Browsing through The Ooze the other day, I came across an article titled “What is worship?” by a gentleman named Darin Hufford. Reading through Hufford’s piece, I was taken back by two things: an appreciation for Hufford’s willingness to delve into a lot of important topics in the greater conversation about worship, as well as a sense of frustration over some of Hufford’s conclusions on the topics.
It’s not very often that I find myself coming to the defense of conservative Evangelical theology and practice (usually they’re the ones waging a very loud war of words against crazy emergents like myself), but some of the shots that Hufford takes at them seem a bit unfair – a bit unbecoming of a generous orthodoxy.
I’ve gone ahead and annotated Hufford’s work, just to give a second opinion on these matters. (My comments are in bold-faced type.) Read for yourselves and decide what you think.
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I think Christians are particularly defensive about the subject of worship because of all they’ve been taught over the years. The “super-spiritual” person uses worship much like a peacock uses his brilliantly-displayed feathers to get attention and impress a female in the area. “Passionate expressive worship” is often a way to fan spiritual feathers and amaze the onlookers with how spiritual and close to God they are. I’m not saying that everyone in a worship service thinks this way, but I am suggesting that the set-up and format of today’s “worship services” breeds this thinking and behavior. All it takes is one or two positive comments from people who like watching you worship, and before you know it, it’s almost impossible not to “give it your all” during the song service while secretly wondering who’s watching this time. In many churches, just being on the “team” at all, is a sign of spiritual superiority and being the one up front on the stage is the most coveted position of all. It’s a position that people “audition” for and pray they’re good enough to land.
Really? Are all worshipers using their arsenal of worship moves to pick up dates? I realize that it happens, but I really don’t think it’s a rampant problem. As a matter of fact, Hufford goes on in this article to talk about how men can’t comfortably sing these songs. It seems like it has to be one or the other – a masculinity problem that keeps men from singing, or too many people actually participating in “passionate expressive worship”. Hufford can’t have it both ways.
I’m definitely guilty of aspiring for, and then fulfilling, “the most coveted position of all,” as Hufford puts it – the worship leader. I remember being 14 and getting involved in the youth band at church and thinking that being a worship leader was the coolest thing in the world. Guess what? It is. Now having occupied the role for eight years, I have to admit that I had fairly admirable aspirations at 14. Being a worship leader – having the chance to combine music, theology, and faith into something that serves both God and churchgoers – is the most fun thing in the world to me. I know there are people who crave a worship leading opportunity for way different reasons than my own, so I sort of get Hufford’s point. I would simply temper his point by saying to people who earnestly want to lead worship that there are far worse things in this world you could be excited about.
In addition, as church shifts to more of an emergent, “organic” platform, there’s a whole new way to be a fake worshiper. Close your eyes and nod your head; everyone will see you and know how “contemplative” you are. Good job. And if some hot piece is sitting next to you, why don’t you go ahead and pull out your journal and write something really emotive. You’re rounding second as we speak, broseph. My point is that you can’t go after the Evangelical charismatic who is shouting to God with hands raised while not taking a shot at the same problem within newer ways of “doing” church. We’re critiquing the heart of worship, not someone’s theological sect or ecclessiastic tradition.
Because of the way we have arranged our church services, it takes very little for the “worship” part to eventually become nothing more than a performance. Not unlike a Britney Spears concert, the church worship service is a show that is specifically designed to dazzle the eyes, the ears, and the emotions of everyone present. We have become unashamedly brassy in our presentation. The worship experience in today’s mega churches is clearly fueled by a, “lights, camera, action” mentality. Make no mistake about it; all of the above are used in conjunction with the latest sound systems and acoustics in an effort to bring a crowd of Christians to a state of spiritual ecstasy in less than 30 minutes. An “anointed worship leader” by today’s standards is someone who can move the audience to tears by the time the last song is finished. That’s the name of the game. If a church can provide an emotional rollercoaster experience that gratifies the masses, they will have secured the return of everyone in the building.
I agree with Hufford that worship does not need to be a presentation, but it can be experiential and participatory. Leonard Sweet approaches this matter with great success in his books, namely The Gospel According to Starbucks (Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs deliver similar thoughts in Emerging Churches). Sweet talks about the need for multimedia in worship services today; if you simply play to the ears of younger Christians (not because of their age, but because of the shift into an Electronic Age), to the ignorance of visual media, you might as well be saying you don’t give a crap about God, the service, etc. Now this multimedia takes different forms for different congregations – some churches employ more tech equipment while other congregations add homemade artwork to the gathering space during the liturgy. The choice of how to use multimedia should center on the gifts of those in the congregation: if those in your church have strengths in a lot of techie stuff, go big and use the techie stuff. If your church is made up of people who are better with painting and such, roll with that. In the end, church services should allow members to develop their strengths and savvy. Church needs to be a place where people can develop their gifts rather than feeling like they need to apologize for them.
