26 May 05 The Heart of Worship

In our mid-week tune-up we are working through George Barna’s book, Growing True Disciples: New Strategies for Producing Genuine Followers of Christ. The past two weeks have been the most challenging from a technical aspect and because of a healthy dose of spiritual reality.

Wading through the research we‚Äôve seen a disturbing picture that believers are not living all that differently from un-believers. It would be nice to think the reason for this similarity is the positive influence believers have had on society at large. This, I’m afraid, would be delusional thinking. We live in a society where Christianity is being pushed to the fringes. All in the name of tolerance!

Barna asks:

How well do we, the Christian community in America, measure up to the example set for us by Jesus and later by the disciples in Jerusalem?

To help measure our progress Barna reviews the pillars of the Christian life as described in Acts and modeled by the ministry of Jesus: worship, evangelism, discipleship, stewardship, service, and fellowship. To be true disciples of Jesus Christ, Barna contends, we will be growing in each of these areas.

Take worship for example. As you know, growth in worship can be measure by attendance. This is an easy indicator to gauge. The harder indicator, as the survey suggests, relates to people’s experience at worship events.

The survey revealed:

• In a typical worship service, about half claim that they did not experience God‚Äôs presence or feel that they interacted with Him in a personal way.

• Less than one-quarter of all born again adults consciously strive to make worship part of their lifestyle. For most people, worship implies attending a church service that includes music and preaching.
• When we asked people to describe the meaning of worship, 42 percent of all adult believers were unable to provide a substantive or reasonable reply.
• When born-again adults conveyed the most important outcome they want to achieve in life, less than 1 percent mentioned praising and worshiping God.

In summary, Barna makes the following observation:

Few individuals deny the importance of worship, but relatively few understand what it means or have a passion to engage God through worship.

Say it isn’t so! And if this is true, why? What does worship mean to you? What does it mean or look like to have a passion to engage God through worship?