Worship and Obedience

One final thought on worship for this month, from David Peterson's book Engaging with God:

From one point of view, the gathering of the church is meant to be an anticipation of the heavenly or eschatological assembly of God's people. It is to be characterized by worship or divine service in the form of prayer and praise directed to God and in the form of ministry to one another. Worship and edification are different dimensions of the same activities. Put another way, participation in the edification of the church is an important aspect of that total obedience of faith which is the worship of the new covenant. From another point of view, we gather together to encourage one another to live out in everyday life the obedience that glorifies God and furthers his saving purposes in the world (p. 287, emphasis added).

Yes! I love the connection of our worship gatherings to everyday life, and the stress on worship as the total obedience of faith in our everyday life.

Traditional Versus New Testament Church

I mentioned an article by Brian Anderson yesterday. He has several other articles at the Milpitas Bible Fellowship site, including a chart showing The Traditional Church Vs. The NT Church. I would encourage you to check out the entire chart. I have copied just a small portion of the chart dealing with the Sunday "worship service" here (the "traditional church" is on the left and the "NT church" is on the right):

5. The Sunday “worship service” is characterized by passivity among the laity with the Pastor or a select group of leaders doing nearly all the ministry.	Church meetings were participatory and interactive – every member had a function and contribution to make. (1Cor.12:4-27; 14:26; Eph.4:15-16; Rom.12:3-8; 1Pet.4:10-11; Heb.10:23-25; Rom.12:15; 1Cor.12:26)
6. The Sunday morning worship service is characterized by a rigid and inflexible order of service.	Church meetings were characterized by informality, flexibility, and spontaneity. (Acts 20:7-12; 1Cor.14:26-31)
7. The goal of the meeting is worship, listening to a sermon or evangelism.	The goal of the meeting was mutual edification. (1Cor.14:3,4,5,12,17,26; Eph.4:11-12,16; Heb.10:24-25)

Participatory Worship

The phrase "participatory worship" seems to have a wide range of meaning. For some, participation means - or at least includes - engaging the five senses in worship. What others emphasize - and I believe rightly - is the involvement of believers with others in the worship gathering of the church.

Brian Anderson describes how his church does Participatory Church Meetings (HT: House Church Blog):

We began introducing more participation into our Sunday gatherings. I informed the congregation that anyone could participate by reading Scripture, praying during a lull in our praise singing, or starting a song that was on their heart. I brought the podium down from the platform to the lower level so that I could be closer to the people, thereby encouraging mutual interaction. We rearranged the chairs into concentric semi-circles so that we could look into one another's faces when speaking, instead of the back of someone's head. We bought a wireless microphone and began passing it around to those desiring to share what God had been doing in their lives or to encourage us by declaring what God had been teaching them from His Word. Sometimes these sessions included exhortations, admonitions, teachings, or the sharing of blessings or burdens. One woman revealed that she had recently been diagnosed with cancer. This allowed the whole church the opportunity to tangibly express their love and commitment by gathering around, laying hands on her, and praying. These changes felt a bit awkward at first. We had no previous model to guide us, and thus, felt a bit uncomfortable with them. Before long, however, many began contributing some very edifying insights and exhortations.

Also, Ryan Jones describes how his Reformed-Charismatic church provides for participation (in terms of the exercise of spiritual gifts):

We have a microphone setup in the front of the church service, it's slightly hidden but in front of where the elders/pastors sit. While we're worshipping someone may have a scripture or vision that came to mind during the week or that morning that they believe God is calling them to share with the congregation....

The elder/pastor overseeing the mic weighs the prophecy and determines if it is biblical and meets the criteria of upbuilding, encouraging, consoling or convicting, I'm sure more goes into than this as well. Also, not everyone who thinks they have something to share is given the go-ahead to share at the mic.

BTW, I believe that listening to a sermon is a highly participatory act of worship. Unfortunately, many people allow their minds to wander instead of being actively involved with the word of God as it is taught.

Worship and Reading the Scriptures

Jim Hamilton has some thoughts on Reading the Bible as an Act of Worship in Church. One of the simple things he encourages is that the person doing the reading should go over it a few times the night before. May be obvious, but my guess is that it's usually not done.

The purpose of reading over the text several times is so that the reader can get a sense of the flow of thought in the text and pronounce it accordingly.... We don’t want to be ostentatious about this, and we certainly don’t want to draw attention to ourselves as we read. But the person who reads the Scripture publicly is, in a sense, leading the people of God in worship. He is worthy of our best efforts, of our cognitive and emotive engagement, and reading the Bible this way helps us render to him the glory due his name.

