Worship is NOT Entertainment
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Tue, April 01, 2008
- Viewed 945
- (97) comments so far
People are evangelized, not by a juggler, but by the presentation of the Gospel. And while evangelism may occur in worship as the Gospel is faithfully proclaimed, the purpose and focus of worship is that those who believe in Christ should gather and meet with God.
--Robert Godfrey, quoted on OldTruth.com
When will we stop trying to entertain people with the word of God? Why can’t we just meet with God like my grandpappy did?
I’m open to your comments (as long as they agree with me).
Todd
The call for entertainment in worship in our time is often cast in a particularly seductive form. Entertainment is often sold in the name of evangelism. We are told that we must make worship interesting and existing for the unconverted so that they will come to church and be converted. At first glance that argument is very appealing. We all want to see many brought to faith in Christ. Who wants to be against evangelism? But we must remember: entertainment is not evangelism, and evangelism is not worship...
Comments
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Rob on Fri, April 04, 2008
Just to clarify myself a bit.
If I absolutely love traditional hymns and worship God with them from the bottom of my heart and to the best of my ability. God enjoys it and I enjoy it also.
The same is true if I enjoy any other style of worship.
When I worship God, I do it to bless him with a gift that suits who I am.
Perhaps your church suits whos you are and that’s great. Regardless, you and I both enjoy our worship experience. Both experiences entertain us (engage our attention).
Is there anything wrong with that? No.
We’re just worshipping God in the way he’s made us to be. You may never fit my mold, that’s ok because I may never fit yours.
Does God want us to be fighting over this? No. Rather we should be celebrated our unique differences. So lets make a deal - You continue to enjoy (be entertained) what you’re doing, and please let me enjoy (be entertained) by what I’m doing.
In heaven our music may be completely different than you or I like, However I can guarantee you that we’ll both enjoy it.
This is definately my last comment. It was a lot of fun and I learned a great deal! Thanks to everyone.
Peter Hamm on Fri, April 04, 2008
Bonnie writes
[And if you agree that anything done well is entertaining, then why do we need ostentatious displays or performances? Shouldn’t we be just as “entertained” by a few well-sung songs and a solid presentation of a biblical sermon as we would be by a full band, video displays, pyrotechnics, etc?]
Don’t need all that stuff, but if you have it, why not use it?
Leonard on Fri, April 04, 2008
A few times someone has commented that worship is for God. I think that is too small a view of worship. It is a view that is easily propagated because of the gap between God and us. Worship is “of” god but not just about God. It is an expression of an experience we have with God. This makes it essential to have our experiences with God based in truth and grace so we can worship in spirit and truth.
All communal worship is a recitation of the greatness of God, the mercy of God, the acts of God and what turns a recitation into worship is our heart and the relationship we possesses with God. I can recite the words and actions of Michael Jordan but my heart has no connection to him. I guess what I am saying is that while worship is for God is I about our relationship with God.
Throughout the OT God introduced himself and was introduced by his relationships and acts… I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… I am the God who led you out of Egypt… Both of these introductions are not singularly about God but rather about experiences and relationship people had with God. When I come into a service (what we are talking about here) I worship God with my heart and mind because of a relationship I have with him. The fact that he altogether different form me and measurelessly above me is in large part what transforms my heart into a worshippers heart. The paradox of His personal connection to me and his vastness is what makes my singing, my spirit, my service, my preaching worship in my heart as well as an action.
My job, which is why we use music, teaching, creativity and every other reasonable resource we can use is to facilitate for the people of God the opportunity to collectively recite, proclaim and be grateful for the relationship and experiences with God. Music came from the heart of man because it was a way to express emotionally what the mind was experiencing with God. The stories of God through the Bible and the reading and explanation of the text are what God uses to draw us deeper into a transforming experience with himself. We use tools not to entertain but to make sure the representation is accurate and the experience is full. But I can tell you this for sure.
We worship God and no one else but worship is not only about God otherwise it is not worship. Worship is much bigger than that.
Bonnie B. on Fri, April 04, 2008
I stand corrected—worship is not only about God, it is about coming into communion with Him and responding with joy and thanksgiving for salvation through Jesus Christ. Thank you Rob and Leonard for that reminder. However, I still stand by my belief that worship must be, first and foremost, acceptable to our Lord, and if we are bored without the audio-visual performances to stimulate us into a joyous response, then we are worshiping in the flesh and not in the spirit. Why? Because first we must meet our own needs before we are willing to praise and honor Him. And no matter how great or excellent the performance is under those circumstances, we cannot please Him.
