I’ve been spending a lot of time lately trying to create new and fresh experiences and expressions of worship in my life. It’s been an interesting time.  I’ve also started rereading Praise Habits by David Crowder.  I really appreciate his perspective on creating a lifestyle of worship. I just read this section on page 27 of the book:

“I have tried to develop a habit of having a “quiet time”. Sometimes it would stick. Sometimes it would not. Guilt would be thick when it would not. But for a long period it became what I did first thing every day. It was beauty. The internal joy it brought was overwhelming. Then at some point it went hollow. It’s not that it was a bad idea to form a habit of a quiet time, but the habit had slyly begun to suck the life out of my relationship with God. I had fallen in love with my spirituality rather than with the one whom I sought, and in the end it left me void and wanting. A frightening aspect of habit attached to our spiritual formation is that inherent in the idea of habit is the possibility for meaningless ritual. With the formation of habit there is a subtle abdication of consciousness in our actions. This can twist things that were intended to bring life into cold and empty ritualistic experiences. Indeed we are broken. We do bad things without thinking and when we try to do good things they often end up warped. How can we maintain life in our spiritual formation?”

One of the things that lead to me needing to leave ministry was the exhaustion I was feeling about planning worship services.  Both the planning and leading of the services became such a “cold ritual”. What was suppose to be moving me closer to God had “begun to suck the life out of my relationship with God.” I worked really hard to prevent that by trying to keep things in our services fresh and by making sure I was ready spiritually to lead but I couldn’t do it anymore. The confines of planning worship times for a large group of people who all have their own needs and expectations was too much.

Don’t get me wrong I loved my job. LOVED IT.  I loved trying to create new experiences for us as a congregation and shaping where we were going, I really loved working with and engaging the young people we had involved and I really miss it.  But I became bitter. I felt that I was just a dealer providing junkies an empty ritualistic experience.  (I don’t believe that was true but it was how I felt)

Now I’m thinking through the things I do and things we (universally) do as a church and really trying to examine what has become old and stale (even if it started with right intentions)? What habits or ways of thinking are holding me back from moving closer to God? Or am I just crazy (don’t answer that) and making bigger issues of things that aren’t important?