Does this apply in a house church setting, where there may not be a scheduled reader but more "spontaneous" readings by people? Yes. I would encourage house church members to come prepared to share a scripture. Don't think unprepared is more spiritual - it is probably less spiritual because it means you haven't been thinking beforehand about how you will encourage the body. So if you have a Bible passage in mind, read it over a few times before the meeting. Then if the way is open, read it - as Hamilton says - with "cognitive and emotive engagement." But if the way is not open to read, that's okay too. We don't all need to clamor to be heard.

Worship and the Lord's Supper

On the first day of the week we came together to break bread... (Acts 20:7a).

John Piper on The Lord's Supper as Worship:

So I conclude that, in a few minutes, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we may nourish our souls by faith on the spiritual presence of Christ. When we remember and proclaim his death, he manifests himself to us as infinitely precious. He shows us all that God promises to be for us in Christ. This is the food of our souls. With this we are nourished and find strength to live as Christians.

The Lord's Supper is worship because it expresses the infinite worth of Christ. No one is more worthy to be remembered. No one is more worthy to be proclaimed. And no one can nourish our souls with eternal life but Christ. So let us come and remember, and proclaim and eat.

A few additional thoughts:

1. As I've mentioned before, I agree with most of Eric Svendsen's conclusions in his Lord's Supper series - I mainly disagree with unbelievers being invited to eat the bread and drink of the cup.

2. In Tim Keller's article on Evangelistic Worship, he talks about "presenting the sacraments so as to make the gospel clear":

In addition, the Lord's Supper can become a converting ordinance. If it is explained properly, the unbeliever will have a very specific and visible way to see the difference between walking with Christ and living for oneself. The Lord's Supper will confront every individual with the question: "are you right with God today? now?" There is no more effective way to help a person to do a spiritual inventory. Many seekers in U.S. churches will only realize they are not Christians during the fencing of the table after an effective sermon on the meaning of the gospel.

3. I like this question from Doxologue, not because we should ignore either but because both are important:

Do you prefer approaches that emphasize our communion with each other or our communion with Christ Himself? How do we keep both in tension?

Worship and Baptism

Earlier this summer, Ray Van Neste posed a great question, Baptism: Why Do We Not Value It More? I have to admit that I'm guilty of not putting enough weight on baptism. Here's one of Van Neste's points:

Our culture has largely lost its ability to appreciate symbolism. In short we have lost our poetry and as a result have little appreciation for the symbolic. As people are realizing this many try all sorts of way to integrate the use of the symbolic and dramatic into our worship all the while missing that Christ Himself has instituted for us two symbolic practices which are dramatic portrayals of the gospel.

Our general failure to appreciate symbols is seen in the language used when baptism or communion is described as a ‘mere’ symbol. ‘Mere’?! Why ‘mere’? Not ‘mere’, but Christ-ordained, holy, precious symbols which portray for us the gospel.

While on the topic of baptism, read also Scot McKnight's blog post How big is baptism to you?

Additional Thought on Evangelistic Worship

As a follow up to yesterday's post on evangelistic worship, here is a perspective from David Peterson in this book Engaging with God, based on a study of 1 Corinthians 14:

Although the apostle's main point is to encourage the readers to minister effectively to one another as the body of Christ, his concern is that even the unbelieving stranger should be able to understand what is said, be convinced by it and be converted (vv. 22-25). There is no warrant from this text for saying that every Christian meeting should be designed fundamentally to appeal to unbelievers. On the other hand, as the church is edified intensively - being strengthened, consolidated, and preserved as the community of God's people - it may also be edified extensively - being enlarged by the conversion of those who may be visiting or invited by Christian friends (p. 211).

Evangelistic Worship

When I started this topic this month, the first comment was from Ken Sorrell of Returning to Biblical Missions. Ken wrote:

I would be interested in hearing yours and others thoughts concerning the following:

We call it a "worship" service, but the focus is on evangelizing the lost who may be sitting in the crowd. Are we missing something when we multi-task like this?

At the time, I had just read a blog post giving one answer to that question. The post was called Please, no more doing church for them. Its conclusion:

The worship service is no longer an evangelistic service for outsiders but a space to practice heaven for a period of time, facilitating the offering of the community life to God in worship. If a guest of the community finds God in the service, all the better, but this is not the focus.

