Do you ever get bored with worship?

This is a loaded question for a pastor wrestling with his or her insecurities. In reality, the collective worship experience is to be about God. Anyone leading worship should be prepared not as an entertainer, or an orator wanting to be liked, but as a teacher pointing the body to Jesus. Perhaps the broader question is “Do you and I ever get bored with God?”

I recently read where a man from India told a popular preacher in America, “You American Christians are funny.” He stated that in general we won’t show up to church consistently unless it is convenient, there is good music, a good speaker and all our consumeristic needs are met. However, in India, believers get excited just to pray. Indian believers love communion and flood the church simply to pray with each other. Often there are no sound boards, gifted musicians, or orators to one’s liking.

What if the worship experience and church life consisted simply of an excitement just to pray and hear the word of God with others in your spiritual family? Would attendance rapidly decline to the point of where the church closed its doors? What if the worship experience truly did not come down to our likes and dislikes, and what am I going to get from church today? Instead in the preparation for worship we came to serve those who were once strangers, but now we call friends.

Maybe our Indian brother in Christ is on to something. The church is to be a community of people with a like-mindedness coming together as one to worship God (Hebrews 10:25). Worship is always about God. It’s never about a pastor, a musician, a specific way of doing something, or ourselves. What if our collective worship experience with our spiritual family was moved up in importance and given top priority, and everything else was rescheduled around that? (This statement is not an endorsement for legalism.)

What if our worship experience with our spiritual family did not end after Sunday? Years ago, I ministered to many juveniles in the prisons involved in gang life. The gang was their “family.” It was central to their lives. Pastor Francis Chan says, “Could you ever imagine gang life being reduced to a weekly hour and a half gathering?

Imagine a gang member walking up to another member and asking, “How was the gang meeting last week? I missed it because I was just too busy.” In my experience working with gang members, connection through the week was vital. And while gang life and Christianity have major differences, the one common bond they share is family.

What if church experiences were no longer seen as an obligation, or ritual, but simply a worshipful act of honoring God? It’s a privilege to hear His word, to pray together, and to grow in His ways. It’s a blessing to serve each other and use our gifts to reach others for Christ.

At a conference long ago, the speaker shared that often we worship God on Sundays with strangers. I can not get that sentence out of my mind. We are challenged by Christ and His word through listening to messages, but it is in the trenches of life with our spiritual family where we will find we truly belong, we will grow, and where we will realize we really need each other.

In Jesus,

Pastor Rich Edwards

“All the believers devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals, and to pray” (Acts 2:42).

“And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now on the day of his return is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25).

“For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and whole-some teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths” (2 Timothy 4:4-5).