As We Gather For Worship…
Yesterday, we wondered a little about where some of the real divides are in this whole thing, whether they are theological or otherwise. And since I have been “preaching” all week as we tried to figure out whether Gingrich or Romney was the best way to go for a person of faith, I thought I’d preach one more time.
Amongst Evangelicals the line between a worship service and a good show can be a pretty thin one – I am sure such is the case in at least some corners of other faith expressions as well. The difference between worship service and good show goes much deeper than simply style and ritual of the event. I think the difference is more along the lines of who the event is about. A worship service is about God. A good show is about the audience.
If we truly worship God, then we acknowledge that He is our ruler and that therefore, he can “go to work on us,” if you will. Now bear in mind, I am not talking about God ruling the nation – just the life and character of the individual. If we are attending a good show then we are entertained, but changed? – Certainly not in any meaningful sense of the word. When attending a good show, God serves us, we do not serve God.
As a person of faith, if you are looking for who to vote for, one of the things you should consider is whether the candidate in question views God as a ruler or a servant.
I will not attempt to make on judgement on this issue about anyone in the running, but I do think it is an important distinction and I think it helps describe some of the divides that we are seeing in the party.
Worship well this day.
Posted in Doctrinal Obedience, Religious Freedom, Understanding Religion | 1 Comment » | 
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coltakashi on 29 Jan 2012 at 8:53 am #
That is interesting. Let me make the observation that Mormon worship services are not designed to be entertaining. While the bishop and his two counselors rotate conducting the meetings each week, their remarks are mostly short comments on the events that take place in the meeting (including the blessing of new babies and confirmation of newly baptized members) or significant events in the life of the congregation, such as a major service project or the passing of a member. On the first Sunday of each month, when members come fasting to increase their spiritual intensity, and donate the food money saved to help the poor, the bishopric member conducting will be the first to take two or three minutes to bear his testimony of the truth of our common beliefs, and then turn the rest of the hour over to spontaneous testimonies from the congregation, including young children.
On a typical Sunday there is a short talk by a teenager, and two talks of 15 to 20 minutes by members of the congregation who are asked a couple weeks ahead.
Usually between the adult speakers there is a congregational hymn, or a special musical performance of a hymn arrangement by the congregational choir or a soloist or small group or family accompanied on piano, violin or flute. Thete is congregational singing og hymns at the beginning and end of the meeting, as well as another one centered on the atoning sacrifice of Christ just before the ordinance of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, in which broken bread commemorating the body of Christ (John chapter 6) is blessed by a teenage priest and other teenage boys distribute trays of bread pieces through the congregation, where the morsel is taken in silent contemplation. Then this is repeated with small cups of water in remembrance of the blood of Christ.
It has been remarked by many that a typical Mormon worship service can be very dull. That was the observation by the Protestant authors of the book Mormon America (I wrote a review in the FARMS Review at BYU) and by Jana Reiss, Mormon author and religion book editor, on her blog Flunking Sainthood. There is no professional sermon, and though some members of the congregation are professionally trained musicians, no one is getting paid for their performance. The one regular sermon from a Church leader is the one given the third Sunday of the month by a member of the twelve member High Council who support the presidency of thenstake in overseeing the wards in the stake group. And those High Council speakers are so often soporific that it is a running joke in Mormondom (I was nominated as the High Council speaker for the Mormon Bloggernacle, the collection of blogs by and for Mormons, at the blog ByCommonConsent.com).
So Mormon worship services are very uneven in their entertainment value, which makes the large families which many Mormons have a major challenge to keep quiet and reverent. There is no professional sermonizing. There is nothing you could feature on a menu board out by the street to attract people in, and you would never get anyone to pay admission.
But your thoughts on the temptation to transition from worship of God to entertaining the congregation and focusing the program on pleasing them rather than God, makes me think that there is this singular virtue in Mormon worship services, namely that it would be virtually impossible to make them entertainment experiences. The focus is first of all on the atonement and grace of Christ, in the Sacrament prayers in which the members renew the covenants they made at baptism by promising to take on themselves the name of Christ as his spiritual and redeemed sons and daughters, to always remember his love for us and the excruciating (literally) suffering He experienced on our behalf so that we can be forgiven, and our promise to do our best to obey Christ’s commandments to us to have a broken heart and contrite spirit, to live with love for God and our neighbors, Mormon and otherwise.
The sermons and singing emphasize we are relying on each other to help us live up to the promises we renew in the Sacrament.
So if Romney comes across as dull, as less than entertaining, it may be because he comes from this culture where the most significant things we say to each other are not intended to entertain, but to evoke our own contemplation of shared truths, in which emotion is not generated intentionally but rises unbidden in our hearts in an experience we Mormons attribute to the work of the Holy Spirit.