The Perfect Worship Service?

“If we just play this song the right way,” he said, “with the right attitude and sound then the congregation will be inspired to really worship God and let go their inhibitions.” These words spoken by a fourteen year old capture the mindset of many worship leaders who get frustrated with their congregation because of their lack of interest or energy. The reality is that it takes time for a congregation to develop the energy that a worship team seeks in the services they lead. We want to make the worship experience perfect and we want the congregation involved. But at what point is our expectation unreasonable when we think a particular song played a particular way will magically revitalize our worship?

How many times have we worked really hard on a killer worship set perfecting every piece of the instrumentation and rhythm looking for that perfect sound and feel? It seems to be a weekly quest for our praise team. We work on every little piece of the song and seem to leave rehearsals almost depressed because we didn’t get that one thing perfect. Is our quest unfounded? Should we not be seeking the best that we can do for God? Doesn’t God deserve our utmost?

These and other questions like them are the wrong questions to ask. We need to focus on the center and purpose of worship. If we don’t know what that is we need to figure that out. I may not be able to answer that in a general principal that can govern all worship in all situations but I can say what I think. I think that the center of worship is Jesus and this Messiah crucified and the purpose is unity in the people of God. From the center and the purpose we can find interest and energy in worship. We also find that worship is not just what happens in the assembly but touches our whole life.

There is a major chasm between people who want to have high energy worship and those who think that more subdued, contemplative worship is more authentic. “We must do ‘the loud,’ but we must also learn to make disciples ‘in the quiet’,” writes Alex McManus in a post titled “Lessons from the Underground: Begin with the M in Mind.” I think he has a great point. “The loud” is the more high energy worship or at least worship that really has energy. And “the quiet” is the more contemplative, inward experiences in discipleship and meditation that really foster complete transformation in the life of the follower of Jesus.

We must locate the center of our worship in Christ and find our purpose in unity. Locating the center of worship is the easier of the two tasks. We can just reorient our language and order of worship and the center is clear. But we find divisions over the instrumentation or the decorations in the sanctuary or the clothing of the people of attend ‘that’ church or worship service. Fostering unity is the difficult task of the Jesus follower. Unity will change the world not that perfect song.