Isaiah 29:13 These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away. And their worship of me amounts to nothing more than human laws learned by rote.

Oh, my, could God be looking down on me and making the same statement.

I have been leading congregations in the Sunday act of Worship for 28 years; if I have led an average of two services a week that puts me somewhere around 3000 services. Yes, there have been times it has become rote. God could have very easily written Isaiah 29:13 about me.

I can put services together. I can construct a service with songs that flow and challenge us by their content. Just following what I have learned over the years about putting services together doesn’t mean that is what God wants. I can find fun stuff to add, whether that is music, dramas, film clips or creative light displays…but is that what God wanted. Does putting stuff in a service thrill God or is even that creativity rote; is that mere human elements (laws)?

I can easily settle in on the familiar and safe order of the elements of the service, but is that what God wants?

The only way I know to avoid worship becoming rote is to make everyday an act of worship…an open conversation with God. When I keep that conversation alive, the blank piece of paper I face each week becomes much easier to fill, and not be filled, with the rote elements of ritual.