Elephant

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I want to share with you a story that a mentor of mine shared with me when I was in the youth ministry used to tell. It seems that the new youth minister of a local church LOVED object lessons (well, so do I!) He was always trying to come up with bigger and better object lessons every week. One week the circus was in town, so he arranged to have one of the elephants brought into the parking lot during his youth lesson. later that day, one of the children in the group was asked about what he had learned in youth church. The child quickly and excitedly talked about the elephant that was the object lesson. The father asked what the elephant had to do with the lesson and the child responded, "I don't really know, but we had an elephant at church today!"

As exciting as new worship ideas may be, they are only "right" if they aid is in the worship of our Lord. If they distract from the message, no matter how well intentioned, they are wrong. This is something that I have to face each time I bring a new aspect to the worship service--is this helping us to worship or is it just fluff? It is sometines a hard decision to make. That is why I do my best to listen to what people say after the service (and during the week). Do they remember the service for its worship aspects, or do they remember the elephant?