It's All About Who?

Found this on Revitalize Your Church. It is from George Barna, the Christian polling guru....

For most Americans, worship is to satisfy or please them, not to honor or please God. Amazingly, few worship-service regulars argue that worship is something they do primarily for God; a substantially larger percentage of attenders claim that attending worship services is something that they do for personal benefit and pleasure. -- George Barna.

The "feel good in worship" attitude has been enhanced by our individualized approach to faith (it's about me and God). That's the one extreme. That's often found in pietistic approaches and modern "contemporary, pop" worship music.

Oddly enough the other extreme is often found in the same places. We see it in the hands-in-the-air style (of which there is nothing wrong- if it is appropriate to the setting and music) and those breaks in contemporary Christian music concerts which are often referred to as "worship" times.

Actually I am not sure it is an either/or proposition. There is, in reality, a whole bunch of reasons, many of them, that make up why we attend worship services. A quick look through the Psalms would more than prove that it is communal, personal, and about God and us. From the depths of despair to the heights of mystical ecstasy, it would seem that all of these are part of worship. To be limited or to narrow the nature and purpose of "worship" to one strand would be to diminish our spiritual life and our connections with our Creator and Savior.