Leonard on Fri, April 04, 2008
Bonnie, I think we all agree with worship needing to be acceptable. I know by how you have communicated here you are well spoken and thoughtful about our worship and I respect that.
I believe the issue is not whether I can worship without being bored, I think that as we facilitate the moment in corporate worship we must use creative and engaging tools. I don’t use video, sound, digital experiences because people will be bored if I don’t. I use them because they are a part of the language of the culture in which I minister. These tools help me present a more fully representative picture of God to others.
Our culture has shifted from written cognitive heart processing to visual heart cognitive processing. In other words we are moving back too an oral/visual society. Most people today equate feeling with thinking. I ask what someone thinks and they tell me how they feel. Any medium of communication today whether it be news, print, movies, media, radio… is designed to make me feel before it makes me think. This is an amoral statement in my mind.
My mind and my heart are both essential to my worship. Traditional churches often seek first the cognitive…Think right thoughts process. It is simply not my experience that most of our culture starts there anymore. To associate “flashy” with human means is simply to downplay the powerful presence of God’s creativity within human hearts. God as a creator means he is by nature flashy and subtle both. His image in me makes me creative too. His redemptive work in my lives redeems my creativity.
Thanks again to all of you for this discussion.
Suzanne on Fri, April 04, 2008
Peter said “Don’t need all that stuff, but if you have it, why not use it?” But what is the point of using it just because you have it? And why do you have it in the first place?
If I’m not mistaken, at times crowds came to see Jesus hoping He’d put on a show, give them an experience, do an awesome miracle, and went away disappointed when all He did was preach. Too boring, in other words. Jesus had all the tools of the universe at His disposal, but mainly He preached, told a few parables, and did a miracle or two or three. Really, nothing very exciting (unless you were the one healed!).
I haven’t been to any of your churches, so I don’t know what your worship is like. I only know that for the past 20 years or more, churches in America have been trying everything they can to entice people to come. Usually, the reason is to appeal to the young people. It surely doesn’t seem to be working very well, unless all the statistics I’ve read are faulty. If my young adult children are any indication, what they want is something with meat, something they can grasp onto in a wonderful, beautiful, scary, violent, and ever changing world. What they don’t seem to care about is having the most awesome, fabulous, mind-bending, rocking worship experience ever! They really don’t.
Peter Hamm on Fri, April 04, 2008
Suzanne and Bonnie,
We’re just not going to agree, so I’m going to leave it at this one last response. (Also, I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m saying.)
Bonnie… [and if we are bored without the audio-visual performances to stimulate us into a joyous response, then we are worshiping in the flesh and not in the spirit.] I weary of the “worship in the flesh” argument. If you’re using your lungs and vocal chords at all, you are worshipping in the flesh. To assume that since the worship is engaging and entertaining that it is therefore pandering to the flesh is assuming at best and judgmental at worst. I won’t engage that argument past that.
Suzanne [ I only know that for the past 20 years or more, churches in America have been trying everything they can to entice people to come. Usually, the reason is to appeal to the young people. It surely doesn’t seem to be working very well, unless all the statistics I’ve read are faulty.] First, we are not trying to entice people to come, that is your assumption. We are, however, trying to worship God with OUR cultural voice, something you apparently disagree with. Fine, we’ll leave it at that.
Second, I have to think your statistics may be indeed faulty. Very engaging contemporary “entertaining” churches are growing by leaps and bounds and traditional very “non-contemporary” churches are… well… not… It shows up in every statistic I’ve seen for years.
Thanks both for the dialogue, but no thanks for the inferences you have made about what I and others have said about contemporary worship.
Bonnie B. on Fri, April 04, 2008
Thank you, Leonard. I think you are absolutely right in that we have become a much more visually oriented society, and many people do equate thinking with feeling. But isn’t there a very fine line between incorporating digital audio-video equipment as an adjunct to worship, and resigning ourselves to an attitude that says “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” Where do we draw the line? We are to be in the world, but not of the world, so who are we really serving by accommodating the culture? Aren’t we simply reinforcing the “feel first, think later” mentality of our culture by giving them more of the same in church? And aren’t we adding to the confusion by including an emotion producing audio or video performance into the mix? How can people tell the difference between worshiping in the flesh and in the spirit when the flesh is becoming excited by the sights and sounds? Drama and theatrics were popular during Paul’s time—could that be part of the reason why he and the Apostles did not use it to proclaim the message of salvation?
