Can I make a confession? I have an allergic reaction to the word ‘experience’ when tied to the corporate worship gathering. I certainly want our gatherings to be experiential - challenging and informing our minds, stirring our affections, and emboldening us to be sent out on mission. But the word experience unnerves me because that is the same way we describe entertainment - it was an experience. We had an experience. We use this word when speaking about goods and services, and products that we consume.
But my conviction is that the purpose of the corporate gathering of the people of God is the spiritual formation of the people of God. Formation does not happen in an instant. And therefore can often not be quantified, or codified as an experience. That is because formation is slow, steady, consistent process which occurs over time.
In the same way, the elements and the centuries have combined forces to shape the Grand Canyon or the Giants Causeway, so too our lives must be shaped by the Word of God, the people of God, and the Spirit of God faithfully over many years.
Experiences can be substitutes for formation because we can measure experience faster than we are able to measure formation.
Our culture is quite content with emotional Summer camp highs and quite uninterested in anything that does not spring up immediately. As followers of Jesus - and as worship leaders leading our team and congregation through the corporate gathering - we would do well to remember Jesus’ parable of the sower:
“That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”” Matthew 13:1-9
May the Lord find in you and me, in our teams and in our congregations, good soil that produces the deeply-rooted character of Christ.