The Oddity of Church Worship

Sunday January 2nd, In the year of our Lord 2011

Home for the Holidays, Saskatchewan

Just returned from Church, 12:32 PM

Weather = Warmer (but still cold) + Snowing

The other day I watched a movie with my family, To Save a Life. It is a Christian film geared towards the youth and follows the conversion story of a high school senior student. There is a scene in that movie where he ends up going to church and encounters what I thought was a stereotypical and rather 'thick' church culture. The Youth Pastor was upbeat, relevant, and had a personal connection with the student and you could tell that the protagonist

took this guy seriously. Then all of a sudden some random people came up and started singing some strange songs and everyone stood up to sing these strange songs with them. The newcomer's eyes dart about nervously as he stands up but doesn't sing. You can sense the tension as the camera pans around to members of the youth group, some are really into the worship, others are talking and laughing, the pastor's kid slips another some marijuana. He thinks this new church thing is a bit weird, but even weirder is that he knows that he believes this stuff more than some who have grown up with it their entire lives!

Having grown up in the church myself, I always loved singing worship songs to God. As a small child I would stand on my pew and proudly sing to the best of my ability even when I didn't know the words. Some of the words didn't really make sense to me though, but it was just part of church and I belonged at church with Jesus so it didn't really matter. Singing songs with lyrics like 'being washed in the blood,' 'set me on fire,' and learning an archaic dialect of English wasn't strange to me. However, the protagonist's girlfriend may have had something right when she said 'this is really weird, can me go please?' Now there were a host of reasons why she said this, she was very self-conscious, she didn't fit in with the church crowd, and she didn't know God or have the Holy Spirit in her heart at that time, but even though I could see these things, it struck me just how strange church worship is.

It's like the appetizer and desert of a high faluten meal and this restaurant insists that you have it twice over with every meal. The typical evangelical church structure demands that this be so. How odd. One might think that they were influenced by Pavlov in triggering spiritual responses to this proverbial dinner bell. I doubt the reasons behind this pattern are so trite though.

So what are the reasons behind it? I don't know, I haven't done any research, but I have a few ideas. Worship has always been an integral part of Christian community. Christian community without focus on Christ will eventually cease to be Christian. Early Christian gatherings were born out of Judaism which read the Psalms as worship during Tabernacle. So corporate worship has always been a part of Church and its expression has changed throughout the centuries. I also figure that good ol' Modernism influenced society so much to love things tightly packaged and efficient that Church proceedings were likewise effected. Look at your average service. Announcements followed by worship followed by special music (another very odd thing) / offering followed by the sermon followed by closing worship. It's a very compact and efficient machine, finely tuned so that if any one of its parts goes over by a few minutes everyone can tell. It has a certain mechanical charm to it. It's like a nourishment pill, a certain bite sized portion of spiritual nourishment that has had worship, teaching, prayer, and announcements to the community broken down into pieces that your average super busy schedule can handle without messing it up too much. The Church had adapted to and was conquering our Modern scheduled life. Then we became disgruntled with Modernism, the philosophers of our age told everyone that truth didn't exist, and now we hate rigid schedule especially in church.

But I digress. This isn't about slamming the church or how to 'properly do worship,' I just find it interesting how we got to where we are and how odd it is if we look at the whole thing from a newcomers perspective. In all times and in all places Christians try to do the best they can with the light and resources that God gives them. Furthermore, Christian work, if it is truly through Christ is (surprise surprise) done through Christ, and Christ redeems all things.

I once heard a very wise man who had studied Christian worship say that a mature worshiper can worship under any circumstances. How odd. How wonderfully thought provoking and inspiring!