As a staff member at a growing megachurch, every week I sat in pastor’s meetings where we dissected the worship service bit by bit, like a frog in a high school biology class. Every piece was systematically analyzed, discussed and reviewed to death. Week after week, as if God’s presence could be categorically formulated with just the right selection of music, the exact style and selection of vocal pieces, the flawless presentation of multi-media. As if God showing up was something any of us had any control over. Perhaps, it was in hopes that if God didn’t show up, no one would notice as long as the musicians were talented, the vocalists were amazing and the lighting and media created the right ambiance.
Somehow when the Holy of Holies is pinned down to the dissection table, the essence of what makes it holy disappears. The goosebump, shivers down your spine, God-is-in-the-house thing somehow refuses to be captured and put in a jar like the pickled specimens in a science lab. Even in a megachurch with a multi-million dollar budget, ivy-league educated executive pastors, half-a million dollars worth of theatrical lighting, state of the art sound equipment and recording quality worship bands, the presence of God remains sovereignly in His control and refuses to be manipulated or exploited, even by our best intentions. Yet there we sat, week after week, every Tuesday morning, dissecting the worship service as if God showing up depended on our analysis.
And somewhere in and amongst all the dissecting, analyzing, reviewing and debriefing, I had lost Him. I had lost God. I could market Him, I could make Him seeker-friendly, I could wrap Him in a creative, entertaining package that would draw crowds of thousands, but I couldn’t find Him; not for myself; not for real. Not in the way that I had found Him when I was 13 and I would cry as I felt His love wash over me like gentle ocean waves. I had lost God in the middle of a megachurch. I knew it, but I was too scared to admit it. So I continued to sit around the dissection table every Tuesday morning, poking and prodding and…pretending.
Maybe that’s why I was so surprised when God showed up…unannounced…in a cafeteria. I didn’t even see it coming. A hot Indian Summer night in a tiny little excuse for a cafeteria with a handful of moms and dads, toddlers and teens, watching three of my dance students dance to worship music from a $79 boombox under fluorescent lights in sweatpants and t-shirts. God showed up, and as the music played, I watch those three young ladies dance as if they were on stage with the New York City Ballet. I tried hard to swallow the lump in my throat and hoped that no one would notice me trying to hold back the tears. Until I looked around and realized that tears were flowing all over that little cafeteria. On the faces of moms grateful for young women who weren’t embarrassed to dance with abandon as an act of worship, on the awestruck faces of little girls who dreamed of one day doing the same thing, in the almost embarrassed admiration of Dads who recognized they were standing on holy ground…in the middle of a cafeteria. God showed up.
Isn’t that just like God though? His presence, that sense of something so much bigger than anything our minds can fully comprehend, yet so personally intimate with the true essence of who we are, refuses to conform to the towers of Babel we try to build to reach him and instead shows up when we least expect it, a burning bush in the middle of our everyday to-do list. May we never grow too busy or too calloused to recognize the Holy in the midst of the mundane. May we have the wisdom to know that when this happens we need make the time to remove our shoes and acknowledge that we are in fact standing on holy ground. May we always be watching with eager anticipation for those moments, when God shows up.
