I recently commented on one of Kent Sander’s posts. He hit a subject that I’ve wrestled with for a while. I decided to share that comment, and I found the video that I references (unfortunately it’s a lot shorter than the one I watched):

I can relate and agree with your post. This is something I’ve really been struggling with for a couple months now. Not only in that”contemporary praise & worship” music is limited in what they say, but most churches/Christians aren’t being 100% honest in the worship [hear me out first].

There is a large pallet of emotions that humans experience… and our worship music often only expresses the “happy” emotion, and it pretends like everything is right with the world. Where are our songs that say, “God, this world is messed up, we need your help to go through it, and we need to see you come back soon… we need you to pour out your judgment and wrath.”?

I remember seeing an interview with Bono (from U2) and he said that he feels like he can’t worship in the churches because they’re not honest. He feels like he can relate to the blues more as worship music than what is being played in the churches. He says he likes the Psalms a lot, and the Psalms seems to be more like the Blues rather than “worship music.”

Although I don’t usually make it a point to look at Bono for theological insight… I think he hit it right on the nose.

One last note. A few weeks ago my pastor was talking about problems and why they happen. We closed the service with a song that’s called, “How Long.” The song is a desperate cry saying, “How long till there’s judgment on the earth? How long till we hear the victory roar? How long till we can gaze upon your face? Yes I know that You’ve already won, but come Lord Jesus!” This is a desperate cry, and our church as a whole took it to heart (some were even in tears). When our worship is honest–it is powerful–truth brings out our emotions. I strongly believe that when we’re honest, God blesses us.

I am usually skeptical of large churches (I don’t need to go into the details as to why), but if there was a large church who did things right, I thought it was Willow Creek. My wife and I even visited last July and we both felt like it was a doctrinally sound church that just did things right.

Several weeks ago Willow Creek announced a 30-year public apology. They say that their approach to church was wrong. The basis of how they did church was to create programs, get people involved in programs, and this would lead to spiritual growth. They did a research in their church body and they found that seekers and new Christians loved the church and felt like they were being fed spiritually. But they found as Christians matured spiritually, they became less satisfied with the church and weren’t being fed. Willow found that mature Christians were expecting the church to continue feeding them. Bill Hybels says, “we should have been teaching Christians to be ’self-feeders’ as they mature.”

Their remedy for this issue is to have “personal spiritual trainers.” The idea is that as you mature spiritually, you meet with a trainer and they create a custom plan for you to grow spiritually.

Willow’s approach sounds interesting, but I still feel like we’re doing church wrong. I can’t give an answer to what the right way is–and I’m not sure if Willow even knows. But it will be interesting to see where things will go as we wrestle with the issues.

Resources:
Willow Creek Repents?
Will Creek Repents? (Part 2)
Greg Hawkins : Hear the heart behind REVEAL
Bill Hybels : The wake up call of my adult life