Worshipping God In "The Land Of Waldos"
I’ve noticed a change in what I see online from Christians when they worship. Everything seems bigger, louder, and brighter. Images are filling my newsfeed of radically engaged worshipers. Passionate and expressive worship is becoming normalized.
Maybe social media makes it more visible, but it seems like outward expressions of devotion in prayer and worship are on the rise. I remember when expressive worship was perceived as particularly charismatic. Now it’s a given.
The good news is that more people are willingly engaging in what looks like passionate worship. The danger is that when passionate outward worship becomes normalized in the culture, it becomes harder to discern true worship from false worship.
False worship mimics true worship in all of its outward features, but it lacks the inward realities of devotion, holiness, and truth that God desires. That’s why Jesus called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” in Matthew 23:27. He judged them, saying, “So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:28 ESV).
Jesus was revealing how easy it is to have an outward appearance of righteousness. We can participate in the rituals of worship without having a true heart of worship. So I’m wondering what to make of the hyper-abundance of outward appearances available to me today.
Nearly every worship service is recorded and streamed. Smaller churches have a few stationary cameras, but some of the more influential churches have Hollywood-level production teams. It’s an odd thing to be able to “look into” the worship of basically any church in America, but that’s what technology has done.
I’m starting to reconsider how this makes me think about worship.
On one hand, I have instant access to true worship anywhere it can be found. I can catch the revival as soon as it starts, learn from world-class teachers, and sit with the most gifted and anointed worship leaders. Everyone could tune into the non-stop revival at Asbury College a few years ago. I can watch the miracle of God healing Forrest Frank’s back on Instagram with millions of viewers. That’s awesome for the witness of the gospel.
But for the growing Christian, I’m worried about what happens to worship when it’s constantly processed through sound boards and video editing software. I’ve become very connected to the sights and sounds of modern worship from a distance, but I don’t know much about what’s going on in the heart. How could I?
Emerging Worship Trends Caught My Attention
For my entire life, words like relevant, modern, and contemporary have dominated the dialogue around ministry growth. An intense desire to keep the culture engaged has resulted in dramatic changes in how many churches operate. For many pastors, the need for change was rooted in a deep dissatisfaction with the state of worship. There was a tangible feeling that spiritual scarcity needed to be confronted, and a revamp of worship could restore something.
My spiritual journey intersected with this development in church worship.
Pioneers of worship saw the opportunity to make a new sound of praise and poured their hearts of worship into a subversively passionate model of worship. I first saw this version of worship in YouTube videos and church worship albums. But I experienced it at church camp and youth retreats.
I remember how much more connected I felt to God in worship when the band had soft pads for prayer and loud cymbals for praise. The intensity and passion of the emerging worship movement ignited my hunger for deeper emotional expression in worship.
I loved looking through those digital windows to supplement my faith. I fantasized about getting caught up in such a moment of worship. From what I could tell, their worship was genuine. I had no reason to believe it was anything but what I was feeling: bold, passionate, authentic, prophetic. I elevated the movements like Jesus Culture, Hillsong, Elevation, and Bethel as not just better bands but better worshipers.
Anyone who could recreate that kind of worship experience in person could quickly captivate my imagination. They didn’t have to be a popular artist, but if they looked and sounded like one of my idealized worship bands, I could generally associate that with a particular spirituality.
The Changing Story
But somewhere along the way, things started to change.
Some of those worship leaders left the church and deconstructed. Some disappeared only to emerge later with tender solo albums, marked with a wounded love for God. Meanwhile, their post was quickly replaced with fresh talent, and the quality of the new clips was next-level. It was like the worship production machine shifted into high gear.
I think, in part, the growing accessibility of audio and video technology made it cheaper to make albums. But I also think the success of these worship movements compelled churches to imitate their models. Gifted and equipped people could watch a powerful YouTube video and go make something as good or better. It became a cycle of imitation and eventually competition.
Still, every release felt a bit more hollow and curated. More targeted to a market than offered to God. So I started looking for worship that was more stripped down and in the moment. When the industry saw that live music translated a feeling of authenticity and intimacy, that format was quickly employed and captured by the highest-grossing artists, record labels, and church bands. They won Grammys, racked up millions of streams, and raced to the top of the Sunday morning setlist.
What started as a new trend in worship surged to a worldwide phenomenon.
That reality is as exciting as it is confusing, because the products of true and false worship often look exactly the same on the outside.
They share the same genre. They present themselves on stage in the same way. How can I tell the difference between someone dancing like David in honor of God and someone jumping to hype up the crowd? How do I know if the new song lyrics are drawn from God’s heart or constructed for market appeal? How can I discern if a new artist is gaining traction because they are talented and the labels see potential, or because they have a real heart of worship and can help the church grow?
I can’t.
I feel conflicted like Paul in Philippians 1:15-18:
“Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.”
Maybe Paul already settled the argument: Christ is being proclaimed, so I’ll rejoice and let God sort it out. But I’m having a hard time rejoicing.
