I ate my church
Posted on 29 Jan 2007
Perhaps it is good timing as I am over-committed at school and beginning to dream up this Urban Hymnal, but sadly, my joy in leading worship has waned greatly in the past few months. I am very grateful to have had a place to serve with my gifts and to learn what it is to lead a team and congregation, I am also frustrated and disillusioned by the consumption that I have witnessed, engaged and fostered. There is an overwhelming assumption that if something is not growing it is dying. As an artist I am constantly plagued with such fear. After three years of performing in the rock community my band was still drawing the same numbers and I felt the sting of failure. A failed artist will often doubt their work and worth, and may in turn, seek to better their craft or, retreat into anemic, glossy pop. I have glossed up my fair share of worship. The urge to get in-and-out unscathed; to entertain with efficiency and excellence. Not good. And next year everyone will flock to a different church with a cooler building, younger pastors and a hipper, glossier sound. This is the cost of church-as-a-product.
How do you provide integral worship without indulging the parishioner as a consumer? How do you both attract and send out? Church should provoke and draw, convict and comfort. It is juicy meat and it is bad tasting medicine. I am learning that a worship leader must wear the prophet’s hat at times. It grieves me when I realize that mine has gathered dust.
And of course, this Urban Hymnal liturgy service could become an even more extreme perversion of consumable church/worship; a detached, unaccountable, hedonistic display of artists doing their own thing. May we surround ourselves with prophets who will call us on our perversions.
&this
Climber says it like so: “Always Right“.
amanda
30 Jan 2007 (15:41)
i love hearing your thoughts zadok.
dan
31 Jan 2007 (16:29)
Amen and double and triple amen.
Zadok
31 Jan 2007 (19:07)
you can’t triple stamp a double stamp Lloyd!
Nova
2 Feb 2007 (04:54)
worship propheteering, she says. spring comes…
Anonymous
13 Feb 2007 (03:17)
i know. it stinks but thanks be to god that He dwells with stinkers like us.
[p] eugene
LP
25 Feb 2007 (02:13)
and furthermore, the same worship music can be entertainment to one person, and lead another into the presence of God. you can’t necessarily judge your worth as a worship leader by how someone reacts to it. just because it’s good music (which anyone, wanting to worship or not, can recognize) doesn’t mean that’s all it is.
of all the worship leaders to question themselves, i wouldn’t put you on the list. then again, i’m not you, obviously…but you say that “Church should provoke and draw, convict and comfort.” that’s why i enjoy it when you lead worship…it does all those things, and then some others i can’t even describe exactly. but i guess you can’t really take credit for that, it’s not really you anyway… still, i appreciate the part you play it it.
Zadok
1 Jun 2008 (19:00)
thanking God for dwelling with us stinkers is not an answer I’m willing to accept anymore.