All Things Seen & Unseen

One of the popular, modern beliefs about Christian worship is that it primarily occurs when the congregation is led in singing by a band of musicians and singers. That view is unfortunate and takes us back to the days when the laity came to church not to sing but to listen to the beautiful cathedral choirs do the singing.  For sometimes, the use of 'worship teams' with bands' and sing ers' efforts amplified can inhibit congregational partic ipation . The 'worship te am' can become a unit set apart by its skills and volume from the congregation leading to congregants becoming passive in their invo lvement in the service.

Church services are invariably connected with boredom. Growing up in Pentecostalist circles, the services I attended were sometimes boring because of the number of words spoken, mainly by persons other than the people of God!! And there was nothing to look at, no pictures, no symbols, no smells to enjoy as in Orthodox worship for example, little sound (except that of the preacher's voice), no colours or candles. Being partly sensory, children especially need the sights and sounds of the Faith enacted before them. We all do. Holy sensory-rich rituals arising out of living faith is most necessary and each is dead without the other. When we get bored, though, maybe we should just learn to sit with our boredom and not try to use the modern panacea of entertainment to suppress it. Sometimes, the Lord is in the midst of boredom and we may miss Him if we try to avoid it. Nowadays, it seems that churches are so overly sensitive to what outsiders think that they have to adopt the modes...