On sermon prep I have met preachers who have punched up a computer file and proudly showed me what they would be preaching for nearly the next year. Everything was cut-and-dried. The pressure of having to seek God week by week had been removed. What if God has a different idea? What if the spiritual temperature of the congregation changes by next October? Without an anointing and prophetic edge to declare something fresh from God's Word church life can be reduced to little more than a lecture series.
On worship Satan's tendency is always to push us toward one extreme or the other: deadness or fanaticism.
Gordon D. Fee, a New Testament scholar whose heritage is Pentecostal, has said about corporate worship, "You really should have this incredible sense of unworthiness - 'I don't really belong here' - coupled with the opposing sense of total joy - 'It is all of grace, so I do belong here.' What bothers me about some within the Pentecostal and charismatic tradition is the joy without reverence, without awe." But in too many mainstream evangelical churches, Fee adds, there is neither "reverence nor joy."
I used to read the blog of a pastor back east who did a whole year's sermons at once. I think he said that God gave him the year in advance. Maybe that's true. God can certainly do that as he knows what the congregation is going to need. I also know that when we plan for something in the flesh the Holy Spirit will sometimes have us change it at the last minute, and we better not be so full of ourselves that we're unwilling to put our plan aside and follow the Spirit's leading. God won't always do that however, sometimes we continue with what we have planned, and see that it was a total flop because we did it without the spirit's leading. If we don't learn that lesson the first time, we have the joy of remedial classes!
On the text on worship, I've been in services where I could tell there was no reverence and no joy. No reverence because people were looking around, whispering, reading text messages on their cell phones, eating, digging for things in their purses, reading the Bible, and a host of other things during worship. No joy because there were no tears, no hands raised, to prayer hands, no hushed praying during worship, or any other signs in the majority of the congregation to indicate a desire to enter in. You may be thinking, well, to notice all this, you must not have entered in yourself! Yep, you're right. I chose to observe, to take a spiritual temperature of the room. Sometimes it's good to do that.
How do we create an atmosphere of reverence and joy during worship? I'm no expert and I've never led worship or designed a service. I can't even sing! But I imagine that it would take careful teaching on the subject, more than a few sentences from the worship leader, but in depth teaching on worship and the character of God. It takes helping people develop their relationship with God to the point that they know him, who he is, and what he's like. Then they will have a sense of reverence, awe, joy, and humility in his presence.
Church shouldn't just be a fun place to go hang out and be with people you like on Sunday morning. It's a place to worship God, receive from him, minister to the body, and of course, fellowship.
Blessings on this sunny Friday.
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