A friend told me that she was talking to one of her friends who said, "Worship isn't the same anymore. Since _____ left, it hasn't been the same. The songs don't do anything for me anymore. I just don't feel like worshiping." I had another friend of mine tell me that he likes to dance when he worships. On a recent weekend, he was told that the bobbing he was doing was a distraction and he was politely asked to stop.
Worship is defined as honor, adoration, glorify; to render religious homage, as to a deity. - from Dictionary.com
In America, most Christian churches worship by singing; JUST singing. People walk in and are given a hymnal or a lyric sheet to help them sing along with the others attending. If they're in a more progressive church, they may have some big screens with the lyrics scrolled through onscreen by someone typically in a different room. This is how many churches have been worshiping for hundreds of years. This is the way they've always done it. They say it's traditional, but it's really not.
Music is not that important to me when I'm worshiping with others. I imagine that it's just a glimpse of what it is truly going to be like in heaven. There are choirs in churches, although it seems like there are fewer and fewer. Now churches have bands called worship or vocal teams. To all my vocal/worship team friends, my apologies but I hope we're singing "a capella" in heaven. You get just a little too loud for me. I love hearing the sound of harmonious voices singing with just their voices being the instruments and I can't hear them.
Worship for me is an intentional act. I enter ready to honor, glorify and praise my King, music or not. I don't need to go to a service expecting the music to move me to worship. Worship is so much more than that. I lift my hands and eyes up to heaven lost in my worship of Jesus not caring about what people around me think. Worship with music in a church is a way of worshiping, but I also worship in prayer and how I live my life to honor God (even though I fail so much).
More churches today are becoming more traditional. Yes, MORE. All you need to do is read some of the stories in the Old Testament. The Hebrews worshiped God through singing and dancing with tambourines, stringed and percussion instruments. These are the traditional ways of worshiping from centuries ago. Even through their oppression, they celebrated God. So why aren't there many more churches doing this?
Most churches today are still clapping along with the music, but now there are more that are lifting their hands and eyes up to heaven glorifying, honoring and adoring God. Then there are the churches that are dancing in the aisles or just where they're standing. There are those with people worshiping with flags and ribbons.
I think the "modern" American church is genuine in it's intent to follow Jesus' example of being a fisher of men, but in doing so, they've kept people from freely worshiping God. They frown at you you if you become a distraction because "that's just not the way we worship here." They've forgotten that your worship is between you and God. Frankly, if someone standing near you when your worshiping in a traditional way is distracted, they're not worshiping; they're just singing along.
They've forgotten the long heritage of the church. A good friend told me that one of the reasons African Americans go to church dressed up in their "Sunday best" is because that's the only time they really had the chance to dress up. As slaves, when they weren't in church, they were typically working in the heat at back breaking jobs, so they took the opportunity to remove themselves from that. Through time, that's evolved to today's men wearing suits and ties and the women wearing bright colored dresses and those great hats. And they sing!
They sing like it's nobody's business. They sing like they're almost shouting. A choir of twenty in an African American church will sound like sixty at any other church. When they sing, it's a celebration honoring God. And they're clapping, and they're dancing in the aisles, and they're lifting their hands up praising Jesus. They are worshiping!
There is a change going on in the churches today. There are more modern churches becoming traditional. I have a friend in the Midwest where they have dancers dressed in traditional looking dresses and scarves playing tambourines. You can now find more churches with vocal/worship teams lifting their hands in praise and celebration, dancing in the aisles with flags and ribbons, These modern churches have evolved to be more traditional like the Hebrews thousands of years ago. This ain't yo mama's chuch no mo'.
There are too many people looking for a church that truly worships. They either don't have a background in the church, or they're looking for something different from what they grew up with. Churches have a great opportunity to draw these in if they would just become like the churches long, long ago; but more importantly, it allows their members to worship freely without someone making a remark because they are breaking away from the modern form of worship.
My worship is between myself and God and yours should be as well. I lift my hands and eyes to the heavens as the Spirit leads me. Don't let anyone come between you and God because you don't fit into their idea of what worship should look like. The devil may be using that person to keep you from honoring God with your best worship. Who knows? There may be someone else who's been timid in their worship because they didn't see anyone else worshiping like you and you'd be helping them towards freedom in worship.
So how will you be worshiping this weekend?
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