Ben Jack on how we assess our worship experiences

Ben Jack

As a football fan of both club (Leeds United - don't hold it against me) and country, I've had my fair share of ups and downs, highs and lows and flat out heartbreak! I remember one final - with a pained nostalgia - that particularly hurt, as Leeds were beaten 3-0 on a rather gloomy and depressing afternoon. My strongest memory of the game is how badly we played. After showing so much promise all season, the team we knew failed to show up and play as they could.

Have you ever had one of those days at school, college or work where you just don't feel like you're quite with it? I had a good 5 years of that feeling through secondary school! A friend of mine at school totally messed up one of his GSCE exams because on the day, mentally, he just didn't turn up. Isn't it frustrating how we can let ourselves, and others, down by not 'showing up' and giving it our all at times?

The phenomenal rise of social networking means that to a certain extent everyone knows what everyone else is doing and feeling all of the time. Keeping your status updated with your latest movements (not appreciated if you have irritable bowel syndrome), or Tweeting your current emotional state of mind is par for the course in the modern online world. For the most part its all pretty boring, but recently a friend's status update caught my eye, saying the following:

"Church was amazing today, God showed up!"

What an amazingly strange thing to say. How can a God who is always present everywhere (omnipresent) show up? Surely that would be like me trying to physically show up to myself - which of course is impossible, as I am always with me, as is God for that matter.

My buddy Mark, who is a teacher, was telling me recently about a stint he did working at a Christian school. Being a church-based school they would meet for a formal chapel-type assembly once a week. This service was taken very seriously, as God himself would be present, a fact that was shown with a red light on the wall. When the light was on, God was in the house. When the light was off, God was elsewhere, presumably practising his golf putt in his heavenly office, between earthly appearances.

I can just imagine the kids shuffling into the chapel before a hushed silence creeps across the room, all eyes fixed on the light, and then 'ping' - God is among us! I hope access to the switch was limited. A trigger-happy renegade could cause havoc at weekly chapel with God forced to pop in and out of the service at the flick of a switch.

This line of thinking is quite frankly a bit silly. Now, before you start accusing me of being picky over a harmless statement, or needlessly attacking the observation of a reverent tradition, let me say there is a very good reason why such thinking should be challenged.

Church for many has become an experience, something we do on a Sunday morning as a part of (if not, for some, all of) our Christian lives. More so, it has become an experience we seek to benefit from, get topped up by, or - shudder at the thought - enjoy. Now, joking aside, you should absolutely be able to benefit from, be refreshed by and indeed enjoy church (to which, from here on, I refer mainly to our group gatherings). But, equally and importantly, it's okay if you don't! Not everything at your Sunday (or any other day) meetings will float your boat. You might find one week boring, the next electric. One act of worship may move us to tears of joy; another breaks our hearts; whilst another leaves us without emotion.

The problem creeps in when we evaluate our worship experiences based on whether God 'shows up' - more often than not meaning: Did I engage with it? Did I enjoy it? Was I satisfied by my experience? All ME questions. If I got into it then God showed up, If I didn't he must have had the morning off! Then again there are the times when 'God showing up' is used to describe a more visual working of the Holy Spirit among us. Sure there are times when the Spirit of God might be more obviously present, but ever actually more or less present? Of course not!!

God NEVER fails to show up. NEVER. It is us who clock in and out on God, picking and choosing when we want to opt in or out of his presence and worship as it suits our lives. It says so much about our walk with Christ when we use such terminology as 'God showing up' to evaluate, and even excuse, our effort or lack thereof, our highs and lows, our pleasure and pain, our pride and shame. God longs for us to show up as we are to the place where he is always and choose to worship him.

Next time you're in a church gathering, I challenge you to show up! Regardless of how you feel, how your week has been or is looking like ahead. No matter how much sleep you got the night before, no matter how frustrated you are about the previous day's football scores! Show up and choose to worship, and whether it is the best worship experience of your life, or the worst (which begs the question of how you evaluate your worship), know that God is always with you and longing for you to 'show up'.

I want to give all of my heart to God, to let those gatherings be an extension of the day to day of my week and church community, so that, no matter what day I were to check out God's status update, I could read his words of joy:

"Amazing day today, Ben showed up."