The marketing of worship

I was recently browsing worship music website when I saw this ad (see the original animated version here):

Here is a moment of worship from a famous worship leader, branded and commercialized to sell a product.  It is no surprise that secular marketers are tapping into the profit potential of the worship movement with all the money to be made.  But they have taken something that was meant to be holy and beautiful and degraded it to the level of worthless internet banner ad. 

Unfortunately this doesn't just end with the marketers.  How often have you seen churches advertising their "powerful worship" or Christian events promoting their "intimate worship experience" in order to draw more people.  Worship has been made into an event.  A promotional piece.  A way to attract crowds.

Worship was never intended to be a means to an end.  God-directed worship is the end in itself.  It is the loving meeting place of the hearts of God's children with their Father and should never be made less than that.  No matter how many microphones it can sell.

Best Worship Band ever!

This video illustration from Bluefish made me lol. They have a lot of other good videos including their take on the Christian movie industry.

Playlist heard around the world

In a ritual dating to the Gemini program of the mid-1960s, astronauts awake not to alarms but to music chosen by family or friends... The songs may seem frivolous, but the astronauts welcome them as moments of good cheer during their hectic assignments, says astronaut Mario Runco, who's not part of the Discovery crew. As construction of the International Space Station ramps up and the workload on shuttle flights gets heavier, wake-up songs will serve as a morale booster, says Runco, whose collection has supplied many of the recordings piped up to space... Some spouses choose love songs. Others choose Christian tunes, such as God of Wonders, played last week for Discovery astronaut Michael Fossum.

Imagine waking up, looking at the earth from space and hearing "God of Wonders".

God of wonders
Beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares your majesty
You are holy, holy.

I've been speaking in our church about our lack of awe and wonder of God. How easy it is for God to become routine and stuffed into a small box of our understanding and comprehension of Him. We need to always come back to a sense of greater wonder in him.

"He who can no longer pause to wonder, is as good as dead."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
- Albert Einstein

"One characteristic that marks the average church today is lack of anticipation. Christians when they meet do not expect anything unusual to happen; consequently only the usual happens, and that usual is as predictable as the setting of the sun... We need today a fresh spirit of anticipation that springs out of the promises of God. We must declare war on the mood of nonexpectation, and come together with childlike faith. Only then can we know again the beauty and wonder of the Lord's presence among us." - A.W. Tozier

Its all about who?

A great article from Brian MacLaren, causing us to question again where the focus of our worship is, God or ourselves. This has come to mind recently for me, as i've struggled to really understand who God is. Yes, the theology books tell us God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, and we've heard sermons on God's holiness and God's love but beyond that, what can we really say from our personal experience of God, that we know of Him? How can we describe God? What words in our worship really show our knowledge of who God is and what makes him so great and worthy of our worship?