Mission happens in the 'world' in the world formerly known as secular, on their 'turf' -- not ours. As servants, the Christian connects with the seeker through service in their world.

Now I want to give you another answer to Ken's question. Tim Keller has an article at Resurgence on Evangelistic Worship. He mentions the two prevalent models today:

Seeker service (evangelism)--> Worship service (edification)
Worship service (edification)--> World (evangelism)

Keller then argues for a third model, what he calls evangelistic worship:

My main problem with the two models, however, is theological. They both assume that worship cannot be highly evangelistic. I want to show that this is a false premise. Churches would do best to make their "main course" an evangelistic worship service, supplemented by both a) numerous, variegated, creative, even daily (but not weekly) seeker-focused events, and b) intense meetings for Bible study and corporate prayer for revival and renewal.

He goes on to draw three lessons from Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 14:

1. Non-believers are expected to be present in Christian worship.
2. Non-believers must find the praise of Christians to be comprehensible.
3. Non-believers can fall under conviction and be converted through comprehensible worship.

You need to read the whole article to understand Keller's full argument. Whether you agree with him or not, don't miss what he has to say about making worship comprehensible to unbelievers (page 6 of the article).

Worship and the Word

Darryl Dash has posted his notes for a seminar he did on Theocentric Preaching (pdf). There's a piece of data he has that I thought interesting (though I'm not sure how to assess it): "According to a study by Preaching and Pulpit Digest, 80.5% of sermons are anthropocentric. Most sermons are not grounded in the character, nature, and will of God."

If that study is accurate, it says something about our worship. Timothy Ralston writes on the relation between worship and the Word,

God's self-expression of relationship - his Word - is central to the worship of his people. It forms a symbol of God meeting with his people in covenant, of his dwelling among and within them. As the incarnation of his promises, it becomes a symbol of godly community and calls his people to live before him with the integrity necessary for their worship to be acceptable to him. Hence, its public reading and preaching within the worship exposes his demands, our inadequacy, and his grace. It calls for covenant renewal and lies at the heart of spiritual revival. Therefore, how can we offer acceptable worship, if his Word does not have a prominent place in our liturgy? ("Scripture in Worship," in Authentic Worship, H. Bateman, ed., p. 209).

John Piper particularly focuses on the prominence of preaching the Word as central to our worship:

The reason that preaching is so prominent in worship is that worship is not just understanding but also feeling. It is not just seeing God, but also savoring God. It is not just the response of the mind, but also of the heart. Therefore God has ordained that the form his Word should take in corporate worship is not just explanation to the mind and not just stimulation to the heart. Rather the Word of God is to come teaching the mind and reaching the heart; showing the truth of Christ and savoring the glory of Christ; expositing the Word of God and exulting in the God of the Word.

That is what preaching is. And that is why it is so prominent in worship. It is not a mere work of man. It is a gift and work of the Holy Spirit. And therefore it happens most and best where a people are praying and spiritually prepared for it.

Going back to the study mentioned earlier: If the 80% number is true, than it is ironic that in many evangelical settings, worship (which is meant to be directed to God) has at its center an anthropocentric (man-centered) proclamation of the word. Doesn't that mean our worship is prominently about self/man-worship?

Darryl Dash also mentions something like this in his seminar notes:

Contemporary worship is far more egocentric than theocentric. The aim is less to give glory to God than to satisfy the longings of the human heart. Even when we sing God's praises, the focus is on fulfilling and satisfying the human desire for wholeness and serenity, a motivation that is not wrong but becomes questionable when it takes priority (Bloesch, “Whatever Happened to God?”).

Children and Worship

An essay on Worship That Is Friendly to Children refers to a book edited by John Witvliet called A Child Shall Lead: Children in Worship. Witvliet makes a case for the full, conscious, and active participation of children in worship. Here are his five guidelines:

1. Children should participate fully, not only in special moments designed for them like a children's sermon, but in all the prayers and songs and actions that make up the worship service.

2. Children should participate consciously. They must know and understand what each action of worship means and why it is done.

3. Children should participate actively. They must not sit in passive silence; rather, children should stand, kneel, process, move, listen, speak, and—of course—sing!

4. Children should be viewed as full participants not only for their sake, but for ours. Children have gifts to give from which we need to learn: a gift of faith, a gift of questioning, a gift of wonder, as well as loyalty, honesty, and trust. Of these virtues, our children may be among the best teachers we have.

