The Art of Worship Part 2
The famous author CS Lewis describes worship as a natural expression of everyday life. (Paraphrased) he muses that to complete the enjoyment of something, say, a good meal or a sporting event, we will naturally want to cheer, applaud, complement the provider of the meal (or the moment). He argues that this does not physically make the meal or the event any better, but it completes our experience of the event/moment. He argues that worshiping God is God’s way of praising Him for our life, but by the action of this worship, he is allowing us to have a more fulfilled/ing experience of the life that we are now living.
My own experiences of worship would back up what Mr Lewis says. These can be moments of corporate worship in a church setting, to something as simple as staring out the window where we live in Warburton & just wondering about the God that created all that I can see. But let’s talk about the corporate “church” worship experience for a moment. I really loved “Mikey fans” insight in the last post about worship. She spoke about contemporary churches being as guilty as more traditional churches being rigid in their expressions of worship, creating “modern Traditions” as it were. There must be a way of answering this conundrum. There must be an explanation or a theory of worship that transcends culture & practice that every genuine worship leader & worship participant can say “this is what worship is & I am comfortable expressing it this way!”
For me, when I am leading a church in worship, I am a really not thinking about the style of the song, or even the words; I guess I tend to try to discover what kind of moment that this song will create, & how will that moment tie in with the other songs that we are choosing, & how will all of those things tie in with the culture of our community, & how will all of that serve where the church is right now. I firmly believe that God can & does take any old piece of music, whether sung or played skillfully, or whether it is played on an out of tune guitar with a tone deaf worship leader, & use these moments for whatever end he chooses. This held as a belief then raises a serious question; why do we bother with seemingly endless rehearsals? Why do we bother with being contemporary & relevant? Why do we allocate large percentages of church budgets for technology relating to expressions of worship? Why do we bother to continually attempt to raise the bar/standard of excellence for our musicians & singers that lead worship in churches? Are we simply succumbing to the standards of the world here & in the process, creating some sort of Christian elitism?
So, the questions for you to ponder & respond to with this post….
1- What consitutes a valid expression of worship for you personally, either as a worship leader or as a worship participant.
2- What do you say about the whole question of “standards” when it comes to expressions of worship in our churches. Should we keep setting a high bar? Why?
3- What would you say to CS Lewis re- his theories about worship. (I’ll try to find a link to the article)
Share your thoughts, your experiences. In the next article, I want to look at what the bible says about worship.
MM
June 18th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Of course anyone could argue that if the heart is in it then worship is going to be good. But is that enough? I don’t want to go to a church service where near enough is good enough beacause “God will show up anyway.” Yes he will but is that the point? Or is it about how you approach it. Giving it your all and then seeing what the outcome is. You have to go to bed the night of leading worship leaving it all at the altar. I like that I am exhausted at the end of leading worship cos it shows that I have given every last part of me over to the experience.
The bar should not be set high, it should not even be set. It’s about the level you have put into it and the willingness to extend yourself. If giving your all means you only have a tone deaf leader and one out of tune guitar, then so be it, but don’t settle, ever. If you have a great worship team of 20 that play really well but they’re only giving 20% of themselves then don’t settle, ever. We should be growing every day in our worship and trying at least to give God our best for today but improve that tomorrow.
June 21st, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Yeah, I have to agree with you Sweetums. To me worship is about making a choice to freely sacrifice something of yourself. If I am disengaged and it costs me nothing to give God my offering of worship, then I don’t know if it is acceptable. I’m not suggesting that worship is only valid when we are at hurting or not enjoying it, but I am saying (as Sweetums pointed out) as far as standards go, it should not remain stagnant. It should be new every day, and usually a new thing requires effort in order for it to be produced. God wants us to pursue Him relentlessly in life and in worship, like the parable of the woman and the lost coin. And besides, it always benefits us when we give something to God!
As far as being contemporary and relevant, I think this has less to do with validity and more to do with the “style” issue that we discussed in Part 1. Worship teams do need to provide platforms that their particular church or community can relate to in order to engage in corporate worship, whether that is contemporary or not. Criticising worship because of it’s style or genre is not necessary, unless it goes against Scripture somehow. It think contemporary styles have a lot more to do with relevance concerning outreach than validity of worship within church walls.
And we should also remember not to put all the emphasis on our half an hour a week worship at church anyway! It is a small percentage of a life lived in worship. But I’m not about to open up that can…