In late 1993, many churches experience a new move of God like they had never experienced. Revival became renewal as churches in Toronto, Pensacola, and Brompton experienced a move of God and begin to write new songs about this new move of God. In many churches, worship became the primary and only focus as hours of time became devoted to worship while minutes were devoted to the reading of the Word of God. The now captive people could focus for hours with music but when the Word was preached, somehow these people turned attention-deficit in nature. People began to migrate to "river" churches as "weekend warriors" to hear great sounding music, dance to their heart's content, and say "God moved" but face the harsh realities of Monday morning when the dancing, yelling, shouting did nothing to feed the inner man and help the inner man die daily to his flesh to where "He must increase, I must decrease". We went from songs that dealt with personal intimacy and worship into songs that dealt with exalting the person and not Christ.

From page 4 of my article "Going Beyond The River":

It was at this time when I had to question the worship music, written in it's own "Christianese" slang with words and phrazes non-Christians can not understand. It got to where the only songs being sung at many of the renewals were songs about the river, getting drunk in the spirit, the wind, the rain, etc. The faster the pace, the better and more the people ran around the church, waived their flags, and created a party atmosphere in the house of God. In fact, I began to wonder if we were beginning to shift from worshipping Jesus Christ into worshipping "worship" itself. I knew people who had gotten to the point where they could not worship until "Hop on The Bus", "Mercy is Falling", or "The River of God" was played in the worship services. I met people who literally chased after revivals to the point of becoming "Weekend Warriors" spend their weekends going from one revival church to another driving as many as six hours each way to the next renewal service. Many of these people did not belong to a local church, but instead, opted to go around their area where they live and look for revival hopping churches. Addicted to renewal when Jesus stated that He wanted his people free and not addicted to anything. It was the search for a constant high that drove some of these people to revival and not the redemptive grace of Jesus to experience what Jesus had to say, offer, give, and save our souls from.

We went from worshipping God to "worshipping worship". We went from hearing songs that exalt and mention the words God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit to songs that describe more of the reaction and gifts of God and not God himself. Many of these songs that a friend and I coined as "metaphorical metaphysics" we sing today reflect that. Instead of songs that offer up praise to God, thanking God from delivering us from our enemies, pouring out our heart to God expecting nothing in return, we sing songs about "I climb the mountain of mercy with the pickaxe of grace then swim in the River of God cooled off by the Wind and warmed by the fire" or songs of "sitting on daddy's knee", etc with no direct mention of Jesus, The Holy Spirit and Father God. Many of these songs cater to our inner cravings and also deal with getting the things we want instead of focusing on Jesus, the giver of it all. Worship in many churches today is nothing more than a self-exaltive re-fried high school pep rally where the cheerleaders hoop and holler and lead others to do the same thing. Then at the end of the pep rally, the principal called preacher has his ten minute speech and we all leave. I find it amazing that in many churches today, most of the songs sung in the service are written by the worship leaders themselves where the more chaotic it appears, the more of God they call it. We go to church not to learn how to fulfill a Great Commission, but to worship. If the worship is not fast paced, then God somehow did not move. If the preaching is longer than the worship, then there was breakdown in communication. The Word has now become second place to the worship. I have to now ask "What's next, churches who have all worship with no Word and expect people to be ministered to, and fed the word by worship?" I have to wonder now.

It seems that we are out to evangelize worshippers to join us in "running in the river", "experiencing the fire", "cooling off in the wind", and "getting drenched in the rain" instead of evangelizing souls, fulfilling the Great Commission, and making disciples of men. Worship today appears more to be us talking to God and not allowing God to talk back to us. The bait of worship has now been turned into the "bait and switch" as we used the bait of worship and switched the focus from the God and his Holy Word to the experience and frenzy of worship. There are some good worship music out there from the likes of Hillsongs Australia, Matt Redman and others. However, where is the focus. Is it on Jesus? Or is the focus directed towards an experience. Have we allowed how hard we danced, how fast the music was, how well we waived flags affect the heart of worship? It appears so, worship has become a formula that many of the "renewal" churches plug into their other formulas and call it "God". We are guilty of taking an intimate encounter with God and marketing it to the masses and stripping out the power of God. We have seen more Christian artists do worship CD's because it's in and the record companies make money capitalizing off the worship demand. We see worship CD's entitled and dedicaded by the names of books that the Bible itself. We now see "tribal drumming in the Spirit" come forth as people drum to open up windows in the heavenlies like the pagan drum tribes do. And now, 24 hour "worship radio" both online and in many radio markets today that only play worship music. Have we cheapened the worship experience of intimacy in the name of marketing? Yes, worship music has gone from the uplifting music that led us into the throne room of God to a multi-million dollar money making scheme that is repeated every day to the point where it has gone from the annointed to the blase.

Instead of worship being the avenue we express ourselves to God to clean out and consecrate the Temple of the Holy Spirit, worship has become the totem pole we dance around praying for "Rain" or paying homage to a "fertility" of new worship. The holy fire that is supposed to purge us from above appears to be slowly replaced by Nadab and Abihu's strange fire in an attempt to go upwards to God as a sweet smelling incense. We have lost the purpose of worship in the name of appeasing our flesh and a "if it feels good, do it" experience. The experience does not consecrate you, the reality of the blood of Jesus washes your sins and the fire of the Holy Spirit purges out the impurities.

Please Click here for part four of this article.