Dinner with Jesus

If we were to use some Freudian free association and I asked you to share the first thing that pops to your mind when I mention the word worship, what would you say? How would you respond? I’m sure many of you, reading this post, would respond with words like: God, service, sing, church, or praise. A few of you might immediately mention the old English derivative worth-ship, which would certainly be impressive. And some might even say boring. But I'd venture that a large percentage of you, when you hear the word worship, you’re thinking about what goes on for a half an hour on Sunday morning at church — the singing part of the service.

What churches do when they get together in their public meeting places is probably the one factor that creates more division in the Christian world than any other. I don't believe the major difference in churches is doctrine. A high percentage of churches agree on most of the fundamental issues regarding the Christian faith. The major difference, the thing that often separates us, is our orthopraxis — the practice of worship — what goes on in our public meetings. If you’ve had the opportunity to visit different churches, you’ll experience very different things, all of them called worship.

In some churches, you might sing an opening hymn followed by an invocation by the pastor. Then, perhaps, a choir number, another hymn, and a Scripture reading. Then, maybe, there will be a soloist just before the pastor gets up and prays and preaches. In other churches, the only instrument might be an ancient pipe organ and the church might follow a formal liturgy in which the congregation kneels, sits or stands at various points in the service. There might be lots of priests walking up and down the aisles swinging incense or carrying an icon of Jesus or a saint or Mary — with the capstone of the service being the consecration of the Host and the serving of the Eucharist. If you were to go to still another church, they might be completely non-instrumental and every song would be sung a capella. And then, you might go to another church that meets in a storefront where the service lasts three hours and people are shouting, speaking in tongues, prophesying, and falling on the floor.

Here's the funny thing. It’s really just a matter of philosophy of ministry and preference. For example, in the church I serve, we want the kind of public worship where anyone could feel comfortable inviting a family member, roommate, or boss who rarely goes to church without wondering whether something is going to happen that will make them uncomfortable. Now, of course, some people are offended by any expression of emotion, some have very narrow boundaries while others can tolerate almost anything — fall on the floor, dance on your seat. Here's my approach to public worship. It's not the only approach. It's not necessarily the most anointed approach. It’s just where I’ve landed after forty-two years of pastoral ministry. I like to compare public worship to the serving of a meal.

Awkward!

Imagine how you’d feel if you were invited to dinner at someone's house and no one spoke to you. The whole evening, you just sat there, silently, in a really uncomfortable chair listening to everyone else speaking Hungarian or some other language and the few times anyone spoke in English, they told inside family stories about people and events you’ve never heard of. Imagine if you were a guest in someone's home and they made no effort whatsoever to include you. Some churches are like that. There's lots of religious language that people don't understand. Folks are being asked to do a bunch of things for which a guest would have no point of reference — kneel, stand, say this, say that. There are things that a guest might look at and say, “That's just completely unintelligible. Why is that person swinging a glow wand or whirling down the aisle?” There are lots of insider activities. These churches are, what you might call, guest unfriendly, however unintentional that may be.

I went to church one Sunday with a friend of mine from college. It was his home church. We were on spring break. And he didn’t warn me! There had to be two to three hundred people there. We sang a couple of hymns and then a nice, older gentleman popped up to the podium and said, “Do we have any visitors here this morning? If you’re here for the first time, please raise your hand.” Without thinking, I raised my hand and I will never forget what happened next. They immediately made me stand up and the guy basically interrupted the service to interview me from the front. He asked me my name, where I was from and how I came to be in the service that morning. It was embarrassing! While I stood there, answering his questions, a kindly older woman came around and embraced me in a vaguely inappropriate bear hug. I honestly didn’t think she was going to let go! When she finally did, she then pinned a huge red ribbon on my shirt that said VISITOR in big, gold letters. I looked like I’d just won first prize at the fair. The whole time, my friend was sitting there grinning from ear to ear. Then the guy at the front said, “Let’s sing the welcome song.” So, they sang me the welcome song. “There's a welcome here. There's welcome here. There's a Christian welcome here.” Do you know that song? If you don’t, you’re not missing anything.

Now, it was all very sweet and well intentioned, but, as a first-time guest, I have to tell you; it was weird. It made me feel incredibly uncomfortable and self-conscious, and I was studying for the ministry. Here’s a thought. Can we not do that? Can we be warm and welcoming without being weird?

Some churches tailor their entire service to their guests. If a guest wouldn't like to sing for twenty minutes, then they don’t sing. If they wouldn’t want to hear teaching for longer than 20 minutes, then they keep it short. Many of these services end in forty to fifty minutes. I call these types of services guest targeted. I’ve never been a fan. While guest targeted services might make a first-time guest feel comfortable, they often feel pre-packaged, inauthentic, shallow, lacking in spontaneity, slick, or antiseptic. What am I suggesting? I suspect the sweet spot for public worship in the Western church is somewhere between guest targeted and guest unfriendly. Somewhere in the middle. Again, I’m not saying this is the only way. It’s just where I’ve landed.

Dinner with Jesus

Here, then, is my philosophy of worship. When the church comes together, I like to think of it as a big, extended family sitting down together for a meal with Jesus, and everyone is welcome. You know, every week, you have first-time guests. You’re glad they’re here. They’re more than welcome, but we’re a family and we’re going to do what church families do. We’re going to sing, teach the Bible, make room for the presence of the Holy Spirit, and pray for folks at the end of the service. But we want our guests to enjoy the experience. We want them to have an authentic experience of God. We want to include them and help them enter into the flow of our family gathering, to feel like family. So we’re not going to talk in code. We’re not going to pretend everyone knows everyone. We’re going to be careful to apply the Scriptures as practically as possible and we’re going to take a moment, now and then, to explain why we do what we do. I believe we can welcome guests AND have a great time together as a family at the same time. Do you see worship as a family gathering?