Worldly Worship
There is a time and a place for entertainment, and I will be the first to admit that I enjoy and appreciate the arts, music and sport. There certainly is a right place for fun and recreation and over the years I have greatly benefited from the enjoyment and relaxation of an evening spent watching a football match on television, or perhaps going to the cinema or theatre to enjoy a good film or show. I believe that God has given us all good things to enjoy in their rightful place, so I am not in any way suggesting that entertainment is wrong. However, the worship of God is incompatible with entertainment, the two are like oil and water, they do not mix and they are not supposed to. I believe that it is in the area of mixing entertainment into our worship in the mainstream church that we have adulterated the worship of God with worldliness in an attempt to attract unbelievers. This spiritual adultery has so often polluted our worship to such an extent that the modern mainstream church barely resembles what a true, biblical model of the church is meant to be.
A.W. Tozer, commenting on this back in 1955:
“For centuries the Church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognising it for what it was — a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability. For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world. But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given up the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers. So today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven. Religious entertainment is in many places rapidly crowding out the serious things of God. Many churches these days have become little more than poor theatres where fifth-rate ‘producers’ peddle their shoddy wares with the full approval of evangelical leaders who can even quote a holy text in defence of their delinquency, and hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.” [1]
Observing this in the middle of the last century, Tozer was deeply concerned by the idea that was emerging at the time in America, that the best way to grow church attendance was to attract people in with entertainment. It is rather harrowing to see how many of these so-called mega-churches have since graduated from “poor theatres with fifth-rate producers” to slick operations with perfectly choreographed professional dancing and singing that would not look out of place on a TV talent show.
In the UK, whilst we may not go to the extremes of some of the American “mega-churches” who have huge arenas, audiences (since ‘congregation’ would not be an accurate description here), and budgets for big production, we have, for the most part, bought into this idea that if we make the expression of worship in a church engaging and entertaining then we will attract unbelievers into the church. But the saying is also true that ‘what you win people with is what you win them to,’ so if you are attracting people with entertainment and upbeat rock music, cutting-edge sound and visual, and rousing choruses that are enjoyable to sing, you are essentially offering a free rock gig every Sunday rather than calling people into a place of worship.
There has been concern over the years that whilst the production and musicality might have reached a professional standard, the inner worship of the heart has often been missing. We have too often become a generation that loves to make a noise with our mouths but can that same worship be seen in a transformed heart and life? The prophet Isaiah spoke of a people who worshipped God with their mouths and honoured Him with their lips whilst their hearts were far from Him. The American pastor-theologian James Montgomery Boice makes this observation about modern worship:
“The great hymns of the church are on the way out. They are not gone entirely, but they are going and in their place have come trite jingles that have more in common with contemporary advertising ditties than the psalms. The problem here is not so much the style of the music, though trite words fit best with trite tunes and harmonies. Rather it is with the content of the songs. The old hymns expressed the theology of the Bible in profound and perceptive ways and with winsome memorable language. Today’s songs are focused on ourselves. They reflect our shallow or nonexistent theology and do almost nothing to elevate our thoughts about God. Worst of all are songs that merely repeat a trite idea, word, or phrase over and over again. Songs like this are not worship, though they may give the church-goer a religious feeling. They are mantras, which belong more in a gathering of New Agers than among the worshiping people of God.” [2]
The way that our public worship has been ordered has so often in modern times been set up to appeal to man rather than God, and I will confess to my shame that I have been guilty of this myself on numerous occasions over the years. So I am not in any way attempting to take any moral high ground but freely admit that I have been a part of this problem as a church leader over the years and deeply lament it. I am not in any way looking to judge others, since I have been guilty of this in my own ministry, but my honest and deep conviction is that I owe it to God to confess my failings in this area publicly and to write this to explain why I believe that whilst we may have had all the best intentions, we have lost our way in modern worship. I also believe that the mainstream church needs to recognise this, particularly her leaders, and there needs to be a season of repenting of the worldliness that has become so established in the modern church.
At the heart of the problem is mistaking a form of worldly catharsis for the true worship of God. Many of the modern worship songs that we sing today are brilliantly-written songs with catchy choruses and even catchier bridge sections that can whip the worshipper up on a rollercoaster ride of elation, high emotions, and dopamine. A recent study in January 2019 has found a direct link between music and pleasure in the brain explaining how previous research has consistently shown that music-evoked pleasure is accompanied by physiological changes in the autonomous nervous system, as well as modulation of the mesolimbic reward pathway - in other words, music creates a dopamine hit in the listener.