5. Children's programs should be childlike, not childish. In programming for children, we must do nothing to "dumb down" what we are doing. When we choose music and dramatic scripts that are thoughtful and well-crafted, we take our children seriously.

In the article I've linked to you'll also find practical ways in which parents can help their children to participate in worship.

A Space Blog

I mentioned a while back it might be fun to find blogs from out of the way places. Well, here's one. Anousheh Ansari has a Space Blog.

Worship Planning

A while back House Church Chronicles had a series on Programs vs. Prevenience. In part 3 of the series, they offered this contrast:

The "program model" assumes that the Prevenient Creator (who never made two snow flakes alike) will always follow the same format when His children come together. This model requires that we do the planning. We develop the agenda. Then, we ask God to bless it. This model results in church that is usually orderly (by our definition) but also often sterile.

The "prevenience model" assumes only that the Prevenient Creator is already at work before His children gather for church. This model requires that we see/hear what the Father is doing/saying and then ask Him how we are to respond. We surrender our agenda and look for His. This model results in church that is sometimes messy (by our definition) but also often exhilaratingly alive and fruitful.

On the other hand, others express the importance of planning worship gatherings. For example, this 9Marks article counsels:

Consider drawing together all those participating in the worship service on a day prior to the service. For instance, if you have a mid-week gathering, bring the music leaders, those leading in prayer on Sunday morning, and the preacher together for a brief review of all that will take place on the following Sunday morning. “Last minute changes” are resolved days in advance, and the Sunday morning bulletin reflects them.

I think we can overplan our worship gatherings so that they are more like well-practiced performances than drawing near to the living God and building each other up. They can be more about creating an atmosphere than meeting with God and loving one another. They can bow more at the altar of "excellence" than bowing before God and submitting to each other.

Having said that, I disagree with the idea that planning necessarily misses out on "what the Father is doing." Boo and hiss to sterile gatherings. And down with developing our own agenda. But who said we should plan for sterile gatherings and plan our own agenda? If the Spirit can lead on Sunday, he can also lead on Tuesday. It's not like He doesn't know what God wants to do that weekend when the church is gathered. So plan in dependence on the Spirit.

A New Header

Thanks to my son, Mike, for putting a new header picture on my blog.

Mike is a grade 12 high school student who has a wide variety of interests, including music (guitar, drums) and sports (soccer, swimming, cross country).

He dabbles a bit with web design stuff for his bands. He has a website for his own music. And he helps his dad with technical computer things.

We are thankful to God for his grace in the lives of each of our children. We love to see their many different interests. But as we have told them throughout their growing up years, the number one desire we have for them is that they love God with all their being.

Teaching Through Song

Doxologue is another blog devoted to "worship," specifically "conversing about, and calling for, God-centered worship in the local church."

In contrast to what I posted on yesterday (though not totally opposite, since Xenos does sing in its house churches), here is a thought on Teaching Doctrine Through Song, coming from a chapter in a John Witvliet book called Worship Seeking Understanding titled "Soul Food for the People of God."

Congregational song is a means of spiritual nourishment.
A great couple of quotes from this heading are "Consider the prominent spiritual disease of sentimentality: religious experience as candy-coated happiness and bliss. If we feed our souls a steady diet of musical candy, we will have little spiritual protein to sustain us." and "[Music] is more than a shell for the text. The music we sing shapes the affections of our souls. It gives emotional content to the text."

Given some of the concerns I've raised about the place of music in the church gathering, I think this is a needed reminder that "speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" is a scriptural command.

No Worship Service

What do you think of this philosophy of worship for large church gatherings:

Visitors to Xenos are always amazed (and often appalled) that we don't conduct worship services. This often leads to the commonly heard question, "Why doesn't Xenos worship?" Xenos leaders are never happy to hear this question, since it signals a misunderstanding. We certainly do worship the Lord! The problem is that the modern Western church has a very specific understanding of what worship is, and visitors do not find that particular form of worship at Xenos.

Xenos leaders are not convinced the New Testament supports the modern American concept of the "worship service." The early church had large meetings as well as home church meetings (Acts 2, 22). However, as we have studied these and related passages, we do not believe these large meetings were for the purpose of corporate worship, at least not as we see it in America today, with music, choirs, liturgy, etc. The descriptions of these large meetings never mention worship as their goal. Instead, they appear to be meetings for teaching and evangelism. Some forms of worship, including hymns, revelations, and tongues, were practiced at the home group meetings, according to 1 Cor. 14:26. This suggests to us that home groups are the best place for group worship in song.

