The room is dimly lit. There may be some form of candles, some colored lights pointed towards a stage with some musicians dressed in the most recent fashions they bought straight off the mannequin at Urban Outfitters. Suddenly, music begins to play, and it sounds like a U2 knock-off band playing songs that are secular love songs with the word baby replaced by Jesus. Music always starts upbeat, but eventually progresses to a mellow fingerpick, coined by some as “Cosmic Glue,” as the lead singer says things like, “Meet us here,” or “you are worthy.”

I would guess that almost all church-goers who attend a contemporary style service knows exactly what I am talking about. Its ‘The Formula’ as Tara Leigh Cobble calls it in a recent article called “Worshipping in Reverse.” Contemporary worship leaders have been tasked with the burden of getting us “in the mood” for worship. It has become the stardard to work through the Formula as a means of engaging people emotionally before the Word is preached. But is this not the exact opposite of what God has prescribed for us in the very same Word? Is it not the Word of God revealed to us that leads us to worship. The historic church circumvented our current situation by having songs that were literally word-by-word Scripture. Today’s worship songs are hardly that. Even songs by bands like Ten Shekel Shirt and others could pass as secular songs. So we’ve traded one for the other, but its really not an even trade.

Think of it this way. We love because He loved us first. We respond because of what God has first done. To show up to a service and get into the mood to worship God first is counter to this process. Lets propose an opposite service. Say you showed up for the service and it started with the pastor preaching. Through the word of God, he proclaims what God has done, is doing, and will do in the lives of His people. This allows God to speak to us through His own Word, and not just the words written by man about God. It is then that we can respond to His word and the preaching of His word with worship and song, in a natural order.

This is not a panacea for contemporary worship, nor am I saying that the Formula cannot work or serve a function. God is a God of order, and maybe he really has prescribed the best way for us to worship, worship that is a response to Him, not a preparation for Him.