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.

Resources

Several weeks back we were driving through Austin, and Stew and his family graciously allowed my family of six to invade their two bedroom apartment for the night. We stayed up wicked late talking, and Stew has no idea how much the conversation we had that night has changed my perspective on several issues.

One comment in particular that Stew made in passing has been ringing in my ears ever since. He was talking about his disgust at hearing someone lament the fact that the Church in such-and-such third world country didn't have much in the way resources, as if that was a major barrier to the health/success of the Church there. Then Stew said something like, "since when is God dependent on resources?" or something to that effect.

I have consciously let this idea inform many conversations that I've had with people about different things since that day. I remember a few years ago reading a great little book that Zac Allen gave me by J. Scott Horrell called From the Ground Up, in which he talks about doing a study with a bunch of pastors in Brasil in which they determined that the majority of activities in the churches there revolve around four central images (1) the building, (2) the full-time minister, (3) the Sunday service, and (4) Sunday, the "Christian Sabbath." Horrell goes on to show that the controlling concepts that would more accurately express the biblical essence of the Church are (1) worship, (2) learning, (3) fellowship, and (4) evangelism/mission. I have found Horrell's simple conception of the purpose of the church really compelling and helpful over the last couple of years.

But Stew's comment really helped drive the point home to me that we in the west assume that where there are no resources, the Church is all but paralyzed. We also assume the inverse of that--that where there are an abundance of resources in and for the Church it is a sign of much success.

This was on my mind this morning as some representatives from Luis Palau's ministry came to our church to talk to us about how our church can participate in the huge Luis Palau evangelistic campaign coming up in a few weeks here in Monterrey. They showed a promotional video, and the whole selling point was what a big production it would be--they're gonna have all these big name Christian musicians in and high-profile converts and whatnot. Luis Palau himself said in the video, that he wants to show the world that Christian artists are first-class.

Now I'll keep my opinions about this kind of thing to myself for now. I don't make the decisions in our church about whether or not we'll participate in stuff like this--if we do participate I'll do it wholeheartedly. But this morning in my own mind I resolved to do what I can to make sure the church doesn't buy into the idea that we need these kind of resources to be faithful in our mission.