[BBC List] boring

[Mike Abendroth]

IS WORSHIP BORING?


Don Whitney


NOTE: In December 2000 I was asked by a writer of Word and Way (the
newspaper of the Missouri Baptist Convention) to contribute to a multi-page,
special section on the subject of "Is Church Boring?" My input was requested
because in my responsibilities as professor of Spiritual Formation at
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary I teach a required class on "Worship
Leadership, " and also because I have written on and speak frequently in
churches and conferences on the subject of worship.

I also suggested this to the editor of the piece: ". . . when writing this
up, you might you want to change your questions from 'Is church boring?' to
'Is worship boring?' or 'Are church worship services boring?', or something
like that. I have assumed all along you are referring to 'worship' when you
refer to 'church,' but 'church,' of course, can have an endlessly broad
application."

Some of what follows appeared in the December 21, 2000 Word and Way.

  _____  

What is your response when you hear someone say, "Church is boring.?"

My first response is to ask, "Why do you say that?" For starters, even the
worship service that would be most pleasing to the Lord is likely to bore
the unconverted person, whether they profess to be a Christian or not. "But
a natural man," the Bible makes plain in 1 Cor. 2:14, "does not accept the
things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot
understand them, because they are spiritually appraised." In light of this,
and in light of the fact that many who attend church are not true believers,
I would expect church to be boring to many people. They do not have the
God-given, spiritual capacity to find the satisfaction, nourishment, and
refreshment in it that those with the Spirit of God do.

If I am confident that a person is genuinely converted, and still they say,
"Church is boring," then I want to ask about their expectations and
determine if they are reasonable ones. 

Beyond that, I would ask about the particulars of the service, trying to
discern if the worship leadership is seeking to promote "worship in spirit
and truth" (as Jesus put it in John 4:24).

Should boring be a term used to describe church? Why or why not?

Sadly, sometimes it is an appropriate term. There is such a thing as dead
orthodoxy. To refer to John 4:24 again, worship that is done "in truth" but
not "in spirit" is heartless and potentially boring. To present the
endlessly satisfying and perpetually fascinating God who is "holy, holy,
holy" to His worshipers in such a way that does not call for "reverence and
awe" (Heb. 12:28) is deplorable. 

In my own case I've found that the immediate cause of boredom in worship is
often thoughtlessness on my own part. In other words, I am not sufficiently
focusing on and thinking about what I am encountering in the service, I may
be bored-but it's my own fault. If God is presented faithfully to me in
worship, that is, if the Scripture is read, if the hymns/choruses are true
to Scripture and God-centered, and if the sermon is faithful to the Word,
then enough of God's revelation is there for me not to be bored. I cannot
sit back, fold my arms, and wait for the worship leaders to stimulate or
entertain me. That's not their job. Their job is to present God to me. And
if I am seeking God, I will find Him and find Him interesting, not boring.
The old adage about horses has application to worshipers here: you can lead
a worshiper to God, but you can't make him worship. God forbid, however,
that the worship leaders appear thoughtless and unmoved about the God they
are presenting to the worshipers.

And yet, I'm not sure I want to admit the use of the term "boring" when it
comes to worship. To do so may be merely reflecting the values of a society
that places such a high priority on amusement that the most common word of
blessing on someone departing is "Have fun" or "Have a good time," and where
the most condescending evaluative curse is, "That was soooo boring." To
analyze worship on a "boredom scale" is to use the wrong measuring rod. To
call worship "boring" could imply that we can evaluate it in the same way
that we appraise movies, TV shows, and other forms of entertainment. It also
puts pressure upon the worship leaders to focus on making worship more
exciting or interesting rather than considering it upon more explicitly
Biblical grounds.

If people are bored in church, is that a problem with the church or with the
individuals?

As I've already mentioned, if people are unconverted then the problem is
with them. Since "no one can [sincerely] say, 'Jesus is Lord' except by the
Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3), no unconverted person can truly worship, no
matter how the service is conducted. Therefore not only is it a mistake to
plan worship for those who cannot worship, it is also a mistake to seek the
evaluation of our worship services by those who cannot worship. Otherwise
it's like planning an art exhibit according to the preferences of those who
are blind.

Second, as I said above, it is also the problem of the individual if he or
she is not thoughtful about what is presented. People who do not want to
love God with all their minds during a worship service are likely to be
bored. The proper observance of the Lord's Supper, for instance, requires
deliberation. Without thought about its meaning, the mere ingestion of the
elements may not only be boring, but sinful. The pursuit of God in worship
is worthy of our best attention and mental efforts.

