When Worship Is Boring

How many times have you heard someone characterize worship services as “boring.” In fact, how many times have you characterized worship in the same way?  “Boring Worship” is a tragedy! Something must be done about it. But most of the attempts at solving this problem are futile and don’t address the real problem.

Most of the efforts to eliminate “boring worship” center on how we do the things we do in worship.  They center around changing up the order of worship, the type of songs we sing, varying the length of time we spend on different avenues of worship, etc. While these matters deserve to be in the discussion, they are at best, on the periphery of the discussion.

“Boring Worship” is eliminated when my spirit is prepared to worship. And when my spirit is not prepared to worship, none of the proposed solutions listed above are of any value.

Let me illustrate.  When my dad died, we had a “typical funeral” for him. I’ve attended hundreds of funerals, and they are all conducted in just about the say way every time. For my dad’s funeral to be meaningful to me, no one had to dim the lights, or shake up the way we organized the funeral so it would vary from the routine. You see, that service was meaningful to me because my spirit was engaged. I fully understood why I was there, what it was about, and how indebted I was to the one I was honoring.

Solving the problem of “Boring Worship” is not so much an issue for elders to wrestle with regarding how to change procedure, but rather, it’s an issue for those who are “bored” to better prepare our inward person to honor the one who saved them.

Are there externals that can enhance our worship experience?  Absolutely, just like there are some that can detract from a meaningful worship experience.  But don’t think that by shuffling the externals, we can eliminate “boring worship.” That will only be eliminated when one’s spirit is engaged.