Kat Von D and the Worship of God’s People

The Worship Experience

The Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s gave birth to what we now know as contemporary worship music. At that time, a contemporary worship service was rare and cutting edge. Not only was it exciting, but it certainly gave early church adopters a significant marketing advantage.

But things have changed dramatically over the last 20-30 years.

A 2004 LifeWay study found that churches were moving toward a contemporary worship style and away from a more traditional style at a pace of 11-1. What was once rare and cutting edge in the 60s, 70s, and 80s is now routine and commonplace in 2024.

This rapid change in music style has taken place in large part because it was believed to be necessary in order to reach the next generation. Younger people needed to be drawn into the church with culturally relevant music.

What started pretty small as something fresh and new has ballooned into something much bigger and now expected. No longer is just contemporary music enough; young people need to have a “worship experience.”

Contemporary worship services that once advocated for acoustic guitars or a drum set have now given way to “worship experiences.” A “worship experience” is often marked by things like a rock band, dimmable lights, powerpoints, and videos. The whole church service is a carefully choreographed blending of audio and visual effects.

And what often propels these modern updates is the same underlying belief: Rock concert-quality audios, the most exciting movie-esque lighting and videos, combined with the latest technology is what will attract the next generation to the church.

The Megachurch Dilemma

This commitment to curating the perfect worship experience has given rise to nearly 1,800 megachurches in the United States.

And yet at the same time, we know that young people are leaving the church in droves. In fact, a separate LifeWay study found that “most teenagers drop out of church when they become young adults.”

It’s an odd dilemma. There are more megachurches in the United States growing larger than ever before, full of young people, and yet at the same time, more and more young people are walking away from the church.

For so long the belief was – and continues to be – that the more modern and technologically advanced a church’s worship experience, the better they will be at attracting and retaining young people. However, the studies seem to tell a different story. Perhaps these methods will attract young people for a season, but after a while an overwhelming number of them will eventually leave.

Enter Kat Von D

A few months ago, I found myself listening to a podcast between Allie Beth Stuckey and Kat Von D. Occasionally, I have listened to the Allie Beth Stuckey podcast when she’s interviewed someone interesting, but I had never heard of Kat Von D.

After a quick Google search I learned that Kat Von D is a celebrity tattoo artist, owns her own makeup line, is a budding musician, and is a recent convert to Jesus Christ. Her conversion shocked many of her fans because she had previously dabbled in dark magic, witchcraft, and the occult.

But her conversion story wasn't what caught my attention in her interview with Allie Beth Stuckey. What I found particularly interesting were her comments on what she looked for in a church. She told Allie Beth Stuckey that she specifically sought out a church with a more traditional worship service.

(You can listen to the whole podcast here. She starts talking about what she looked for in a church at the 43:00 minute mark.)

The quote that really stood out to me was, “I’m seeking more traditionalism. I want to worship, I don’t want to go to a concert.”

What I found particularly interesting about her comment is that she is a millennial (I think!), very culturally relevant (she has tattoos), a budding musician, and just the type of person you would expect to be drawn into a slick “worship experience.” But instead she rejected what so many churches have adopted as gospel truth: That in order to reach people like her, you need to have an informal, technologically driven worship experience.

The Medium Doesn’t Reflect the Message

Of course, I found Kat Von D to be an interesting case study for something that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time: Young people are growing increasingly disillusioned with the modern evangelical worship experience. It might appeal to them initially, but over time they will grow disenchanted.

Why is that?

For one, it doesn't reflect the reverence that we should have in approaching the God of the Universe, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.

Secondly, it’s never as entertaining as they advertise. Megachurches perpetually underdeliver, especially in comparison to all the other entertainment options at your fingertips like Netflix, YouTube, or an actual concert.

But the primary reason I think young people wash out of modern evangelical worship experiences is that the medium doesn’t reflect the message. A worship experience complete with a rock band, dimmable lights, powerpoints, and videos undercuts the gospel message!

Consider the immediate tension between a highly produced worship experience with a fashionista pastor preaching about a man who “humbled himself to death, even death on a cross.” The medium and the message are immediately at odds with one another.

Young people crave authenticity, but there’s an intuitive feeling of superficiality to highly produced worship experiences. There's a built-in level of hypocrisy.

It’s so curated and well-produced that eventually, the very thing that draws them in will eventually push them out.

Worship isn’t about people, it’s about God

When Kat Von D said, “I’m seeking more traditionalism. I want to worship, I don’t want to go to a concert,” she was striking a nerve that is felt by many. She wanted to attend a worship service that focused on the living God, not a person’s performance.

The more an individual church is able to exalt the living God and downplay the significance of men, the more authentic the worship service will be.

This highlights the crux of the matter: Worship isn’t about entertaining, mass marketing, or catering to the individual. Worship is about praising the living God who sent his Son to die on the cross. The worship of the living God is a category unto itself.

Worship is supposed to be focused on the living God, not the people who are there, or the people who might be there. Once we understand that point, we can echo the words of the living creatures from Revelation 15, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb - be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”