Because of the shifting climate of our culture, the changing of modernity into that which comes next (post-modernity?), and the nature of people that have grown up in a society of bigger is better and more exciting is more desirable, there is a move for us as ministers to help people experience worship instead of simply participate in it. My first exposure to a move toward experiential worship was by Leonard Sweet, who teaches that our worship needs to become EPIC: Experiential Participatory Image driven and Connective. It is with this and some of Sweet’s other writings in mind that I first opened up to the idea of experiential worship.
I believe that God made us to be tactile creatures. In instituting the Passover, God ordained the using of all of our senses to remember the salvation that came from the blood of the lamb which was spread on the doorpost of the Israelites’ home while in Egypt. The smell of the bread baking, the taste of the saltwater, or vinegar, the telling and hearing of the story, the feel of unleavened matzo in the mouth, and the sight of something very different than most nights, all lean toward God wanting His story told in a way that would not be forgotten because it was so fully experienced.
Our worship has become the opposite of this intense experience. Our worship has become something we do to fulfill a requirement and not something in which we honestly engulf ourselves. While most of us still do participate in a continuation of the Passover in the form of The Lord’s Supper, even in our Communion, we often rush. We need to find ways to create sacred experiences; celebrations, laments, and services that lead us into knowing God more fully.
If we are to engage our world, and especially our young people, then alternative forms of worship need to be explored. The way we look at the world has changed. People are questioning the facts and beliefs that we have held as the fabric of life and Godliness. We need to help them engage in the One True God. This is not a cheap way to entertain people so they like us better or feel better when they leave. It is a way of helping people, both alone and within community, come face to face with God. As we grow to know God more fully this worship is a way to help people leave our community of believers and go into the world knowing that serving God means serving others, that loving God means loving others, and that the light of the Creator God should flow through us into the world.
