Pastor's Corner by Dr. Kenneth Greene

Deeply immersed in meditation during a church service, Italian poet Danté failed to kneel at the appropriate moment. His enemies hurried to the bishop and demanded that Danté be punished for his sacrilege. Danté defended himself by saying;

“If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing.”

It’s not about us — it’s always about God. I’ve often heard people say: “Well, I didn’t get anything out of that service.” But that assumes that we are the audience and God is the performer. It’s so easy to have this attitude because we go to the movies or to a play or a concert where it is true that we are the audience. But worship is different. We are the performers — the worship leaders are the prompters — and God is the audience. So the question isn’t: “Did you get anything out of worship?”, the question is: “Did God get anything out of worship?”

There was once a great pianist who was giving a concert in a large concert hall. When he finished the concert, everyone in the place stood up and gave him a standing ovation — except for an old man in the front row who didn’t stand, even though everyone else was on their feet cheering. When the pianist walked off the stage, he was crying. His manager asked him what was wrong and he said, “Didn’t you see the man in the first row that wasn’t standing and wasn’t applauding?” The manager said, “Sure, I saw him. But he was the only person who wasn’t standing and cheering. Why worry about the old man?” Then the pianist said, “But you don’t understand. That man was the composer of the music I played tonight. He is the only one who counts. He is the only one who knows what the piece is supposed to sound like.”

In other words, it doesn’t really matter what style of worship we are using — formal, informal, traditional, and contemporary or blended — but it does matter where our focus is. Are we connecting with God, and allowing others that luxury too? So the next time there is something in worship that is not meaningful to you and pulls your attention away from God, know that it is meaningful to someone else and they are connecting.

We are here to get to know God and we do that through worship. We are here not to be picky but to be passionate. In his play, Equus, Peter Shaffer has one of the characters say: “Without worship, you shrink; it’s as brutal as that.” And so we seek the very presence of God — we look for signs of Christ’s power — we yearn for God to help us make sense out of life — for Christ to be present to us as we live through all of what makes life so unmistakably life.

M.E.T.R.O.: Christ's Church

"The Church Where No One Is Left Out"