The fashion today finds some churches talking smack about how long the worship portion of their Sunday meeting persists.
“We open with 20 minutes of nonstop praise to the Lord!”
“Well, we spend 40 minutes lifting up His name!”
Meanwhile, churches continue to build or renovate so that the altar area is more like the stage at a KISS concert. It used to be that a church could drop $50,000 easily on sound equipment. How 2005! Now they spend that much on stage lighting.
Can I ask a simple question?
What did Jesus say His Father’s house shall be called? A house of a 45-minute worship set with lasers?
When was the last time you heard anyone brag, “We open our meeting with a half hour of prayer”?
Something is monstrously wrong in American Christianity when a church of believers can sing some bad rock songs interminably and then brag about it, yet you can’t get the assembled Body of Christ at that same church to spend five minutes in shared prayer.
I wonder if we’ve reached a stage where we can say that our Father’s house has become one of misplaced priorities.
He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
–Matthew 21:13
You see, there is more than one holy thing such robbers can steal.
Your post is right on! Thanks. And can someone tell me why the music has to be full blast? In my church this seems to be used to keep the elderly from coming since many elderly’s ears cannot take things that loud. In other words, a power grab for the younger leaders? There is no reason that the amps cannot be turned down, is there?
This post says so much with very few words!
I’ve also wondered how it can be that while we worship a God of infinite creativity and imagination, our N. American churches seem to all want to look the same…….
Dire Dan: “some bad rock songs”
Please Dan, don’t get me started on the subject of church music.