And it’s not like a experience for all the senses is a new thing, an Evangelical thing, or a Pentecostal thing. Think Eastern Orthodoxy for a minute. What do you think icons are for, if not to connect all for the senses into a holistic focus for worship? We don’t need to be so afraid of iCons today. One of the reasons the Eastern Orthodox Church gels so well with emergent spirituality is because they are no longer having to defend themselves for being multi-sensory.
Hufford is right to say that worship isn’t there to simply dazzle the senses, but it sure needs to be calling all of the senses toward a conversation with the Lord. I don’t think Hufford really wants to go off a Reformed deep end and start whitewashing churches. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is calling for less showmanship, but not an ignorance of the senses.
Usually when people put something in quotations they are making light of it. Hufford in this section talks about the “anointed worship leader” being a person who can move an audience to tears. Again I’ll give Hufford the benefit of the doubt and assume he is communicating that a connection between anointing and emotive response can be misleading, and not that he claiming there is no such thing as a worship leader being particularly “anointed.” One doesn’t need to be in the Church for long before they see the disparity between worship leaders and the ways in which they respond to the move of the Spirit. That’s not to say that the most charismatic leaders are the best ones; I am only saying there is such thing as an anointed worship leader, one who is not so bound to tradition or liturgy (be it a historic liturgy, or a newer and still rigid liturgy of songs-sermon-songs) as to quench the work of God. On top of God’s appointment, anointing comes with obedience and responsiveness. That’s true whether you’re a worship leader or a barista. Listen to the Spirit of God who lives in you, and ministry becomes a whole lot easier.
The formula is the same almost everywhere you go. The lights come on and the music starts. It’s playful and inviting. The happy-go-lucky rhythm is delightfully contagious and before you know it; you’re hooked. By the second song, things begin to move a little deeper and more intimate. The pace becomes slower and more methodic as the lights are slowly dimmed. The lyrics are more heartfelt and personal. The lights come down just a tad more, and by the time the third and fourth songs hit, the lights are completely out and the music goes from a soft meaningful ballad and slowly builds to an anthem-like climax that everyone reaches together. People are howling and crying with their hands in the air (I was Charismatic) while the musicians sustain a two- or three-minute hum. From out of nowhere, a staff pastor comes out and prays a closing power prayer. Then, as if nothing significant ever took place at all; the lights are matter-of-factly flipped on, everyone sits down and by the time we’re all done with our cigarettes, the announcements are half way over. We don’t even get enough time to ask God if it was good for Him too.
When this sort of “modern liturgy” is performed outside of sincerity, I find it distasteful and away from the point of worship. There is an explainable degree of predictability to a worship set, however. If you’re going to allow for an instrumental time for people to pray and reflect, the chances of doing that at the end of a worship set and not at the outset are high – there’s good rationale behind that.
It’s funny to me that Hufford has a problem with the “two- or three-minute hum” as well as the matter-of-fact transition out of the singing time. I think there are times to very casually transition into the next element of a gathering, but there are also times to simply sit and dwell with God. It turns out that God’s manifest presence works differently from one service to the next; I suppose sometimes there is a very intense and direct thing God wants to do in the body of believers (I see this in Acts and supported by sections of Pauline Epistles as well as a stack of extra-biblical texts). Who’s in such a rush that we can’t just stop and stay awhile in worship? And doesn’t it make sense that the worship leaders would continue to pray through their instruments? Yeah, what they’re playing is probably an ambient “hum,” conducive to congregational and personal prayer. Do you want them to play metalcore instead? Being predictable is not always an indictment, in and of itself.
With so much that has been taught to us over the years concerning worship, I am still left asking myself: What is worship? People pose this question to me all the time. I think we live in a generation of Christians who are more confused than ever when this subject is introduced. My last article, “Going for the Worship” has become more popular than I expected. After receiving many positive emails, I decided to write a little more on a subject that I feel has been pulverized in today’s church. In the end, I hope and pray that you will have arrived a little closer to discovering the answer to the question, “What is worship?”
Using Worship
I’m always amazed when I hear people talk about worship as though it is something we use to get results in some fashion or another. The whole subject of worship kind of reminds me of Duct Tape. The purpose for which Duct Tape exists is virtually unknown to most of the American public because people spend more time using it for other things and almost NO time taping ducts. Worship conferences and seminars are nothing more then a Duct Tape Convention where people gather to talk about all the interesting ways they can put it to use.
I’m excited to be informed of the true meaning of worship…
Worship is advertised as a way to win the lost to Christ. I once talked with a leader of a worship team in Arkansas who told me that he and his band go to local coffee shops and play their music for the unsaved people. He believed wholeheartedly that if the people were even in the same room while his team was worshiping the Lord, they would be convinced to turn their life over to Christ. I felt almost pagan when I respectfully suggested that he and his buddies leave their instruments at home next time and just sit with the coffee shop people and express the Love of God to them. I could tell that he was not only offended, but he was also let down at my suggestion. Something in this guy couldn’t conceive of anything being more powerful at winning souls than worship. The Love thing was all great and fine, but it couldn’t possibly have the same power and influence as worship.