Service of Worship Squeezed into a Worship Service

Many people who are looking for a church to attend will choose the church that offers the best music experience, and they will equate it with the worship of God. John Fischer, in a Moody Monthly article from 2001, gets at the heart of the issue.

God is after a life of worship for each one of us. It’s what Paul calls our "service of worship" — presenting ourselves to Him continually as living sacrifices, transformed in our thinking and awake to His will in the world (Rom. 12:2). Unfortunately we tend to turn this service of worship (which takes up our whole life) into a worship service (which takes up about an hour a week). It puts a lot of weight to bear on 30 minutes of music if that will be a person’s sole worship experience for the week. No wonder people are fighting so hard for their music.

We worship because we are worshipers. We were created with this big cavity in our souls that can’t be filled with anything but God, and filling ourselves with God on a continual basis is the most fulfilling thing we can do. It is what we were made for.

True worship incorporates our minds in understanding, our strength in service, our souls in wonder, and our spirits in praise. It does not take a song to do this. It takes my mind on God and my whole being focused in His direction. I also believe it is possible to do all this while doing everything else we normally do — in fact, this is what gives everything else meaning. This is what Paul meant when he said to do everything we do to the glory of God (Col. 3:17).

It’s our life, not a worship service, that will make us worshipers. We don’t go to church to worship; we go to church because we are already worshipers. And if someone is a true worshiper, which means their whole life is an act of worship, then what happens for 30 minutes of music once a week is a small thing indeed.

I often hear people say they need to give God more of their time: longer quiet time, more prayer, more Bible reading. That’s good, but I’m not sure God wants more of my time as much as He wants more of my attention. It’s not this time for God, this time for work, this time for play, and this time for me. It’s the whole thing for God.

If I’ve lived a week like this and I get to church with my fellow believers filling up a room, they can sing in French and play sitars and it won’t matter to me. I’ll be so happy just to be there and join my voice, however timid or strong, with others who believe.

These two lines stood out when I was reading Fischer's article: "Unfortunately we tend to turn this service of worship (which takes up our whole life) into a worship service (which takes up about an hour a week). It puts a lot of weight to bear on 30 minutes of music if that will be a person’s sole worship experience for the week." Has Fischer hit on something here? Is the reason we put so much emphasis on the Sunday gathering as the time for us to "worship God" because we are actually not worshiping the rest of the week?

A History of Worship

Robert Webber offers an interesting, albeit brief, history of worship: From Jerusalem To Willow Creek. He has this quote from Justin Martyr describing a worship gathering in the second century:

And on the day called Sunday there is a meeting in the place of those who live in cities or the country, and the memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president in a discourse urges and invites us to the imitation of these noble things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers. And, as before, when we have finished the prayer, bread is brought, and wine and water, and the president similarly sends up prayers and thanksgiving to the best of his ability, and the congregation assents, saying the Amen; the distribution, and reception of the consecrated [elements] by each one, takes place and they are sent to the Absent.

He also describes the order of service coming out of the eighteenth century as "singing, preaching, and invitation."

As for the "future" (Webber's article dates back to 1992), he writes:

In the future I see a return to early Christian worship—rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; having a balance of both Word and Table; seeking both intimacy and theater; and involving the people in a more participatory way.

I call this convergence worship. It is a worship full of promise because in it God speaks and acts, and the people respond. It is a worship that is not done to the people or for the people, but by the people.

Worshipping Music?

I'm blogging about "worship" this month. Bob Kauflin devotes his blog Worship Matters to reflect on worship and music. So go there if you want more (and better) thoughts on the topic. He is posting quotes right now, and this one on worship and music is from Harold Best's book, Unceasing Worship, and was posted on Friday:

