Who is our worship focused on?

As a worship leader there are many tensions that exist in planning and leading worship. There is a tension between trying to lead with excellence without making it a show. There is a tension of balancing multiple services while still leaving room for the Spirit to work. There is the tension of wanting to use ancient practices of worship the church has used sometimes for thousands of years but not wanting to alienate and remove people from worship they can understand. There is a tension about the focus of worship. Worship should be solely focused on glorifying God, but how do you do that and still make those seeking God welcomed? These are difficult questions for all who worship and lead worship.

There was an article the other day talking about how some Catholic churches still celebrate the Tridentine Mass, the mass that was used prior to Vatican II in the 1960's. This mass, which is performed mostly in Latin, is really a beautiful dance of the priests and those who tend to the altar moving and praying and focusing every moment and word on God. The priests have their back to the congregation most of the time and the service is mostly silent, except for the soft chanting of the worship leaders.

    It is easy to understand the tensions of the church that led to them removing this service as the primary format for mass. With the lack of interaction, the prayers done in an ancient and unspoken language and the seeming impersonality of the service I too probably would have pushed to make the Gospel and the worship of God more tangible for my congregation. But most styles of worship whether they are contemporary, traditional, seeker sensitive, and even ancient/future blended worship tend to be more congregational focused than God focused in our culture. It is not that these styles do not lead people in worshiping God, or they are by nature dishonoring to God. Instead, our consumerist society has led us to try and create worship that will bring people in, attract larger congregations, and feature better and better performances, preaching, and styles to build our churches. It is obviously difficult to try and draw people in and still have the primary focus of every aspect of worship be glorifying God. So how can we do it? How can we have worship that is dynamic, God-centered, and still makes the Gospel tangible for the world? When we look at a service like the Tridentine Mass, there are elements there that refocus worship on God and we can use them in our services, regardless of what style of music or liturgy or non-liturgy they use.

1) We can stop teaching our people that worship is all about them. No matter the style of worship we can easily give our congregations the wrong message about worship. We mis-educate them when we make decisions about music, messages, order of service or the focus of the service that is driven by practicality and not by our theology and understanding of God.

2) We must bring silence and reflection back into worship. In our fast paced and entertainment driven culture we have leave little space for God. By creating intentional silence and reflection in our services we let God back in. These times will seem awkward and difficult at first, things that make us grow usually do, but in time they will become treasured times of conversation with God.

3) Our creation of services should reflect less of our cultures priorities and more of God's. If slick, entertaining, bite sized nuggets of truth are the value of our culture, but difficult complex and messy realities and mysteries are the ways of God, how should this affect our times of worship? If God is a God of continual creation and redemption how should this inform our creation and use of liturgy and music? If Jesus took time to always seek out the marginalized, the seemingly unimportant, and the weak as he ministered, how should our gatherings as the Body of Christ similarly reflect these values?   

There are certainly more ways for to refocus our worship on God. Do you have any thoughts?