What is our chief end?

According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, it is "to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever."

I look at how that affirmation should affect our approach to worship in my new United Methodist Reporter column.

Worship is a funny thing. There are some people who don't feel like they've really been to worship unless the service follows a very formal liturgy, the clergy are wearing vestments, and the Eucharist is celebrated. For others, that bores them to tears.

On the other hand, there are people who don't feel like they've been to worship unless there is a plugged-in praise band, preaching w/ PowerPoint, and a mid-service drama to illustrate the Scripture reading.

The church I currently serve doesn't fit in either of those categories. We follow a recognizable liturgy - either the Service of Word or Service of Word & Table according to the rubrics of the United Methodist Book of Worship. But we also take "liturgical time" twice, at the beginning and middle of the service, to share stories, announcements, prayer concerns, and testimonies. I don't wear clerical vestments, but I do wear a clerical collar (which the congregation thinks is important). We sing hymns out of the hymnal, but we also have church members offer anthems that you might call either praise or gospel music. Sometimes our service lasts an hour, and sometimes it lasts an hour-and-a-half.

So what is the "right" or "best" way to worship?

Some people might offer a theological argument for how worship should be done. But my sense is that most people would say that the best way to worship is the way that "feels right to them."

And that's our problem. We don't do much theology anymore. We mostly do anthropology. We think that the right worship is the worship that inspires awe in us, or gives us a powerful experience.

We should all repeat this phrase before walking in the sanctuary on Sunday morning: "God does not care about my powerful worship experience." I think it would do us a world of good.

If our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, then that means our worship is first and foremost about the praise of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Beyond that, our "enjoyment" of God means being made like God so that we can know him through Jesus Christ. And that means, in turn, that worship should be seen as a means of grace for our transformation.

Sometimes worshiping in ways that glorify God and open ourselves to transformation by God will involve a feeling of awe or a feeling of upwelling power. And sometimes it will feel mundane or even difficult. Learning to run a marathon is not always a bucket of peaches and rainbows; neither is being conformed to Christ always like getting our "felt needs" met through the worship that we always dreamed we'd get to experience.

Ever heard someone say that they left a church because they didn't like the preaching of the new minister, or because the music changed and they just "had' to go somewhere that offered music they liked better? I have. A lot. And I think the fact that such sentiments are common in contemporary Christianity is downright tragic.