Preferential Worship

Father forgive me my arrogance...

I thought I knew what worship meant. I have prided myself on understanding what it means to soak in His presence...I have reveled in the fact that I am good at demonstrating abandonment....I have selfishly chosen songs that move me.

I have been very, very wrong.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am newly in charge of worship for a church replant. To make a long story short, it's an older church that has pretty much died. They have brought in a new pastor to birth a new legacy for this church, and man is his vision awesome! Along those lines, I have tried to blend traditional and contemporary worship. I have tried to be open with the feedback, sensitive to the congregation, flexible with my worship plan, song arrangement, vocal style, and even vision...which ended up causing a very troubling day for me. In trying to make everyone else happy, I lost sight of the purpose.

Oops.

I left practice feeling frustrated, troubled, burdened, and confused. Not overwhelmed, thank goodness....just wrong. It's no longer about picking songs. This is about so much more than that.

I came home and sought answers in the one place where they are always found: His Word. As I thumbed through Ephesians where I have been all week, I found the answer...

Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God (Ephesians 5:17-21).

The Israelites did not worship God based on their preferences, but on clearly defined expectations that He commanded in the law. Just as they find their design in the OT, so can we find design in the New.

To me: do not be foolish, and seek the will of God.
To the congregation: open our hearts to the movement of the Spirit, which is compared to a state of drunkenness.
To the team: psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs....regarding ALL THINGS HIM.
To the church: submit to one another.

As always, He has humbled me with His greatness. I have been reminded that the true purpose of worship is simply worshipping God. It's not about any of us, myself included. We must throw out our preconceived notions of what worship is supposed to look like. It doesn't have to be traditional, and it doesn't have to be contemporary.  It doesn't have to include a killer band, or awesome lights, or a sick sound system (although those things are super cool). He doesn't need to hear 3 harmonies on a hundred year old hymn or my vocal rendition of Hillsong. He needs us to be honest, to listen, to respond, to remove ourselves from the process. We must ask ourselves a singular question:

What has HE done?

All that we are, all that we do, all that we have stems from that one reality. The answers to the question are infinite. Therefore, our worship must be geared towards one specific truth:

Who HE is.

Our worship should be filled with adoration, exaltation, passion ,submission, devotion, and celebration directed at our perfect triune God.

No worship leader is immune from pride, a fact that I have always known. Our lesson as musicians comes from the original worship leader of heaven, and his own eternally costly mistake of idolatry of self. I am awed and inspired at the way I was very gently reminded of this today. Correction came swiftly and specifically, and the reward for my repentance was the gift of a new vision.

I would like to challenge the non-musicians with a thought...as we sit in the audience and observe the ritual of worship, is the idol of preference distorting the true goal? As we sit and perform our amateur critique of the vocals, song selection, arrangement, lighting, etc...are we really concerned about what God thinks? Or is it just what WE think?