This posturing, to quietly separate “Love” and “worship” at the end of this paragraph, doesn’t fly with me. This guy in Arkansas obviously was trying to love through these songs. Just to pull from my own experience, I find it worth mentioning that my dad came to faith in his twenties not via preaching but through a hymn being played in a small Baptist church. Songs are powerful communicators. This hymn communicated to Dad the love of God in a way that might not have been conveyed by a conversation – whether it’s a simple just-sit-and-be-with-the-people sort of evangelism or shouting apologetics at someone.
Last October I was able to go to Salem, Massachusetts (the city with the witch trials – there’s a very real community of witches and warlocks there today) for Halloween. Halloween in Salem is a pretty crazy thing. But I got up on some giant stage with Josh, Joel, and some other folks, and we played music that would entertain people – some of which contained the gospel story. I would have a stronger reservation to doing this if we weren’t very entertaining and were crappily shouting the gospel at people. But we’re not half-bad musicians, and someone’s going to be up on stage that night entertaining the people anyway, so why not us? I feel that we were taking appropriate measures in communicating the gospel – we had good “kairos” – and we were free of any unfair expectations placed on mega-evangelism. If anything we were proving that Christians can play relevant music.
I’m being ridiculously hard on Hufford, I know. But I want to level off his criticism of the Arkansas guy by noting the role of music in sharing any story, the God-humanity narrative included. (And I say this as a person who often engages in coffee shop banter, which is another great way of sharing truth.)
I’ve been on outreaches and missionary trips where this mentality is indelibly burned into the thinking of every Christian present. Once during Marti Gras in New Orleans, I was with a group of about 200 street evangelists who marched together right through the Bourbon Street homosexual district while singing worship songs. It was as though they had found a new use for worship that would ultimately give them a “Get out of talking to people free” card. I felt then, and I still do today, that it was an excuse to keep a safe non-intimate distance from a group of people that they found repulsive. Rather than genuinely loving the people and interacting on a personal and cherished level, they used worship as some sort of spiritual duct tape to do a job for which it wasn’t created.
I think Hufford’s dead-on with this. If all you’re going to do is sing and you won’t converse, don’t bother. That’s not a singing issue or a worship issue, though. That’s an evangelism altogether issue. We need less street preaching and apologists in America in 2008. Let’s replace them with sincere people who are willing to develop relationships with those who could use a friend.
And for those who aren’t ready or comfortable with evangelizing in that very down-to-earth way, it’s the responsibility of those of us who are to help bring others into a place of wholeness where they’re comfortable with themselves and God’s work in them to the point of entering relational evangelism.
Worship has become the pack mule onto which we load all of love’s responsibilities. I personally feel that we load the tasks of love onto worship because for the most part, we don’t love. Our worship MUST pick up the slack for this generation of Christians, because without possessing love, we simply cannot bear the requirements of love. So in the end, worship becomes the catch-all for what this generation lacks in love. Similar to an ecosystem plagued with extinction, we scramble to re-assign tasks and responsibilities to things that were never meant to perform such feats.
What generation is guilty of this? The baby boomers? I assume (wrongly?) that Hufford’s platform for this article is mostly Generations X and Y, and I find those generations to have made big strides in terms of sharing truth at a grassroots level.
A loveless Church must assign a door greeter and a welcome committee because people won’t just be greeted and welcomed naturally. We have to pay for and supply a staff for an emergency hot line because when love is extinct, no one has anyone to call in an emergency. Worship can no longer be about personal intimacy with the Father, it now has to take on the duties of love and it has to accomplish things it was never created to accomplish.
Why do I feel like “personal intimacy with the Father” is bashed in other parts of this article?
Here’s the thing about a growing church: you get a lot of people coming for the first time, and now everyone feels new – the lady who’s been there for five weeks, and the guy who’s been around for two. A church is a place for real and hurting people, some of whom are very afraid of human interaction for incredibly legit reasons. It’s nice to have people who are naturally hospitable to make a point to be certain that new people are being greeted by someone. But what does this have to do with “worship” in the sense of this article?
This is where we get teachings on how worship breaks down strongholds and opens spiritual doors. Love was meant to be the force that topples over these things, but when love is absent, we have no other choice but to rely on worship to pick up the slack. Sadly, the church today now sees breaking down strongholds as a major purpose in worship. Today’s Christians lock themselves in the sanctuaries and lift their hands in worship, fully believing that doing so is somehow affecting the invisible roadblocks over the city or town they live in. We can almost envision the stronghold of poverty, immorality, violence and divorce collapsing before us as we emotionally belt out the chorus to our favorite song all in the safety and comfort of the choir loft.
Welcome to faith, son. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it is God’s world and God’s reality: something seemingly insignificant like a prayer or a prayer-through-song (worship) moves mountains. Let’s face it: today’s Church would do well to move a few of those.
