Liturgy For Justice: Moving Beyond "Happy Clappy"
On Expanding Worship Expirences
Six years ago I was at a large, Christian conference in San Diego. It was July, and San Diego, like you’d suspect was gorgeous and warm. A friend and I managed to pull ourselves together, leave the comfort of perfect weather and wander into the early afternoon worship session.
Inside were thousands of worshipers, a fog machine filled the room with soft smoke, and the worship band was singing, jumping, and very, very loud. It felt weird to me.I would not feign to judge the motives of our worship leaders. I’m sure they were excited about the work of God and the movement of the Spirit.
What struck me, was that on this warm, sunny San Diego day, the worship team was dressed as though they were leading worship in the dead of winter in Chicago. Jean jackets, hoodies, beanies. Maybe the fog was cold? The songs, at least the one they were singing when I came in were fine, but to me (and this is totally subjective), felt vapid. My friend and I looked at one another and without saying a word turned around, walked out the door we walked in through, and went to hang out with friends in the Pastor’s Lounge.
Don’t get me wrong. There was nothing “wrong” with worship. But what we found in the Pastor’s lounge were several other pastors and church leaders who thought what we thought. We did not understand what was going on in worship. What we discovered is not that we had become critical of the worship itself, but had, over time, become disconcerted, disappointed, and dispirited that one style of worship had come to dominate the worship experiences of the churches where we pastored. Worse still, more and more churches were attempting to emulate the production-drive, highly produced worship experiences that we had just witnessed.
Everything had become “happy-clappy.”
But what should we do?