Cheap Imitation

Here it is Sunday and I'm at home. Health concerns have me at only about 1/2 operational efficiency. That's fancy talk for I'm not feeling well. That's OK! I will get over it; or I won't. Whatever.

Anyway, because I'm home I was wandering around the "web" looking at some of the Churches around the country. (Who said the internet is not useful?) I visited the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Idaho Falls, Idaho. On their web site I read this about their sabbath day worship service:

Substantial, reverent worship:

The apex for every Christian week is Sabbath worship.

It is the duty of all Christians to present themselves with all of the family in the assembly of the saints to render praise to God, submit to the life changing discipline of the Word preached and the Word made visible in the sacraments of baptism and holy communion, sing the songs and Psalms of the Kingdom, confess doctrine, and give of our earthly goods for the support of the church.

We are called out of the world for these few moments to live in a world fragrant with the air of the coming Kingdom of God. Thus, we seek to provide the true laborers of worship (you, the saints) with all of the ordained elements of worship so that we might provide the true audience of worship (not you, but God) with worship that will be pleasing to Him.[emphasis mine]

I have never read a more beautiful description of what worship should be. "...a world fragrant with the air of the coming Kingdom of God." "We are called out of a world...!" How is it that we have come to believe that in the name of pride - we call it relevance - we think our choruses about what we are doing for God, the mind-numbing "modern" hymns we sing, the pointless shallowness of sermons about...about what?, we think are viewed by God as Worship?

The Sabbath should be the day when our entire focus should be on the God who is our savior and the Kingdom he is preparing for us, but what do we do? We drag our secularized desires into this sphere - rock bands and all - call it worship and wonder why we don't attract the unsaved. We don't attract them because the schmaltz passed off as a sermon, the garage-band sounds, and the constant harping about money is what they see on TV every day. Why would they want to spend their day off with a cheap imitation of what they live now?

Why can't we just show them the "fragrance" that is coming and allow God to do what He is going to do?