A Plea To The Church To Turn On The Lights During Worship
“All I Want Is To Be In The Light”
There are two things I want readers of this article to know before I get to any arguments.
1. I do not believe the issue I will be discussing today rises to the level of sin and repentance. It is just a topic I hope all churches will consider with thoughtfulness and humility. It can be an issue of wisdom.
2. I am not a pastor who is stuck on nostalgia and thinks modern ways of doing church are wrong because they make me uncomfortable. I do not like pulpits, I do not wear ties to preach unless I am asked or expected to, and I would be completely fine in a worship service where all the songs are from this century. This is not a disgruntled boomer article, though I do have those feelings on other things (sports, namely).
No, this is something different, as you will see from my reasoning below.
It is undeniable that making Christian worship services dark, particularly during times of musical worship, is in vogue right now. I would say it is fairly typical, especially for large churches and churches with a lot of young adults. And I will be clear to Point 1 above, if a church is preaching the Gospel, making disciples, serving its community, and being obedient to the mandates of the New Testament, then this is secondary to that. None of this means a church is “liberal” or watering down the Gospel.
But I confess I wonder why dark worship services are so common. And I am open to arguments for it. But as of this moment, I cannot think of one reason to turn the lights down in church. I can think of a few reasons not to. Here are some I would love church leaders to consider:
Worship In Heaven is going to be filled with The Light, so why go for the opposite effect on earth?
Light as good and darkness as evil are prevalent in any Bible translation. And Heaven proves that these words are not merely spiritual in their uses. Heaven will not need the sun, according to Revelation 21, because God is there and is the Light. We will worship God forever in all-consuming Light. Literal, physical light. Does it not seem odd that we voluntarily choose to worship in darkness on earth?
There are even Bible passages that connect literal darkness to spiritual darkness, like Abraham in Genesis 15, notably verse 12. This could be a coincidence, but I think at minimum we cannot deny that physical light is imperative to physical, emotional and spiritual health1.
The point of church is to share in worship with your community. That is hard if you can’t see them.
My former pastor in Chicago had a brilliant idea many years ago. Since our sanctuary had chairs instead of pews, he would, every few months, arrange the chairs so that there were four sections and they all faced the middle. And the speaker would stand in the middle. One major reason he did this was simple: He wanted the people of the church to see each other while they worshipped.
One justification I’ve heard for dimming lights during worship is that it eliminates distractions and helps the worshipper focus just on God. But church isn’t meant to focus “just on God”. You do that in your closet while you are praying and having your quiet time. At church, it is absolutely about God and your fellow believers. Other people worshipping shouldn’t be a distraction; it should be a blessing.
On Palm Sunday this year, some of the kids in my church did Bible Memorization and sang songs they will be doing for competition. I looked in the back and saw a couple of our people shedding tears and grabbing the Kleenex boxes we have on hand at every window. I could not have seen this if the lights were down. And I could multiply stories like this by the dozens.
But let’s say things other people do distract you. In my opinion, that is a part of church. It’s part of the sacrifice of choosing to gather with other believers. You live with the messiness and awkwardness of being in close, intimate proximity with each other. I’m confident this is a reason many avoid church, and others go to church where it is easier to hide (which is a lot easier if it’s dark).
If you are not dealing with messiness and awkwardness, even during the worship service, you likely do not understand the why of the Christian church2. Commands abound in the New Testament about putting up with one another (Colossians 3:13), being patient with one another (Ephesians 4:2) and honoring one another above yourselves (Romans 12:10). How can we live those out if we want church to be distraction-free and “just me and God”?
I want to see and hear people I’m worshipping with3. Even if they are off-key or blowing their nose.
Turning off the lights lends itself to an atmosphere of a concert more than a worship.
I do not think it is unfair to say that Americans are, in the main, addicted to pleasure, emotion, amusement, dopamine, and the like. We want the show. We want to feel all the things. We want the pleasure centers of our brains constantly activated. We want the rush.
And I fear church becomes just another thing we run to for temporary fulfillment. By doing things like turning out overhead lights and using spotlights and light shows, to me, it can easily feed into the cultural need to be stimulated to an unhealthy, borderline obsessive level. The average American attention span is stunningly low, and I get the rationale behind trying to make sure people are not bored at church. But it is my personal conviction that the church should push against culture in this way and aim to disciple people to focus without stimulation4.
In 2 Kings 16, Ahaz copied Assyria’s altar and proved that copying the world in worship is idolatrous and destructive. I do not believe turning down lights has to be “copying the world”. But I believe it can be. Should our worship services resemble rock concerts in terms of atmosphere? I think this is a fair question to ask. Again, I come very short of accusing this sort of thing of being wrong. I know churches that turn out the lights and evangelize and make disciples as biblically as possible. I am just wondering why even exceptional churches do this. How much are we willing for church to seem like a “show”?
The issue of atmosphere is one that people bring up when I have discussions about this and push back on worship in the dark. I do not think the issue of atmosphere is one to be dismissed. Every church creates some sort of atmosphere. And at times atmosphere can be a powerful tool in leading people to the throne. I love it when I’m in a Christmas Eve service and they give everyone candles and turn out the lights and we sing “Silent Night”.
