A number of years ago, I believe somewhere in England, there was a pastor who decided he and his congregation had lost touch with what it was to worship God. In a brave move, he announced that they were going to go without a sound system, without instruments, and without worship leaders for awhile. That they would re-discover what it means to truly come before God and worship him. I’m not sure how long they did this for, but at the end, Matt Redman, a member of that congregation, wrote the well known song
‘Heart of Worship’. I always loved this story, but I never stopped to think about what an entire congregation worshipping in ways other than singing might look like.
The first small team assignment we received at training camp was to come up with 50 different forms of worship – other than our usual guitar/praise music – write them down, and turn them in after 4 days. After our first 10 minutes of brainstorming, we had almost 30. Surprised? So was I. Even more so when I discovered that most of them could be done within a congregational setting. Music is the easiest for a large body of people, but there is so much more that we don’t see in church today.
Throughout camp we would have ‘creative worship’ sessions, where anyone could just lead out in whatever way they felt lead. Someone would start singing a song, and we’d sing. Someone else leads out in a scriptural reading, or speaking words straight from God to the rest of us. Next person feels led to get up and share an insight God revealed to them. Someone else prays. I don’t think anyone got up to dance or paint, but all the options are open. My new favourite is worship through loving each other, where you tell someone how you’ve seen Jesus in them. It’s my favourite because God has shown me that I have the gift of being able to speak words of insight or encouragement into someone’s life – with or without knowing them – and this not only allows me to practice but allows me to worship using the gift God has given me. It’s pretty sweet.
On Easter Sunday we went to this huge megachurch for the Easter service. This church is so big they have police escorts directing traffic. It had stadium seating, ginormous video screens, concert style lighting racks, and my favourite, pre-packaged communion, where the juice and cracker are handed out like dunkaroo packages, just smaller. Out front they had a live last supper display (pictured on the right), and get this – they had a real live lion come out on stage at the end of the message. And a living lamb too. Jesus burst from the tomb smiling ear to ear, and kids in angel costumes flew accross the congregation hanging on wires. We dubbed the whole thing the ‘Jesus on Ice’ event, but don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to critisize the service. The worship music was beautiful, energetic, fun and very well done by the 8 or so talented individuals and their backup choir. People were touched by it, as people often are by worship music. But here’s my point – when we came back to camp, we had our own worship session. There were 50 of God’s children, one guitar, the freedom to worhsip in whatever way we could think of, and the spirit of God to lead us…
And THAT is where I was brought to my knees.
This is where people were broken, when they were able to bring to God every last bit of themselves and hand it all over. Rather than just bringing our voices, we could bring our very souls and lives, our strengths and our weaknesses, our gifts, and give it all over to Him in worship. As we worshipped, people started to confess, to break before God, to drop to their knees. People wept – I wept – and it was AMAZING. But without the freedom to worship in the ways that we were being led, I don’t think we would’ve reached that point. In being able to come to God entirely as we were meant to, in the ways that God gifted each of us, we worshipped in a way that was more complete than anything I’ve ever experienced, and what came from it was so perfect and pure.
So if that’s what happens without the sound systems and the worship leaders and the multitudes of people, what would it look like if we freely worshipped WITH all of those things too? What would my church, with I think nearly a thousand people in a service, look like if we were given the freedom to worship God in ANY way that we felt led? Not just worshipping in the ways set out in the program, not just singing the 20 minutes of pre-set songs, but freely and creatively worshipping God as He leads? If what I saw with only 50 of us is an indication, then I don’t think I can fathom the power that would follow my whole church doing this. And what about if every church did this? What about your church? Can we take the risk of leaving what we know, what’s tried and true? Do we dare step out with such wild abandon? Do we dare to seek more than what we’ve seen?
Do we dare to take God out of the box we’ve made for Him?
(‘Praise’ photo credit: crouchingcathiddendog on flickr.com)