We make and offer art because we worship; we should not make it to lead us into worship. We can carry [this concept] into the weekly corporate gathering. Since Christians come to such gatherings as continuous worshipers, it should now be obvious that it is erroneous to assume that the arts, and especially music, are to be depended on to lead us to worship or that they are aids to worship or tools for worship. If we think this way, we fuel and stop, and worse, that music or some other artistic or human device bears the responsibility for doing the starting or the facilitating... Music and the arts have a kind of power in themselves that can be falsely related to or equated with Spirit power, so much so that the presence of God seems all the more guaranteed and the worshiper sees this union of artistic power and Spirit power as normal, even anticipated. This thinking lies behind comments of this kind: “the Lord seemed so near during worship time.” “Your music really helped me worship.” And to the contrary: “I cold not worship because of the music.” Senior pastors, ministers of worship and worship teams must do everything to correct them. If we are not careful, music will be added to the list of sacraments and perhaps with some Christians become another kind of transubstantiation, turned into the Lord’s presence. Then the music, not the Holy Spirit, becomes the paraclete and advocate. God is reduced to god and music is raised to Music. Thrones are exchanged, lordship reverts to its fallen hierarchy, and conditioned reflex replaces faith. (p. 119)

What a great insight and solemn warning. In fact, I wonder if Music has already become the false god of evangelical churches. Is it possible - especially for long-time Christians - that we need the "fix" of "good worship Music" to feel excited about our relationship with God? If so, it's really the Music that we desire and not God. The great deception comes because the Music is about God and is supposedly sung to God. But what we really love is the Music.

Worship Breaks Down Our Misdirected Loyalties

John Witvliet writes on Our Inestimable Privilege: Full, Conscious Participation in Christian Worship. He talks about conversations that help to re-orient the focus of our worship:

One other point for discussion is how worship breaks down our misdirected loyalties even as it builds up our deepest loyalty to God. Every act of praise is a strong act of negation as well as affirmation. Every time we sing praise to the triune God, we are asserting our opposition to anything that would attempt to stand in God’s place. Every hymn of praise is a little anti-idolatry campaign, as Walter Brueggemann explains: “The affirmation of Yahweh always contains a polemic against someone else. . . It may be that the [exiles] will sing such innocuous-sounding phrases as ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ or ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’ Even those familiar phrases are polemical, however, and stake out new territory for the God now about to be aroused to new caring.” When we sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” we are also saying “Down with the gods from whom no blessings flow.”

The Puritans on Preparing for Worship

Yesterday I linked to an article by J. I. Packer on The Puritan Approach to Worship. I want to follow up with one more excerpt from the article:

Incomplete though this survey has necessarily been (we have said nothing, for instance, of the sacraments), it has at least sketched in the main outline of Puritan ideals for worshippers -- reverence, faith, boldness, eagerness, expectancy, delight, whole-heartedness, concentration, self-abasement, and above all a passion to meet and know God himself as a loving Father through the mediation of his Son....

But still one question remains. How do we begin to get from where we are to where the Puritans show us that we ought to be in our own practice of worship? How can we, cold-hearted and formal as we so often are -- to our shame -- in church services, advance closer to the Puritan ideals? The Puritans would have met our question by asking us another. How do we prepare for worship?

Here, perhaps, is our own chief weakness. The Puritans inculcated specific preparation for worship -- not merely for the Lord's Supper, but for all services -- as a regular part of the Christian's inner discipline of prayer and communion with God. Says the Westminster Directory: "When the congregation is to meet for public worship, the people (having before prepared their hearts thereunto) ought all to come...." But we neglect to prepare our hearts; for, as the Puritans would have been the first to tell us, thirty seconds of private prayer upon taking our seat in the church building is not time enough in which to do it. It is here that we need to take ourselves in hand. What we need at the present time to deepen our worship is not new liturgical forms or formulae, nor new hymns and tunes, but more preparatory "heart-work" before we use the old ones. There is nothing wrong with new hymns, tunes, and worship styles -- there may be very good reasons for them -- but without "heart-work" they will not make our worship more fruitful and God-honoring; they will only strengthen the syndrome that C.S. Lewis called "the liturgical fidgets." "Heart-works" must have priority or spiritually our worship will get nowhere.

A couple of months ago I started to provide links on "Saturday Night Preparation." The series didn't last long, but here is what was posted:

1. Preparing to listen to preaching.
2. Preparing according to Hebrews 10:24.
3. Preparing sons for Sundays.
4. More on preparing to listen to a sermon.
5. Preparing to meet your God.

The Puritans on Worship in Spirit and Truth

Here is an article by J. I. Packer on The Puritan Approach to Worship.

With respect to Jesus declaration that we must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:24), this is how the Puritans understood that:

The Puritans understood this as meaning that, on the one hand, worship must be inward, a matter of "heart-work," and, on the other, worship must be a response to the revealed reality of God's will and work, applied to the heart by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, they insisted that worship must be simple and Scriptural. Simplicity was to them the safeguard of inwardness, just as Scripture was the fountain-head of truth.

