Do you ever feel as if your church meetings are a bit dry and formulaic?
Do you look at peoples’ faces during the sermon and songs wondering if there is anything going on the hearts of the congregation members?
Bored and discouraged?
If you’re a church musician, are you bored by following the same old pattern of building up the music during the bridge so that people experience the Spirit when the kick drum punches in during the chorus?
At the same time, are you discouraged that it’s always the same people raising their arms for the chorus?
Are you worn down by the relentless need for an immediate and spontaneous response from the congregation?
Are you bored with the 30-minute song set that always follows the same pattern: fast song – slow song – fast song – slow song – ministry time?
Do you ever fear what people would say if they didn’t feel God’s presence during the ministry time?
Are you concerned for your pastor’s sanity as he trawls the internet for countless illustrations to keep his sermon relevant to his congregation?
Here’s some good news. We can break out of our dull and lifeless straightjackets and witness a dynamic and spontaneous work of the Holy Spirit every time we meet. No longer do we need to rely on our own strength, improvisational skill and professional presentation. And the answer is found (you might just have guessed) by reading, teaching and singing the Word of God.
Word and Spirit
What happens when we focus on God’s Word is this: The Holy Spirit is working in awesome power. So we can do ourselves a huge favour and take the pressure off our weekly endeavours to manufacture an experience of the presence of God in our own strength. Instead we can rely on the strength and power of the Spirit to take the Word of God and to plant it deep into hearts, producing the fruit of obedience, repentance, faith and genuine joy.
In his wonderful grace, God does this through weak (and yes, sometimes even dull) people like us. We may not see joy in the faces of the congregation, we may not see a single arm raised in the chorus and the musicians may not even be able to improvise. That’s OK, because raised arms and improvising musicians aren’t necessarily authentic signs of the work of the Spirit. Spontaneity – even planned spontaneity (as it almost invariably is) is not a confirmation that the Spirit is present. Neither is the opposite true – that the Holy Spirit is absent if a meeting feels dry and formulaic (as Word-centred churches are often accused of being).
Investing all our efforts into generating some kind of spontaneous response in a Christian meeting through man-driven means (music, rhetoric, etc.) will produce only fleeting change. The raised arms have to be lowered again, the kick drum can’t go on for ever (phew). Our efforts are always weak and temporal. But the Word of God clearly read, taught and sung will be making use of the power of God. His work is always powerful and eternal.
Plan, pray and trust
Please don’t be duped by those who accuse Word-centred churches of being dull and formulaic. They will tell you that your music needs to be more dynamic, that there ought to be more spontaneous responses, and that your preacher needs to be more engaging in his preaching style. Those things are not in themselves wrong, but to think that in any way they are authentic signs of the Spirit at work is to rely on the work of man and not God. Nor are their meetings any less dry and formulaic than a meeting with none of those things present (as can be seen in the examples above).
They may experience more excitement during their meetings, they may even have many more people coming to their meetings, but those things are merely outward and visible. We are involved in a much more dynamic work of the Spirit, who wields the sword of God powerfully, but inwardly, through minds and hearts. Plan carefully, preach and sing faithfully, pray unceasingly… and trust God for the response, spontaneous or not.