I’m not saying that we need to sing and do nothing else. That’s not it. But if prayer and song doesn’t form the pinnacle of this active cry for change, well then welcome to missing the point. It’s funny to hold Hufford’s paragraph in contrast with Old Testament examples of songs, fasts, and prayers as ways of bringing about change and deliverance. My mind also goes to African-American slaves whose connection with Moses and the people of Israel gave foundation to their songs of faith. I’m so glad those slaves had songs to sing in their day. Their gospel songs encourage me today.
Again, it’s not about singing and doing nothing else. But failing to sing and pray is just as distanced from a life of faith.
Make no mistake about it, this mentality is hideous and inappropriate. If I were to notice that after making love to my wife, she got up the next morning and fixed a nice breakfast for the entire family, that does not give me license to use lovemaking as a way to get breakfast. The moment I perceive its value from that selfish perspective, I will have effectively murdered the purpose of loving-making with my wife. The only way I could continue in that pattern of thinking would be if I cared more for breakfast than intimacy. This is precisely where the affections of modern-day Christians lie. We openly and shamelessly “USE” worship to do the laborious things that would require a personal effort on our part.
No one wins with this guy. The people who lavish God with an offering are too feminine, and those who benefit from worship are using God. Great.
I agree that we can’t worship to “get some” spiritually. But I don’t think that mentality is actually most people’s problem; their problem is when they don’t sing at all, when they buy into some of the crap being said here.
The attributes and characteristics of the purpose of worship have been re-written by today’s pastors and theologians. We now advertise the power of worship to the world as something that literally takes the place of Christ Himself. In many respects, we have exchanged God for worship. We’ve taught ourselves to rely on worship to perform miracles that only God Himself could perform. Like consolidating our bills into one low monthly payment, we have decided to pay to worship and rely on it to take care of everything else.
When Aunt Thelma is in the hospital dying of cancer, we show up with a boom box and a collection of worship CDs hoping that the worship will heal her from her cancer. When our wayward teenage son has slipped off into an angry world-seclusion and is listening to the wrong music and experimenting with drugs, we sneak into his room when he is gone and play the worship music on high hoping that when he returns, something miraculous will happen in his heart because of what we did in the spiritual realm. If our marriage is on the rocks and is plagued with constant bickering and fighting, we prescribe ourselves the sound of worship music all throughout the home in an effort to change the spirit of the environment. I have even watched sincere-hearted people blast their worship music out their windows in an effort to counteract the worldly rock-n-roll music they hear coming from the neighbor’s garage. One person I know actually played their worship music on an ipod while jogging around the neighborhood. He told me that he believed he was circling the neighborhood with worship and when he was finished, no unclean spirit would stay.
I don’t know that worship is taking God’s place. Again, I think it’s something we’re accessing too seldom, not too often. For some reason I think God is very able, and that communicating with him is a really good idea. I also buy into the idea that bringing statements of faith and belief into times of hardship and doubt can bring forward a lot restoration and change.
There is not much worship music that I enjoy (because of musical lameness or lyrical shortcomings), so I would not be that person playing music in hopes of “speaking change into the situation.” But I might very well do some singing and praying myself toward those same ends (sans the “worldly rock-n-roll” scenario).
Whether through prayer, song, or positive statements, it does help a situation when we speak God’s truth – not in some matter-of-fact way, but in opposition to the lies of despair and abandonment that we sometimes start to believe. Worship music is not some power god toward this end – I’m not much for a strong distinction of “sacred” and “secular” as much as noticing the grayscale of truth conveyed through varying products of art and media.
Worship, we are taught, is not only a defense against the enemy but also a way to launch an attack on him. We comfort ourselves by believing that Satan must leave the moment we begin to worship God. Supposedly he can’t even stand to be in the building when this is going on. I wish that were true. Some people have taken this concept to an extreme level. They’ll climb a mountain and worship God while overlooking their city, believing that the hold the Devil has on an entire city can be broken through the power of worship. These teachings have become so popular that many people actually try to make worship a “lifestyle.” This has become an extremely popular and accepted teaching in Charismatic circles. The moment someone says, “Worship is a lifestyle”, everyone in the room oohs and amens.
I don’t know what more to say than to acknowledge that the very thing Hufford calls unbelievable has happened before my eyes: the demonic leaving a person, allowing that person to experience deliverance – all of which started through a few guys sitting in the basement of a college building singing to God.
I get that this can all be abused, and whatever comes of combatting the demonic, it needs to be joined with psychologic and emotional restoration. Not every problem is a demon. But evidently some are, and I think that’s problematic for Hufford and ninety percent of non-charismatics… until they see some dude being delivered of something demonic in a college basement.
I remember being told once that worship was a cure for depression, anxiety and any other mental condition. If I just let go and worshipped God, all my demons would scatter, my thoughts would return to normal and the affairs of my life would be put back in order. Even my relationships would be healed and rejuvenated through worshipping God and people around me would suddenly favor me when I walked into the room because I had spent time in worship. I was even told that if I had a tragedy happen in my life and irrespective of my personal feelings, I looked to Heaven and worshipped God, everything would turn out to be okay.
