Sunday Morning Coming Down

“Come down on a Sunday morning and perform a worship service for our overflow room and we’ll see if we are a good fit.” They suggested.

Some time ago I sent my resume to a church that was looking to bolster their stable of worship leaders for their overflow room. I was excited that they contacted me to “audition” for the job. Thinking that this opportunity could develop into a way out of my tent, I did my best to prepare the worship rightly.

As I drove up to the church on that Sunday I realized that this was a church that had several thousand regular parishioners. The “overflow room” was actually a full size gymnasium that converted to facilitate the several hundred people who couldn’t make it in the doors of the “real” sanctuary.

“You’ll have 14 minutes to fill for the worship portion of the service—no more, and no less.” They instructed.

I had to be certain to stop at just the right moment so that there would be no awkward silence and give enough time for the service director to access the live video feed from the main sanctuary where the pastor would deliver the actual service. As I led worship I was to keep one eye on the director for hand signals instructing me to either lengthen or shorten the song. And as I suspected the hand signals did come, they had extended the main service a few seconds and I was therefore expected to do the same for the overflow. That is until, by a sudden wave from the director’s hand, I was instructed to immediately cut the last verse of the last song. And so the worship of the beloved King of kings, and Lord of lords, ended up being all of 14 minutes 45 seconds—no more, and no less.

That morning the pastor of the mega-church, with great passion and compelling emotion, asked for the congregation to give money to fulfill an extension of “ministry to the community and the world”. The pastor asked the church to give 10 million dollars to the newly proposed plan—adding that God would surely bless and honor their sacrifices if they gave.

As it turned out, the proposed plan was not for a shelter for displaced people, or to kick-start a food bank for less privileged people in the community. The 10 million dollars were needed to build a multi-level parking structure on the church’s property so that parishioners could move comfortably from their cars to the sanctuary for Sunday services. I left that morning content to never hear back from my Christian brothers and sisters at the mega-church regarding the part-time “worship” leader position.

The outcome of those days of discovery was the beginning of a major change in what I believed about the purpose of the church in our western culture. I began to realize that certain “paradigm shifts” or “belief shifts” could only occur in our thinking through drastic changes in how we live.

As creatures of comfort we do not intentionally pursue drastic change in our lifestyle, especially if it leans toward a less comfortable option. We will fight tooth and nail, with the Bible tucked firmly under our arm, against the thought that God would actually bring us to our knees through trials and tribulation for his Kingdom’s sake. God, after all, is a God of success and prosperity, isn’t he?

I think we may have a long way to go yet—but it’s never too late to start.