Holy Fire

A. W. Tozer wrote of worship in Alliance Life magazine some fifty years ago as the "missing jewel of the evangelical church." If anything, the American church is stooping to a new lowest common denominator. Earlier this month, church researcher Tom Rainer presented research identifying nine rapid changes in American church worship services over the past 20 years: 

1. Choirs are disappearing. 

2. Dress is more casual.

3. Screens are pervasive.

4. Preaching is longer.

5. “Multi” is normative. (Today, most congregants attend a service that is part of numerous alternatives: multi-services; multi-campuses; multi-sites; and multi-venues.)

6. Attendees are more diverse.

7. Conflict is not increasing.

8. More worship attendees are attending larger churches.

9. Sunday evening services are disappearing.

I do not intend to contradict Rainer's findings, but I do want, very much, to state that his delineation of trends points almost entirely to matters of style and form rather than substance and transcendence. This substantiates my own conviction that we are confused as to the nature of true worship. Choirs, screens, tie or no tie, times and numbers of services -- these elevate the secondary to the place of the primary. However, let me hasten to add that this preoccupation with trifles is not wholly unexpected. After all, how many have been desperate enough to cling to God as our only hope and refuse to let go until He has brought healing to our land? Who among us has allowed passion for Christ to eclipse all else to the extent that life's distractions are relegated to the shadowlands?  When have we been so found in Christ that we didn't lose track of time, but were totally unaware that such a thing existed?  Worship has nothing to do with posture or elements or duration or location; it has everything to do with humiliating brokenness before an all consuming Holy Fire. Father, grant us once again the heart cry of Charles Wesley:

Come, Jesus, Lord, with holy fire,

Come, and my quickened heart inspire,

  My conscience purged by blood;

Now to my soul Thyself reveal,

Thy mighty working let me feel,

  Since I am born of God.

Let nothing now my heart divide,

Since with Thee I am crucified,

  And live to God in Thee.

Dead to the world and all its toys,

Its idle pomp and fading joys,

  Jesus, my glory be.

Now with a quenchless thirst inspire,

A longing, infinite desire,

  And fill my craving heart.

Less than Thyself, oh, do not give,

In might Thyself within me live;

  Come, all Thou hast and art.

My will be swallowed up in Thee,

Light in Thy light still may I see

  In Thine unclouded face:

Called the full strength of trust to prove,

Let all my quickened heart be love,

  My spotless life be praise.