C. S. Lewis famously said:
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping.
Indeed, but what if the production and evaluation of the worship service is your job? What if you serve on a creative team that has the responsibility of making sure the service is free of unnecessary distractions? What if you are a pastor who has a vision as to the excellence of the elements of your church’s worship service, and is trying to move your team in the right direction?
Thinking about worship really is different from worshipping, but someone has to think about the worship service right? For many pastors and production team members, this is a tension we live with every week.
Missing God
I am sad to say that there are some weekends in which I emerge from the worship services with a list of notes and action items only to realize that I forgot one critical element. I missed God. I missed worshipping because I was focusing on the visual transitions or the stage set up. I was so consumed with the production of the worship service that I forgot to worship.
If your church has multiple services, the answer may be rotating this responsibility with other team members and having at least one service in which you have no responsibilities.
If you are on staff at a church with only one weekend service this may be more difficult. In some cases, there may be too much production in a service and not enough simple passion.
Less really is more sometimes.
Martha and Mary
In any case, when you pour your heart into crafting a meaningful worship experience for God’s people all week long, it’s tough to tune out the details. However, this is a discipline that must be mastered.
Someone who is consistently missing God in the worship service because he or she is “working” is making a tragic compromise.
Luke 10:38-42 tells the story of Martha who was obsessed with serving Jesus, and Mary who was focused on Jesus himself. Jesus said that Mary had it right.
Have you ever struggled with this issue? How do you balance the tension that can exist between worshipping and worship planning?
Debra says
I followed your Facebook link to this article, David. You have some great thoughts here. 🙂
Kevin says
It’s harder to predict ahead of time how things will allow people to worship which is the real goal of worship planning (I think?!). However, after the fact, I think you have the hindsight to figure out more about what happened. If you get comments like, “Awesome!” “Cool!” “Wild!” or other things that just focus on the people or production rather than the experience with and to God, then we’re probably missing the point somehow. We can learn from this “positive” feedback. The paradox is that most people (in my experience) tend to gravitate toward the awesome, cool, and wild production rather than the God-focused worship (with or without lots of production). That’s where good worship leaders really do their job…
Kevin
http://opensourcechurch.com
Tom Martin says
This weekend I witnessed someone worshipping in the midst of what I would have perceived to be a handicap and that experience left me with the same question after that experience. As someone who volunteers on the production team at my church, at times even though I may not even be serving that that day, I find myself not always worshipping completely but evaluating the production aspects of the service. I think for me that stems from a desire to do my job, and to continue to improve, but if I’m not guard against getting lost in the production asspects it does limit what I experience personally.
I happened to be on guard this past weekend and experienced a form of worship so raw and pure I had to write about it. I only hope my description of what I experienced watching someone else worship does it justice. http//tommartinatl.com/
I truly believe that was something I needed to experience personally to take a look at myself and to reinforce why I serve.
joshua brooks says
Interesting post. I’ve been involved in church production elements for about 9 years and I have experienced exactly what you’ve described above. Unfortunately I think the biggest issue is that we (the church) have gotten too consumed with “cool” & not consumed enough with God. I write this as one of you, not one pointing a finger. We have gone through a few phases of different styles and elements in our services and thankfully God is graceful, because things we did with good intentions were slightly selfish. This scripture describes my personal stance on this issue of corporate worship which is just an extension of personal worship. Romans 12:1-2 1Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The hard thing to do is to be relevant without conforming to the pattern of the world. The bad thing is that much of the church I believe has conformed to the pattern of the world and call it relevance. This has gotten slightly off from your question, sorry.
To reduce the tension this situation (worship vs worship planning) creates, we have greatly reduced the things “we” do in worship & are really focusing on honoring, glorifying, & loving God. The words “awesome”, “wild”, & “cool” have completely new meanings when you know you didn’t do anything, but God did.
God bless,
-joshua