Let me restate: not every problem is a demon, but some are. Let’s be good ministers of shalom and approach people with holistic ministry – ready to counsel, give generously, and encourage. With careful discernment, we should also seek God to find out if it is appropriate to approach a person’s need in a metaphysical way (spiritual warfare). This needn’t be abused – that’ll do more harm than good. But to ignore this type of ministry completely is to discard some important biblical mandates we’ve been given as believers.
Not all depression and anxiety can be combatted by spiritual warfare. Some can, and when a new generation of Christians comes to terms with that, and carefully and discerningly introduces spiritual warfare into holistic ministry, we’re all better off for it.
I think what grieves me the most about all these promises and expectations we have been given concerning the effects of worship is that almost every single one of them side-steps our personal responsibility to love one another. Aunt Thelma wants YOU in the hospital sitting next to her, loving her and praying for her. She doesn’t want to listen to a CD with a bunch of people who don’t even know her. Your wayward teenage son hates your worship music. He doesn’t need you secretly sneaking into his bedroom for a secret moment of “spiritual surgery” while he’s out with his friends. He needs you to purposefully, openly and deliberately walk up to him with a desire to connect your heart with his in love. If your marriage is plagued with bickering and fighting, it’s because you love yourself more than you do your spouse. No worship song in the world will change that! Playing a worship CD to save your marriage is nothing more than a spiritual excuse to not change. Don’t depend on your worship to take up the slack in a marriage that you’ve allowed to slacken.
Good paragraph, especially if the worshipful statements never changed circumstances and situations. I agree that making some worship song into a golden calf is crazy-false, but I bet there’s at least one Aunt Thelma in this world who has been experienced restoration while listening to a worship album. Look, I’m not exactly a card-carrying Evangelical – my guess is that Hufford and I are on the same page on a lot of topics – and I don’t care for Christianese and stupid Christian products. I also can’t deny that God, in his grace, has used them for good. Even if I’m not a conservative Evangelical poster-child, I can’t deny those people their story – the work that God has actually performed in their lives. Yes, I’m on their case to be more missional, more sincere, more personal and involved with greater culture. But I’m not going to tell them that the things God has used as catalysts in their spiritual development are terrible. That’s not holistic ministry.
Your neighbors don’t need a battle of the bands; they need your acceptance and friendship, and you can jog around your neighborhood all you want playing whatever worship songs you love the most, but the only thing that will happen as a result is that you might lose some extra weight and lower your cholesterol. If you want to affect your neighborhood, have a cook-out and invite everyone over. Get to know them, fall in love with them. Be the best friend they’ve ever had. Put the CDs away (keep jogging because that’s good for you) and get busy loving! The same is true for climbing a mountain and worshipping over the city. Climbing mountains is good for you; worshipping over the city is an excuse to not go into the city and be the light of the world. The only time that I know of where the love of God inside of you is rendered completely useless, is when you’re standing alone on top of a mountain.
I like some of what Hufford is saying – in this paragraph and even the whole of the article. It just needs moderated in a way that his word count probably didn’t allow. I think that the day is long enough for personal interaction and intercessory prayer. I’m radical that way. The love of God is not rendered useless when you’re on top of a mountain – that’s an overstatement on Hufford’s part. We all have time to be on the mountain (or you could just pray in your car if you’re lazy like me) and in the city.
Also, there are a bunch of people who are Christians who are themselves going through a restorative healing process and are, at present, freaking scared of interacting with, and opening up to, other human beings (such as the neighbors you’re supposed to invite over for a cookout). Christianity needs to be big enough to fit those people and their needs. Advice to Christians should be the same way. I don’t think we’re talking about a small demographic, either. A lot of Christians are in this place. To them I would say to excuse Hufford’s criticism, and set aside time for prayer – that your neighbors would experience a life of salvation, and for your own healing process (that you’d become comfortable sharing the gospel as God provides you with the ability to trust people and gain confidence).
I know that it’s a popular idea that worship causes demons to scatter and that very well may be true. The only problem however, is that once they are all gone, you are still left with YOU, and you are the one who makes you sin. “Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed.” If it’s true that Satan was the “worship leader” in heaven before his fall, I seriously doubt he’s doing any shaking when he hears it today. Opening doors and toppling strongholds happens because you move your life on behalf of others and according to a heart of love. When love for others is living in your heart, there isn’t a stronghold in all the heavens that can withstand you.
Credit to Hufford for at least acknowledging the reality of demonic beings. I don’t believe that demonic things tremble at statements that are true of God, but they might tremble when a person who they’ve been destroying is empowered with the ability to say and believe true statements – about God, and even themselves in God. I like when holistic spiritual direction brings hurting people to that place.
