Enhancing the Worship Experience

History is replete with examples of clerical leaders attempting to “enhance the worship experience” by applying elements of the surrounding culture. The usual impetus for such a change stems from some combination of maintaining a base by appeasing dissatisfied attendees and building up numbers by attracting indifferent onlookers. Practices and patterns from leading or trending entities are often borrowed under the assumption that pragmatic or appealing elements of the populace will sufficiently engage, energize, and build the local church. Is this strategy wise? What are the effects of such changes?

The first example is an account from Israel’s history during the reign of Antiochus I Epiphanes (175–164 ʙᴄ). The account begins in 2 Maccabees 4:10–12.

When the king assented and Jason seized the high priesthood, he at once changed his countrymen over to the Greek way of life. He set aside the royal benefits to the Jews brought about through John, the father of Eupolemus, the ambassador who established friendship and alliance with the Romans. He also renounced and destroyed conformity to the laws, and created a new civic life contrary to the customs. For he eagerly founded a gymnasium under the citadel itself, and persuaded the most noble of the young men to wear the Greek cap.

Jason, brother of Onias the high priest, usurped the position and instituted sweeping changes to Hellenize the Jews in an effort to make the nation more amenable to their Greek overlords. Continuing the account in verse 13, what was the result?

So there was the fullest expression of Hellenization and the adoption of foreign customs because of the surpassing wickedness of Jason, who was ungodly and not a true high priest. Therefore the priests were no longer eager to serve at the altar, but they despised the temple and neglected the sacrifices. Instead, they hastened to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the wrestling-school after the invitation to the discus. They counted the honors of their fathers as nothing, but regarded Greek honors as the best. For this reason, difficult circumstances overtook them, and those whose way of life they admired and wished altogether to assimilate became their enemies and punished them.

Jason was wildly successful in his attempt to turn the culture, but instead of making life better for the Jews, the enterprise imploded as the priests abandoned godly worship for worldly adulation; and the Greek, seeing how they were being emulated, disdained the effort even becoming hostile. So much for good intentions.

Would Christians fare any better? We might believe so because of the presence of the Holy Spirit and all that, but 250 years after the above, St. Paul starts a church whose members decided that they could do what they please (just like the culture) necessitating a letter with scathing remarks like:

• For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you.
• you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
• It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife!
• Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?… I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers!
• For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk.

Maybe we can give the church in Corinth a pass, since they had not yet matured and received the benefit of all the apostolic writings, but fast forward 30+ years:

• But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality. Thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
• [Y]ou allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
• Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked—I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see.

Jesus Himself identifies what these churches from Revelation 2–3 have allowed from the culture, condemns it all, and calls for repentance. Sadly, we believers are just as prone to tweak things in a worldly way.

When a church tries to assimilate processes, programs, or principles from the world, nothing good happens. We should be asking, “What has God told us that He wants?” He gave Moses a pattern for His habitation and its furnishings (Exod 25:9, 40). He gave clear instructions of what was acceptable worship in His holy place (Lev 1–7). He provided acceptable prayers and songs to be used or emulated when coming before Him. Perhaps these should be learned and revered before seeking fresh approaches.

What we are and have is not of this world. Attempts to add the world to the mix makes it useless for everyone. Why do we insist on chasing after the new and shiny? Because it’s new and shiny—and because we think we know better than God how things should work in our community. The fact is that we are more likely to tear down with our own hands what God has wrought while turning away the world because we are not offering anything but what the world already has. In other words, to borrow from a Hank Hill meme, “You’re not making Christianity any better. You’re just making culture worse.”