Yesterday we began a follow-up series on Matt. 6:1-18. We asked the question, “What if Jesus preached this passage today? What religious activities would he talk about?”
So far, we identified three topics. Today, I want to begin expanding on those topics. We begin with Worship:
WORSHIP
When you worship, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they look forward to their worship experience from week to week and talk about their conferences and events to be known as religious. They have received their reward. But when you worship, consider how God is asking you to change your life throughout the week. And your Father who sees your heart will reward you.
When I consider WORSHIP as a religious activity in the 21st century . . . I think our tendencies to pervert true worship tend to fall into three major camps. Interestingly enough, at different seasons in my life, I have fallen into each of the three camps, so I do not write to point fingers, I write out of my own journey. All of us tend to lean toward one of these . . . Each of the camps have some validity, but our motivations need to be kept in check to keep it true worship.
Camp 1: The Show
I thought long and hard about what to call this camp. I could call it “Tradition,” “superficial,” “Outward,” or a number of things. The basic idea with this camp is that we trade in genuine worship for superficial perspectives to try and impress each other. I don’t care if it is dressing in your Sunday Best, or to have the highest quality church music around, to put on the biggest show, to have the best programs, or whatever. If you are in this camp, you are in danger of trying to impress fellow Christians with your appearance or abilities more than you are of truly worshiping God. A lot of traditional churches and “contemporary” churches of the 80’s and 90’s can easily fall into a routine of looking good and doing things “bigger and better.” “We want to be the best church in town” is the call of this camp.
Camp 2: The Experience
Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between Camp 1 and Camp 2 because some churches fall into both . . . But the basic idea of this camp is that we trade in genuine worship for an incredible worship experience. Whether it be incredible spiritual highs from special conferences, to the holy moment week-to-week, or the late night “worship session” at your friend’s house . . . You live for the worship experience more than the God you claim to worship. You spend your days looking forward to the next High Holy Moment. If you are in this camp, you are in danger of trying to impress either yourself or fellow Christians with your spirituality more than you are of truly worshiping God. I personally believe Louis Giglio, John Piper, and their gang saw their movement slipping into this camp, and that is why they cut back on the One Day and other Passion events. Hats off to these leaders for recognizing what the movement was becoming. They aim at drawing us to worship God, not the worship experience. True Worship leaves the worship event/room and infects our lives not with an excitement about worship, but a passion for God. “We want to offer the best experience in town” is the call of this camp.
Camp 3: The Attraction
This camp is vastly different from the first two. The first two camps trade in genuine worship to impress Christians. The basic idea of this camp is that we trade in genuine worship for a concert for the unchurched. This is the camp a large number of church planters today would tend toward. I am not accusing. I tend to lean in this camp today. There is nothing wrong with packaging the Gospel and Worship in such a way that it communicates to our culture and crosses barriers to the Gospel that the other two camps have built. However, in our attempts to communicate to our culture, we are in danger of trying to impress the unchurched more than we are of truly worshiping God. This does not mean we remove all things secular from our worship services. It does not mean we abandon our awesome bands and cool environments. True Worship means we carefully use all of these things as a tool to draw those far from God into a place where they can come to know Him and worship Him. “We’re at least as cool as you are” is the call of this camp.
No matter what camp we tend to fall into, we tend to make worship about us. Worship is about God and God’s work in us. Anything else is hypocricy.
Until next time . . .