Packer goes on to quote from Stephen Charnock's sermon on "Spiritual Worship":

Worship is an act of the understanding, applying itself to the knowledge of the excellency of God, and actual thoughts of his majesty....It is also an act of the will, whereby the soul adores and reverenceth his majesty, is ravished with his amiableness, embraceth his goodness, enters itself into an intimate communion with this most lovely object, and pitcheth all his affections upon him.

Only the regenerate can worship God acceptably, says Charnock, for only they have hearts that truly go out to him in adoration and self-subjection. Therefore "we must find healing in Christ's wings, before God can find spirituality in our services. All worship issuing from a dead nature, is but a dead service."

Charnock goes on to show that spiritual worship is performed only by the Spirit's active help, since it requires sincerity and singleness of heart ("unitedness," Charnock calls it; "concentration" would express his meaning). It involves acts of faith, love, humbling, and self-distrust, and must be an expression of the heart's desire for God. "A spiritual worshipper actually aspires in every duty to know God.... To desire worship as an end, is carnal; to desire it as a means, and act desires in it for communion with God in it, is spiritual, and the fruit of a spiritual life...." Also, spiritual worship will be joyful:

The evangelical worship is a spiritual worship, and praise, joy, and delight are prophesied of as great ingredients in attendance on gospel ordinances, Is. xii.3-5.... The approach is to God as gracious, not to God as unpacified, as a son to a father, not as a criminal to a judge.... Delight in God is a gospel frame, therefore the more joyful, the more spiritual....

In worship we must seek to reflect back to God by our response the knowledge that we have received of him through his revelation.

God is a Spirit infinitely happy, therefore we must approach him with cheerfulness; he is a Spirit of infinite majesty, therefore we must come before him with reverence; he is a Spirit infinitely high, therefore we must offer up our sacrifices with deepest humility; he is a Spirit infinitely holy, therefore we must address him with purity; he is a Spirit glorious, we therefore must acknowledge his excellency... he is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us, therefore we must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying mediator and intercessor.

What Is Worship?

Worship Resources is put together by Ron Man of Greater Europe Mission "to strengthen the body of Christ in the U.S., Europe and beyond by promoting the priority, understanding and practice of God-centered, Christ-exalting worship."

Each month they have Worship Notes which is an "online digest of reflections, news, views and reviews about biblical worship."

The January 2006 issue is on Defining Worship (pdf) and includes this expanded definition of worship from Don Carson's book Worship by the Book:

Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so. This side of the Fall, human worship of God properly responds to the redemptive provisions that God has graciously made. While all true worship is God-centered, Christian worship is no less Christ-centered. Empowered by the Spirit and in line with the stipulations of the new covenant, it manifests itself in all our living, finding its impulse in the gospel, which restores our relationship with our Redeemer-God and therefore also with our fellow image-bearers, our co-worshipers. Such worship therefore manifests itself both in adoration and in action, both in the individual believer and in corporate worship, which is worship offered up in the context of the body of believers, who strive to align all the forms of their devout ascription of all worth to God with the panoply of new covenant mandates and examples that bring to fulfillment the glories of antecedent revelation and anticipate the consummation.

Definitions of Worship

In a series of posts last November, Bob Kauflin at Worship Matters references several definitions of worship (part 1, part 2), and offers his own definitions (unpacked here and here).

Christian worship is the response of God’s redeemed people to His self-revelation that exalts God’s glory in Christ in our minds, affections, and wills, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Biblical worship is God's covenant people recognizing, reveling in, and responding rightly to the glory of God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In another post, Kauflin also addresses the importance of defining worship:

It’s hard for us to know whether or not we’re doing something if we’re not sure what that “something” is....

When someone refers to worship, they can be talking about any number of things: a time of singing, a meeting, a style of music, a certain type of religious liturgy, a mystical experience, something in contrast to “praise,” or a type of Christian band.

And finally he offers some practical ideas for changing the way we talk about worship. They're all good ideas, but I especially like #4:

Use words in addition to “worship” to describe what we do when we sing together in meetings. Alternatives include corporate praise, congregational song, exalting God in song, or simply, “the singing time.”

Blogspotted

Thanks to Phil Johnson at Pyromaniacs for a blogspot. For a small neighborhood operation like this, it's nice to get a bit of advertising from the Walmart of Christian blogging. Or to say it another way, it's fun when Disneyland advertises the local fair. Over 40% of my traffic the last two days has been from them.

