Worship like a lemming!

August 13th, 2007

Worship in the context of the Christian faith has very little imagination, we all basically do the same thing and no one ever comes up with a new idea. I know there are a few smaller churches that are trying to do things differently but as a majority Christian worship is the same.

For example: This past week the staff of Real Life attended a leadership conference that was being held in Chicago but broadcast live by satelite to places all over the world. We attended a venue over in Boise. They began the conference by singing worship songs. Everyone in the auditorium in Boise stood up and were singing toward the screen as if there was a real person on the stage in front of them. This struck me as odd. As I looked around in curiosity at our trained response to “Worship time” I asked the question “Why do we stand in rows and sing as our worship?” Who decided that this was the best way to worship the God of all creation? Why are Churches set up so the congregation sits in rows? Are we missing some opportunities to worship God in new and creative ways? Again, I ask more questions than I have answers, but I think worship is important and I don’t think we have it all figured out yet.

I like how Real Life has phrased it’s core practice of worship; “Bringing to light God’s activity in the world through the corporate expressions of beauty and art.” Do we actually practice this? I would say…no. I don’t blame anyone at least not anymore than I blame myself. What are beauty and art? How do we corporately express them? I don’t even know what worship like that looks like. I agree with it whole heartedly but I just don’t know how to do it. My rough idea of how this looks is as follows:

We as a community of believers are so in touch with our community, town, nation, and world that we see God working in amazing beautiful ways every day. We are so infatuated with God’s grace and love that we have to express our love for Him through song, poetry, dance, photography, painting, sculpture, and literature.

I don’t know how we get from here to there but I would love to try.

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