Whipping post

Friday after work my wife and I drove over to Mississippi. My mission was to buy a new car for my father for his 87th birthday and Father’s day. I drove as long as my tired body and aching back, (after a hard day at the office), could stand on Friday night, and then got a motel. The next morning I got up very early and drove another hour to get to his house. After chatting for a little while, we all drove two hours to Birmingham to pick out his new car. After spending several hours there selecting and purchasing the vehicle, we drove two hours back to his home in Mississippi.

I badly wanted to go to church in Atlanta on Sunday, never wanting to miss an opportunity to hear my good friend, Dr. James Merritt, preach one of his great sermons when in the area, but we had already driven five hours that day and my back was killing me, and it was already late afternoon. It was at least five more hours to drive to our Atlanta home, and that would mean that if I drove it, I would have driven ten hours that day, not to mention the time spent at the car dealership.

We decided to go for it and after saying so long to my dad and step mom we took off. We pulled into our garage at ten P.M. that night, exhausted after a brutally long day, but happy that we did so, albeit I could barely straighten up when I stepped out of the car.

Well I got to go to church all right. Pastor Merritt immediately ripped into me like a chain saw and turned me every way but loose. His sermon was about worship not being for “us”, but for Jesus. I am dead certain that someone must have sent him my WFTD about praise music and casual clothes, because that was his main theme. Point after point Dr. Merritt would make about worship being for God and not us, and God does not give a whit about the way people dress, act, or sing praises during worship; the important thing is that we worship in spirit and in truth. “That music is for Jesus and not for us!” he preached. My wife had a gleeful look on her face and I was wondering if she was going to be able to contain herself without hitting the bathroom. In essence he made the point that it is what God derives out of worship that is important and not us, and he backed it up point by point with Scripture. My wife resorted to writing me notes like, “Ouch!” with each blow and was giggling like a high school girl as each point was eloquently delivered.

Dr. Merritt’s eyes were blazing and his rhetoric was just as fiery as he preached the word! I started thinking of the lyrics from the Allman Brothers tune of being tied to the whipping post as lash after lash landed about my head and back. I just sat there with a silly grin on my face and listened like a masochist as he then beat me about my kneecaps and feet with the baseball bat of his sermon. I kept noticing that he was looking directly at me as he delivered his message.

Verse after verse he quoted that reinforced the notion that worship is the only thing that God asks of us anywhere in the Bible. “When the Bible instructs us how to worship, music is not even mentioned”. “Huh?” I mused, “How odd. Surely the Bible has something in there about a requirement for only singing gospel songs and not praise music when we worship”. “Nor are the clothes that we are wear to worship mentioned”, he railed. Hmmm “Nothing in there about wearing our Sunday best? How can that be?” All of the many things that drive me crazy about modern day worship services such as praise music, casual grunge clothes, and hard driving electric instruments are not even in the Bible. (This is all common sense I thought; there is no need for God to have to spell it out.)

He then made the point that in fact worship had nothing to do with what “I” like, but what “God” likes. SLAM! The guillotine fell. Hmmm. I drove ten hours at night with an aching back to listen to this? Arghhh. The bad thing about it is that what he is saying is entirely and biblically correct and none of this was lost on me.



He mentioned that Psalms was a book of praise, most of which was sung. Interestingly what remains today of these songs of praise in the Bible are the words of praise and not the music score or manner in which it was delivered. Dr. Merritt made the point that it is the “substance” that is important to God and not the instrumentation in which it was sung, nor how it was delivered. “OK, OK, you made your point”, I thought, “Worship is for God and not for us I get it”.

I do have a point of my own to make of all of this and that is I contend that church services serve more than just one purpose. To be sure worshipping God by believers is the paramount purpose, but so is spreading the gospel of Christ to those who have never heard it. In fact praise music, casual clothes, and all of the rest evolved in order to get young people into churches whereby they might hear the word of God in the first place. Churches must attract the unsaved from all walks of life and if the preacher is boring and the music roaring, some folks will never come back..

At our company we are constantly trying to improve. At the end of each exciting and tremendous year we will spend all of five minutes congratulating each other for all of our successes and then get serious looks on our face and say to each other, “Ok, now how are we going to improve things for next year”. We then roll up our sleeves and start ripping the company to shreds and pointing out all of its flaws and weaknesses with reckless abandon. By the time we are done, one would think it is the worst company in the world, instead of one of the best, but that is how “good” companies become “great” companies.


In my lifetime I have observed that this line of thinking is all but taboo with the leadership in many churches. Anyone who dares to question anything is often labeled as being a trouble-maker, dissenter, divisive person, or even of the devil. Recently a buddy of mine gave me a newspaper article written about the devil being in churches and the central theme is that anyone who dares to criticize the service in any way is being influenced by the devil and helping him to achieve his goals. Call me paranoid, but in giving me this article, I think my buddy was chiding me for my recent remarks concerning praise music, but it brings up a valid point.

I have been to plenty of church services whereby I would have given anything to have a CD of the sermon because I have an insomnia problem and I have no doubt that listening to that sermon would put me right to sleep because it was boring beyond measure. If that service is complemented with praise music I could get a CD of the entire service and listen to the praise music on those long drives like the one I took Saturday night and that horrendous racket would keep me awake and prevent me from falling asleep and running off the road, thereby getting twice as much value for my money in purchasing the CD.


I often have good ideas on how to improve things and that is one of the most valuable things I bring to my company. I must ask myself does God want us to just sit idly by and not ever say anything or do anything to try and improve things for fear of dividing the church. What if these so-called trouble-maker, dissenter, divisive people have valid points and if their ideas were implemented the pews could be filled to overflowing? What if the preacher and/or music are joyful to the Lord but awful to the congregation? What if current policies need to be improved and could be improved, but no one would speak up for fear of being labeled a divisive malcontent? What if the preacher or Sunday school teacher is straying from the Bible and interjecting their own philosophy or hunches and portraying their fleshly wisdom as coming directly from God? Should we all sit there like bumps on a log and take it, or should we just leave and go find another church more to our liking, or should we just quit going to church altogether? Like it or not all of that is exactly what happens.

In a well managed business suggestions are not only encouraged, but they are rewarded. Why? Because good businesses are always striving to achieve greatness and this makes perfect sense. My observations are that there are two types of criticism, constructive and destructive. As CEO I am quick to quell destructive criticism and heads will roll and have rolled for such behavior, but if someone is earnestly trying to improve the system by offering constructive criticism, then I am going to welcome their suggestions and reward them.

The bottom line is that when we go to church leadership and offer suggestions it should be constructive and we need to think about it. (Warm up brain before engaging mouth.) We should present it in a professional and not accusatory, emotional, or mad manner, calmly making a case for our point(s). They should be receptive and quell their egos enough to realize that often two heads are better than one.

Why do we go to church? To worship! Is worship about us, music, casual clothes, teenagers rocking and rolling, or Jesus? It is about Jesus! Would you suppose Jesus likes praise music? I suppose He would.

I don’t like praise music. The next time I hear it I will not dwell on it though, because I know that Jesus loves every minute of it and it is sung in honor of Him and not me. I intend to concentrate on my worshipping Him and whatever pleases Him, pleases me. I still might go to the choir director and (tactfully of course) ask her to play some classic gospel song like, “Just as I am” occasionally to entice some old guy like me to walk down the aisle. She can know my suggestions are coming only from my heart.

Isaiah 29:13
The Lord says:
These people come near Me with their
mouth
and honor Me with their lips
but their hearts are far from Me
Their worship of Me
Is made up only of rules taught by
Men.