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.