When I stepped up into a role a few years back as Worship Pastor, my spirit felt grieved. I couldn’t pinpoint it at the time. But all I kept thinking was “Why?” Why do we have services? Why we do what we do, the way we do them? Who decided this was the way it is supposed to be… and is there wiggle room to do something different… what will our future church look like? Is there possibilities or must we stay within our given denominations framework or the one my boss continues in because it’s been done this way forever. Having been in itinerant ministry for the past four years, I’ve continued this wrestling, this reasoning and I find myself still asking things like: why do we have to have moving backgrounds behind lyrics through to why do we do communion weekly, through to why do we sit side by side in a dark room with our eyes closed immersed in a moment, engaged yet disconnected… why am I trying to create “unforgettable services” when all I see He wants is an encounter with us, in our day to day, in our gathering whatever shape or form that takes… a throwing off of the framework we’ve all grown up within, that leaning towards the known found in a tangibly “good” service and follow His call to come away with Him, to lean in and linger, to wait on Him. To encourage one another, to be thoughtful in our approach to living with one another, to wait on love.
As a worship leader time and time again I’ve played with setting the room differently; physically altering the atmosphere by arranging the musicians, lights, segments, chairs, segues to find a way to best invite and usher people into the depth of His presence within an allotted time. I found after many years of trying such practicalities they only fabricated more seemingly “wow” moments, than a collective individual encounter with God on that deeper level causing new growth and development in the day to day lives. A Sunday facade if you will.
When we are geared to consume church on a vibe, or entertainment value we miss the point. As leaders, we are guilty of it too – the song/setting/sermon/prayer/segue wasn’t what I would do, it’s too dark/light/ambient/cold/vibey for us to “enter into” a moment. Sadly a service has become about pandering to our cultural and personal needs rather than it being about our heart connected to His: individually and collectively. When we gather together, it’s not just a bunch of liturgy’s to placate comfort with repetitive familiarity to woo the soul into a lullaby of connection. We gather together because the Church is the outworking of Christ, He is the focal point. His main purpose was to gather, to build, to restore, to shift, to go deeper. To stop. To breathe. To rest. We miss this sometimes in our attempt to create, and facilitate “Sunday”.
Behind the scenes you and I spend hours and hours rehearsing, writing, scripting, sculpting these moments to encourage sleeping giants to awaken within the attender. I don’t believe Sundays are ever meant to be ordinary, they are in fact extraordinary – not because of our efforts but because of our desire to move into the deeper places, to co-labour with Christ. Extraordinary, because God meets with us. He uses every thing. God uses all of these shifts in our world as segues to build deeper intimacy within community, and to grow our affection towards Him. To wake up the Church to be actively shaping this in the day to day. To stop. To breathe. To rest.
Here we are in the throws of the COVID-19 pandemic and everyone has moved quickly from cancelled physical gathering to streaming online or production valued pre-recorded services/worship for us: the consumer of Church, from the comfort of our own home. There are benefits to this accessibility and also the practical problems along with it – all unique to us figuring out what is next. You might be familiar with this, What does it mean to pre-record leading/preaching to an empty room to stream at a later date? How can we connect authentically in a time where we need genuine connection? How can we invite people to interact or respond in a one way virtual environment? How to we gauge ‘the room’? I’m not alone in these questions, I think this is the perfect time for us to be re-evaluating why we do what we do. To ask God, what is next for His Bride. To seek His face. And invite the next generation onto the road ahead. How can we create authentic two-way environments that build and edify the Church? What would it look like to do church differently? What could worship look like? What could God do in and through us as we build deeper connections around a table instead of pews?
I grew up in the era of professionalism of worship in the Church. I studied a Bachelor of Music Performance at a Christian college where I also studied worship – not so much the heart of it, but the practicalities of running a service and working for a church. And for a long time I thrived under the mantle of bringing excellence… prone to striving, high expectations and burnout only to reveal a mask of perfectionism, programming and performance “for the Kingdom”. This serving somehow had more value. Or importance. As if the working this hard placed more valued in the eyes of the Lord. Services have been crafted to perfection and performed for too long. I sense there is a shift we are entering into if we are willing to seek out wisdom. To lean into His presence in our own spaces. This is the time for the Church to arise into Her new beginning. Like any beginning, infancy of a new era is often tricky to navigate a starting point. But let’s begin somewhere beyond a production, program and performance. And let’s construct a new voice to be heard upon the earth. We hear it said the Church is the people, so much more than a production or a performance.
I see His beautiful Bride – she will be refined during this shift. I see people gathering around tables. The central theme of connection being around the heart, the hurting, the hilarious, and the Heavens being unleashed. I see smaller gatherings with a deeper intimacy and anointing in a lounge room than on any platform. I see the banding together when times have been hard, and being the hands and feet of Jesus in the wider community – not just the “church fambam”. I see a depth of worship in our every day lives rendering us to our knees. I see intimacy and the messy real life moments being lived out together during the week replacing the generations of Sunday surface chatter.
I love that we are in an age where technology means we can work from home, connect to each other within our palms, we are richer than we have ever been, information is more accessible than we can consume. And thats just it – we are consumers of church. So what would it look like to no longer consume, or produce church. What would it look like to go back to an Acts church. One, filled with upper room moments in our every day lives. Worship isn’t a Sunday thing. A production thing. A perfect thing. A performance thing. It is connection, relationship, intimacy, depth, living our day to day from this deep well of overflow into our spheres. Granted they are smaller physically in this season. But we must start here. We must start with our self, our family, our neighbour, our street, our school, our workplace, our suburb. We must start seeing the Church as the beauty-filled moments in our ordinary going about.
I want to be lost in His rhythms of grace, I want His Bride to hold space for her beauty to unfold… for this we need to divorce our ideas of narrating the perfect setlist, detailing services down to the minute and live fully into perfect love.
God I am so sorry for when I missed the point. For when we got this Church-thing so off point. At the time it seemed right, it fit our needs, our culture, our relevancy, our pride, our rigid formats, our politics. He uses it all, some days He worked through it. Some days He was inhibited by it. But God, Your Bride is bloated with ego, structure, pain and she needs renewing. She needs our perspective renewed. We need to realign with only Heaven’s eyes, not what the mega/house church down the street is doing. We need to seek Him for the answers to our questions. We need Him to pave the way forward, which we will only find in getting away with Him. To stop. To breathe. To rest.
Do you see it? Do you see the winds of change are upon us? Do you see that we have an opportunity to find Him in every. thing. we. experience. It’s not a doing of church. It’s being the Church. And I am excited to see the other side of this epic change to our world, I’m anticipating the Church will arise and birth revival in unprecedented ways. We will see His Spirit pour out renewed life just by merely being in His presence. The Collective ‘I’, as in the center of the brIde. See it, you are at the centre of His plan, You have the power to bring about this new future – because you let Him take the stage, and you nestle in and let Him surround you. It starts with us. Be the change. Settle in, it’s going to be an adventure as we discover and unearth what Heaven is doing. Amongst what we perceive as chaos and fear, He is bringing peace and purpose. Rise up, seek Him. Lift you head, fix your gaze. The King is coming, and He is coming through you.