Gavin (the vicar) reflects on worship and the culture of individualism that pervades the church.
As a vicar I get a steady stream of correspondence in the form of emails, letters and webmails. Nothing new there – it comes with the territory. But did you know that nearly all correspondence is about one thing – Sunday worship. People write to me about the style of music, the choice of liturgy, the sermon content or length, the prayers, the church worship furniture, the version of the Bible used, and so on. At church meetings the questions raised are often about one thing? Guess what it is? Yep – Sunday worship. When people ‘leave the church’ or choose to be members of churches outside their immediate geographical community, do you know what the reasons are? Well done, you guessed it again – Sunday worship.
I’m not going to beat about the bush. There is a real underlying problem in the Christian Church (big C).
For many churches, no matter what the tradition or denomination, the church focus is primarily about Sunday worship. One could argue quite rightly that the focus should be on worship of God, however the pervasive individualism of our culture, like a cancer, has found its way into the church such that Sunday ‘style’ of worship has become the main thing. None of us in the Church are immune to this and sadly many clergy and church leaders make one of several mistakes:
- They make a stand for a particular model of worship – be it biblical, early church, contemporary or traditional – “This is how we are going to worship and people should adhere to this way of worshipping”
- They collaborate with culture opting for an attractional model – “We should worship like this to appeal to more people and get them in the door.”
- They become cynical and use ‘emerging church’ or ‘community’ as a cover – “We must separate from all other churches and define worship like this.”
Any attempt to redefine or tackle Sunday worship does not address the underlying problem. It would be very easy to do any of the three above but all that will do is pander to the culture of individualism and people will simply choose the ‘Sunday worship’ that they like best – as they currently are doing. Worship quite rightly has its place in the church but should be the overflow of the gathered community. I suggest that the tail should not wag the dog as it currently is.
To tackle this problem the church needs to reform around its mission in the world. People of all ages – children, teenagers, adults and elderly – need to know that they have a role to play both individually and collectively in the ongoing mission of God in the world. Then, when this community come together to worship – the worship will look like what it looks like – be it contemporary, drawing on tradition, relevant, and so on. There is nothing wrong with style or method, however, as long as the church continues to define itself by its style and method of worship it is disabling its effectiveness for mission and ministry in the world.
My hope and prayer for God’s Church (big C) is that it will teach and enable people to see their place in the church and have the freedom and capacity to allow worship to flow.
Let me leave you with some of the lyrics of a song by Matt Redman,
“When the music fades and all is stripped away, Lord I simply come longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless Your heart. I’m coming back to the heart of worship and it’s all about you, Jesus. I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it when it’s all about you, Jesus.”
Amen.
Nail, the, head, on, hit, the.
Please re-arrange to form a well known phrase!
Hey Gavin, I agree wholeheartedly. What we do with the 166 hours per week outside 2 hours in church on Sunday, deserves as much of our attention and prayer as we give to weekly worship – or perhaps even more….
I find it is really hard not to campaign for what WE like in many parts of life, including worship styles. It’s part of our human condition, I think. But if our faith, modelled by our ‘servant’ king means anything, then it must mean trying to set our own preferences aside in matters where there is no right and wrong technique – such as worship styles (….obviously as long as our Christan values are not compromised..). God limited Godself in coming to us in Jesus, after all. Sometimes we might need to do what is beneficial for the whole church family, but not our ‘ideal’ in a similar(but much, much smaller) way. I believe we exist as a church to praise God and encourage each other to live our lives for Him (or Her). I don’t think God much minds HOW we worship as long as we do, and from a pure heart.
The grumpy older brother of the ‘prodigal’ son, always reminds me that none of us has the monopoly on praising God the Father – it is His grace which makes our measly but sincere offerings into something worthy.
Amen!
Hi Gavin
Just picked up the above and although we are new members to Uplyme felt I wanted to reply. Both Garrick and I are thrilled with the form of morning worship at Uplyme. It is refreshing, enthusiastic, sincere and involves the whole congregation,albeit in a very different format to what we were used to. We were looking for a Church to attend for quite some time and felt at home from the first visit. We enjoy the music in all its forms, the readings which is not usually taken out of context so the talk to me is more meaningful. For us please don’t change its wonderful and am so glad we found you. I’m sure you don’t get the good emails but hope this cheers you up. May God continue to Bless you and Lucy and your family.
Sue and Garrick
I read this with interest and of course it’s entirely true that in an ideal world the way that worship happens when we meet usually on a Sunday will reflect the gathered life. But this is surely almost impossible to actually do isn’t it? Would it not require that meetings are unplanned in content and largely not led so that people can simply contribute as they feel moved to do so, perhaps sharing what has been happening in their week and so on. What happens in most churches, including our own is that a small number of people determine the form and content of meetings and when that happens the only recourse that people have, if they feel that the meeting is not reflective of their spiritual life etc is to make this known to the leader, which is where you started. Please forgive me if I have misunderstood what you are saying, but I’m wondering how one might ensure that ‘when this community come together to worship – the worship will look like what it looks like’? When I was a kid I went to a church which was exactly like my earlier description unplanned and improvisatory and it did work. But there everyone believed in the concept of :The priesthood of all believers’ and so they realised that they had a responsibility to be led by the spirit in a meeting. I also experienced this in a house church in Exeter, but the small numbers made this more practical. It is interesting what you say about individualism, but it is the individualist nature of most worship songs that most upsets me. Most of them are about ‘me and Jesus’ including the one you quoted and not about ‘us the body of believers’ Perhaps we need more songs of the gathered life to awaken individuals to their corporate responsibility.
Of course you are right that it is down to the small collection of people that lead that worship to define how that worship is led, and because of this it cannot and will not ever be reflective of any one individual’s spiritual life. It is acceptance of this communal commitment to gather for worship – putting the needs of the whole community before self – that is lacking in some. Who is the worship for? Is it for us or for God? More than that, our church is a Mission Community and should be defined by the God’s mission and not by the style of Sunday worship. How blessed we are to be able to freely gather to worship our Lord and how grateful we should be to all those who freely give of their time and talents to lead our collective worship. There is nothing wrong with singing first person songs to Jesus – together. Individualism is not speaking (or singing) in the first person but putting oneself before God and others. It is this attitude to corporate responsibility that needs challenging.