Radically Real

Arts in Worship part II
Worship in the context of the church is a difficult thing because the audience is unclear to many. Clarifying the audience may be the greatest thing to come out of the post modern "discussion". At this point, we have a stage and we have seats, the people in the seats feel they are the audience and right or wrong pastors are hired and fired by how the people in the seats are "entertained." The problem is the people in the seats are not the audience, they are worshipers too and the audience is God. (I know we give this lip service but I don't know that we are really there.) I believe that the role of the people on the "stage" is to lead people into worship. The more of people's gifts that can be incorporated into the worship hour, the better, because people will be inspired to live lives of worship with the gifts we have been given. This to me is why all the arts (as well as recognizing all kinds of gifts) are important in the worship hour. At this point our lives are compartmentalized. There's church and there's everything else. We sit in church for an hour and unless we can preach or sing or play an instrument, all we do is sit and listen and sometimes judge whether the pastor's message was good enough to justify another week (Since when did pastors become employees of the church? but that's a different story for a different day.) The more people that are involved in telling the story the more people will be challenged to see how they can be used of God.