Third, it is also the problem of the individual if his or her expectations
are unrealistic. We should remember that those who lead worship "are but
dust" (Ps. 103:14) too. They have many other ministry responsibilities in
addition to leading worship (though few are as important). To expect the
leaders of most local churches to "produce" events that can compete with the
teams of highly resourced professionals on TV and in the movies with all
their special effects that we watch for hours each week is unrealistic.

But if Godly, mature, Word-hungry followers of Jesus are consistently bored
in worship, the worship leaders need to take a great deal of the
responsibility.

How do you train future church leaders to preach and otherwise "do church"
without being boring?

You ask about training them to preach. I am not a professor of preaching,
but I believe that the greatest need of the pulpit today is for men of God
to preach the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God. (By the way,
Ben Awbrey, our professor of preaching at Midwestern, agrees with this.)
When this is done, God's people find it extremely satisfying, not boring.
Sheep love sheep food. 

I do train future church leaders in "Worship Leadership" (that's the name of
the class). There I train them to evaluate every element of the worship
service by whether each is God-centered and Biblical. Worship is, by
definition, the worship of God. If the worship leader can present God to his
people in the ways He has revealed Himself to us in Scripture, God's people
will find all they need for Him to be alluring and captivating.

And I urge them to insure that every element in the worship service is
Biblical, that is, they should be able find clear support in Scripture for
each line item in the order of service. Otherwise that element should not be
part of the worship service (though it may have a legitimate place elsewhere
in the life of the church).

Baptists have, going back to their first (1644) and to their most
influential (1689) confessions of faith, agreed that worship should only be
as "prescribed in Holy Scripture." This, I believe, is what it means to
"worship in truth" (John 4:24). And the failure to understand and do this
is, in my opinion, the root of most of the "worship wars" today, including
the one over boredom. If we will consciously include only those elements
that are God-centered and "prescribed in Holy Scripture," I believe God's
people will find worship nourishing, and rarely boring. Spiritual life and
light are not boring, and these come to us only when we focus on God through
Christ and feast upon Him through His written self-revelation.

I realize this goes counter to the trends in evangelicalism today, and flies
in the hurricane face of our entertainment-oriented culture. Add to this the
numbers of unconverted people who attend church and such a reformation in
worship will be difficult to accomplish in many situations. But all
reformation begins with teaching, and I would recommend such a path to a
pastor before he overhauls the order of service.

75% of Missouri Baptist churches are plateaued or declining. Can that
reality be attributed, in part, to people finding church to be boring?

In part, yes-at least theoretically. Personally I think there are more and
greater reasons than this, such as the erosion of insisting upon the
historic Baptist principle of a regenerate church membership. Second, I
think it has more to do with our lack of Biblical preaching than we'd like
to admit. But if we want to focus specifically upon whether the worship
event as a whole has contributed to 75% of our churches plateauing or
declining, I would say it has more to do with whether each part of the
service is God-centered and Biblical than it does with the leaders pursuit
of the intangible quality of whether the service is "interesting."

Don Whitney
www.BiblicalSpirituality.org

Copyright C 2001 Donald S. Whitney. 

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Whitney. 

 

 

Thanks.

 

For the King's honor,

 

Charis,

 

Mike Abendroth

 

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Ephesians 3:21 auvtw/| h` do,xa evn th/| evkklhsi,a| 

 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

 

"Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician ... Faith is
not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on
Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us;
that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for
our sins.  It is a sin-bearer that we need, and our faith cannot be a
sin-bearer. Faith can expiate no guilt; can accomplish no propitiation; can
pay no penalty; can wash away no stain; can provide no righteousness. It
brings us to the cross, . but in itself it has no merit and no virtue.
Faith is not Christ, nor the cross of Christ. Faith is not the blood, nor
the sacrifice; . Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between
itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgment that the cross alone saves,
and that it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross, nor to its healing
virtue. It owns the fulness, and sufficiency, and suitableness of the work
done there, and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter
into rest. Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see
the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion
without a misgiving as to its efficacy. It listens to the "It is finished!"
of the Sin-bearer, and says, "Amen."   

NOT FAITH, BUT CHRIST 

by Horatius Bonar 
(1808-1889) 

 

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