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Have you heard the one about the thoroughly modern man who went to his doctor who told him, "I hacked into your fitness band and analyzed your decision-making process under different conditions. When you are hungry, tired or stressed you make terrible decisions"
"Well, how often is that?" the man asks. "Only when you're awake" came the reply.
Religious man was born to be saved.
The (modern) humanist man was born to be pleased.
How dangerous it is, then, if churches let their worship degenerate into whatever is pleasing. Adopting an entertainment style baptizes the context of a culture of diversion, and if our worship merely offers diversion, we have lost the call to involvement in the world's needs and investment of ourselves for the sake of God's purposes.
Worship is not diversion or to escape, but to encounter. As we worship we are changed, so that when we leave the worship service we go out to change the world. The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
Worship is not primarily therapeutic, merely offering self-help coping mechanisms to deal with the hassles of modern life. But rather worship that focuses our attention instead where it belongs -- on the God whose words we speak and sing. On the faithful proclamation of the reign of God.
It's the reign of God which draws people to Christ and not the star organist, guitarist or preacher. If you disagree, you might be on the wrong side of the Reformation. It is the Word of God that speaks to hearts, and not the manipulative chatter of human beings.
Worship leaders, who serve to enable others to worship, ought to be like Paul's old "clay jars" (2 Cor. 4:7) so that "it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us."
Christians are different from the world; our habits, customs and, most of all, a language that tells us who we are, that reminds us of our identity, and nurtures our vision of how we are different and why it matters.
I pray that day by day and year by year that being a Christian is more fundamental to your identity than your family, your ethnicity, your work, your sexuality or your personality. You are not your own. Christians have been ransomed and bought with a price.
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Finding Faith is written by area pastors. This week's column comes from Pastor Taylor Camerer of Great Island Presbyterian Church, Lock Haven.