Growing up, I was always taught that worship was an activity that happened on the stage. People with musical and vocal abilities would stand and lead us into a place where we can see and experience God. Sure people can spend time with God during the week in devotions, but real worship only happened if it was led from the stage. This was evident by how people would respond with a sincere and authentic desire to experience God in time we were together.
As I got older and went into ministry, I took what I had learned and applied it in the same fashion. The stage was the platform that our church would use to define what worship was. It had been this way for a long time so why mess with it.
But, over the years my perspective began to change. The stage was becoming such a huge focal point in our church that people would fixate on it. Everything revolved around the stage. This created an expectation that the level of presentation from the stage would always deliver something big and creative. The response of people following a service felt more like the discussion one has after leaving a movie. “The opening was good, middle fell a little weak, and the end was a real disappointment…” It felt a lot like we had transitioned from facilitating an atmosphere of authentic worship to an environment of critics and performers.
That is when it hit me.
People in our church had started looking at the Sunday worship service just like a movie at the theater. What made it worse is that I was leading a ministry that facilitated this type of dysfunctional worship experience.
I am still in the process of figuring this all out, but it has been great to approach worship with the realization that the stage is just one of the places where we experience God.