In most churches there are really two significant issues that rear their ugly heads from time to time relating to worship and they both tend to negatively impact our worship.
Our society places such an emphasis on being entertained or having excitement that if this these are not present we are mentally not there. The church has exacerbated this by failing to provide any of the excitement. I'm not suggesting that we institute bungee jumping in church, if our church does this I'll have to work hard at getting accustomed to it. What am I suggesting? It is simply that we dump the forms and ceremonies and deal with the reality of God. Most of our kids are looking for something real. If we are not providing it then we will loose them to drugs, the cults, suicide and ultimately the devil. And all too many of the kids today are being lost.
And some of the attempts to bring that excitement into the church have been dismal failures because they have brought the world into the church along with the excitement. Unfortunately many adult Christians view worship and serving God as boring and their feelings are telepathed to their children. They really don't believe God provides any excitement. We have a God who has answered derision by fire from heaven and we think we have to provide the excitement. How foolish!
What is at the core is simple, we have lost the emphasis which must be on Him. We are more interested in our sermons being structurally correct than in whether they portray the gospel and love of Jesus. We are more interested in the majesty of the music from the choir and organ than the majesty of God. We are more interested in the cross on the altar being straight than our lives being straight before Him. We are more interested in the collar our pastor or priest wears then whether he, and the rest of us wear the mantle of God's presence. We are more interested in clothes we wear to church than in whether we are daily clothed in righteousness. We are more interested in whether the sermon is correct to the doctrine of the denomination than whether it ministers to the needs of the people. We are more interested in why a brother or sister was not in church than if they needed a call or visit from us to encourage them. We are more interested in the details of the sin of a fallen brother or sister (spelled gossip) than what God wants us to do to bring about their restoration. We are more interested in the positions in the organization of the church than the living organism of the Body of Christ. We are more interested in building our church than His church. We are more interested in the church building than kingdom building. We are more interested in our youth (and us) conforming to the rules of the denomination or non-denomination than in being transformed by the renewing of their minds to the spirit of Christ.
If you want to keep your youth in church, and in fact, many of your adults, don't give them glitz, smoke and mirrors. Give them reality. Coke did it. They provided the real thing. It sold! What motivates the youth more than anything else is the reality of God. You see, inside every man and woman is a need for God. And kids have that need too. What turns them off more than anything is our majoring on the minors, our not seeing what is important, and our not recognizing that the core of it is love the Lord and our neighbor. They can get excited about that. They can be motivated by that kind of reality. I have seen them in prayer for hours. I have seen them worship. I have seen them work to clean up a trash-covered corner of a city block. I have seen them preach on a street corner and I have seen the same kids quietly pray for someone on the opposite corner. They didn't care who picked up trash, who ministered the word, who prayed, who loaded the truck, they just wanted to be a part of what God was doing there and they didn't care which part or parts they took. If your church isn't motivated, the problem isn't God. The problem isn't the plan of salvation.
I was in the Amway business back in the 70's. I wasn't very good at it but I was there and I learned some good things. We had a slogan, STP. They kept telling me, "If your business isn't growing, STP." What is STP? Show The Plan. Looking back the reason I wasn't doing well was because I wasn't showing the plan. And if your church isn't growing: STP. Show The Plan. If you church isn't seeing God be real, STP. Show The Plan. If you have to put up little sign to remind people, STP. That is what Jesus said, "Preach the Gospel to every creature." Show The Plan. Don't check if they qualify for you to tell them, STP. Don't worry if they will listen, STP. Don't worry about what they will say, STP. Tell them that Jesus died that they could be free from sin. Let's not push our plan for our church or the denomination but His plan for fallen Man. STP. If someone comes to Jesus and goes to another church that is fine. It is a win. The angels in heaven rejoiced over that sinner coming to Him, why are we glum? Was it because our goal was not a kingdom goal? You take care of what is His, he will take care of what is yours.
Now the teens don't always do it exactly the way I would like but I get past that because I know that is me trying to map them to my calling. And I like being with them because it keeps me from being comfortable and complacent. They have seen strife, heartache, abuse, divorce, suicide enough to know that these things are real and so have I. I wish to God that we had not seen them. What they want is for us to join with them in showing that these are things that Jesus put under his feet and pray and seek God's face to see the victory he died for on the cross manifested in lives. We will either join with them in doing that or they will find the excitement somewhere else. And that somewhere else may be the corner drug dealer. Let's face it, the high of drugs is reality. What happens is to some degree our choice.
Let's find out what worship really is. Let's demonstrate it. Will the next generation look back to us and say, "They were faithful." Or will they say, "Why didn't they point us to Jesus?" I know what I want them to say because if I live so that they say, "He was faithful," maybe I have a possibility of standing before Him and hearing, "Well done good and faithful servant." That is why I can be with a group that worships different and still worship, because as long as they worship Him, they and I have a common bond. The rest is mechanics.
