Fr Victor Makinwa Ogunyemi
CESACC,CIWA Port Harcourt.
I learnt this vocabulary sometime in the year 2018
The vocabulary is “WORSHIPTAINMENT”
I took it from the address of Ibadan Provincial Bishops coming out of their communique after their plenary.
The bishops of the province strongly advised we should run away from it as worshipers in the Lord’s sanctuary.
The whole idea is that the tendency is their for the worship leader to steal the show and focus on himself. He wants to please the people as if he is on a stage performingbefore an audience. He wants them to feel okay. The attention is shifted from the Triune God.
Before you know it there will be ovation and applause for the leader of the worship.There will be excitement borne out of entertainment spirit and there is wild happiness, not joy that worship brings that comes from within through worship.
WORSHIPTAINMENT surely brings confusion in worship.The glory that should be given to God is going to a mere mortal.The liturgy looses its sense of public worship and the place of worship is like a secular amphitheatre.When I say I am going to church, I mean I am going to meet God for an encounter and of course I know what it means to meet God in a place of worship in the Catholic Church.
Please stop WORSHIPTAINMENT.