WORSHIP: What is it and how is it done?

One of the popular, modern beliefs about Christian worship is that it primarily occurs when the congregation is led in singing by a band of musicians and singers.

That view is unfortunate and takes us back to the days when the laity came to church not to sing but to listen to the beautiful cathedral choirs do the singing. 

For sometimes, the use of 'worship teams' with bands' and singers' efforts amplified can inhibit congregational participation. The 'worship team' can become a unit set apart by its skills and volume from the congregation leading to congregants becoming passive in their involvement in the service.


Interestingly, the perspective that supported the Medieval church in its captivity was its split view that regarded the ordained in a higher, separate category. These exalted ones all had a 'vocation', a calling. Needless to say, the common, unordained folk found in the congregation did not have a vocation. 

The great Reformer, Martin Luther challenged that understanding. He countered by stating that God is milking the cows of the countryside through the hands of the milkmaids! (See G. E. Veith's splendid article on Luther's reformation idea of vocation.)

Entertainment As A Way of Life 

It doesn't take too much discernment to see that our present society is taken up with entertainment and amusement. Although, our secular society worships other gods as well, entertainment is big business and it keeps consumers (horrible word!) off the streets and inside shops spending.

Moreover, entertainment keeps non-Christians and Christians alike from focussing any attention on the world to come.

It hasn't always been like this and certainly for major parts of the 20th C -during the two world wars and in the 1930s economic depression in-between- entertainment as a way of life, wasn't prominent. Even after WWII, both the victors and vanquished societies were exhausted by the war effort.

After the second WW, things were slow until we hit the 1960s with worldwide street protests and the young dropping out of 'the establishment' and experimenting with free 'love', 'recreational' drugs and different modes of living.

The establishment of television in the West became the springboard for many other technologies that have been directed towards financial gain through providing entertainment. Central to that entertainment culture has been the pop music industry.  

We cannot blind our eyes to the fact that Christians also breathe the air of this popular music-centred, entertainment culture. We also cannot avoid the unnerving questions that it raises for Christian worship services in general.

Christian worship songs

N. T. Wright, the famous New Testament scholar, points out that church worship music has done two things historically: reflect the culture we live in but also, challenged that culture if need be. 

He expresses concern that some present worship songs are all about 'my love affair' with Jesus. His gentle chides that the 'falling in love' metaphor is rather like striking a match. We see all the fireworks and it's exciting; but if the lighted match is used to light a candle, then the match's light is given a more permanent expression in the burning candle.

The other concern that should be expressed about some worship songs is that they are individualistic in theme rather than we-affirmations of the assembled body of believers. Of course, both types have their place but both should be given a place in the church's repertoire. 

At the heart of worship is reverent adoration

Lots of ways exist for the church to express reverent adoration of its God. 

From the stricter liturgies of the older denominations to the free forms of the newer groups each congregation is acknowledging God's Lordship, Kingship, Sovereignty, Loving Kindness, Goodness, Holiness and Tender Mercies and praising, glorifying, thanking and honouring Him for all he has done.

Why do we need to worship?

Why does God need our worship and adoration? Well he doesn't need it! 

But we need to do it because in acknowledging who God is we also acknowledge who we are. 

He is the Creator who has given us life and who sustains our lives moment-by-moment. To not acknowledge that is to live a life of delusion. To try to live without gratitude for the life we have is to exist as an ingrate.

Much, much better to recognise from where we draw all our life and this occurs in confessing God's worthiness to receive all our praise.

A New Church

I am an evangelical looking for an Anglican congregation which still values the Prayer Book (PB).

Australian Anglicans have three major prayer books dated: 1662 (Book of Common Prayer), 1978 and 1995 but it's hard to find evangelical congregations which use the PB. Some will use tiny bits out of the PB but it's hard to describe their liturgy as dependent on the Anglican Tradition; what is presented could equally be found in any non-conformist denomination.

Usually members of such churches will boast about this absence of Anglican liturgy as if this is a good thing. (I suppose it can be if the formal liturgy has become lifeless and routinised but this process can happen within non-conformity too.)

