I have to confess that I am not much of a shopper. I do not mind getting out there to pick up some groceries, and if I have something I really need/want I’ll head out to the store with eager anticipation for the hunt. But I consider my needs to be few so I like to think I am not a ‘shopper.’ But such a position would not hold up to much scrutiny. We live in a consumer culture, bombarded by advertising and the temptations of excessive things and gadgets. You know, those little things that make life more meaningful, and enjoyable. And let’s express our thanks for the greatest revealer of our shopping/consumerist attitudes, the channel changer. Why the moment we are bored, un-interested, or there is something better on that interests us we simply change the channel. The very young, and the very old have been conditioned to this consumerist attitude (ie “I’m not interested unless it suits me or moves me, or I’m getting something out of it.”)
And let us be sure that this attitude affects our approach to worship. I read the following recently….
It is a scarce wonder, no wonder at all, that in a society dedicated to consumerism people ask, "What can I get out of worship?" As if getting something out of everything expresses an appropriate response toward life! The question of worship, when so stated, does not take God seriously. It does not ponder the true worth of God, for to treat God as if He were a means to OUR ends is to imagine that we ourselves are gods. God is not humanity’s servant. (John Burkhart, Worship, p.15, Westminster Press, 1982).
All too often we fall into the trap of consumerism when we think that worship is supposed to move us or stir up our feelings. I am not saying that it won’t (indeed the promise of God is that it will), but if our motivation for heading out to worship is to ‘get something out of it,’ then we are not going there to worship. We can never be seen as heading to church with a shopping bag ready to get from God the things we need. Rather we head out to church to worship Him who is worthy of worship and adoration. Worship is the surrendering and the giving up of ourselves, our hurts, pains, losses, joys, and thanks, to simply be in the presence of the living Lord. What is that wonderful line in “What a Friend we have in Jesus?” ‘O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.’
Let me put it this way - if my goal in loving my wife is to get something out of it for myself, then I am falling short of really loving her. There is the constantly repeated principle in the Scriptures that in order to have you must give. Jesus said to save your life you must lose it; to be first you must be last, to lead you must serve; to be exalted you must be humble, and so on.
These days I think that worshippers and worship leaders alike have fallen into the trap that worship (ie our church services) have to change in order to excite and interest, and the fear is that if we do not the Church will die. It is profound that the early Church called the worship of the Church Liturgy. The word literally means work. And let us not doubt that the Early Fathers understood that worship is work. It is difficult to surrender our need to satisfy the self, even our brokenness. But true worship calls us to surrender the self for the pure purpose to behold God. Somehow the children of God must find their way back to offer God the worship due His Name, and we worship leaders must find some way to inspire that worship without playing to the shopping bag, consumer mentality of today’s society.
LORD have mercy,
Brian+
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