Author, Simon.
Published, July 22, 2008.

I heard a bold sermon preached a week ago, about Psalm 89. The psalmist, here, spends verses 1-18 exclaiming the might, glory and power of the living God. Verses 7 and 11 read thusly:

In the council of the holy ones God is greatly feared; he is more awsome than all who surround him…The heavens are yours, and yours also is the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.

Indeed, the tone of the psalm makes one cower at the might of the creator, and also stand straight and tall, in awe and honour at his power and faithfulness. How, then, can we reconcile this sort of rhetoric, which we read throughout the scriptures, with the sometimes trivial goings-on in the church? I, for one, admire the reverence and care with which the Roman Catholics and high Anglicans conduct their services. Some understandably take them to task on these practices, accusing them of rigidity and a lack of sensitivity. There is a heavy focus on ritual and order, but these elements are lacking hugely in many other churches’ services.

The way in which many services are conducted is not dissimilar to a talk-show; music act, host arrives and makes a joke and some announcements, more music, then the main speaker entertains the crowd for around 30 minutes, before the host throws to the band for some more music. This style of service, I feel, lacks. It fails to recognise who we are, in fact, meeting to worship, learn about, repent to, and celebrate. It lacks weight. It neglects to respond to what the members of the congregation need to do; repent, and worship the God to whom they owe so much. The music resembles a mix of Blink 182 and Kelly Clarkson. The lyrics sung to God have more in common with Burt Bacharach than King David of Israel.

The preacher rarely challenges the minds and hearts of the congregation with hard-thinking, hard hitting teaching. Instead of looking to what God has said and applying it to our circumstances, we tend to be fed sermons which look at our lives first, and try to fit in the scriptures with them. This is a mistake though; our lives are filled with sin and deprivation, television and violence, sex-saturated Internet and music. Making scripture fit our lives is like trying to fit a Rolls Royce engine under the hood of a 1974 Datsun. Another danger related to this is that if we look at the scriptures in this way, we find very little in common with what they say and what we experience. The Bible, therefore, gets slowly but surely pushed out of our practices. Congregations end up getting fed what has been termed as “advice-talks with a religious twist.” The church is oblivious to its own practice of gradually squeezing out the bible from its services.

The truths which we know and love, and the God which we worship and fear, should be approached in earnestness. Culture is filled with triviality; everything that the world throws at us is dumbed down. We are consumers, so everything has to be easy for us to consume in order for us to desire more. Sunday mornings (or Saturday nights, or Thursday mornings, whenever you worship) can be, and should be bastions away from this triviality. For, what we meet to do, and whom we meet to worship and seek, is without doubt the most important and weighty factor in our lives. Our practices in church should reflect this.