I had the opportunity last night to talk to my Nana about her experience in the Church. She has been going to the Catholic Church ever since she was a little girl, but she started going to a Christian Evangelical church almost 35 years ago. She has seen her sons serve in the Church in many way, whether through worship or pastoral service, and she has been to churches all around the country. I asked her questions about worship specifically in Sunday services but also got to talk about the Christian community as a whole.
I asked her questions like: what do you find most important with worship in music? How has your experience with worship changed over the years? What's something thta our generation needs to remember as we write new worship songs? And what she admires about newer forms of worship that have emerged? Her answers to these questions can generally be summarized into three ideas: worship is meant to ascribe God glory, worship shouldn't be boring, and worship is not about us. She would say things like, "Well, I'm oldschool..." and then proceed to talk about how that means she likes words that are theologically profound but beautiful, that primarily ascribe God glory and talk about his character. She mentioned this a few times, and that got me thinking about why that seems like an "old school" concept. Is it because when we think of rich lyrics we think of hymns? or is it because she doesn't like contemporay styles of worship? But rather, she said she loves the lively worship and thinks that hymns are amazing but can seem boring. She said this seems like an "old school" idea becuase the worship songs that are written recently are not primarily about God and the Gospel. Rather, she said that a lot of worship songs are too much about ourselves and are cheaply encouraging ourselves with some nice songs. There was a lot more in the conversation I had with her, but in order to keep this blog post somewhat short I will just stick with this short summary.
I found this relates to the writings of Mark Labberton in his book,"The Dangerous Act of Worship." The book is meant to open the eyes of the Church and awkenen them to what a life of worship truly means. Labberton talks a lot about how the Church is asleep to the things of the world an individualizes much of their problems. That the Church doesn't have an eye for the hurting world around us, and in a life of real worship we need to see them and act. I think that relates to what my Nana was saying about how our worship recently has been seemingly becoming more and more selfish and individualistic focused. There is a sense of too much inward focus in oursevles, which isn't bad, but there is not pouring out when we are being filled. I wonder what the Church could learn from Mark Labberton and my Nana.
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