Worship is not, or at least it should not be, a form of entertainment.
- Entertainment is when a speaker, musical performers, and others entertain the audience and the audience applauds their efforts.
- Worship is when the preacher, the musical performers, others, and the congregation entertain God with remembrances, prayers, and music, and God applauds their efforts.
When I was a boy, my father taught me that it is wrong to applaud in church, because that gives someone other than God the glory. If we are applauding the choir as an act of worship, why isn’t the choir also applauding—unless they are hijacking the applause for themselves.
The only exception is when the applause is directed at young children.
Jesus says, we should not be actors in a play. The Greek word for actor
is ὑποκριτής
(hypokritēs). An actor is a person who pretends to have the emotions and opinions of his character rather than himself. We should not be actors—that is to say, we should not be hypocrites—we should be worshippers.
Part of the service, however, is a sort of stylized play, in which God, not the congregation, is the audience. This is Communion, in which the celebrant plays the role of Jesus.
Don’t Have an Invocation
When a church service begins with an invocation,
it means that the worship leader is inviting God to attend the service. Since God is always everywhere, He is already there, so this is unnecessary. You don’t need to invite someone who is already present!
So instead of inviting God to join us (such as come Holy Spirit
), we should ask God, who is already present, to empower us (such as Holy Spirit, empower us to worship…
).
Don’t Have a Prelude, Interlude, or Postlude
Sometimes you look in a church bulletin and see that there is going to be a prelude.
Ludus
is Latin for play,
both in the sense of a game and in the sense of a theatrical performance. The word prelude
is Latin for music before the play
and postlude
is Latin for music after the play,
and interlude
means music during the play,
or in practical terms, music while they change the scenery.
Since worship is not a form of entertainment, there is no lude.
Therefore, there is no pre, inter, or post. Instead, there is an processional,
music,
and a recessional.
Sometimes a church bulletin will describe the music as a voluntary.
That means the musicians can play whatever they want that is appropriate.
Don’t Have a Stage, an Auditorium, or an Audience
As I said above, worship is not, nor should it be a way of entertaining the people in attendance, it should be a way for everyone in attendance to entertain God, who is the audience of our worship.
We lead worship from a chancel, not a stage, the service has a congregation, not an audience, and they are in a church, not an auditurium—regardless of what these things are called under other circumstances.
Don’t Tell People to Ask Jesus Into Their Hearts…
I suppose you are going to react badly to this one, because we do it all the time!
Haven’t we all learned as children in Sunday school that God is everywhere? I remember listening to a sermon in which the pastor talked about teaching his children that lesson. They asked if God was in the sugar bowl. The pastor said yes, so one of his children clapped the lid onto the sugar bowl and said, Got Him!
Everyone laughed at that anecdote, because we understand that God being everywhere does not imply that we can contain Him or trap Him.
Yet we tell people to ask Jesus into the sugar bowl of their hearts and clap the lid on, even though He is already there! There is no passage in the Bible where anyone told anyone else to ask Jesus into their heart. He needs no invitation to be present in His creation. The Bible does not say, ask Jesus into your heart,
it says, confess the Lord Jesus,
which means admit that He is already there, and that you didn’t realize it until now.
If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
—Romans 10:9, NRSV
We see this also in Hebrews 13:15, 1 John 4:3, 1 John 4:15, and 2 John 7.
Despite these passages in plain language, it seems that Christians nowadays prefer to base their Christianity on the disaster movie at the end of the book—Revelation.
I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.
—Revelation 3:20, NRSV
However, those who pay attention while reading Scripture realize that this was not written to non-believers as a way of salvation, but to believers at Laodicea who weren’t fully committed. Maybe the Laodiceans were doing what many of us do today. Maybe they were entertaining themselves, expecting God to stand outside, feeling warm and fuzzy by overhearing what they were doing. They let Jesus stand outside eavesdropping, He wanted to come in and be the object of their worship.
Don’t ask people to Make Jesus their Lord…
This is another instance of asking God to be something He already is. Jesus is not up for election. You cannot choose whether or not you come under His jurisdiction. He is already your Lord; you cannot choose a different one. He stands ready to save you, which no one else can do. You don’t make Him Lord, you confess that he already is, even if you didn’t see it in the past.
You know what you should do in church. Don’t do the things you should not!