Moving Beyond Vanilla Worship

This week's blog contains a snippet of the book that I have been working on over the last few months:

Over the last century, the America culture has redefined what worship once was. To many, worship surrounds the idea of what a church practices during the song service. Although we may call the service in its totality a “worship service,” we have carefully compartmentalized the various aspects of church life to encompass their own individual meanings. In other words, we have our “praise and worship,” sermon, offering, occasional attention to the ordinances of the church, and if time allows, prayer that extends longer than just the opening of the service, offertory, and concluding blessing. Enter the doors of any evangelical church (which includes some of the predominate Pentecostal denominations as the gifts of the Spirit in which they claim to be their distinction is seldom ever exercised in the public setting) and you will find the similar format, similar songs and music styles, similar preaching emphasis, and a similar push to become a more relevant community to the world around them. It has become a conglomeration of the Willow Creek, Saddleback, Purpose Driven Life, John Maxwell’s and George Barna’s church growth strategies that have shaped the face of contemporary worship as we know it today.  To a God who offers us more than the “Thirty-One Flavors” of the typical church setting, the Body of Christ has remained content to indulge themselves America’s favorite flavor of worship: Evangelical vanilla.

What does this metaphoric example have to do with the subject of worship? Doesn’t the idea of having a simple vanilla approach to worship seem like a great idea as the church can add it’s toppings to make it their own unique flavor? This is the problem with Evangelical Vanilla! It’s the taking of the pure flavor of worship and adding things to it in order to change the taste and make it more appealing to the human palate.

Worship must first and foremost be centered upon the Lord and be relational to Him in order for it to be genuine. For some reason, the church has shied away from allowing the unbridled expression of worship to take place in the midst of their services in fear of offending those in attendance. If I am not mistaking, the last time I checked Scripture, it suggested that God is the one who determines how He is to be approached and worshiped. Somehow we have turned that around and created a worship that suits our ideas and preferences. We have taken the purity of vanilla and decided to mix in our own flavors in the attempt to make the worship experience more palatable for our taste. This is the beauty of evangelical vanilla. It can be best described as a special formulation of complex flavors blended into a rich, traditional vanilla-like mixture resulting in the perfect concoction that will appeal to any appetite.

What is too often mixed up in the theological thought processes of many in church leadership is in the vast difference between “relevance” and “relational.” Unfortunately, what many churches are considering to be relevant is in actuality an attempt to become more relational to those in the world. The real question is in asking ourselves, “Is worship something that those in the world can find either relevant or relational for their lives?” Are we as the Body of Christ doing unbelievers a great disservice by allowing them to feel as if they are participating in the worship of a holy God when their hearts are far from Him?  When the purpose of the worship service is particularly geared to be a bridge to allow unbelievers to experience worship in a non-threatening environment, what in reality are we doing? We’re focused on pleasing the world, glorifying our church, and receiving praise from outsiders! We’re striving to be the relevant church that has made a name for itself in the community because of the way we do church. This is not the prescribed formula found throughout Scripture. The church in the first century was hated by the world. They didn’t make the monotheistic worship of Christianity appeal to the polytheistic worship of the pagans. It wasn’t their worship that drew the masses to come to Christ. It was the power of the Holy Spirit working through their lives as they brought the message of the Gospel outside of the four walls of the church.

      In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul makes the analogy that we, as Christians, have been called to the ministry of reconciliation by being “ambassadors” of Christ to this world. This ministry is based upon the Christian being a representative to the world as he lives in the world. God, however, has a different opinion when it comes specifically to the believing community solely as his sons and daughters. Paul’s command in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 tells the church that “righteousness and wickedness” and “light and darkness” have nothing in common. The church is to remain “separate” from the world and not to find common ground with unbelievers in the context of the Christian life experience. Central to the Christian’s life and values, both corporately and individually, is worship. It is a separated activity by which the world cannot find any common ground to relate while the church cannot afford to compromise the holy and sacred for the sake of getting a stamp of approval from unbelievers. Is it ever wondered why Christians have become so hungry for a genuine and authentic taste of worship? Perhaps it is because “evangelical vanilla” is one flavor of worship that adds no nutritional value to the spirit and leaves one famished for a just a morsel of something real that will sustain the soul.