Religious Worship vs. True Worship

"Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 'Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.' He answered them, 'And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' But you say, 'If anyone tells his father or his mother, 'What you would have gained from me is given to God, he need not honor his father.' So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God." Matthew 15:1-6

The Pharisees approached Jesus one day asking why he didn't care about their laws. His disciples didn't wash their hands before eating, thus making them ceremonially impure according to additional laws made by the Pharisees to try and please God. Jesus came back at them confronting them with their own hypocrisy. The Pharisees were asking people to give to the temple money that was meant for caring for their parents in old age. They had made a rule that goes against one of God's big ten, and Jesus wouldn't stand for it.

I read a story like this and initially think, "These Pharisees are really stupid! How could they have missed something so obvious?" It's easy to look at the Pharisees in the Gospels and see them as the enemy. It is true that Jesus reserved his harshest criticism for the religious leaders of the day. But I think we fail to see ourselves in the Pharisees.

As a worship leader, it's easy to be a Pharisee. Recently, our church has been planning a move from meeting in an Elementary school to having a permanent home (for at least the next five years). I think it's a smart move and I'm excited about it. In doing so, we've started talking about budget amounts for new equipment and other things like that. Of course, every worship pastor salivates at the thought of having more money for equipment and media in the worship auditorium, and I am no different.

But is this right? We justify the great amount of money we budget towards sound and lighting by saying the worship service on Sundays is one of the most important functions of the church, we need it to sound and look good so it doesn't distract people from worshipping God. I've said this to myself multiple times in thinking trough how many thousands of dollars needs to b poured into the new worship space we'll be moving into.

And that's the problem. We have placed our ritual worship, our religious worship, at a level it should never be. The Sunday morning experience is not the most important function of the church. People's comfort and quality experience is not worth the amount of money not budgeted for the poor, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan in our community. Jesus was not saying it's bad to have religious worship, as long as it supports lifestyle worship.

The way we spend money in the church to support the things we think are worshipping God is our "hand washing" problem. It is us requiring a temple tax from money that's meant to care for elders.

What is a good balance when it comes to spending money in the church? How can we have an excellence on Sundays without leveraging our whole budget for it?