Last Sunday I finally found an evangelical Anglican church where good expository preaching was given and the PB liturgy was used. My, it was good! I had almost given up hope.

The church is the Church of St Edward the Confessor in Blackburn South, Melbourne, Australia.

I'm not saying that other Anglican services don't have a place in the Anglican fold. I'm sure they do and that many join these churches from other denominations because the Anglican character is often non-existent.

But I wonder then why be Anglican at all. Why not just be non-denominational?

The Trinity a Forgotten Teaching Among Worship Song Writers?

When I hear some recent church songs I wonder whether Christianity has become a Jesus-only movement!

Some songs talk about nothing else but Jesus. Of course we all love Jesus but the calling of the Son is to lead us to the Father.

I appreciate that the Trinity is heavy-duty teaching in so many ways because heretics stand ready to demote the Son to a mere creature and the Moslems want to relegate him to an inferior prophet to Mohammed. And Judaism sees him in even lower terms.

And Christians too claim not to understand it! Yet the teaching makes the Christian religion distinctive among all religions!

But we are Christians, followers of Jesus because he is God's son who reveals the Father through the power of the Spirit.

What we do in our songs/hymns we are likely to do in our prayers. So some will pray to the Son directly and never mention the Father. That's not the practice of the biblical writers who consistently pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit (e.g., Eph 1.16-20). Even the Lord Jesus in the Lord's Prayer teaches us to pray to the Father.

Why then do we find this poor hymnology that fails to get the persons of the Godhead in their rightful places?

Praise My Soul

Yesterday I had what I can only describe as a feeling of Paradise. I was babysitting my 2 y.o. granddaughter and we had been up to our local park. She hadn't been as interested in that as she normally is but she did enjoy her regular swing.

We left there to buy some bread and as we walked home with her pushing the pusher--or trying to--I was seized with a spirit of thanksgiving. I began to sing, Praise My Soul the King of Heaven. I didn't care who heard me. (In any case I didn't and can't sing very loud!)

This was a grace-filled moment when the privilege of being when I was with my gorgeous little granddaughter on a beautiful, albeit hot, sunny day with her steering the pusher all over the place because she can't see over the top of it!!

Words on the Wall

Christian groups 'dress to impress' these days with their song words on walls. We usually don't stop to think about this development but go along with it as the latest thing. However, may I just point out some aspects of this development that should give us pause for thought? With every use of newer technologies our lives are being subtly and sometimes not so subtly changed leaving us forgetting that 'the medium is the message'.*

First, the medium of data projection means that words cannot be meditated on or scanned before viewing by a congregation. Nor can an arresting phrase in any already sung verse be looked at again because the congregation is now onto the next verse. The simple use of hymn books allows those activities to be done.

Second, the congregational worship is always controlled by the click of the controller of the data projector. One could say that congregational worship in song moves according to the rhythm of the person with the mouse! I wonder whether we should much rather having that rhythm being established by a musician sensitive to the leading of God's spirit. Projectionists may well have that sensitivity but then we would have the need for three offices to become aligned: projectionist, worship leader, and musician.

Third, despite the usual assumption that newer technologies aid the church in adding to the number of disciples of Christ, no evidence exists that supports any link between changing the content of services and increase in church numbers. On the contrary, in the UK, the two appear to be negatively associated (http://xrl.in/2bg) for the Church of England at least. Astronomical sums in the billions spent in the US on upgrading technologies and using new programs in one year (2006?) in fact resulted in negative growth in US church numbers!! (See also http://xrl.in/2bj)

Last, data projection is a post-modern technology because post-modernism highlights the ephemeral, which precisely fits with data projection. One could say, post-modernism makes an absolute of the passing away of 'reality'. The latter is ephemeral, transient, here this second but gone the next. I don't think the church would want this notion to become embedded in its worship forms but it could be accepting that definition without much awareness that it is happening.

*A helpful article by Mark Federman @ http://xrl.in/2bk helps to explain what Marshall McLuhan meant by his popular but misunderstood phrase, 'the medium is the message', a process that the church would do well to remember.