ACOUSTIC WORSHIP

Many of us were raised on what we believed to be poorly planned second-rate worship services. When we took over we determined to improve them, and we did. We decided that people wouldn't accept second rate worship services, so we would do everything first class. Along with the rest of our culture, we too went off 'In Search of Excellence.'

So, we installed first rate soundboards, excellent lighting, bought a half dozen mikes, deployed a quality praise team to use them. We sidelined 'Sister Agnes,' our local accompanist, in favor of perfectly crafted orchestra sound tracks for our soloists. They now sounded almost as good as the best singers in the country, (so long as we played the sound track loud enough.

We avoided like AIDS the #1 enemy of production worship -- DEAD SPACE! Things whipped along nicely with our minute-by-minute schedule , with nary a moment of silence. We banished anything second rate and the resulting quality performances in some churches (especially our living Christmas trees) competed favorably with many secular performances. You didn't have to be afraid to invite your rich neighbors any more to these productions. In fact, a few churches even named 'producers' for their services, to coordinate all the setup, sound, lights, drama, music, soundtracks, and most of all... the 'flow.' We searched for excellence and found it. In the last 15 years, worship services in most churches -- and all the growing ones -- have gotten to be first class. These churches now offer a fast-paced production that snaps along as quickly as a TV special, and almost as interesting.

One thing you've got to give us Boomers credit for -- we do things well. We do not always see the implications of our revolutions, but the revolution itself is always done well. However, in this move to production worship, what we did not count on was the eventual effect of our fast-paced excellence-production-spectator orientation.

It took several years for our 'customers' to notice it. But they eventually started to sense there was something missing. Our music now only expressed the 'top half' of human religious emotion -- the happy half. Our preaching eventually focused only on the sunny half of the Gospel, and people increasingly sensed there was part of truth they weren't getting in their diet. But most of all, our fast-paced snappy services eventually left people feeling frantic and hurried, much like they feel on a busy freeway. And this is where an increasing number of lay worshipers are today. They think their worship service feels somehow 'contrived' or unnatural, and even 'fake.' They are tired of being spectators and worship watchers. They are weary of being shouted at -- they want conversational preaching, and more subdued tone from the singers too. (You can shout at people in either music or preaching.) They are weary of being whipped up, and yearn for a more peaceful, relax