Passionate Worship

A friend sends me a Murphy’s Law calendar each year. It not only reminds me of the day of the week and the month, but also often brings a smile to my face. The saying quoted back in June was entitled Peterson’s Principle, “Traditions are solutions for which we have forgotten the problems”. I call this traditionalism, but the point is that we sometimes keep doing the same things over and over, long after we knew why we performed the acts in the first place. For instance, why do many worship services start at 10:30, 10:45, or 11:00? Those times were solutions to problems faced by communities of faith. The solutions continue long after the problems ceased to exist. In fact, the “old solutions” may be creating “new problems” for a vital community of faith.

I am amused by titles and names that made wonderful sense at some point in the past, but no longer convey their intended meaning. The Carden Young Married Sunday School Class began about 1965. First Methodist Church formed the class for persons recently married. Mrs. Gladys Carden was the teacher. It was a strong class and continues to this day. Mrs. Carden ceased to be their teacher over 30 years ago. Very few members of the class are recently married. Most of the members talk about their grandchildren, and a few brag about great grandchildren. The name remains, but it certainly does not reflect a current reality. Tradition continues long after the title had meaning.

I love candles and candle lighters. Many worship services begin each week with young people processing down the aisle with candle lighter in hand. Some congregations attach meaning to this tradition that was a necessity to provide light in previous generations. The members of the congregation loved the action, and forgot why they performed the action. The unchurched only see meaningless activity.

Traditions often begin as solutions to problems or realities. They continue for a wide variety of reasons. Ringing a church bell, standing, sitting, or kneeling at particular moments in a worship service, were all done for particular reasons in the past. Congregations must regularly examine their practices to see what activities and actions have outlived their usefulness. Some practices can cause the de-churched, the unchurched, and the nominally churched people to decide that the Church and Jesus Christ reveal people who celebrate rituals and behaviors that are unimportant or a waste of their time.

Since I am in such a wide variety of congregations, in various sizes of communities, I often examine the church bulletin, watch what is happening, and ask myself, if I were a thirty year old and coming to a church for the first time, would I return the next Sunday. I certainly cannot answer for that hypothetical person, but I wonder whether the members of the congregation ever ask themselves that question. Do the ways we present Jesus Christ, from the time people enter our parking lots to the time they leave the property, convey the amazing love and grace of God? We can no longer assume that people entering our doors have any real knowledge or understanding of who Jesus is. We must go into our communities, live like Jesus, invite people to our churches, tell them about Jesus, and make sure we participate in passionate worship that enables every person present to encounter Jesus Christ on every Sunday morning.

One of the most distressing statistics is the number of worshippers returning home on Sunday feeling they never encounter Jesus Christ in the worship service. What we are doing is participating in a tradition and failing to worship almighty God passionately.

Let us participate in passionate worship this Sunday.

Grace & Peace,