Author, Simon.
Published, July 22, 2009.
Mark Dever writes at 9Marks:
There’s silence between various aspects of the service. I encourage service leaders to NOT do the “no-dead-airspace” TV standard of busy-ness. We LIKE “dead air space.” “Dead air space” gives us time to reflect. To collect our thoughts. To consider what we’ve just heard or read or sung. The silence amplifies the words or music we’ve just heard. It allows us time to take it all in, and to pray. We have silence to prepare ourselves. We have silence between the announcements and the scriptural call to worship. We even have a moment of silence AFTER the service! I pronounce the benediction from the end of II Corinthians, invite the congregation to be seated. And then, after about a minute of silence, the pianist begins quietly playing the last hymn that we had just sung. During those few moments, we reflect and prepare to speak to others and depart. We do business with God. We prepare ourselves for the week ahead.
Isn’t it interesting? Isn’t it interesting that in our media saturated, claustrophobic culture, where we are surrounded by “loudness” pretty well all the time, silence seems to be surprising. It’s even uncomfortable. At church, I sometimes find myself feeling concerned when there’s a gap of ‘nothing’ between, say, a song and the service leader talking. I feel discomfort during silence! When there’s nothing happening, I feel insecure.
Psalm 62:1:
For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.
Habakkuk 2:20:
But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.
In Revelation 8:1, the seventh seal is opened:
“…and there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.”
Perhaps we’re hiding, or avoiding something. Whatever it is, silence shouldn’t always feel awkward. Imagine how Elijah, in 1 Kings 19:9-18, felt when he sought to hear from God. He received an onslaught to the senses: an earthquake, great winds, and a fire. It was only after the fire that he heard:
…the sound of a low whisper. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And behold, there came a voice to him and said “What are you doing here Elijah?”
We fill our senses with sound and vision, some of us almost constantly. Yet, it was in the silence that Elijah heard the voice of God; the “low whisper”.
It is for this reason, that I enjoy the English commentary at cricket, and rugby. There is often silence, unlike the Aussie standard which seems to want to cram every second with stats and what this guy ought to be doing!
I do wonder sometimes whether we often “speak too much” in Church. It appears we feel like we need to fill the gaps, keep on keeping on. But it is also true of our culture generally. We are almost obsessed with efficiency and being busy.
I totally agree - silence is not at all a bad thing in a church service. Seriously, you don’t need transition noise for most of what goes on during a service.
I wonder sometimes at some church’s insistance to play music during the taking up of the offering/tithes - I’ve been in services where hymns are sung during the collection and others where the ushers move about the pews in silence. I think there’s place for both and it should be alternated from time to time.
What I can’t stand are busy corporate prayers … the congregation should have some moments of silence within which to offer up their own petitions and an invitation for them to do so during corporate prayer seems a very tidy spot for it.
Why people have become uncomfortable with and / or embarrassed by silence and seek to substitute it with meaningless noise is beyond me.
Thanks Matthew,
I am a big fan of the silences in coporate prayers. My church does that fairly carefully, generally. I agree, too, on your point regarding music during offerings and tithes. There is a place for both. I have had one fellow at my church who has suggested multiple times that I play something during offering - fair enough I suppose, but not a necessity!
I think we are uncomfortable with silence because there is a severe lack of it in the West. Most people would have to choose silence over constant noise - when it is forced upon us, it seems to make us squirm.