But there, I understand; the focus is on the night Jesus was born and on the candle as representing the light of Christ. I do not understand (yet at least) what atmosphere you are creating by turning out the lights.
Dimmed Lights Put An Inordinate Amount of Focus On Leaders
Darkness puts the focus on the people on stage. I have heard this used in defense as well. People can see better and follow the leaders during the music and the pastor during the sermon. But I confess putting focus on people to this magnitude scares the daylights out of me. I heard Francis Chan once talk about speaking on stage, literal spotlight or not, being like poison for him. As a man who preaches weekly, I get this.
Worship should have leaders, and it should be organized and ordered, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 14. No doubt there. But by putting so much focus on the people on stage, I feel like it becomes very easy to see them as elevated and even in many cases, celebrities. I think the church should take every measure possible to keep church on Christ first and the body as a whole second. Never on a few talented, called leaders.
I didn’t create this design, but I love that at my church, when my wife leads worship, she sits behind a piano. You can barely see her face on the Livestream. People are still blown away by her talent and can still see her as too important. But there is no spotlight on her. There is no elevated status as she leads. The focus, to me at least, is truly on the songs and music.
One thing I say to my people regularly is that “if people leave this church talking more about the worship leader or the preacher than they do about Jesus, then maybe we aren’t singing and preaching the Gospel.” I don’t think turning off lights, again, has to create an environment where people see the stage people in an unhealthy way. I just think it makes it far easier.
When I was in Chicago, I noticed the Spanish speakers never used the Spanish word for “stage” when talking about the raised platform where the musicians and pastors were during worship services. They used the word for “altar”. I asked why. And I was blown away by the answer. “You perform on a stage; you sacrifice on an altar.” I have zero doubt in countless churches that turn the lights off that the leaders are offering a sacrifice of praise and not performing. But knowing human nature, I know it is possible to only increase the temptation to blur the lines between the two.
It is very, very easy for us to be captivated by talent, charisma, stage presence. And very easy for anyone in leadership, especially Christians in the spotlight, to allow people’s perception and adoration of us to go to our heads.
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I close by saying I truly am teachable about light vs. darkness in worship. If you are willing to dialogue or push back without vitriol, I will read with humility and without attempting to “win an argument,” though depending on the feedback, I may still disagree. Feel free to comment below!
- The Bible often connects the physical with the spiritual in crucial theological truths, such as our bodies being resurrected as well as our souls. As such, I think Christians of all people should be cognizant of these connections, especially with light and darkness. Research on seasonal depression from dark days and no sun proves there is at least some connection. ↩
- This is not the topic, but it relates, especially in the sense of Americans seeing worship as just another hyped-up “event” they attend, like concerts and sports: I recently heard a pastor of a big church comment that too many of his people saw church as something to check in and check out of for an hour every week. This is common in small churches as well. But when the draw to any church is exciting worship via a “stage production,” which a dark sanctuary highlights, this can easily be a huge temptation for people, simply because of culture. ↩
- On this note, and this may be a boomer complaint (I’m technically Gen X), but I think it is related–I will never ever understand why any church service would have the stage musicians’ music so loud you cannot hear the person next to you sing. Or the whole congregation, even. Why even go to church if you cannot truly worship with other people? ↩
- This could possibly raise debates about whether the worship service is for saved or unsaved people primarily and whether being “seeker sensitive” (or attempting to make the worship service attractive to lost people if that word is too connotation-heavy) is biblical. I don’t desire to make overt points about those types of debates, but I do believe church should be counter-cultural. I may be off, but a huge impression I get from social media is that churches are trying quite hard to be, for lack of a better word, “cool”. There’s only so much of this I can stand before it feels like humanistic effort instead of the Spirit and the Word building the church. ↩
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Lots of food for thought here, Gowdy, and as time permits, I hope to do some thinking and responding.
Maybe it’s a trend.
Maybe it’s a fad.
Maybe it’s a symptom.
At the very least, may the Lord use it to open up some courteous, civil, and respectful discussion. Thanks for putting it in the context of a secondary, non-essential matter.
Very apt and thought-provoking comment, Steve. I appreciate it. Any time you respond to anything we write, I read with great interest.
Excellent article, Gowdy. A lot to consider and digest.
I admit, I struggle to balance this area in my own mind, much less with the church I pastor. You address some very practical ideas with dimming the lights. You were fair, albeit definitely old school (which I lean toward personally).
This would be a great topic in a national session, although I would love for it to be either a prepared panel or multiple small group roundtable discussions.
“You perform on a stage; you sacrifice on an altar.” WOW! What a statement of using your gifts for the purpose of Christ and His body. That one sentence was worth reading the article.
Very well said.
Well stated, Gowdy! I’ve always disliked the dimmed lights in a worship service because it did feel like I was there to be entertained, but I thought it was just a preference. This gives some good food for thought. Thanks!
THanks as well!
Gowdy