Reading Worship Leader Magazine

Today, I received my worship leader magazine. I highly recommend it and the accompanying product SongDiscovery. I've been reading/listening to it for years. It tends to stretch one forward and reach backwards connecting one to the roots of worship arts and moving one forward to what comes next in order to help the next generation to connect with God.

I found this magazine to be full of ups and downs. The article with Vicky Beeching was really awesome and then my heart saddened. She talked about people connecting to acts of service to others throughout the whole article, that we need to be connected not just to music but to the poor as well. At one point she says, "I think we actually have lost sight of what worship even is. I've been going back to the Old Testament and looking at Isaiah, Malachi, Amos. And God makes it very clear. He says, 'I'm wearied by your festivals; I'm wearied by the noises of singing. This is the worship I desire. I want you to serve the fatherless, the widowed and the orphan.' He makes it very clear what we're supposed to do." -- To this I give many kudos. That's awesome. That's right on the money. But later she writes about worship as more than just singing songs and lives that would be so pure that we're actually inviting God to come in, in his power and in his glory--inhabiting the praise of his people." This much is good it's what comes next that troubles me and seems to contradict what she said earlier... She writes, "And I think that when that happens, that's when the lost will come in. People talk about crossover music all the time. But my heart for worship is that the crossover would be backwards. When God shows up in our churches, the lost will be banging on the church door. Because they'll know that's where the true spiritual experience is." That part saddens me.

I realize that she only had a limited amount of space, but this ending seems drastically off. First, the lost banging on the church doors sounds more of an attractional than missional mindset. Is the goal of mission to attract people to our church, to get something out of them? Or is missional about Christ-like self-giving love on behalf of the other. The second thought, "because they'll know that's where the true spiritual experience is." This is a huge leap. Do we really want to say that the 'true spiritual experience' is in some building that we mistakenly call the church? Jesus did spend some time in synagogues, but it intrigues me, if we are following Jesus and seeking to be like him, we must recognize that Jesus revealed true spiritual experiences in the midst of all of life. Whether Jesus was at a wedding, or a tax collectors' party, or a Pharisee's house, or among the poor, or among the lepers, or being touched by a woman who had bled for years everything was a part of the truly spiritual to Jesus. Jesus spoke to a woman by a well and said, "True worshipers, the kind of worshipers God wants, will worship neither here nor there, but will worship in spirit and truth." If I understand this, and I may not, our attitudes and actions will be intimately tied together as we live a Jesus-kind of life. And it is this kind of life that realize that my every action has a spiritual connotation to that I bear my worship (loving service) to God. And my best way to show love to God is by loving my neighbors, even the ones who are my enemy.

What do you think?