they knelt alongside Snoopy-and-Charlie-Brown bedspreads. But even they may find themselves uncomfortable praying in public years later. I still recall my terror as a high school senior at the Honor Society banquet table when our faculty sponsor whispered to me, “Would you offer the blessing?” My salad fork froze in my hand.
Before I could voice a protest, she was up and announcing, “Now, before we begin . . .” with her pleasant, demanding smile. Hesitantly, I stood, cleared my throat, and did my best to mumble a prayer fit for Honor Society chicken and peas.
For a long time I explained my fear to myself and others by saying, “Well, you know prayer is such a private thing.” Yet the truth was this: I didn’t want to pray out loud simply because I was afraid I would blow it. Prayer, I knew even then, is important, and I didn’t want to open my mouth and hear something stupid come out.
In other words, my fear of praying with others was rooted in pride. I assumed my task in prayer was not merely to converse with God but particularly to give the human listeners something from my accumulated store of knowledge and experience. If what I offered in prayer was “no good,” clearly I was no good. The prayers I had heard most often used a formal, educated English, and so I assumed just speaking to God required a certain level of educational accomplishment.
By the end of seminary, of course, I had overcome these false assumptions. I had also learned that praying together has been a hallmark of Christian life since the beginnings of the church, as the opening reports from Acts make clear. In working since then with parishioners uneasy about vocal prayer, I have found it helpful to do the following:
1. Encourage a daily time of individual prayer and devotion. Talking with God in private is the best foundation for talking aloud with God in a group.
2. Be understanding toward those who are uneasy praying with others. It’s scary for most of us at first. The best things in life—and that surely includes praying together—take time to grow. Make sure nobody feels obligated to pray out loud.
3. Affirm the value of silent prayer. Don’t hesitate to say in your prayer, “Lord, we know you hear us whether we pray quietly or aloud.” Indeed, you can pray quietly yourself after that, asking the Holy Spirit to move others to pray out loud.
4. Provide entry-level opportunity for simple public prayer. For example, before a potluck meal, you might invite everyone simply to “say something to God that you’re thankful for.”
5. Model simplicity yourself. In the above situation, you might say no more than “Lord, I thank you today for these friends.” Avoid churchy language and try to be as conversational with God as you would with any person you love.
6. Whenever appropriate, encourage others present to add to your prayer. Pastors are usually asked to offer “the prayer” for an occasion, but often you can follow by saying, “Would anyone else here like to offer something as well?” We all learn by practice, and laypersons must be given chances to try.
7. Trust that the full Word of God is not in any one person—not even the pastor—but rather in the body as a whole. It’s OK if you don’t know what to pray when someone in a gathering asks you to pray. Just be honest with God: “Lord, we confess we don’t always know how to pray by ourselves. But we thank you that you are the Head of your body here, and there is no limit to the saving power you give us when we come together in your name. So we release this moment to you and ask you to speak through any and all of us here, so we can let you do what you want in this situation.”
8. Follow up with appreciation. Go especially to “beginners” and say, “Thank you for praying today.” If someone did not pray and you sense he or she was uncomfortable, go and say, “It was good to have you here—I’m glad you came.” That is, make sure people know they are loved and valued for who they are, not simply for the prayers they offer. This sets people free from their fears of being left out and keeps them open to later prayer times when they might be ready to participate. As you move ahead in the adventure of praying together, you will add to this list yourself. Above all, be gentle with others. Nearly every church member has a sense he or she “should” be willing and able to pray with others—and may therefore be embarrassed and defensive about it. In our competitive, performance-oriented society, let the church be a place of acceptance and safety. Indeed, the person who “doesn’t know how to do it” is often the most teachable—closer to the authentic starting point where we need to be in prayer: confessing that we can do nothing for the Lord on our own human power.
—Gordon Dalbey
Torrance, California
WHO’S THE AUDIENCE?
Reprinted with permission from Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, Douglas Steere, trans., (New York: Harper & Row, 1948).
In virtually any discussion of worship, someone is sure to point out the fallacy that ministers and other “up-front” people perform for the audience in the pews. Instead, they say, the leaders help the congregation perform for the pleasure of God. That concept is not new. Søren Kierkegaard wrote about it in 1846:
In regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theatergoers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. But the speaker is not the actor—not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatergoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart.
The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if he is not, he is at fault) stands up before God during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he is to say, but the actor’s repetition of it is the main concern—is the solemn charm of the art. The speaker whispers the work to the listeners. But the main concern is earnestness: that the listeners by themselves, with themselves, and to themselves, in the silence before God, may speak with the help of this address.
The address is not given for the speaker’s sake, in order that men may praise or blame him. The listener’s repetition of it is what is aimed at. If the speaker has the responsibility for what he whispers, then the listener has an equally great responsibility not to fall short in his task. In the theater, the play is staged before an audience who are called theatergoers; but at the devotional address, God himself is present.
In the most earnest sense, God is the critical theatergoer, who looks on to see how the lines are spoken and how they are listened to: hence here the customary audience is wanting. The speaker is then the prompter, and the listener stands openly before God. The listener, if I may say so, is the actor, who in all truth acts before God.
Oh, let us never forget this, let us not reduce the spiritual to the worldly. Even though we may earnestly think of the spiritual and the worldly together, let us forever distinguish between them. As soon as the spiritual is looked upon in worldly fashion (an observation for which one has the same foolishness to thank as that which would look upon the prompter in a play as more important than the actor) then the speaker becomes an actor and the listeners become critical theatergoers. In the same way, from the secular point of view, the devotional address is simply held for a group of attenders and God is no more present than he is in the theater. God’s presence is the decisive thing that changes all. As soon as God is present, each man in the presence of God has the task of paying attention to himself. The speaker must see that during the address he pays attention to himself, to what he says; the listener, that during the address he pays attention to himself, to how he listens, and whether during the address he, in his inner self, secretly talks with God. If this were not done, then the listeners would be presuming to share God’s task with him, God and the listeners together would watch the speaker and pass judgment upon him. So it is with the true relationship of speaker and listener in a devotional address.
Or to put it in another way, it is as if a subordinate functionary of the church, who is without authority should read aloud the prescribed prayer. Properly speaking, it is not the church functionary who prays. The one who prays is the listener who sits in the church and opens himself to God while he listens to the reading of the prayer. Yet the listener does not speak, his voice is not heard, nor does he pray softly to himself; but silently and with his heart he is praying in the presence of God by means of the audible voice of the one who reads out the prayer, and whispers to him what he shall say. Yet this is not earnestness: that one man shall tell another or dictate to another what he shall say. But this is earnestness: that the other man now should tell it to God speaking for himself.
Copyright © 1986 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
