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Good Shoes and Bad Worship

While discussing prayer C.S. Lewis said to his friend "Malcolm", "As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping"...Tis mad idolatry that makes the service greater than the god."

I'm tempted to leave the words to make their own point but I'll resist it; maybe to your loss. It's commonplace to remark that individualism is plaguing the West and the reckless pursuit of "feeling blessed" becomes a central element in how we "structure worship" and novelty buries healthy predictability (to say nothing of the biblical teaching on worship). Petrified forms as well as "this is how we've always done things" are undesirable but the limits of pleasurable flexibility or "moving" novelties are beginning to show what they cost. One fine man explaining why they were (again) engaging in Holy Communion on Saturday evening told me quite simply it was because having done it once and "everyone felt so blessed" they were going to keep doing it.

Worship (even bad worship) does things to the worshiper. How could it not? Biblical worship is the faithful response of the people of God to God and is intended to edify and bless the worshiper. But worship is to God! And if it's theologically, biblically rich and the people are communing with Him they love and adore and serve they'll flourish well as a congregation of his people without dubious distractions.