thought exercise on Worship as Performance

My teenage son, Justin, had been invited to an area church by a friend. Since he had grown up as a PK (pastor’s kid) and had never been to a megachurch like this before, I wondered what impression it ...

We have become so performance-oriented that it is hard to see how compromised we are. Consider one small example. In many of our churches, prayers in morning services now function, in large measure, a...

I can remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday. I (Doug) was standing out in the middle of the green grass of the quad on campus, singing as loudly as I could. Twenty of my Christian friends an...

John Coltrane stands out as one of the giants of 20th-century jazz. His legacy is a generation of hearts touched and the light of God shining through his songs. Yet, for years, his work was haunted by...

In 2008, I felt like an American for the first time because I saw a leader who looked like me. All my life I hoped my education and accomplishments would free me from the history of my skin color as i...

When Queen Victoria first took the throne, she attended a performance of Handel's Messiah, a customary event for royalty. Advised on proper etiquette, she was informed that she should not stand du...

How much does a world-class violinist make? Well, that depends on how he markets himself. Have you ever heard of Joshua Bell? He’s one of the finest classical musicians in the world. He plays to pac...

Most of us probably assumed Elvis Presley enjoyed his unofficial moniker of “the king.” As it turns out, Elvis had a rather complicated, if not tortured experience with fame and fortune. One day duri...

At a worship service I attended a couple of years ago, my attention was drawn to the enthusiastic worship leader. He opened our time with prayer, asking God to meet us and draw us together in the Lord...

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

Two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character o...

Whoever dubbed the debate over musical style a “worship war” failed to realize that worship is always a war. The declaration that there is one God, that his name is Jesus, and that he has died, has ri...

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or b...

What’s at Stake in Worship? Everything. that’s what’s at stake in worship. The urgent, indeed troubling, message of Scripture is that everything that matters is at stake in worship. Worship names what...

My friend Isaac Wardell, a pastor of worship and founder of Bifrost Arts, asks whether we think of gathered worship as being more like a concert hall or a banquet hall. If it’s a concert hall, we show...

Good liturgy, whether formal or informal, ought never to be simply a corporate emoting session, however “Christian,” but a fresh and awed attempt to inhabit the great unceasing liturgy that is going o...

The word worship comes from the Old English weorthscipe, which combines two words meaning “ascribe worth.” The Trinity can be said to be always at worship because the three persons of the Godhead perf...

When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become l...

The story of worship as told in the Bible defines worship in a radically different and surprising way. It’s a story that surprises us because we discover that it doesn’t primarily feature us. The star...

These days, music is everywhere. It’s on television and film, elevators and restaurants, public bathrooms and dentist offices. It’s in our cars and on our phones. With just a few taps to our screens, ...

Participating in God’s glory-sharing life, then, happens in two contexts: scattered and gathered. Worship scattered is the Spirit-filled life of the Christian in the world, and worship gathered is the...

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

Nobody ever went up to Jesus after his blistering warning about religious hypocrisy and shook his hand and said, “Thanks, rabbi. That was a nice talk." Nobody went up to Moses after the thunder, ...

Martin Lindstrom observes: When people viewed images associated with the strong brands-the iPods, the Harley-Davidson, the Ferrari, and others-their -their brains registered the exact same patterns of...

In the English language, worship is an important word. It comes from ancient Anglo-Saxon and means “worth-ship”—to ascribe ultimate worth to something or someone. Matthew is portraying the nature of t...

Religion is the business of appeasing gods. In the old days, you’d take some unfortunate animal to a temple, give it to a priest, and the priest would dispatch of it for you before the watchful eyes o...

When a person is confused and things refuse to fit together, she sometimes announces a need to get out of noise and turbulence, to get away from all the hassle and “get my head together.” When she suc...

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

Worship gives us a workable structure for life. The psalm says, “Jerusalem, well-built city, built as a place for worship! The city to which the tribes ascend, all God’s tribes go up to worship.” Jeru...

The [Trinitarian] view of worship is that it is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father. That means participating in union with Christ, in what he...