from singers to servants

I read an article today by Shaun Groves entitled “From Singers to Servants” that started out like this:

I go to church with 5,000 singers. I can’t call us worshipers yet because many of us come to church only to feel better, be served and hear our favorite songs while our kids are kept in short-handed pre-school classes. And after church, on Monday, you won’t catch many of us singers at the reitrement home writing letters for hands too bent by age to hold a pen. A few miles north, in East Nashville, you won’t find us playing basketball with a child of another ethnic background, giving his mom a dress or a job. And down the street, few will bring blankets, tooth-brushes or a kind word to the rapists and thieves in the county jail. We’re great singers, but, to be honest, some of us are lousy worshipers.

Wow. I’m really convicted by that statement. I have to ask myself, am I a singer or a worshiper? I wonder how so many churches are content being full of singers, but in actuality contain very few worshipers. I wonder how church leaders can justify focusing almost exclusively on facilitating opportunities for people to sing and hear a sermon, but not so much on opportunities for people to truly worship. I wonder how so many people can go by the title of ‘worship leader’ when in actuality they are only functioning as living juke boxes that churn out the latest and greatest worship songs for people to sing along to. Do we go to church to feel better? Why do we live by the concept of “going to church” when in actuality we are supposed to be the church, 24/7?

Shaun later points out that “‘Worship’ in our English bible is never translated from a Greek or Hebrew word meaning “singing” or “songs.” So where is the disconnect in churches today? Does our modern view of worship distort the truth and allow us to justify lives that aren’t lived in such a way as to reflect the true meaning of worship? Can you find instances of people in scripture who encountered Jesus, became his disciple, and yet their lives were not radically disrupted for the sake of God’s Kingdom? Were there comfortable worshipers who suffered little sacrifice? Or, like the rich young ruler (Matt 19, Mark 10, & Luke 18), is it the people who are not willing to radically disrupt their lives for Christ that miss out entirely on knowing God?

I have to believe that these are questions that we, the bride of Christ, should wrestle with. Is a church that’s full of ’singers’ a beautiful church? What do you think?