We get these teachings from stories in the Bible like where Paul and Silas were in prison praising God and the ground began to shake, and all the prison doors supernaturally opened. I am not debating whether or not that really did happen. I am however debating whether or not Paul and Silas were praising the Lord FOR THAT PURPOSE. Herein lies the key difference from the New Testament experience of worship and today’s Christian mentality. When we praise and worship God out of a true heart connection, doors open. When we praise and worship to GET doors to open, there is NO heart connection whatsoever! That’s not worship, that’s manipulation.
Hufford might be right about Paul and Silas, but I’m not sure the point matters. What if Paul and Silas were petitioning God – through singing of his ability to do crazy, miraculous things to change circumstances – to get them out jail? I think that’s different than singing a prosperity gospel, and not the same as an actual criminal hoping for a “get out jail free” card, if you will.
My theology allows for Paul and Silas to sing about God while asking something of God, or to simply offer songs to God because he is who he is, and that is worth singing about. None of it is manipulation in my book.
Worship as Manipulation
I think more than anything, I am deeply grieved when I see people using worship as a way to manipulate or control God. It’s of concern to me when I watch a generation of Christians playing the part of the manipulative housewife who uses physical sex to get what she wants from her husband. It’s not about experiencing a heart connection with her husband anymore; she uses sex as a means to an end. Sadly, many Christians today think God is actually falling for the lure of physical worship because that’s where He gets His thrill. We somehow have come to believe that He can’t control Himself when we physically worship Him and the moment we do, He becomes the awkward, desperate school boy who foolishly give us anything we want. Our tendency to veer off the road of intimacy and into another lane of selfishness comes as a side affect of teachings about the Heart of God that we have all grown up with.
Who thinks that? Maybe Hufford has just been hanging out with the worst people on the planet, I don’t know. But I don’t see this as a mindset running rampant in Christians.
Some preachers actually teach that the only reason God created us in the first place was to worship Him. I truly believe that God mourns over such despicable teachings about His heart. It’s difficult to desire intimacy from someone who has you here so you can worship Him. It’s no wonder we use worship to get what we want. When we think it’s all He cares about, it’s a perfectly natural response on our part to give Him what He wants and profit personally from it in the end. I truly believe that this teaching is as harmful to people as it is to the reputation of God. It grieves Him so deeply because he created you for relationship and intimacy, NOT so you could worship Him. Unfortunately many well- meaning Christians have bought this philosophy hook, line and sinker. What is worse, we like a God who thinks like that and we like competing with each other to see who can put themselves down and degrade themselves the most, all in the name of God.
So now I have to choose between Hufford and Reformed theology? Ugh. Yeah, I don’t really think that we’re created to worship in the way that some people believe. I would say we’re created to relate – with God, each other, and all creation. NT Wright calls it “sex, gardening, and God,” and that sounds about right to me. I think we’re to receive the love God has offered us, say “thank You” (minus all of the circular, hyperbolic statements some of the Reformers would like us to respond with) and to simply be. It’s not complicated. Well it is, but only because we experienced such loneliness and estrangement after sinning toward God.
We pride ourselves in this way of thinking as though it somehow shows a level of selfless spirituality on our part. Every time we remind ourselves that we are nothing more than God’s little pawns that He uses to service Him when He needs to be worshiped, we pat ourselves on the back for being so genuine and lowly. Something so humble and sweet fills the room as we hold our hands in the air and sing, “It’s all about you.” Surely God is up there saying, “That’s exactly right and I want to thank you for not forgetting that.” A truly spiritual worship leader (by today’s standards) will openly declare that he is, “nothing, worthless, unworthy and as good as filthy rags” the moment someone in the audience dares to compliment him. Nothing could be further from the truth about the Father’s heart for worship.
Hufford is fine by me (for what it’s worth) with this idea. It’s so cool these days to come down on worship songs that mention the “I” of our covenant relationship with God. I think it’s crap. As if a God who made us and knows our need finds it appealing that we not mention ourselves or the way we’re feeling about him. I’d rather we worship with a range of emotion, demonstrating the dynamic relationship we’re in. Lament. Wrestling. Questioning. For some reason I think God is ready for it, desires it, and thinks that is worshipful.
The further we get from understanding the true purpose of worship in the Christian life, the more separated and unrelated we become during the experience. Our thoughts and feelings are set aside, disregarded completely and, in many cases; despised to the point where we’ll even sing songs that have absolutely nothing to do with the truth of what’s inside of our hearts. As long as the lyrics say pretty much what we assume He wants to hear, everything is as it should be. Achieving a heart connection with the Father not only becomes implausible under these circumstances, but it is downright impossible. You simply cannot connect with someone who is completely in it for themselves, so we settle for a set of lyrics that are as far from our hearts as possible and we endure the experience in an effort to fulfill our weekly worship quota to the slave master in the sky.
