I am still considering this whole idea of worship being successful or unsuccessful. I guess in a purely innocent way a successful worship service would be one in which the worshiper...worshiped!
Why does that seem so naive?
Probably because we so often measure the success or failure of worship by how well the praise band played or vocalists sang, by how well the preacher delivered the sermon or even by how many accept Jesus at the invitation. We tend to look at the function and forget that there is so much more. We forget that in reality, worship is not about the externals of style and taste, but about our response to how God redeemed us from our sinful lives.
There is danger in listening to the whims and wishes of "what everyone else is doing!" Plantinga refers to "...the songs of Babylon...or Hollywood...." In other words, we get too caught up in the popularity and the "show" and performance! And yet, to completely ignore the culture around us is equally dangerous...a balancing act. I have failed at the balance of being relevant and maintaining integrity more than I would like to admit.
Well, there is more to examine and say concerning this balancing of Christ and Culture in worship. There are so many ways to approach it and I'm a little uncertain how to do it. If anyone happens to check in on this site, feel free to share your thoughts. I think there are some right and wrong answers, but I believe that there is a lot of grey area in this discussion, as well.
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Jim, it's great to see you blogging here. :) You're asking good questions. You might be interested in reading some of the blogging by a guy named Jared Wilson. He leads a young professinal/college age worship service in Nashville (I know of him from reading blogs). Anyway -- he's always very sound and he talks about worship a lot. Here's a link to a search I did about worship on his site:
http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/search?q=worship
On August 30 he posted a good list of tips for worship leaders, too. I think it's in the search.
Anyway, good job!
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