Has our worship become a shopping venture where we pick through the local churches or different worship services to see which meets our needs or are we so in need of giving to God His due praise that we do so regardless of the “packaging?”

 Consumerism has seemingly taken over our churches and especially our worship of God. If a church does not have the right style of worship will we simply find one that does? Don’t hear me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with different churches worshipping in different ways. Each church needs to be unique in it’s make up and how the Spirit is leading. What I am questioning is how we say that one is right or better and how we leave worship services either hearing remarks like “I didn’t get anything out of worship today,” or “I didn’t like the new songs or old songs we sang.” It’s as if we have come expecting to be fed when we are or should be coming to “offer a sacrifice of praise.”

 I see churches with multiple services that differ in style trying to cater to different age groups. Let’s take Paul’s letter to the Colossians (3:16, 17). If we have one service of psalms to entice the students, one of spiritual songs for the young adults and one service singing hymns to cater to the senior adults, then what are we left with? A church divided with no interaction and encouragement from the Sr. Adults to the students. There is no newness for the Sr. Adults given by the students and what we thought was reaching out to embrace each generation has left the church splintered and molded like Swiss cheese…a lot of holes to fill.

 Our singing in worship is not to please or satisfy our longing for rhyth­mical, melodical, or timbre gratification but to offer, unselfishly to God, our sacrifice of praise and to tell of His greatness, glory, and grace to all the generations. We cannot cater our worship for us if it is meant for God. If we allow this to happen then we, the church, are no different than any other entity that plays to our desires of what we think “we” need.

 We are a holy priesthood, a people that are to be different than what the world has to offer. If we continue to make ourselves look like the world so that the world will come to us then who will look like Christ for His kingdom’s sake? Marva Dawn, a Canadian theologian and professor, says this in her book entitled A Royal Waste of Time, “In the world the Christians should work harder toward establishing colonies of the kingdom that point to our true home. All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.” Our worship must be centered on our Center and if it’s not Jesus Christ then we are just another great community organization. Our God is great and our worship of Him must be in response to who He is thus making our ministry of worship great because it will be eternal.

Soli Deo Gloria!