Especially if we’re so entrenched in the mire of total depravity to even construct a true statement of God. Sigh. Yeah, I agree with Hufford here. Why bother with worship if the Christ-event is too impotent to restore our humanity to the point where we can be friends with Christ? Thankfully I believe Christ was and is Second Adam, and has made the Way.
There is nothing in the world like being a man in today’s worship service and being encouraged to sing songs that say things you would never say, in ways you would never say them. Songs that in many cases were clearly written by a woman or at the very least, a guy you wouldn’t be caught dead with in front of your buddies. I’m sorry, but the words, “you set my feet a dancing” just do not jive with who I am in my heart. I’m a man. Very little, if anything sets my feet a dancing. I’m not the least bit interested in dancing. When I’m forced to stand there in a crowd of people and sing out words that I wouldn’t use in a million years, I leave feeling emasculated and humiliated. The songs that my heart sings to God bear no resemblance whatsoever to today’s approved Christian terminology.
As a worship leader, I am really careful about honoring my responsibility to allow people to sing things to God that are both true and sincere. That’s a tough ethic – true and sincere. I don’t use much in the way of “dancing” songs, but I will say this: at some point we have to question contemporary American standards of masculinity. Yeah, Hufford is a man; I won’t question or attack that. But Jesus was a man, and I get the idea that he wept for people before God (that’s not to say he did it on a weekly basis or in contrived ways). Today you can travel to the Mediterranean and see a very different type of masculinity on display – the type of men who dance with their families, who sing loudly for many reasons, who share emotion sincerely.
I’m not comfortable dancing, and enjoy public singing less than some might believe. But I won’t claim to be “right” or preferable in either respect. I think we need to constantly question whether we justify our actions just because it’s a cultural norm: “I’m from New England, so I’m supposed to be crusty and rigid. You really think I’m going to lift my hands and sing these songs?” Sometimes groups of people are just different than one another, but there’s a point at which we have to be brave enough to put qualitative terms on that difference. Maybe it’s not okay to hold everything back, and maybe you can’t hide behind regionalization in doing so. Maybe everyone in your region is missing out on the fullness of living a life of masculinity as God invented it.
In a day and age when people like John Eldredge, Mark Driscoll, and others push for a macho, deer-hunting masculinity that wages the “war” of Christianity into the “conquering” of weaker beliefs (and the belittlement of God’s daughters), I’d have to say that if American Christianity has a masculinity problem, it isn’t a problem of too much sensitivity; rather the opposite. We’ve confused bravery with grunting, chest-pounding, demeaning women, and being too “ambitious” to love vulnerably.
There has to be a Christ-like way of being male that falls between twirling around to “Jesus is my boyfriend” songs and being a Fundamentalist caveman.
Over time, if I allow it to happen, I can lose all sight of what my heart is actually saying to God in worship. This is crippling, and I presume that it is exactly why in the New Testament times people were encouraged to each bring their own songs to sing when they met together. Unfortunately that practice has been done away with long ago, and has been replaced with a standard set of institutional cookie-cutter worship songs that express one standard way of feeling about God. Everyone must stand and perform on cue or their spirituality will be called into question. The end result of participating in this is the hollow-eyed disconnection that I see in the body of Christ today.
Very true. We need faith communities to create songs that embody the spirit of their own relationship with God. We can of course share songs and adopt a song outside of the community when it captures the sincerity of our hearts’ prayers to God, but creative artists in our community need to be empowered with the ministry of creating songs that speak prophetically to a particular church.
When we hijack the true purpose of worship and tweak it inside out, neither God nor you will ever experience the joy of consummating your relationship with Him. One-sided worship kills the soul and I am certain that it was never God’s intention for it to be that way. Christians today are either “right wing worshippers” or “left wing worshippers.” That is to say that it’s either all about God, or it’s all about them. Neither philosophy looks very good to me. Surely there must be something a bit more mutual to the true heart of worship.
“Mutual” is key. Our songs need to show both sides of our covenant relationship.
One-night stand with God
Worship can only be worship when we KNOW the God we are worshipping. Knowing God is NOT the result of worship; it’s the reason for it. Worship is the consummation of a relationship that is already present. This is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding that I see in the Church today. We are routinely taught to believe that we can know the heart of God through worshipping Him. Nothing is more demoralizing then watching a group of people who have little or no intimate knowledge of the heart of God, as they try their best to worship Him in an effort to know His heart. It’s a parallel reflection of the dating world where people sleep together BEFORE relationship is established in an attempt to “get to know” one another. I honestly believe that most Christian worship services are exactly that: Premarital Worship. They encourage and manipulate people to have premarital relations with a God whose heart they have no connection with.
I don’t know where to go with this other than to say that Hufford is entirely wrong. By worshiping God, we get to know him. Prayer is funny that way. All conversations are funny that way. What are worship songs if not prayers to God?
Hufford compares worship to premarital sex while dating, when in actuality it is more like going on dates at all. Worship, like all conversations, allows us a “getting to know You” time with God. What we’re dealing with is maybe the most spiritually-formative component to the church service today.
