Worshipping Worship

The resurgence in worship is a good thing. The legacy of the Billy Sunday, D.L. Moody and Biily Graham crusade idea has been transferred into church services. This was probably not without cause. The gospel became muddied and lost in the emphasis on liturgy in some churches. Reclaiming an emphasis on bringing truth to bear to the conscience is not bad.

Now it appears as though the penduluum is swinging in the other direction. Now there is an emphasis on worship where it was not the case before. But, since we are creatures of extremes, we must be cautious in this as well. Some want to see "worship" happen so desparelty in the church, that they come close to worshipping worship.

Matthew Smith provides some helpful insight as a guest blogger for Tim Challies. He says:

Like many high school kids before and since who’ve learned to string together three guitar chords, I was soon recruited to lead the worship singing for my youth group’s weekly meetings. (Or forced myself upon the position— my memory fails me at this point.) After leading the music, I would sit down and hear a message, whose point was often that I needed to try harder. Try harder to be a “good witness” at school. Try harder to avoid temptation. Try harder to obey God

Somehow, the idea of trying harder carried over to worship. My repertoire consisted of praise and worship songs (none of which had an F chord— I didn’t know how to play that one), mainly ones that talked about how much I wanted to worship God. I thought that if I tried harder, was sincere enough, and really meant it enough, that I would enter into a state of capital-w Worship. The world around me would fade away, I would lose my inhibitions, and I would achieve a spiritual state of being lost in worship.

But this state of spiritual ecstasy never arrived. And, in my mind, there was only one person to blame–me. I was a failed worshiper

Read the entire article here