Other "Thinking Drafts" and writing by Keith Drury -- http://www.indwes.edu/tuesday .

They Yearn for Mystery.

There's less doubt now than there used to be. Even Christianity Today admits the trend. Americans today are yearning for more mystery in their worship.

Boomers, who have enshrined their particular brand of 1980s worship, will, of course, dismiss this column as just-another-worship-fad. They're now tired of fads since their own preferences have prevailed. Like all revolutionaries, Boomers became conservatives once they got in control.

But, the trend is undeniable. People are hungry for the mystery side of religion. I suspect it is no fad at all, but signs of a mystery-deficient diet on worship. Humans get hungry for what they've been missing in their diet.

So, why do they yearn for mystery?

1. Our God-as-buddy theology.
Each generation seems to raise one aspect of God so high it blocks out His other characteristics. Our generation has made God into a fishing buddy. To us, God is primarily a friend who loves us no matter what. He's a buddy who accompanies us everywhere, always affirming and encouraging so that we can succeed. He's as close as the mention of His name. Emanuel. Right here with us. The all-Abba god. All this, of course, is true, but it is only half of the truth. There is a distant side of God as well. And it is this distant side which inspires awe, reverence and fear. A God of 100% immanence is no God at all, but merely a sociological totem carved in our own image. Today's evangelicals are full of the humanized buddy-god. What they hunger for is what they've not consumed in years -- Transcendence.

2. Practical application.
We're so good at use-this-tomorrow preaching and teaching that we've made religion so practical you don't even have to be a Christian to practice Christianity. It is so practical, sensible, logical. We've become like our CE Curriculum -- so oriented to application that we forget what it is we're applying. Such studies are helpful but offer no mystery.

3. Classroom preaching.
We've gotten so good at teaching the Bible that we've turned sermons into dynamic classroom lectures and worshipers into note-taking students. Sermons are for the people to learn something they didn't know, to use in their daily life this week. Such teaching-preaching is interesting, helpful, and enlightening. But it is very human. It offers no mystery.

4. Minute by minute schedules
We now produce a worship services which tick off as smoothly as any secular production. (10:17 House lights gradually down after offering for prayer. 10:19 Spot on soloist; stage-right; mic #3 active, etc.) The minute-by-minute production plan is impressive. The resulting worship service, however smacks more of performance and production than mystery and wonder. An attendee today is more likely to concratulate the production with AWESOME! than to be struck silent in awe.

5. Personality parade
Americans love personalities, especially in their athletes, politicians, and pastors. A young person today with a fill-up-the-room personality will get encouraged toward the ministry. The gifts-and-graces of the ministry today are platform personality, stage presence and good communication skills. But people are tiring of personality. They are weary of the human spotlight and yearn to enter near the mysteries of God's presence. They are tiring of preacher-as-David Letterman and hunger for preacher-as-priest where personality seems to disappear and something else emerges that is not human in origin.

6. Seeker centeredness.
Most churches now believe that a non-believer off the street should feel comfortable and not be faced with incomprehensible symbols and liturgy. So we have reduced the unexplainable, incomprehensible and bewildering parts of worship. But what is left? Nothing but the explainable. This is what they now miss: mystery. And mystery by definition is incomprehensible.

7. Pedestrian Communion
In an attempt to be relevant and sensitive to the practical side of both seekers and saints we have reduced the Lord's supper to the mundane. Sure, we've not joined the youth pastor who served the Lord's Supper with a crouton-and-grape tossed from the stage to leaping-catching participants. But we've done the age-appropriate equivalent when we work to make Communion so relevant to the attendee's lives that it is robbed of all its mystery. People are tiring of Cute Communion. They are missing the mystery side of the Lord's Supper. For something beyond the human explanation which brings them in touch with the Divine.

Do you see any signs of this yearning for mystery? Can Evangelicals satisfy this hunger, or do people have to go elsewhere? Where?

So what do you think?

To contribute to the thinking on this issue e-mail your response to Tuesday@indwes.edu