THAT'S NOT HOW I WORSHIP?!
Currently worshipping to Mat Kearney

14When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, 15the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. 16I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit. 17And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love. 18And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is. 19May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

20Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope. 21May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages. Amen. (ephesians 3.14-21)

This morning's message at church completely tore me up. I don't know whether to say that I loved it or hated it, but I suppose that either way I was engaged by it, which is good. It was about "worship," being "surrendered and sacrificed" to God so that we can fully worship. I was on guard from the beginning of the message as I felt that Tom was going to be teaching "worship" as a response to God during corporate gathering time, particularly during the musical portions of that time. As you might remember, I've grown tired of the American white worship scene, and so to teach our church any more about how to respond to that "worship," I just don't want to hear it. I'm really thirsty for something different. I'm thirsty for "worship" that is not connected simply to musical worship at the corporate gathering... but if one is going to connect it to that, then I'm even tired just of that. I don't know that I'm looking for something more "multicultural" necessarily. Just not something so WHITE, and consequently a response that is boxed into being so white. So when he started with saying the he was going to explain why we worship like this (imagine a tall, lanky, balding white man with his hands thrust straight up into the air, his eyes clenched tightly closed, and a grimaced look on his face), and then also saying that he was tired of accepting the excuses of those who do not worship... I wondered of course what those excuses were, and if he was referring to "those who do not worship LIKE THAT?" or just those who do not "surrender and sacrifice." ONE of those I'd be interested in hearing more about; one I am not.

During most of the message, I found myself agreeing, and then disagreeing with his points. I just didn't "see it." I couldn't see where he was going, and what I did see, I didn't necessarily agree with. What did he want us to do? To say? To love God with? Was it that he wanted us to worship like he did? "Fully surrendered? Fully surrendered Vineyard style?" Is that why he's going to teach us this series? But that's not how I worship. So, am I one of the people who make excuses like he talks about? Do I need a good talking to?

Is it possible to teach us to worship in a way that doesn't look like hands in the air, grimaced face, kneeling on the ground, prostrate before the Lord worship? It exist, and it's just as true as that. It might not even look like one is worshipping at all, in fact. At the same time - that other style of worship is totally true and valid. It's lovely and great and holy. This is not to discredit or invalidate those expressions.

At the end of the message, Tom asked for 12-20 people who consider themselves "fully surrendered, fully sacrificed to God" to come to the front of the auditorium, no questions asked. My first instinct was to go. But then I thought, "No. I can't. I used to be on staff, and if I go, people will think, "OH of course she knows how to worship, she was on staff." And I thought VERY quickly about a time that Tom challenged me to worship more "openly," and in that moment, I wondered if perhaps I was one of the people that he thought was teaching TO. And I sat up in my seat, curious to know what it was Tom was going to do with the 12-20 people who thought themselves fully surrendered enough to get up to the front. And then - he did it.

He said, "You 12... now worship."

He asked those 12 people to just worship. In front of the whole church. And in that moment, I both wished I HAD gone, and was deeply grateful that I had not gone. The part of me that wished I had gone, did so because MY worship looked nothing like theirs. It typically looks like standing very normally, with my arms crossed, or even in my pockets, just normally, as if we were having a conversation, maybe even with my eyes open. You might not even know I was praying or singing if you were standing next to me. It would have been good to the people to see something so... different. But, at the same time, I was very glad that I didn't go because 1) it felt a little bit like a show, and 2) there was a slight part of me that thought, "UGH! I KNEW I should have gone just to SHOW YOU Tom that people really CAN worship in a way that's not like that other thing." And that part of me, is a very ugly part, and in that moment wasn't at all focused on God and his goodness. Granted, we don't have to be perfect in order to worship or in order to come to God. But, by the time I got done thinking all of that, the moment was over. And God had spoken to me, "Yes. I know. It's true. You are surrendered to me, and it's good that you worship me the way you do. Just do it with all of YOUR heart, YOUR mind and YOUR soul, and I'll recieve what you bring to me. It's not for them, or you. It's for ME."