face the music

In Christian circles we like to quote Romans 12 and say worship is a lifestyle and not really about music at all. In fact, my blogging comrade Arron wrote a good post about this last week, and I agree with the points he makes.

However, while we say this, we plan “worship services” which usually include mostly music and a sermon. The budgets for “worship” and the “worship staff” and “worship programs” are often some of the largest in the entire church. And many meetings, conferences, blogs, and books revolve around rehearsing, resourcing, and relevant-izing these 15-30 minutes of music each week.

One of my friends plans to start a church that moves away from this focus. In fact, he plans to include no music in their weekly gatherings at all; instead he’ll include observational and improvisational comedy that he believes will connect more easily and more genuinely with a non-Christian crowd.

He asked me to join a small team for a day-long meeting to brainstorm about this new project, and I’d love to hear your thoughts before I fly to California next week.  Why has singing and playing music become the only method for corporate worship? Is it a problem for us to know that worship is an attitude of honoring God in every moment but to talk like it’s singing—preferably with ecstatic emotion—for 20 minutes on the weekend? Are there other, equally biblical ways to “do church”?

an inconvenient truth

When two of my friends got married, the pastor reminded the groom that while it’s right to be willing to lay down his life for his new bride, he must also be willing to be inconvenienced for her.

That’s often more difficult. There is something noble and soul-stirring about the grand gesture, but neither of those adjectives apply to waiting without sighs and eye rolling while she does her hair and makes you late. There is something heroic about the gallant knight expertly commanding his white horse to duel for the lady’s honor—it’s much less exciting to adjust the tire pressure on the white Camry so she can drive safely.

The same principle applies to other relationships. While I am quite willing to fly across country and be there for a friend at a time of great need, how often am I willing to take a phone call during my hectic day and listen to the details of hers? I would donate a kidney to a family member, but will I stifle a snarky comment the next time I’m annoyed with one of them?

And it’s true with God. As Twila Paris sang in her old song Undivided Heart, “There have been days when I would die for You, and days when I would not die to me.” I’ll hopefully never have to find out, but I think I really could face a firing squad rather than deny my faith. So why is it so hard to tithe?

God asks few of us for the grand gestures, but he asks all of us as his bride, the church, to “inconvenience” ourselves for His sake. Most of us won’t have to lay down our lives, but we all have to take up our crosses.

Instead of passing a plate, bag, or KFC bucket during services, my church collects tithes and offerings through tall, narrow, plain wooden boxes placed at the entrances to the worship center and in a few other buildings. When I attended the new members class, the pastor explained the elders made this decision to reduce the perception among visitors that the church “only wants their money.”

I hear this all the time—that many seekers (and not-so-seekers) believe the church talks too much about money or cares more about people’s giving than their salvation. This is ironic because, first, Jesus talked about money all the time and, second, many pastors I know are terrified to confront the issue at all much less overdo it, and, third, with the high rate of debt and low rate of savings in our society it seems we have an obligation to teach people about biblical stewardship.

But I digress. What I find interesting about the offering boxes is that even though the method of collecting the money is different, the idea is still mentioned from the pulpit each week. Without fail, the person doing the welcome and announcements will mention the presence of the boxes and remind members to give as part of their worship.

It’s also interesting that the principle is important enough to our leaders that they are willing to forego a tithe of another kind. The senior pastor estimates the church could receive 10% more money each year by passing the plate—those impulsively-given fives and tens add up. But they choose to do without that cash in favor of making a statement.

Finally, it’s interesting that our church is a very generous church. Whether this is caused by the offering-box method or happens in spite of it, I don’t know, but we consistently make or exceed the budget for each year plus give many thousands of dollars to the poor and needy of Orange County and to special efforts like hurricane relief.

So what conclusions to draw? The practice doesn’t seem to be hurting us, and I’m not aware of a biblical precedent for passing buckets so the question seems more practical than theological. What do you think?

This past Tuesday at small group, Joe shared his usual prayer request: “That I would just hear God and be able to discern his will.” Every week he shares this request, and every week I struggle with whether or not to confront him on something that’s been bothering me—early in our gatherings Joe shared that he enjoyed the midweek worship gatherings at church and liked small group, but didn’t really like Sunday morning church and so he no longer attended.

Those who know me well (and even not so well) can tell you that I usually don’t have trouble telling people what I think, but I hardly know Joe (see earlier tirade on small groups) and wasn’t sure how my input would be received. Nevertheless, on Tuesday after Joe shared his prayer request again, I asked permission from him in front of the group to share a thought. I told him that every week I hear him make this request and pray this prayer, and yet my experience with God is that he often reveals his will to the extent that we are obeying what we already know. “Joe,” I said, “you need to be in church. Obey in that area, and see what God does.”

To his credit, Joe heard this, wasn’t defensive, and thanked me for my encouragement.

This morning I hurried in to the worship center, looking around me for someone smiley with a bulletin, and saw Joe standing against the wall looking like he was waiting for someone. I said hi and kept going. It wasn’t until the middle of the third song that it hit me: Joe came to church. I said hi to Joe. And I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that the significance of this did not even register with me enough to talk to him, much less invite him to sit with me or tell him how proud I was of his being there. I had to stop singing, bow my head, and apologize to God. I looked up from the prayer hoping Joe was still against the wall so that I could try to make it right, but he had either (hopefully) taken his seat by then or had left.

Yep—I’m a jerk.