Last week I wrote about dealing with blank faces. How outward expressions are not always an indication of an internal reality. And how worship leaders may be tempted to try and elicit a response from those gathered corporately. As I was writing that post, I was reminded of this quote from one of my favorite authors:
’The church that can’t worship must be entertained. And men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.’ - A.W. Tozer
Maybe like me, when you think entertainment the first thing that comes to mind is high production value. A very attractional church model: the band is good-looking, the lights, loops, and lasers rival what could be seen at a mainstream concert, and the music is highly produced, and executed flawlessly. This is a service that is more concerned with playing than participation. And to some extent, this model does represent a form of entertainment over leading in worship. But to define ‘entertainment’ this narrowly would be unfair. Because at the core, entertainment is more concerned about passive engagement than high production value.
Regardless of the production value, we entertain rather than lead worship when we are not concerned about engaging our hearts and minds to behold and respond to God. We entertain when we get up and sing, rather than lead people to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice. We entertain rather than lead when we are more concerned about being in our own private worship moment with God, instead of inviting the congregation to engage through song and Scripture. We entertain rather than lead when we choose songs and keys because they sound good, not when they serve the people well. We entertain rather than lead when we are only concerned for smashing a service, rather than deeply forming the people of God. We entertain rather than lead when we do not understand what it is to lead God’s people in corporate worship.
People will default to entertainment because worship is costly. People will default to entertainment because they do not understand that true worship is the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself. People will default to entertainment because they have not been led, truly led, by worship leaders who desire to provide the words and environment to respond to the beauty of God as revealed in His Son, His character, His Word, His creation, and His people.
If we want to be worship leaders who lead people in worship rather than provide them entertainment, we must first be worshipers before we are worship leaders. We must be led by the Holy Spirit, to behold Jesus, and to live our whole lives in worshipful response to Him.