People are excited to worship when they realize that their God is a God who responds, who speaks back in the conversation – whether a spoken prayer or one created through song. How do you learn that if not through engaging in the conversation?
Believe it or not, God would rather you take the time to get to know Him before you enter into a worship session with Him. He’s not dying for it! It’s not the physical act of worship He is into, it’s the heart connection. He’ll wait as long as it takes for you to know His heart because that’s the most important thing in the universe to Him. Until you know Him personally, you simply have nothing to worship about. For God, worship is an extremely intimate experience that He shares specifically and uniquely with you alone. You knowing Him is EVERYTHING. He cannot be touched by you through worship unless you know His heart. It’s a mutual connection that God is seeking in worship. That connection is only possible through knowing His heart as he knows yours.
Yes, God cares more about relationships than songs. But speaking to God is a way of getting to know him. Hufford likes to talk about God’s “heart” though the more biblical term would be God’s “Spirit.” Get to know God’s Spirit. Do it through prayerful conversations. And, if you’re feeling real crazy, go ahead and sing a couple of those prayers. It’s not, as Hufford suggests, that you have to arrive at some invisible point in the journey of getting to know God before you’re authorized to belt out a song. Hufford’s idea that God will simply “wait as long as it takes for you to know His heart” doesn’t tell the whole story. It turns out that God is not so passive; he wants you to know him, and will even approach you with his Spirit. Talking with God will help you to know him at first, as well as when you’ve been getting to know him for twenty years. It’s a process.
As a preacher and author, I travel all over the country and I meet many different people. Almost always there is someone who has read one of my books or listened to a teaching series and they’ll come to me showering me with sincere and loving compliments. They’ll tell me how wonderful and special I am and they’ll call me a great man of God and an inspirational teacher and stuff like that. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate these people with all my heart. Their sincerity is evident and their desire to encourage me is wonderfully accepted. I love them for it! However, when I return home to my wife, and the exact same compliments come from her lips, I am touched deep in my heart! When it comes from a stranger who doesn’t really know me, I appreciate it. When it comes from my wife, who knows my heart, I’m touched!!!
God is not interested in you singing words to Him that did not come from YOUR heart, or were not based on what you personally have observed in Him. He is not moved when you pray the prayer of Jabez. He is moved when you pray the prayer of YOU. The same principal is true with worship. It must come from you, and it must be your reaction and feelings about what you know of Him. In my opinion, a church worship leader’s first question should not be, “How can I get the people to worship God,” but “Do the people know Him?”
Had the prayer-worship connection been made earlier on in this article, the whole of the article would have been healthier advice for Christians.
A worship leader would do better than Hufford’s two options to ask “How can we worship in a way that helps us to know God more?” Or, better yet (and more specific to worship leaders): “How is God revealing himself to us, and how can I pastor everyone toward receiving what God has for us?”
There’s a difference between saying “Jesus paid it all” and giving the impression that we’ve taken hold of it all. Unless you’re a determinist who thinks that God is completely content with the Church’s spiritual coordinates as we speak, you have to see the difference between the sufficient work of Jesus and a Church comprised of people who have – for better or worse – received a free will to sin, obey, and drop the ball. By placing value on active times of worship where people adamantly and intently pursue the Spirit for conversation, we can’t accuse worship of being a god that rivals the true God; worship is a time of corporately pursuing the realization and fulfillment of Christ’s already-sufficient work.
We worship Him for who He is. We praise Him for what He has done. When someone asks me my opinion on what worship is, I don’t know what to say. I can only tell you what it is for me. It’s that personal! With that said, my question to you is the same: WHAT IS WORSHIP?
This seems like a cop-out. How do you tear apart the worship habits of so many Christians in a public forum, and then follow it by claiming that this is simply worship as you see it, implying that someone else could see it differently and be equally correct? That sounds like pandering business-speak to me. If you’re going to tear people apart, at least take ownership of the reaming you’ve just tossed out. “I can only tell you what [worship] is for me.” Seriously? Because it sounds like you sort of hate the way most people worship.
You claim to not know what to say when asked to explain worship, yet you’ve obviously said plenty. So let me get this right: other people can differ from your “personal” views on worship, but you’ll kick them in the face with your next article.
This article lacks appreciation for the prayerful nature of worship acts. It portrays God as one who is waiting for us to configure right theology before we can engage in worship. It seems to me like the tone of the article suggests that we should all settle for low-tech, low-expression way of worshiping that dwells on the fact that we could still know God even better than we do. Man, that sounds like mediocrity to me.
My hope is that Darin Hufford’s actual beliefs don’t align with this article as I’ve interpreted it. If he were to read my annotations, I hope he would be able to admit the areas where his article potentially misleads people; in real life situations (which have no limiting word counts) he speaks highly and graciously of worship as something that can take many different forms in a diverse landscape of faith communities, but also as something with an incredibly high ceiling for spiritual connection and formation.
