I confess. I’ve lusted. I’ve lusted after the kind of church that someone else is pastoring. More than occasionally. Worse yet, I hid my lust by pretending my church was actually better. Or at least just as good.
The object of my lust was worship. I wanted the kind of worship at my church that I saw and heard about at others. I wanted to see people moved by the Spirit during a service. Tears. Joy. Intimacy with God.
I found many people and situations to blame for my unfulfilled desire. It was the board, the lack of musicians, the town, the backward people, the building (“If only I had a larger sanctuary”), the denomination (“Pentecostals don’t have this problem”).
It was everything, except me.
After all, I had the desire. I was the one who “spoke for God.” I couldn’t be the problem, could I?
Well, yes.
I didn’t openly hinder worship; in fact, I was all for it. I taught that it was a good thing to celebrate God. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” was a text I was familiar with. (I wasn’t too familiar with the taste, just the verse.) It wasn’t that I didn’t want people to love Jesus. The problem was I had no idea what loving Jesus meant.
Messing with My Mind and Emotions
My faith was cerebral. I grew up in a stoic family that went to a stoic church. Faith had to do with reason. If someone were to ask me, “Do you love Jesus?” I would have said yes, though with little emotion attached. I had the “if you love me you will obey my commands” down cold. I would love Jesus as long as doing was as far as it went. I didn’t want him messing with my emotions.
Worship was an hour on Sunday morning. While I had passion when it came to my wife and children, I had none when it came to expressing my faith through worship. I was opposed to the “hand-raising, oil-slinging” crowd because I mistakenly thought their faith was all about emotion. I failed to see that my own faith had swung too far in the opposite direction.
It was 1983, and I was pastoring my first church. Sixty people in a poor, rural Kentucky county. Fortunately, only one family in the church had problems with me. Unfortunately, 58 of the people in the church were from that family. I had no idea what I was doing. I felt like a failure.
That’s when God did it. He chose that time to begin drawing me into a love relationship with himself. I wasn’t seeking him wholeheartedly. Yet despite my sin and immaturity, God wanted my heart.
Over the next several years, God taught me to express love and adoration to him that actually came from my heart. Patiently and gently, he transformed my heart of stone.
Beyond “Pass It On”
I suspect God knew that I had to love him with all my heart before I could help the people to love him.
It began simply enough. I felt an “urge” to worship the Lord. Not a mandate, not a command, just a simple, quiet longing.
The small church I pastored had a large cemetery. It dated back to the mid-1800s. About 1,200 people were buried there. I would venture out into the church cemetery on nice mornings with a hymnal. There was one unique tombstone that I would sit on. It was a large shelf of rock suspended on four pedestals about two feet off the ground. The writing on it had long since worn away, but it made a nice bench. I would sit there, my hymnal in hand, and sing hymns to the Lord. I didn’t play an instrument then, so I sang a cappella.
Often I was embarrassed when someone would pull into the church lot looking for me, only to find me with my eyes closed, sitting on a tombstone, singing at the top of my lungs.
Yet no matter how strange it seemed or how often I got embarrassed, something in me was changing.
After a while I discovered worship tapes. Like many Christians raised in the Bible Belt, my exposure to contemporary worship was singing “Pass It On” around a campfire. Listening to worship tapes expanded my range of expression. I was able to feel my heart drawn closer to God as the recorded praise of the worship leader and musicians led the way.
I talked to the Father as my father for the first time in my life. I could describe our relationship using real relationship terms: love, passion, friendship, companionship.
Pick and Grin
One Saturday I was sitting at a friend’s house. He had just taken up guitar. I picked up his guitar and he showed me a few chords. After I left his house that day, I asked the Lord for the chance to learn to play guitar for him. I had no guitar and no money to buy one, so I figured it would be a while before I could start. I had momentarily forgotten how generous our Father is.
That Sunday the associate minister was going to begin giving free guitar lessons to anyone interested. I went to him and asked him if I could come and if I could borrow a guitar—just during the lessons—so I could at least begin learning the chords.
He took me to his office. Handing me a guitar, he explained, “A kid came by this week and donated this old guitar. He wanted someone who couldn’t afford one to still be able to play. Enjoy.” The case was caved in. The strings were corroded. And it was one of the most precious gifts I have ever received.
It took surprisingly little time for me to be able to play songs in worship to the Lord. Soon I was able to pick songs that expressed how I felt about God rather than having to depend on the songs on a tape. My love for God grew even more.
The Fruits of Real Worship
That was several years ago, but I have continued to grow as a worshiper. There are times when I have been distracted. There are times when I have rebelled. Still, God has been faithful to love me and call me back to his side.
Why has becoming a worshiper been so important to my life and my ministry?
First, it taught me what worship is and isn’t. Once I had thought of worship as a style of music. Now I see it as an attitude of the heart. As a pastor leading others in worship, I needed to focus on the heart, not the style.
After a while, people gleaned from my lifestyle and heart that worship was about the Lord, not about my personal agenda. They knew my concern was that the church would love the Lord. Whenever I recommended a change, they saw it from that perspective. They didn’t always agree, but they were always agreeable.
As a worshiper I also gained something else: communion with God. There is no way I could have pastored several churches through radical change without it. Times in the presence of God gave me the emotional strength to carry out the tasks at hand.
I have helped three churches move into blended worship over the last 15 years. No two were the same. Spending time with the Father allowed me to “see what he was doing” and imitate him.
I no longer lust after a “better” church. Instead, I long for a deeper relationship with God.
Applying the Lessons
Becoming a person of worship is not difficult, but it requires consistency. Here are four helpful keys:
- Set aside time to worship. Without making time in your schedule, it won’t happen.
- Start where you are. If you know hymns, sing hymns. If you don’t like to sing, pick out a characteristic of God that you appreciate and tell him about it.
- Use worship tapes and CDs. Recorded worship music from companies like Integrity, Vineyard, and Maranatha! can have a tremendous impact on your personal devotional time. Keep music playing in your car, you may find yourself worshiping the Lord in gridlock instead of being annoyed.
- Offer what you’ve been given. If you play an instrument, worship with it. If you write, create a poem or tribute to the Lord. Whatever you do, do it as an act of worship. God made you just as you are; so give him yourself.
Excerpted from our sister publication, Leadership journal, © 2000 Christianity Today. For more articles like this, visit www.Leadershipjournal.net
