I am not who I was yesterday.
I’ve changed and I continue to change.
My perspectives, knowledge, thoughts, prayers, questions, relationships are all changing, developing and evolving continually. Similarly, I believe the worshiper’s journey is also a journey of change and can be broadly split into these 5 stages with each stage leading us to another level of walking with the Lord. Read on and let me know if you can identify yourself in this lifecycle.
1. Casual Consumer
This is where many of us begin. Attend church because it’s a tradition in the family or maybe someone invited us or maybe we want a problem to be resolved etc. In this stage, it’s mostly about showing up at church and going through the motions with a rudimentary belief that God exists. Worship is mostly about asking for material stuff and God is more about religion than anything else.
2. Neophyte
Some of us skip the first stage and get here first especially the ones who have had no formal Christian upbringing. This stage starts with a distinct move of God in our lives. Could be an experience in a retreat or a worship service or someone prayed over us and something happened or maybe a prayer was answered miraculously and so on.
Suddenly God becomes an attractive tangible reality and the Bible is no more a myth. Worship becomes a longing for more of that experience and tends to be very emotion dominated. More often than not, this is also the stage of spiritual innocence when we make most of our mistakes that we laugh about/regret 5 years later (man…can’t believe I thought God was telling me to do that!).
3. Theologian
The first-love experience kinda fades after a while and we start studying everything we can about God. As we come to know more and more about Him, the knowledge leads us to worship with more of the mind, reasoning out the ingredients of worship. This is also the stage in which we start examining (and disagreeing with!) song lyrics, sermons and worship format. This is also a time when some give up on God out of doubt, frustration, dispute with a fellow churchgoer or pastor/ministry leader etc.
4. The Think Thank
This is the stage when the revelation of salvation through the Cross takes deeper and stronger root within. Here, worship takes a posture of thanksgiving for all that God has done for us. By now, trusting God is greatly easier. This is when we count our blessings and can’t help thanking God for the many precious gifts He has showered upon us.
5. Theophilus
In this stage, God becomes all and everything and we hold nothing back from Him. Material desires take secondary place and worship looks not at the hands of God but focuses on His heart. We start embracing the Cross without worrying about things like, prayers going unanswered. Worship becomes all about enjoying the presence of a God, who is now a lovable person – lovable not for what He gives, but for being the person that He is. Like how a little child loves its parents.
Put simply, this is when we love God for who He is going beyond for what He does/has done for us and nothing else matters more.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that as we keep progressing on to a stage, we lose what we had or stop being what we were in the previous one. Rather, it’s about how we evolve throughout our life journey as worshipers, striving for excellence and maturity in our relationship with our awesome God.
- Where do you find yourself in the worshiper’s lifecycle?
- Do you have any tips on how we can progress through these stages?
- Have you experienced a different journey as a worshiper?
