Worship Barriers

In our current ministry in a church plant, we seem to have a hard time getting our people to actively participate and engage in worship. Recently I was reading Worship-Filled Life by Marcos Witt. He listed 5 primary barriers to worship in the American church that I see to varying degrees in myself and in our congregation. I think recognizing these barriers may help us to come up with solutions so that our people can better engage in worship. I've listed these here, with my limited definitions:

1. prisons - people are held captive by their past, by addictions, by self-doubt, by mistakes, by lack of opportunity

2. lack of teaching - people struggle to worship a God about which they have little knowledge. It is important to teach our people about God's character and about the practice of worship.

3. spiritual death - many people sitting in our churches are not worshiping because they do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

4. pride - There are people in our churches who do not worship because they do not want to seem silly to the person sitting next to them. There are even people who cannot see their need for God because they are filled with prideful arrogance like the Pharisees.

5. autopilot attitude - people do not worship because they are disengaged. We operate on autopilot, living routine lives. People do not expect anything extraordinary to occur in worship, and so they get what they expect.

These five barriers were eye opening for me. In a church plant, dealing with many new believers, I believe I see people who are hindered by each of these barriers. I have friends who are still so enslaved to their past and their addictions that they are not yet worshiping as people who have been set free. I also see in our people a great need of education about God, his character, who they are in Christ, and what it means to worship.

However, of all these barriers, I think that the autopilot attitude may be the most prevalent. I see people arrive week after week, sit through services, talk about how amazing the music was and how awesome the message was, and then live unchanged. It is as if we are hamsters running on a wheel, missing out on the glorious life that God has planned for us.

I definitely struggle with autopilot. After a lifetime on stage, it is easy to play the worship songs on autopilot and to greet the same people the same way week after week. This makes me realize that I need to work harder at being present in every moment, especially while I am on stage as part of a worship team. Praying that I will worship tomorrow as a woman who is set free, full of adoration of an Almighty, Majestic God, without fear of ridicule.

Starfield in Concert

After performing several of Starfield's songs in worship, I had my first opportunity to hear the Canadian band perform live at the National Worship Leader's Conference in Kansas City last summer. They arrived exhausted after days on tour. That night I was impressed by lead singer Tim Neufeld's honesty about worship leadership. I remember him confessing his exhaustion and asking permission to just have some fun as he and the band played some great head-banging, hard rocking worship music. It was fun, with lots of jumping and shouting, but very different from the concert I attended last night.

Last night Starfield did an amazing job of leading worship on stage at Dallas Baptist University. This first solo performance in the metroplex was an incredible success. The concert began with Starfield's original song, "Something to Say" and included others such as, "Unashamed," "Hosanna," "Reign in Us," and "Saving One." Although the songs were superb, the vocals were great, the drums rocked, and the lights were impressive, I was most impressed by lead singer Tim Neufeld's skills as a worship pastor.

A short time into the set list, Tim sensed the Spirit moving and allowed his agenda to be flexible. In between Starfield's normal concert fare we sang "Amazing Grace", "Awesome God", and "How Great is Our God", to name a few. The acoustics in Pilgrim's chapel were incredible, allowing Tim and his brother Jon to step away from the microphones and join with the audience in worship. I have many times experienced God's tangible presence in worship, but last night was unique in the effect on the audience.

College students around me were weeping, kneeling, praying together, jumping with joy, shouting with praise, as well as sitting quietly in prayer. What I saw last night was the body of Christ moving under conviction from being in God's presence. It was a beautiful sight. I think we might have turned just a little Pentecostal at one point for Tim's Mennonite upbringing, but I appreciated the opportunity he extended for us to voice prayers together corporately. Too often the only person to pray in a worship gathering is the pastor or the worship leader. It was refreshing to allow the audience to shout out their own prayers, to voice their own praise to the Father.

I enjoyed the night with my 12 year old daughter. Grace is a percussionist, which makes worshiping with her fun and unique. When she is gently moved in worship, she responds like many by raising hands and singing loud. However, when she is overcome with God's presence in music, she turns into a drummin' fool. I looked over at her in the middle of "Awesome God" to see her drumming up and down the back of the seat, while stomping a foot to create a funky groove to express her praise.

At the end of the concert, I was surprised. I honestly thought we had been in worship for just a few minutes, only to look at my phone to see that over an hour had passed. Somehow in the midst of chasing after God in that place, time seemed to stand still. Coming back to reality was challenging. Although impossible to describe with words, it was an incredible night, one in which Starfield did an excellent job of fulfilling their musical mission, "to lift up Jesus so he is impossible to ignore."