"Successful" Worship

One of the devotional booklets I read each day expanded on Leviticus 9:22-24, describing the first worship service led by Aaron and his sons. Verse 24 states, "Fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown." The writer of the devotional made the following comments that seem to fit in very well with this thread:

"Is worship successful because you sing contemporary hymns? Have a traditional liturgy? A friendly and entertaining preacher? Doctrinal preaching?Israel's first worship service was successful because God was there and God accepted the offered sacrifice. God was pleased, and the people rejoiced."

Whether our worship service if liturgical or informal, includes beautiful organ arrangements of classical hymns or guitars accompanying heartfelt lyrics of praise to God, the key is that the focus is first of all on God. The author of this devotional reminded us that the ongoing worship of the people of Israel was not always full of such emotional highs: " Worship was exacting, repetitive work - and yet God was there, accepting their worship." But if the "repetitive work" of their worship--and ours--loses its focus on and direction to God alone, it begins only one more futile task. Merely trying to dress it up in new orders of worship, changed musical styles, addition of drama or whatever, without making sure the focus is on Him will ultimately be futile.

Could we compare the family of God at worship to our own families sharing a meal? When the congregational "worship service" is always geared to seekers, to the "lowest common denominator," it is as if we are feeding everyone from 9 month old junior to the adults a diet of pureed peas and rice cereal. Of course we don't expect the infant to be able to chew up and swallow the roast chicken and broccoli the rest of us are eating, but we also recognize the need for more adult nourishment as being a part of our meal together.

In the same way, congregational leaders need to be sure that they are providing substantive messages and teachings that will help all believers continue to grow in their Christian lives. Yes, they can provide a little baby food, perhaps through added explanation of some terms or through notes in the bulletin or Sunday School options that provide basics of the faith, but they won't allow the worship service to remain stuck at the infantile level. Not sure this is the greatest analogy, though we are warned in Hebrews 6:12-13 that trying to continue to live only on an infant's diet "is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness."

So I come back to the question: "What suggestions would you make to the people you are teaching about using worship as a time for seeking the transformation of their minds?" Raising an awareness of where corporate worship should be focused, reminding all that every worship service has an audience of One, is something that is really an extension of living out a BWV. For some of us, it may mean "infiltrating" the "worship committee" of our local congregation, for others, it may mean volunteering to teach a Sunday School or small group session devoted specifically to worship, but for all of us, it probably means even more formal preparation for our own participation in each week's worship service, through prayer and meditation before we ever step foot into the sanctuary.

"How the Art World Lost Its Mind"

There is an extremely interesting article on the state of "the art world" in The New Republic for February 5, 2007. Author Jed Perl replaces "post-modern" with "laissez-faire aesthetics" but otherwise sounds a lot like Ken Myers in All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes--and Myers wrote his critique in 1989!

A couple of quotes:
"Something very strange has emerged, something more pertinent to art than to money--a new attitude, now pervasive in teh upper echelons of the art world, about the meaning and experience and value of art itself. A great shift has occurred...We have entered the age of laissez-faire aesthetics. The people who are buying and selling the most highly priced contemporary art right now--think of them as the laissez-faire aesthetes--believe that any experience that anyone can have with a work of art is equal to any other. They imagine that the most desirable work of art is the one that inspires a range of absolutely divergent meanings and impressions almost simultaneously....My problem, I now realize, is not only that I am looking for consistency, it is that I persist in imagining that there is such a thing as inconsistency....A painting is simply what everybody or anybody says it is, what everybody or anybody wishes it to be." (page 21 in hard copy)

"What laissez-faire aesthetics has left us with...is a weakening of all conviction, an unwillingness to take stands, a reluctance to champion, or surrender to, any first principle." (p 26)

"Laissez-faire aesthetics is the aesthetics that violates the very principle of art, because it insists that anything goes, when in fact the only thing that is truly unacceptable in the visual arts is the idea that anything goes....At times...it could seem that what had died was the modernist century, with its vehement advocacy of certain aesthetic principles. Perhaps we have to accept that it has gone. But what is really in danger now is something much bigger than modernity. It is nothing less than the precious exclusivity of the high-art experience." (p 27)

For for some of us, "what is really in danger" is absolute truth.

You can find the article at

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070205&s=perl020507