Come worship at our happy hour . . .

We went to church yesterday, Easter Sunday. Easter used to be one of my favorite holidays. I loved going to church to listen to the glorious Resurrection story, hear the inspiring music, see the beautiful Easter lilies, and wear my new clothes and hat. It seems, though, that Easter has lost its meaning. Oh, I don't mean that the Resurrection story still isn't the most miraculous story in the Bible, or that the flowers still aren't as pretty, but the music and the worship are certainly different.

How sad it was for me when the choir sang a very nice Easter number and received a standing ovation as if this were high entertainment instead of a worshipful moment. How sad it was for me when we sang some ditty about "Celebrate Jesus, Celebrate" accompanied by hand clapping and general gyration and repeated umpteen times. How sad it was for me when "I Serve a Risen Saviour" was played on a steel guitar and drums instead of the grand pipe organ.

When I was a child, we entered the sanctuary (not the worship center, or as one church I know terms it "the wc") in a reverent manner. The organist or pianist would be playing softly, and children were admonished to get their drinks and their bathroom trips over with before the service began. We usually started our services with "The Doxology," and there was nothing like that to prepare you for worship. Our hymns were sung from the hymnal with real music, not from Power Point words flashed on a screen covering the stained glass window of Jesus. We never had the problem of the wrong words being on the screen because the projectionist couldn't keep up with the grandstanding music minister -- all the words were right in front of us. We knew whether to sing a quarter note, half note, or whole note, because the notation was right there in our hands. We sang songs with meaning -- "Oh, to grace, Lord, like a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above." Now we sing, "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord, yes Lord, yes, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord, yes Lord, yes, yes, Lord. Amen!" over and over and over again. (Mr. Essie May calls these 7-11's -- 7 words sung 11 times.) And I hear that the pastor at our local First United Methodist Church is lobbying to have the pipe organ removed and have it replaced with an electronic keyboard.

Those who espouse "church lite" as I call it, usually give two reasons:

1) The worship is all about God, not us.
2) We have to change our worship style to bring in the younger people.

Aren't those directly contradictory? If we change our worship style to attract more people, then it's not all about God, is it? It's about what appeals to the flesh. We can attract a whole bunch of people if we set up a bar and have a "Happy Hour Service," but I somehow think God wouldn't feel particularly honored by that.

I long for the days when church was different than anything else, when you went for worship instead of entertainment, when people still reverenced God's name and His buildings. I guess the whole point of this is that nowadays I feel more like I've been to a barn dance than church on Sundays!