One of the reasons I hear for people not coming to Sunday worship gatherings is that the services don’t seem relevant to them or aren’t uplifting. They don’t like the music, they aren’t “being fed”. I understand these comments coming from those who aren’t Christians. But when I hear them from someone who claims to follow Christ, I am disturbed.
Our worship gatherings should encourage us, lift us up, ready us for the week to come. But that isn’t why we are there, it’s only a by-product.
When we gather to worship—and yes, when we worship with each thing we say and do throughout the week—we do it for God. When we sing, we sing to God. When we celebrate communion we remember what He did for us. Everything we do is a celebration of our relationship with Him, and our focus is on Him. We worship God because we need to, but it isn’t about what we get out of it—it’s about what we give! As one person said, “Worship is a concert, and the entire congregation is performing it for God!”
If we approach our worship gatherings with the expectation—even the demand—for what we are going to get out of it, we miss the point, and that’s the biggest reason so many of us are troubled by distractions and feel our worship experiences aren’t “relevant” or “uplifting”. They can’t be when we’re not really worshiping! And if what we are doing is about us, then we aren’t really worshiping.
That’s why it is so important that we come together no matter what is happening in our life, how we feel, or what’s on our mind. We need to worship God, and to do it together.
We don’t have to suffer for Jesus. If the worship is bad and the spirit does not move you at your current church, the question is why stay. We go to the building to connect with other like minded people not to worship god. We are in him every second of the day worshiping him. Just because we have a habit of singing hymns and listen to someone speak does not mean we are being more spiritual than a person reading the bible by himself at a coffee shop. God wants to have a personal relationship not a visitation. He wants to habitate. When the church gets slopy with how they conduct the service and complain that people are not coming back, that is what bothers me. It truly is about god and not an agenda other than what the holy spirit is saying to do. No rules just spirit all the way. If the church want to become extinked keep with the same old ways off performing church. If the church wants to thrive, start by helping those who need it and allow the holy spirit to drive the bus all the time.
Chris,
I think you\’re mixing truth with untruth personally. No question the church can get sloppy–and to worship God in a way that is \”sloppy\”, not giving our best, is like offering the lame bull as a sacrifice–it just shows that God isn\’t important.
However, you seem to be saying that worship is ONLY individual (our personal life given to God at all times–the living sacrifice of Romans 12:1). This simply doesn\’t fit scripture. Worship is both individual AND corporate. To separate myself from the body and not worship with the body, OR to say that Christian gatherings are only for the purpose of \”connecting with other like minded people, not to worship God\” is just wrong. It ignores the value of corporate worship (NOT corporate connecting) and makes our times of corporate worship times of self-focus. If the Holy Spirit is driving the bus, the bus isn\’t about us.
Good posts on worship. One of our pastors, Dan, just preached on an aspect of this topic 2 weeks ago, referencing a book (don't recall the name, but could get it) written by one of the "seeker churches" in California, who re-evaluated after growing their numbers to about 1500, but realizing they had inadvertently fostered a "consumer mentality" in their church. This had not been intentional, but people had become accustomed to a "what are we going to get" environment (is that the world or the church?) – very difficult to sustain. When they corrected this to a more Christ-centered (biblically-anchored) message, they lost numbers, but deepened the discipleship of their members. Best to all.