Bonnie B. on Fri, April 04, 2008
Peter, I think maybe we’re talking about two different things. Yes, we use our bodies to worship and serve Him. But that is not the same as “being in the flesh” when we worship or serve Him.
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
Romans 8:5-8 (RSV)
Leonard on Fri, April 04, 2008
Bonnie, those are great questions, thank for asking them. You ask: “But isn’t there a very fine line between incorporating digital audio-video equipment as an adjunct to worship, and resigning ourselves to an attitude that says “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?” Where do we draw the line?”
I use video and such because they allow me to more fully illustrate an invite people to a place of worship. They are not adjunct in my mind but rather tools, just like books and piano’s and guitars. They simply help. The if you can’t beat them join them assumption is not my nor anyone I know mentality. We are not competing, we are communicating in a language that our culture speaks.
I do not think it is a moral issue to think first of feel first, it is simply a byproduct of culture. Prior to the reformation and in many non-literate cultures of the world this was and is true. Technology has created a duel path of written knowledge and visual experience. People tend to wire toward the visual. I do not think that thinking is superior to feeling nor do I feel like feeling is superior to thinking, they are simply incomplete without each other.
My goal for a Sunday morning is to invite people into a worship experience with God that causes them to experience transformation in the heart and mind, causing a change in action and word. As for Paul using theatrics, we simply do not know because the bible is silent. We do know they used music and they use an oratory skill. We also know they did not use clever or cunning tricks, but that does not necessarily mean no theatrics. Worship in the flesh and worship in the spirit are discerned by the fruit of worship.
Suzanne, I feel like I know full well what you are against, but what are you for? I am sure if you articulated what you are for as well as what you oppose, we would not be that far away in our desire.
Bonnie B. on Fri, April 04, 2008
Hi Leonard,
Thank you for your thoughtful responses to my questions. I agree that feeling and thinking are both essential and one is not superior to the other. I think what concerns me most about our churches (and please understand I am not saying yours is one of them) reinforcing the “feel first, think later” culture we live in, is that people are very quick to act on feelings before engaging their minds. While that’s normal behavior for young children, we are seeing more and more adults who have not grown beyond that, and obviously the results have often been disastrous. If we offer them more of the same experiences in church by designing worship experiences that will stimulate emotions before thoughts, we aren’t teaching them to “take every thought captive” as much as we are teaching them to rely on their feelings as a way to assess their walk with Jesus. They may “feel close” to God without actually being close to God. Conversely, they may easily lose interest in God or believe they are far away from Him simply because the excitement diminishes and they don’t know how to feel close to Him without it.
I also know of many Christians who try to serve based on the fact that they “feel led by the Spirit” to head in a certain direction, only to have a very different “feeling” a day or two later when the thought process finally kicks in. Ministries are started but not followed through on, and chaos reigns supreme. I know this is just my opinion, but I think, with our young people in particular, we may be doing more harm than good by attempting to either bring them to or teach them more about Jesus by capturing their emotions first because we fear we won’t reach them at all otherwise.
threegirldad on Fri, April 04, 2008
To Rob:
Sorry that I haven’t been able to return to this disucssion sooner. Before the thread fades into the sunset, I wanted to say thanks for clarifying the confusion over “chadad/chagag.” I probably should have made the connection between this and your reference to Exodus 5:1.
Leonard on Fri, April 04, 2008
Bonnie, I see and agree with your thinking about emotional manipulation and such. I see much more of that in many of the pentecostal groups. I know this is controversial to say that and certainly do not think the case in every pentecostal church. More often than not in my experience the churches with more “flashy” worship are not as manipulative.
Sorry if I opened some scratches.
Will on Thu, April 10, 2008
A couple thoughts: to entertain means to to capture/hold people’s attention. Should worship services be designed to do that? If not, what is the alternative? Second, living in culture of consumers we are constantly asking; how can we make people happy so they won’t walk? We are having this discussion because we’ve allow the culture of form the church.
CS on Thu, April 10, 2008
Will:
“A couple thoughts: to entertain means to to capture/hold people’s attention. Should worship services be designed to do that? If not, what is the alternative?”
Worship services are designed for the worship of God. If people get entertained in the process, no harm done, but worship is all about Him and not about us. If worship services are being designed with the core intent of entertaining people, they have missed the mark entirely.
“Second, living in culture of consumers we are constantly asking; how can we make people happy so they won’t walk?”
In talking about preaching the Gospel, Paul said to the church in Galatia, “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
If people walk because they are not being entertained in a church, let them. They likely came for the wrong reasons in the first place.
—
CS
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