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Fot The Audience Of One

FOR THE AUDIENCE OF ONE
By Mike Pilavachi
Hodder. 143 pages. £6.99
ISBN 0 340 72190 1

This book will tell you what Mike Pilavachi (and therefore Soul Survivor) think about worship. While they say it's more than just what we do when we meet together, this is a book all about what they do when they meet together, and it raised four things: my concern to worship the Lord better myself, some questions, some hairs on the back of my neck, and my blood pressure!

It's generally entertaining, sometimes educative, and at one point embarrassing as I laughed out loud while reading it on a train. The author has an engaging style and turn of phrase. And it's refreshingly honest.

The chapter on the language of worship was thought-provoking. I didn't agree with all of it, but at least it made me think. That's because there are some arguments here-but many of the things he says, especially in the later parts of the book, are bald statements, unsubstantiated.

Not that I agreed with all his arguments when he did have them. I was uncomfortable in his arguments that we should be using our bodies in worship in the kind of way that they do (i.e. you've got to raise your hands, dance and so on). He doesn't seem to appreciate that there may just be other ways of worship which are equally valid. It also raised some conundrums, like his argument that worship is all about being intimate with God in a very public way ('as I have poured out my heart in the intimacy of worship' p.7).

Then, after the conundrums, came the blood pressure. For example: 'What I did discover was that while hard work and discipline can do wonders for the gut, they do very little for the soul.' (p.48)

And one other thing - he seems to ignore completely the horizontal dimension of worshipping together. Why do we do it with other people? If we are meant to worship publicly with others, then worship can't just be an expression of my own personal intimacy with God. Can it?

So it was interesting to read and find out some of their thinking, and try and fathom what goes on at Soul Survivor. Can't say I agreed with all of it; can't honestly recommend it; but curiously I enjoyed reading it.

Phil Moon
Lowestoft