WORSHIP: NOT A FAN

Often, at least in my Pentecostal circle, worshipers’ lack of fervor and involvement is rebuked with a comparison from the world of sports. Reference is made to fans in a stadium watching a game, fans who shout, clap, leap, stand, stomp feet, wave arms, high-five. They are active. They are loud. They are enthusiastic. Then, the contrast is made to inattentive, unenthusiastic, lifeless worshipers: “Football fans are far more into football than we are into God! Where is the worship? Where are the shouts of praise? Where is the show of enthusiasm?” Although I appreciate the poignant point of the convicting contrast, I think the analogy makes a cardinal mistake--a mistake that faddish, contemporary worship makes: Worshipers of God are not fans. Worshipers of God are not spectators. Fans and spectators are consumers. The contemporary, misguided idea that worship’s purpose is to draw people to services and wow them once there has resulted in the worship service becoming a performance-driven event designed for an audience’s consumption and approval. Worship is like a show at Branson or Pigeon Forge—something to get people to come and to enjoy the performance once there. The worship service is planned, practiced, and later performed guided by this concept. Sanctuaries are designed to accommodate worship as an event performance. Instead of ceilings being vaulted to draw upward, they are flattened and blackened. Houselights are lowered, obscuring the worshipers, and the spotlights are trained on the stage, focusing attention on the activity there. This creates an ambiance that does not encourage vertical worship but horizontal spectating. Worshipers should be participators and not spectators, producers not consumers. To use the football game analogy above, the contemporary common conception of worship is this: The worshipers are the fans in the stands; those of the worship team on the platform are the players on the field. The performance of the players on the field drives the response of the spectating fans in the stands. Worshipers should NOT be the fans in the stands responding to the performance of the players on the platform. Worshipers should be the players on the field—the participators in the game. The “fan” is God—a fan in the sense He is an observer and assessor. The leaders of worship are the coaches, or the quarterbacks, encouraging folks to give their all. Though not possible in football, in worship none of the players should be sitting on the bench. All should be in the game. All can be in the game. A fan sits in approval or disapproval of what he sees and experiences. Today’s worshiper does the same. He responds with approval or disapproval to the event-performance he spectates. This is opposite a true worshiper. A true worshiper in a worship service is not asking, “Do I approve of what I’m experiencing. Do I like it? Do I get anything out of it?” A true worshiper has another concern: “Is God approving of my worship, what He is seeing out of me?” This changes everything about the worshiper and his worship. This makes him, not a fan, but a player; not a consumer, but a producer; not a spectator, but a participator; It makes his worship not about himself, but about God. The true worshiper has not come to get. He has come to give to God. He comes with an offering of worship. He has come to give himself. If one is honest, he can always tell the difference in the sound of a congregation of those responding like spectators and the sound of a congregation of those participating in vertical worship of God. It is the difference between applause and adoration. The analogy is not meant to sound frivolous, but, on this Sunday morning, did you come to watch or play ball? Did you come as a fan or a participant? Or, are you just sitting on the bench?

WORSHIP: NOT A FAN

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