I believe the church needs to relearn the importance of true worship and prayer. In a culture that is dominated by consumerism, the goal of the church in America has become to meet the needs of its market. Through top rated programming, concert like Sunday services, and high quality marketing, the church has taught it's attenders that church should meet their needs, and if it doesn't, they should go somewhere else where it does.My senior pastor has said on a number of occasions, "If all we did was pray and worship, God would blow the roof off our building!" In other words, God will move mightily in his church if all we did was pray and worship. I'm not sure about your church, but if my church canceled all programming and just prayed and worshiped, I'm pretty confident we would lose at least half of our attendees. Worship and prayer is much more about giving of yourself sacrificially and dying to the flesh than it is about meeting our perceived needs. When we surrender the desires of our flesh and give ourselves in submission to God, then God is able to move and demonstrate his power in our weakness. The Holy Spirit is the only person capable of radically changing people's hearts, so why do we try so hard to do it on our own?
A few weeks ago, I quoted pastor Brady Boyd on my facebook page. "If you don't teach your church how to worship, you'll be responsible for entertaining them every Sunday." The quote came from the video below. Enjoy!
Brady Boyd:The Nines:Game Changing Moment from Timothy Dumais on Vimeo.
Inspiring post! Thanks for bringing me back to the heart of worship!
ReplyDeleteHmm. I think I dig the sentiment but would quibble that something is missing: if all we did was *preach the gospel* God would move mightily. We know this because it's what he's done--in Acts and throughout history. Of course the gospel moves us to pray and worship, but without it we are likely to forget who we are praying to and why we worship!
ReplyDeleteThen again, it's possible I've just been reading too much Michael Horton lately...
I guess I would counter and say that authentic worship and prayer is one of the most powerful ways to "preach the gospel." You PotAto, I saw PotAHto. :)
ReplyDelete