For many years now, "worship" has been the in thing in churchdom, the thing we do which is supposed to be paramount, more important than anything else. Evangelism, obedience, faithfulness, discipleship, missions, spiritual gifts--they had their day. But today's United States church says it's all about worship.
I confess that I'm totally confused when it comes to worship. I've heard so many definitions and general proclamations about worship, with so many contradictions and inconsistencies, that I've given up. I think I helped craft one definition, as part of a music team exercise, along the line of, "Worship is giving all of myself to an infinite God." Or something like that (am I close, Chris?). It was profound, as everything about worship must be.
We hear that worship isn't what we do on Sunday morning, but how we live throughout the week. That worship is a lifestyle. I've heard that everything we do is an act of worship. That we worship by teaching Sunday school, by eating right, by driving within the speed limit. That world missions is, in fact, an act of worship (rather than an act of obedience to the Great Commission, which I was errantly taught as a kid by non-worship-minded adults). When I send my wife flowers or do the dishes or get to work on time--more acts of worship.
But then, we do some kind of elevated worship on Sunday, when we hold worship services. But what part of the morning is worship? When people say, "I really worshipped this morning," they're usually talking about the songs. Nobody says, "I really worshipped in listening to that sermon," or when the offering was taken, or during announcements.
As a worship team, we lead the congregation in worship. But if it's a lifestyle, and not something we do on Sunday morning, then what exactly is our role? If what we do inspires positive emotion, people will say it was good worship. If the pastor gives a knock-em-dead sermon, people will say it was a great sermon, not a great act of worship.
I read today someone's thought that, "Quite often worship is simply a baptized version of our culture. In our worship we simply mirror what is all around us--worship of self." Wow, there's something to think about. But that person is confining worship to what happens in worship services.
Our new Christian rock stars are worship leaders like Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Darlene Zschech, and Tommy Walker. Instead of going to hear them "in concert," we go to hear them conduct musical worship. During my childhood years we had fulltime evangelists, and they emphasized that winning the lost is more important than anything else we do. Well, few fulltime evangelists are still around; it's just not a marketable skill, I guess. But we do have thousands of worship leaders who tell us that worship is, of course, more important than anything else we do. Since I'm a Communications Director, I'd like to tell people that nothing is more important than communicating clearly, but you can't pack an auditorium with that message.
So anyway, I'm confused, and I've been blissfully confused for many years now. And I wonder how many other people share my confusion, but don't want to admit it and thereby show themselves to be spiritually unenlightened. When I hear new definitions or profound pronouncements about worship, I just nod my head with severe understanding and privately look forward to the day when some other Christian concept becomes in vogue, something that people can explain with a little more consensus and less starry-eyed abstract prose.
To me, it's not all about worship. It's all about obedience and faithfulness. Those are concepts I can wrap my mind around. Is God pleased with what happens at my church on Sunday morning? If he's pleased, then I'm pleased, and I don't get my shorts bunched up about whether or not worship occurred.
(This is what happens when I'm snowed in.)
Career-wise, I've been hanging around and writing about and cheering on churches and pastors for the past 25 years as my denomination's Communications Director.
I recently had to answer this question. Here's what I'm thinking right now:
Worship is the people of God, scattered and gathered seeking God’s face, delighting in His presence, and acknowledging His gracious supremacy.
There is in worship both the loving tenderness and earthshaking awe.
This is developed in a congregation by giving everyone as many tools as they need so that everyone can in their love languages speak God’s many love languages. We need prayer that is tender and prayer that is structured. We need music that is passionate and music that is grand. We need words that work in the Body gathered and that echo as the Body scatters.
Teaching what songs mean, teaching how to pray, considering what people who knew God 1500 years ago wrote about walking with Him and talking about how to apply those ideas now. We need to teach and train and help people to move from one hour of corporate worship each week into 167 hours of living worship.
Short definition: worship is living to please Him.
Yeah, the word "worship" gets somehow cheapened and at the same time overly-spiritualized. I have the same issue with the word "love." When do I truly love others as I love myself?
Too deep for early afternoon. I'll keep thinking...
The problem with worship, praise, prayer, awesome, excellent and other words is that they've been trivialized by expansive definition to the point where they mean everything and effectively nothing.
It is the need to make something more than it is in an attempt to emphasize it's importance that makes it meaningless.
The practice has been common in churches for years and has resulted in christians incapable of meaningful communication with those outside the church.
Steve, you were close. This is what we had actually come up with:
“Worship is the act of submission of all our nature to God, giving honor and praise to Him without looking for anything in return. It is a time of selflessness, and a time when we place the highest value on God as supreme, and recognize our universal moral failure.”
[Note from Steve: No, Chris, I wasn't close. you're just being generous.]
I do have to say though, as I read this, I still agree with some of it but as some of the others commented, the word worship has taken on too many meanings. I’m currently doing yet another study on worship, specifically worship from the tabernacle. Worship the way God intended it to be. The way HE instructed it to be.
Music, lifestyles, giving, helping, surrendering, focusing, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes I think we give worship a life of its own and forget that it is a verb, not a noun.
For far too long I have given music too much credit when it comes to worship. Did you know that the first time the word worship appears in the Bible is in Genesis 22 when Abraham tells his servants to stay put, that he and his son will go and worship and then they will come back? They weren’t going to play “go tell it on the mountain” or sing a little ditty by Chris Tomlin. Abraham was responding to all that God is with all that he was. Out of fear of the Lord he took his son up to sacrifice him because that is what the Lord told him to do. It was his act of obedience that was worship.
Just a short snippet out of my study and then I’ll stop.
True worship is seeing the Lord for who He is and surrendering to Him. As Abraham shows us, true worship flows from the heart of one who walks in the fear of the Lord, one who withholds NOTHING from God, and one who obeys His words promptly and fully.
I look forward to the day when the Lord will call us home and we will learn what true worship is.
Yeah, Steve, I'm with you. It's hard for me to be able to note the difference between entertainment and worship (songs in the service kind of worship). I will admit that the church I attend has an excellent worship band. But as I sit there, sometimes (many times?) I'm just enjoying the music in a way analogous to listening to the radio while driving my car.
I've found it interesting that when the music leader is quiet and they bring the sound down for people to sing acapella - it's incredibly quiet for the amount of people there. What does that say? I don't think I have a problem with using entertainment to draw a crowd, I'm just not sure if entertaining music helps me worship. Come to think of it, my most memorable worship experiences have been when I'm alone.
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