One of the online music magazines I enjoy reading pretty regularly is Attack. A recent article from them titled “Manufactured Moments” laments the loss of the true sublime dance club experience and how festivals and promoters armed with elaborate laser shows, glitter cannons, and pyrotechnics try to artificially recreate or induce that elusive feeling. At the center of the discussion is a grainy 40-second video from a club in the UK from 1990 that surfaced recently showing a throng of ravers going absolutely bonkers when the beat drops.
What’s of interest to me is that I’ve read nearly this exact same article many times before… about church! This sort of thing is so common in Christian circles that it could almost be its own genre. One of the most memorable examples was a long thread (sorry, I don’t have the link) where the author pines for their early days in the Anaheim Vineyard Christian Fellowship. At the center of the discussion is a fuzzy hour-long tape recording from a worship service from about 1983 where a large crowd enthusiastically sings praise choruses. The comment section is filled with people who were there or had a similar experience, lamenting how the current songs and lighting and routines from tightly-produced groups like Hillsong and Elevation are nice in some ways, but just don’t capture that original energy. Not even close. They are trying to manufacture a moment and it’s just not nearly the same. The Holy Spirit seems gone.
Lest you be tempted to think this is just something charismatics think about, I’ve seen more than a few high-church liturgical types write their own versions of this story. It usually boils down to something like “things were really magical back when we (fill in the blank: chanted the psalms, burned more incense, knelt during the eucharist, listen to brilliant teaching from father so-and-so, sang the long version of the Sanctus, etc.), but now the worship service has gone to pot with all this modernization and I’m just not feelin’ it anymore”. The Holy Spirit seems gone.
I think we can learn something from both people telling this similar story. Quite simply, many of the most important things that happen in a person’s life… you just had to be there to get it. It really can’t be replicated, and it’s disingenuous to even try. The miracle of your conversion, or the way God met you in a certain place and time or surrounded by a particular community, is not replicable, nor should it be. Everyone else is going to have to live their own story… including the older version of you!
At the same time, the good liturgist or worship leader knows that the church service IS fundamentally something we manufacture. And that’s OK. It’s good to reinforce our faith with traditions, especially the proclaiming of the word and the administering of the sacraments. And we should do that as well and as thoughtfully as possible. This is how we, as humans, in time, in the rhythm of the week, and the seasons, can remember what God has done for us and can worship him, which is good and right.
So I don’t fault Hillsong for trying to produce really polished worship music with highly trained and skilled performers and technicians. But I do fault anyone who goes along with the marketing that this can make the magic happen. It could be a good thing but it’s been ridiculously oversold and overrated.
At the same time, I don’t fault the liturgists for wanting to reform the traditional worship service, or even to spend a lot of money on some new stained-glass windows. But I don’t think they should oversell or overrate these good things either. God meets us in and around these things, and often in the hours when we are away from the church service altogether. Let us ask him to increase our faith that we might be steadfast whatever situation we find ourselves in.