Where Were You When The Lights Went Out? (Part 1)

I've been asked this question a lot lately from people who knew me as a pastor and are new to church. They ask me, "Why do some churches turn their lights out during service and others don't?" This seems to be the new trend in the church world and when you ask leaders why they do it nobody seems to have a clear explanation. They share many different reasons, but few of them make sense to new converts who came out of darkness into light. So, I decided to research this subject and I found several articles that I want to share with you that simply ask the question, "Where were you when the lights went out?" 

Before I'm considered old-fashioned, I was leading "songs of the wall" before it was popular. We mixed in praise songs with choir worship a long time before it was the "popular" thing to do. So if cutting out the lights during service works for you, have at it. Just make sure it's a God thing and not a man thing!

Bob Kauflin, renowned worship leader and blogger had these things to say in his recent article on this matter. I will share them over the next two days. He wrote:

"Churches have been meeting with little to no light for centuries. In pre-dawn and night services they depended on candles or torches, or met by moonlight. With the advent of electricity, churches that had once gathered in darkness could now meet to the glow of bulbs and lamps. Even as far back as the early 20th century, progressive pastors were experimenting with the potential upsides (in their minds) of affecting people’s emotions with lighting. In the last few decades of the 1900s youth leaders were turning the lights down in their meetings, reasoning that near-darkness made teens feel less noticed and more comfortable. Low lights would give unbelievers an opportunity to hear the gospel. 

Enter the world of rock concerts, seeker sensitive and emerging churches, and modern lighting. We can control lights in every possible way, including the percentage of light in the room. We can focus lights. We can flash lights. We can color lights. We can cause lights to move. We can widen and narrow lights. For the first time in history we can use all the light we’d ever want or need. But we don’t.

More and more churches have chosen to turn down the house lights when the congregation sings. Search for “worship” in Google images and the majority are mostly dark or shadows.

For a number of years I’ve wondered why. This is my attempt to share some of my thoughts. In this post I want to focus on the level of lighting for a congregation.

I think I understand at least some of the reasons for turning the lights down:

-It keeps people from being distracted.

-It focuses people on the front.

-People feel more comfortable and less conspicuous. 

-Screens and videos are easier to see when the room is dark. 

-Lights can be used to direct people’s focus. 

-Lights on the stage are less effective when the rest of the room is fully lit. 

These are legitimate reasons for lowering the house lights. But I want to ask whether we should still consider turning the lights up. Or even on. I recognize this issue falls far down the scale when it comes to crucial topics for the church to consider. But perhaps low lights can have unintended consequences.

That question begs a few more questions:

1-Why does not seeing the congregation make for “better worship?” 

2-What is the best “mood” for worship? 

3-Should we be trying to set a mood through lighting? 

When we start quantifying worship by the lighting and mood, we’re already in trouble. We’ve slipped from viewing worship as a Spirit-enabled response to God’s self-revelation in the gospel to seeing it as an emotional experience that can be humanly produced and manipulated. Worship is not simply a mood. 

Aesthetic elements should support and complement our response to God’s Word and the gospel, not overpower it, distract from it, or be the foundation for it. God has given us means to motivate and affect people – the Word, prayer, the gospel. He’s given us the Lord’s Supper and baptism as visual and sensory ways to remember the gospel and its implications. 

Aesthetics are important, but secondary. Every time in history the church has overly emphasized aesthetic and artistic elements the gospel has suffered."

(Part 2 tomorrow)