brown-headed musings

It seems to me that one of the ways that consumerism has really afflicted the church, is in the urgency and pressure that churches are under to deliver an “experience” at every single service that will keep the attendee coming back. The result is that we grossly overestimate what is possible in a 75-minute format, and we tragically underestimate what it is we’re doing in a 20-year format. It strikes me that most of Jesus’ illustrations for spiritual growth are botanical illustrations—seeds, branches, vines—and that, by implication, Jesus is stressing that our long-term spiritual health may not be so much about mountaintop experiences as about faithful practices and obedience.

So all that is to say that when it comes to the corporate worship, it seems there is an enormous amount of literature and teaching on how to improve or maximize the experience of worship, but a relatively small amount of resources that really address what kind of people we are forming with our worship, over the course of their lifetimes.