Worship-tainment

This is something that I heard from a youngster recently, “I attend that church because they have awesome worship, man it is a happening place and it’s cool”. This is not a one-off statement, alarmingly it has become the norm of our times. People look for churches where they can feel recharged, refreshed and leave on a high after the worship service, so they engage in church-shopping or church-hopping because the recharged batteries tend to get empty pretty soon, the euphoria seems to wear off in no time and like a junkie we are looking for a new and better high. In fact I came across a church advert tagline that went, “come in for refreshing worship”. Well is there anything wrong in this kind of worship-entertainment, the feel good, feel recharged, with upbeat music, the latest digital instruments, multimedia and laser- Fresnel lights and even fog machines to create smoke effect on the stage kind of worship? Pretty much a duplicate of a rock music concert or a live stage show!!

We are living in a world of entertainment, our senses are constantly bombarded by different kinds of entertainment all around us and we believers do not want to be left behind in any way so we replicate the whole thing in our worship sessions believing that it will bring in the numbers and will keep the existing ones happy. The focus is on the feel good factor, the worship team and the leader’s focus is on the audience and try to engage and entertain them just like a music concert, or a movie or a reality show. But is that what God wants? Is it God honouring, God exalting worship? 

When our worship is centred on Man, we come in with the question, “What am I going to get out of it?” and go out thinking, “how am I feeling, did I feel really good with the worship?” But when our worship becomes Theo-centric or God centred we leave reflecting “How great thou art?” We totally forget about ourselves; our feelings and emotions because the focus shifted from us, from me to God who is awesome and worthy of all our worship.

I love the question that Philip Yancey asks in his book; “Church why bother?” Who is the audience in your worship? That profound question puts the whole thing in perspective. If I am the audience in worship then I need to be entertained and I need to feel good after it, but if God and God alone is the sole audience in our worship then our emotions, feelings, ego, the music, the lights, the pace and our desires doesn’t matter, all these things become shadows in the light of the one who is worthy because we are in the awesome presence of a Holy God who created us and wants our worship, we are there for HIM, for HIS pleasure and to have that reversed is an abomination to God.

Who is the audience in our worship?