Questions & Answers

You're right to be concerned about this person. What they're saying sounds like a misconception about "church" that's very common in American consumer-culture: the idea that we go to church in order to "get something out of it," the "something" being defined as a sudden rush of religious feelings. Many churches capitalize on this idea very skillfully, offering the worshiper an experience that differs very little from a pep rally or rock concert. Worshipers are then taught to interpret the emotions they feel as an experience of the presence of God. But things are not always what they seem.

In my view, two teachings of Scripture need to be emphasized with your friend: who we are, and where God is. When the message of the Gospel starts sounding like "the same-ol' same-ol," usually it's because our sense of how deeply we need God's forgiveness has faded, and we need to wake it up. Encourage your friend to spend quality time in prayerful self-examination according to the law of God and to go deeper than just "the big stuff." Think about the hundreds of unclean and unkind thoughts that flash through our minds every day. Think about how subtly and skillfully we turn every discussion to make it all about "me." Think about our shocking neglect of our neighbor and their needs, spiritual and emotional as well as physical. Think carefully about what God says each one of these sins deserves; and if we're at all unclear about what they deserve, take a good, long look at our Savior on his cross. When we really understand who we are and what we've done, we won't take a "ho-hum" attitude toward the proclamation of God's forgiveness. We'll willingly die for it.

Then, encourage your friend to think about where God says he wants to be found. As our Lutheran fathers put it, the last thing you as a sinful human want is a direct and genuine experience of God apart from the means he has appointed. Those means are the spoken word of the Gospel, the water and word of Holy Baptism, the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. In the Lord's Supper, for instance, we have the body and blood of the Lord Jesus himself placed on our tongues (Matthew 26:26-28). In this life, a more direct and genuine experience of the presence of God isn't possible; and whether or not we feel his presence there has nothing to do with anything.

All this isn't to excuse congregations that offer boring and lifeless worship week after week. But the way to enliven worship isn't to repackage it as a pep rally or rock concert. The way to enliven worship is through a lively sense on everybody's part that God is here in the means of grace, offering himself and his pardon to guilty sinners--and we know it, not because we can feel it, but because he promised it. When we truly understand that, we'll usually find our religious feelings pretty much taking care of themselves.