Prayer: The tear gas of the worship assembly

I never like when, in a public worship assembly, a prayer is used as crowd control.

The crowd is murmuring, the person up front doesn't have their attention, so as if to shoot a can of tear gas into the crowd- to control the masses, the speaker declares, "Dear God..." He says it loudly then pauses. The crowd quiets down then the speaker wraps up the prayer. Garbage.

This happened recently. I might have cussed. The leader started a song in a key only discernible to K9s. After a few words of the song he pulled the plug. "Whoa, sorry! That's not right at all," he laughed with the crowd. Immediately he dove into a prayer. "Dear God..." he proclaimed, instantly silencing the giggling audience, "forgive me!"

The room erupted. That's where I (allegedly) cussed.

Honestly, the situation is funny if you don't think about it. I'm not against laughter. I'm not even against laughter in public assembly. I'm just not for irreverence, and that is how the whole scene struck me. The crowd wasn't maliciously, intentionally disrespecting God. They didn't think twice about it. Therein lies the greatest irreverence: doing God-things with your brain turned off.