That is why when we are singing a particularly catchy chorus at a conference or a contemporary worship service, or eagerly anticipating the worship band playing a favourite worship song, whilst the chorus or bridge section is being repeated over and over as it builds up to a crescendo, the worshipper is completely wrapped up in the music. Whilst we may not be aware of it, repetition is pleasurable in music, this is why we will often listen to a favourite song on repeat at home or compile a playlist of songs that we enjoy listening to one after another.
Taking all this into consideration, my question would be: in that situation how can the worshipper be sure that they are worshipping God rather than just enjoying a dopamine high? The great Twentieth Century preacher Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones was particularly wary of this back in the last century and on one notable occasion, he gently rebuked his congregation in the church that he was leading in Wales at the time for getting too carried away with the melody of a hymn. He made them sing it again, urging them to pay more attention to singing the hymn with reverence and worship towards God and not as if they were joining in singing a rousing chorus at the theatre.
My desire in writing this is that as the church we would be released into true worship, worshipping God in “Spirit and in Truth”, and grasping what that looks like on the ground as well as in the spiritual realm. But in the meantime, we are going to observe what is wrong in the current church climate, particularly before the Covid-19 pandemic which has at least allowed us to stop, reflect and pray more deeply about this. It was in the first lockdown of 2020 that I first really properly reflected on how our church worship may not be glorifying God and what God might want to say to us through the pandemic. So this leads us to think about the issue of false worship in the church, and since this is such a bold claim the question that is likely to be asked is “Who gets to say what is or isn’t genuine worship?” To answer that question, let us consider what the Lord Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well:
“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24 ESV)
Jesus is talking about an attitude and posture of heart, a full surrendering, and bowing of the knee in submission to God. This is not about what style of church service a worshipper goes to, the reality is that in many church buildings, we have been seeing different expressions of tradition rather than people gathering together to worship. Particularly in Anglican churches, it is very common to find a church building serving as a “temple” for more traditional styles of worship and as a “theatre” for the more contemporary style of worship. As an ordained minister who has ministered across a wide range of different expressions of worship over the years, and who loves and values the rich diversity of worship expressions in the Anglican Church, I have no desire to be controversial or provocative. However, for some time now I have had my concerns as to whether a lot of what passes for worship in our modern church today is truly faithful to the Scriptures in leading the worshipper to worship God in Spirit and Truth.
God doesn’t need our help, He doesn’t need us to make church appealing, He doesn’t need us to make Christianity fashionable, He doesn’t need any of us at all. But in His great love, He calls us by name into that relationship with Him to walk obediently with Him and to be a witness to Him through our worshipful obedience. We should not worry about what others think about us, how unfashionable and out-of-sync with the culture we might be, remember that one day every single person who ever lived will have to bow in the presence of Jesus Christ:
“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:9-11 ESV)
I would like to close this blog post with a modern parable that the American missionary-preacher Paul Washer told at a pastors’ conference a few years ago:
“There was a great King who had a beautiful bride who he loved dearly and he always dressed her in the simplest and most elegant white linen. She needed no audacious colours on her face, she needed no wild hairdos, she was beautiful, simple, elegant, pure, godly and beautiful. One day this king went on a long journey and calls you as a steward and he says: ‘I am going to entrust my bride to you, I am going away for a while, but I have laid out for you in a book every rule I want you to maintain, I want nothing changed at all. Stewards, you be faithful to carry out what is written in this book.’
So the king goes and he has been gone for a long, long time, and all of a sudden the steward begins to realise that the people in the kingdom are losing interest in the king because they’re losing interest in the bride. She is too simple, too prudish, rather boring. She’s out-of-step with the times. And so this steward thinks in his mind: ‘A-ha! I’ve got it figured out!’ So he calls her in and takes off her white, elegant, godly dress and dresses her in something far more attractive to carnal men. He paints her face and parades her up-and-down the street and by doing so, draws all the carnal, wicked men back into fellowship supposedly with the King.
That is exactly what countless pastors are doing in America today, they have taken the simplicity of the bride of Christ, her magnificent beauty, her purity, her holiness and they have torn it from her and dressed her up and paraded her in front of carnal men in order that they will be attracted to somehow come back to God. Let me tell you something, on the Day of Judgement, don’t worry about the atheist! Don’t fear for the prostitute, or the murderer. You want to fear for somebody on the Day of Judgement? You fear for a large number of evangelical pastors who have departed from the Word of God and are parading the Church in a dress and garb that God never intended for her to wear.” [3]
Footnotes:
[1] A.W. Tozer “The Root of Righteousness” (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1955) p32-33
[2] James Montgomery Boice “Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace?” (Crossway, 2001) p180
[3] Paul Washer, 2017 G3 Conference, Session 6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-NDLxlsmOY