Wednesday night, I was flipping around on the TV and found a History Channel special on the history of soda pop – and it was fascinating! I know I’m a bit of a history nerd, but it was just interesting to see how the industry grew, changed, and became the multi-billion dollar cultural icon it is today.
One of the things I learned on the show was that the taste of sodas changed very little through the years. In fact, when Coca-Cola tried to change their signature taste with New Coke, the pushback from fans caused the company to backpedal and rerelease the original formula as Coca-Cola Classic. When it comes to soda, you don’t change the taste that people fell in love with.
Through the years, however, the image of a soda needed some refreshing. While the taste of Coke, Pepsi, 7-Up, and the rest remained the same, the ways they are marketed – and the cultural images their tastes evoke – are constantly being tweaked, revised, and changed. Thus new commercials, packaging, designs, and jingles keep the images of our favorite sodas fresh and exciting for our palates.
After the show was over, I thought about how the necessity of changing the form of a soda without changing its essence is true in many areas of life. Perhaps nowhere is this more the case than in our worship of God. Through the centuries, the focus of worship and the essence of faith has endured: the Lordship of Christ. Yet Christian worship has seen many shifts and changes in form over that time period, and today worship can be quite diverse.
I think this is a necessary thing to maintain the vibrancy of faith. Worshiping in the same form or way can be quite comforting and helpful in an ongoing relationship with Christ. Yet it is very easy to slip from unchanging worship being a stable foundation to it being dull, repetitive, and habitual in the worst way. Used to the movements of worship, we can be tone deaf to what God might be saying. Locked into certain styles or structures, we can miss a new innovation that may reveal another aspect of God’s nature we never considered before. And, perhaps most insidious, when we make worship about “what I like” or “what I’m comfortable with,” we shift the focus of worship from God to us.
These are important reasons, in my opinion, to alter worship from time to time. It might mean moving the elements of the service around or trying a new style of music occasionally. It might mean inviting different people to share or rearranging the worship space for a season. It might even mean stepping out of our comfort zone as a congregation (and as a minister!) to try a form or element of worship that is utterly different and even scary – because it challenges us to look at, approach, and encounter God in a way we never have before.
When we do these things, not for change’s sake or in an attempt to be “cool” or “relevant,” but because we want to be open to God and experience God in fresh ways, we may just find that we’re rediscovering the true nature of worship. Why is this important? Because the rituals of worship – whatever the style – are not what God desires. Rather, God desires that his followers seek to be in relationship with him and live as if that relationship affected them. When worship doesn’t facilitate this, it is no longer worship. Periodic changes or experimentation can help keep worship fresh. The taste of God’s love we know is still the taste we seek – sometimes we just need some new packaging to be reminded “that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:3)
In Christ,
Adam 
Comments
Post a Comment