The best counterargument is that even if “worship music” is a big business, the model is successfully bringing Christ to more ears than ever before. Even though marketability and audience appeal are now critical factors in writing the next hit worship song, some of these songs have become treasured hymns.
Except in Paul’s time, these bad-faith actors couldn’t get two hundred million views on YouTube. When Paul wrote Philippians, the church wasn’t a 150-billion-dollar industry to be accessed. Those are realities I have no idea how to address.
The Story Being Told
Yet in thinking through what story is being told to the world about worship, the question might be more about how we receive information about God than even what information we receive, because digital media, by definition, mediates the message.
The properties of the media form are woven into the message, so worship videos can’t help but model a story about Christian worship that defines success according to sights and sounds. In the process of condensing worship to fit on a screen, it has been objectified into a commodity.
In this way, it doesn’t really matter what the heart or intentions were behind the production of a worship media artifact. When it shows up in front of a person, it’s consumed like a product. The better-looking “objects” get more attention, and lower-quality productions are overlooked.
Professionals know that the audience’s newsfeed prioritizes captivating and sharable content, so those properties get wrapped up in the strategic mission. For the sake of the gospel, it’s a non-issue. God has given some people the capacity to harness the tools of the culture. For the sake of the church and her members, it’s extremely important.
The underlying story being told to the watching audience is that God approves worship according to its eye-catching properties. Success in worshiping God looks the same as success in engaging people. Christians are to be collectors of worship—consumers who pick their favorites.
You Can’t Buy The Spirit
This whole discussion makes me think of a scenario that happened in the early church in Acts 8. There was a magician in Samaria who knew how to wow the people. But when he saw the power that the Apostles of Christ carried, he wanted in. His story climaxes in Acts 8:18-21 (ESV):
“Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, 'Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.’”
Peter was quick to reject the idea that Simon could get holy power through a transaction. Peter knew the power of Christ crucified. He knew the cost of following Christ was incompatible with commerce and entertainment.
Something is severely wrong when the Holy Spirit is portrayed as a product to be consumed rather than a fire that consumes. Instead of putting our hearts on the altar as a living sacrifice, we put worship on the altar until we find an acceptable offering to meet our tastes.
Simon saw the outward force of the Holy Spirit and tried to take advantage of it. He desired the power of God. He wanted to take part in the move of God. But he did not desire to know and follow Christ.
He wasn’t planning to worship God and call others to faith. He was going to use God to further his influence.
Peter knew that the abiding presence of God was no tool to master. That Spirit was the presence of Jesus: master, Lord, teacher, healer, and savior. To try and sell it would be to renounce Christ entirely.
What If Simon Got The Sale?
If worship is defined by an image and a sound, then it is only accessible to those who can fund the creation of those moments. And if that’s the case, then the everyday believer can only access worship through the artists in their newsfeed or, if they are lucky enough, the service at the best church in town.
Somehow, a desire to restore vitality in worship has been morphed into an industry. That industry is closely tied to the church because it’s become central to what Christians desire in worship. But what if true worship had almost nothing to do with what has become of the Christian worship industry?
While many God-fearing churches are simply opening a window into true and faithful worship, many other “Simons" have tried to purchase the Spirit by producing worship. I don’t even have to assume ill intent (although it exists) to conclude that many pastors, leaders, influencers, and institutions are trying very hard to buy worship with money.
Get the right worship leader, instrumentalists, sound system, and video team, and you have a worship ministry. What goes into that container might be true worship, or it might be church growth. It might be about glorifying God, or it might be about engaging people. But on the outside, it could look almost exactly the same.
So Many Waldos
That’s why I think the state of worship today is like a massive page from Where’s Waldo. Except that mostly what I hear is a celebration that the page is filled with red and white striped shirts, and not that the call of worship is holy and sacred: only the real Wally is acceptable to God.
I haven’t seen many in the spirit of Peter stand against the idea that worship could be bought. I’ve seen more Simons competing for digital real estate.
As more and more churches capture their worship like this, it makes discernment a much harder game of “Where’s Waldo.”
Commodifying worship has proven to be an extremely profitable business. That means for every Waldo that carries an authentic heart of worship, there’s another character ready to put on a red and white striped shirt and get on the page.
The looks, feelings, and sounds of worship in the church have never been better. The church has reached the summit of the mountain of media production, but I’m not convinced we are better at worshiping God because of it.
Instead, I think we’ve overall cluttered the page. I stopped listening to worship music altogether a few years ago because I was too exhausted by the task of discernment. Still, there are more people listening to worship music than ever before in the history of the church.
They all have Waldo-like features. Some are real Waldos. Some are just fakers like Simon. Some don’t know any better. How do you discern true worship if you don’t have a key that shows you which characters to look for in the puzzle?
I’ve realized now that I am never going to be able to sort through all the Wallys in “The Land of Waldo.” I just want the capital “C” church to remember that God can.
