Good post by Brian Moss

Brian Moss is a worship leader and recording artist in Seattle. He has written some new tunes for old hymns and has a cool project out setting some of the Psalms to music (with presumably more to come). You can listen to some of that here, but today I'd like to call your attention to a post on his blog in which he raises some concerns about people approaching corporate worship with consumerist attitudes (though he doesn't use those exact words to describe it). For example, he mentions the classic case of an evangelical family going "church shopping", which I think pretty much says it all.

He makes a good point in his article when he says that "worship can be uncomfortable". I don't think any pastor would explicitly state that their chief goal is to make their people comfortable in corporate worship, but I think in reality that is the motivation behind our wanting people to leave the service feeling blessed, not wanting visitors to feel awkward, and not wanting outsiders to think we are fanatics. I think even when we express things in terms of wanting congregants to "feel like they have met with God", we often really mean that we want them to have an encounter with God and come away with a positive feeling. Sure, perhaps the encounter with God will make us want to sin less, be a better father, and give more to the church; but in general pastors tend to want people to leave feeling affirmed and self-fulfilled. The truth is that, unless we avoid mentioning God's character as seen in Christ's life/death/resurrection, the state of the world, and our own remaining sin, we should be made uncomfortable in corporate worship.

After ranting a little bit more, Moss says,

I write this because worship is eternal. I write this because worship matters. When worship is reduced to a top 20 countdown we lose. When worship is reduced to what we get out of a worship service we lose. When worship is reduced to only what we like in worship we lose.

Amen.