What are we teaching?

I just read a worship confessional from a worship leader at a mega church. In the blog, he complained that the week leading up to Sunday his prayer life and time with God had not been what it should have been. So in the middle of the service he decided that when it was time to go back up and have the corporate musical worship time again, he would get up and sing a brand new song that was not even out yet. So, basically the congregation nor the band knew the song, but for him it was a time of worship, to be one on one with God and get all of his frustrations out.

So what did the congregation do? Sit and watch him worship? Take a nap? Step out for coffee? Since when has worship become a spectator sport?

It appears to me that it was mighty selfish for the worship leader to say, "Hey, my spiritual week has basically been the pits so I am going to go up and have MY time with God NOW when I am supposed to leading others into His presence". Now I am certain there are people who were able to worship to the song and were touched by the words and his performance, but what was he teaching? That it is ok to just to sit there and have worship spoonfed to you? It is ok that you did not exert any effort at all but you walk away feeling like your worship schooner is full of worshippy goodness?

(Ummm... I would like the David Crowder special with fries and a large orange drink. Hold the cheese.)

We are pummelled by a consumer culture here in America and as worship leaders we have to fight against the tide of people wanting to sit back and have a relationship with God spoonfed to them.

Hungry? Drive up the road to Mikey D's, order a pizza, or stuff something in the microwave and plop your fat butt back down on the couch to watch American Idol.

Bored? Go to Fry's, Best Buy, Guitar Center, Hobby Lobby or whatever and buy your new toy... bingo, bored no more.

And what is really sad is I hear the same worship leaders who love to sing solos grousing about the lack of participation by their congregation. "Oh, they don't sing, they don't raise their hands, they don't shout, they don't dance, they don't worship, they just sit there like a bump on a log."

Of course they just sit there like the bumps on the logs, because that is what you have conditioned them to do!

If you get up every Sunday with your Chris Tomlin tribute band and jump, jive, and wail without giving a thought to the congregation except whether or not you beat last week's attendance or if your new shirt and pants outfit is really cool from a distance, then of course they are just going to sit there and watch the show! Because you have transformed the worship team into a bar band playing on Sunday morning where the wine and cocktails are now just grape juice.

So what are you conditioning your congregation to do? To sit and be consumers (wow... what a great show) or enter in to the presence of God through physical expressions of worship, singing, tithing, listening to the word, ministering to those around them, standing, kneeling, raising hands, shouting, praying...

When I raced triathlons, I always chose to ride with the bikers, run with the runners and swim with the swimmers because as I looked around at my competition, I could see that the specialists (runners, bikers and swimmers) could always smoke the generalists (triathletes) in their specialty. And I was dedicated to being around what I knew would be successful, even if it meant swimming 5000 meters with a mean masters swimming group and immediately hopping on my bike for the local bike club puke ride. I knew what I wanted (to win) and I knew how to get there (train like a mad man with other mad men)

So what are we conditioning our congregations to do?

I think that if we want our congregations to worship, then we need to leave the gut wrenching solos to the Journey tribute bands and the Monday Night Karaoke singers and bring songs to our worship celebrations that our congregations can sing and with which they resonate. And we must be freakishly dedicated to corporate congregational worship. It must be the hill that we will die on otherwise, we are just spending Sunday morning reinforcing the culture of consumerism. People will come to church to fill in the square and never leave transformed or brought into a relationship with God.

We have to be different, we are called to be different, and we are set apart to be different.

Rant over.