It's OK, It's Not A Performance

This past Sunday, during Gathered Worship, we had a bit of a mishap and it was entirely my fault. Right before the sermon, I muted the musicians on the soundboard. I was preoccupied when it was time to un-mute said musicians, so no one else knew to do so. Because of this, Shawn had to put his guitar down, run to the soundboard from the stage, unmute everyone, run back up, pick up his guitar and then resume the closing songs.

I know that we had at least one visitor who was a bit troubled by this. I know because he let us know. But we were not troubled by this and, if you are a part of Church of the Cross, you shouldn’t be either. You see, Sunday morning is not a performance. It is not a production. It is worship. That’s why we call it Gathered Worship.

I am aware that many people stress the idea of “undistracting excellence” and, behind the scenes, it’s even a phrase that we use from time to time. This is the idea that you do everything so well that people don’t notice. They just take it for granted that everything runs smoothly. It is thought that this helps facilitate people’s encounter with God because you’re getting out of the way as much as possible. But everything doesn’t always run smoothly, and, if you’re dependent on some musicians on Sunday morning to facilitate your encounter with God, you’re probably not really worshiping in the first place.

While the notion behind this notion is well-intended, it can border on legalism and cause much unnecessary stress. When it’s up to us to make sure everything runs smoothly to make sure people “encounter God;” to make sure the transitions are right and the lights are on cue and there are no awkward silences; that’s a lot of pressure and somewhere in there is a line between facilitating worship and performance. Wanting everything to run smoothly is not in and of itself a bad thing.

But sometimes life is messy. But as family united by the Blood of Christ, we work through it, in His strength, together. And sometimes, things go wrong during Gathered Worship and that’s OK. If our largest corporate gathering is always slick and smooth, does it really reflect our life together? Is it possible that allowing room for mishaps might remind us that we are real people living real lives before a real God.

We have tried very hard to remind ourselves that we are family and that Gathered Worship is a family gathering. I know some families that get quite upset when family gatherings don’t “run smoothly” and I know others that are OK with some flexibility and work through it together when mishaps happen.

By no means does this mean that we don’t take worship seriously. We do. It is a weighty thing to come before the Living God. But it is not a production. Nor should it be a performance. We do not gather to entertain you or even to make sure that everything runs smoothly, according to schedule and without hitch. We gather to worship.

We even take subtle but intentional steps to weekly remind ourselves of this. For example, we do not use prayer as a “staging” time to get the musicians on or off the stage. If prayer is really approaching God, then it’s OK to allow a few seconds of awkward silence before or after prayer. It’s when you’re worried about performance or timing that those awkward silences are not acceptable. And we’re not worried about those things.

We have worked hard to begin creating a family environment. Far from distracting from that, I wonder if it’s possible that something like me forgetting to unmute the musicians might, in some small way, remind us of that? Family worshiping together is certainly not dependent on everything going smoothly.