Personal Experience: Sunday Worship

I entered into the worship service, unaware of what to expect. I was not familiar with this church, it was a non-denominational church, but the pastor had his roots in the A.M.E. Zion Church and branched out to establish his own church. I walked into the sanctuary prepared to participate in the Sunday School. I found a seat and readied myself to engage in some meaningful discussion. After sitting for several minutes, I asked one of the gentlemen who was standing at the front of the church if they had already started and where was the lesson coming from. He looked at his watch and indicated that he didn’t know if we had time for Sunday School. A puzzled look came over my face and I couldn’t help but express my confusion as I looked at my watch and we had 45 minutes before the worship service was to begin. He then grumbled a bit and said okay, okay, we can begin now. He then presented the group with a concern he had with the invocation. He started by providing an analogy of if he goes to your house, he expects to find you. There is no need invite you into your own home. I slowly raised my hand. He reluctantly called on me. I expressed to him the relevance of centering ourselves and humbling ourselves in the presence of God. We have to remember that God is in the audience and we have to give him the proper recognition by acknowledging Him and expressing our unworthiness to be in His divine presence. From his initial questions, I deduced he came from a worship tradition which did not embrace the traditional invocation, but possibly replaced the “invocation with a casual greeting by the pastor…in a false attempt to create “community” and make worshipers feel comfortable.” Worship is not intended to be a “feel good” exper...

... middle of paper ...

...nge. The pastor was cognizant of the fact that God was in the audience. He was not there to entertain, he was there to teach and help transform. In analyzing the presentation and words of his sermon, I thought of how successful his sermon would have been if he had a televised ministry. I reflected on Postman and his analytical and critical approach to understanding televised ministry. This sermon was clearly not one designed to entertain the masses, it was not geared to perpetuate a false sense of contempt with our current existence; a culture plagued with false idols of greed and excess. God is no longer the center or the catalyst of the experience, but man is. Everything done during the worship hour; including hearing the word of God, is an act of adoration. This worship should kill us because we realize our unworthiness of being in the presence of God.