Joy = Sabbath?

Today is Sabbath, and so naturally, I went to church. And it was the most boring church service I have ever been too. Granted I didn't arrive until ... 5 minutes or so before the sermon, but still. I won't say what church I went to, because who knows, someone there might have actually enjoyed it.

Is it required that church be dry and completely lacking any sort of excitement or joy? Are we supposed to be stoic and tragically unhappy? I mean, the sermon was about the joy of Sabbath, but with the way the speaker was presenting it, and the atmosphere of the place, you'd think he was giving a eulogy. It's like the word reverence is a synonym for "sucking the joy out of..."

I remember when I was little and right after Sabbath School, our teacher would lead us in a single file line to the sanctuary doors. She'd keep telling us to be reverent, aka shut up and sit down, and how much Jesus hates noise. We'd walk ever so stoically into the sanctuary, sometimes church had already started. Some adults would eye us, giving us visually warnings that if we made a peep, we'd be in big trouble.

I thought reverence meant respect. Doesn't mean that we should, for example, cast aside all of the distractions of our day to day, and put aside a special time and attitude for God? We shouldn't be texting, we shouldn't be having random side conversations. We should just have a general attitude and feeling of respect and humility for God. After all, we are in (or supposed to be in) his presence! But, is happiness or joy now a distraction? A sin of some sort? Did I not get the memo from the NAD?

Now I wonder why people wonder why young people are leaving the church. Church services like that drain out the joy of church, fellowship, and Sabbath, and just turn it into another thing we do during the week. I've been to many churches where you could just see, from the look on people's faces, how they interacted with each, how they treated the children, that they were truly happy it was the Sabbath. The pure... peace that radiated from them just brought a smile to your face! But I've only been to a very few churches like that... most of them are few and far between.

I'm not really sure what can be done to bring joy back into church, into our singing, into sermons. I guess all you can do is go with your own inner joy and inner peace, and bring your offering and praise to God, wherever you are.

Happy Sabbath!