The Direction of the Dialogue in Worship

I linked yesterday to an article in SBJT which included a response by Don Carson to a question about "current issues" in worship. Carson makes reference to "worship wars" in churches. The article was published in 1998.

In 2003, John Frame - in some notes for a worship course (Above the Battle?) - writes hopefully that "the worship wars themselves are becoming somewhat irrelevant today" and "are nearing their end."

Here we are in 2006. Are the "worship wars" over?

I want to highlight something else from Frame's article. Frame references the book With Reverence and Awe by Darryl Hart and John Muether. He says that they believe that "to be Reformed means that worship must have a 'dialogue' structure, that there is to be no believer-to-believer communication in the service, only God-to-man and man-to-God." I don't know if Frame has framed :-) their point of view accurately because I haven't read their book. But he counters with these questions:

Does Reformed theology really require all this? Does one really forsake the Reformed faith if one seeks to take visiting unbelievers into consideration (as 1 Cor. 14:24-25), or if one allows for believer-to-believer communication in worship (as in Heb. 10:24-25), or if one seeks to be friendly to visitors? Does the use of praise and worship songs really conflict with a Reformed commitment? Doing such things may be unusual in the context of Reformed tradition, but do they really conflict with Reformed theology? And weren’t the Reformers themselves quite willing to oppose tradition that was not biblically warranted? Didn’t they advocate clear communication in worship, both verbally (through the use of vernacular languages) and musically (through the emphasis on congregational singing)?

Frame is writing from the perspective of Reformed theology. But whether you're Reformed or not, I think his comments raise an important issue, namely, Who is the worship gathering for? Do we focus only on the God-man relationship? I've quoted David Peterson before that Church Gatherings Are for Edification. If that is the case (and I think Peterson makes a good biblical case for it), then the worship gathering must be both for God (his glory) and one another (our building up). To put it in terms of "worship music," we sing to God and to one another.

Along that line, here is John Frame's article Serving One Another in Worship.

Worship Is Living Out Lives of God-centered Praise

Back in 1998, the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology devoted an issue to Foundations for Worship. There are articles by Albert Mohler, Mark Dever, John Broadus, Kent Hughes and James Spiegel, plus a "forum" in which certain individuals answered questions on "The Current State of Worship" (pdf format).

We are now eight years from the "current state" talked about in the journal. But I found this tidbit in Don Carson's response to the question, "What concerns and/or heartens you when you consider the current issues in worship?"

In the Scriptures, corrupt worship includes everything that replaces or relativizes God (e.g. Eze 8-9); there is much less concern for whether one chooses a pipe organ or a guitar. Under the terms of the new covenant, genuine worship includes living our lives in God-centered devotion to our Maker and Redeemer (Ro 1:1-2). Thus corporate worship is not supposed to encourage the people of God to do something they have not been doing all week (i.e., worshiping). Rather, corporate worship in the New Testament finds the people of God doing together what they are supposed to be doing individually and in their homes all week—living out lives of God-centered praise.

Carson mentions Ezekiel 8-9 in his response. I heard him preach on it once, and somewhere I have the cassette (!) of the message. If anybody knows if the message is on-line, I'd like to link to it.

Worship in Spirit and Truth

Stuart Townend, writer of songs such as How Deep the Father's Love and In Christ Alone, has started a series on Worship in Spirit and Truth. In part 1, he examines the context of John 4 where the phrase "in spirit and truth" occurs twice. Townend concludes thus:

Out of this almost bizarre context comes the most profound, life-changing proclamation that the kingdom of God has come, that it doesn’t matter whether you live here or there, you won’t be able to please God by fulfilling religious duty (in fact, you never could) and when all who turn to Him – Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles – will be reconciled to God and each other. It’s the message of the kingdom.

And it’s a message we need to hear now. Why? Because we, like them, can be guilty of reducing the word of God to religious duty, to a series of rules and traditions and ways of doing things, both in our daily lives, and in our corporate worship. So our church services are reduced to a list of songs or a form of liturgy that doesn’t engage our hearts, or we feel we need to go through this ritual to win God’s approval (emphasis added).

September Topic: "Worship"

This month's topic is going to be on "Worship." In evangelical speech, the term "worship" has become identified with what churches do when they gather together - particularly singing songs, saying prayers, listening to sermons, and participating in the Lord's Supper. I hate myself for this, but that too is how I am using the term here, to refer to the "worship" gatherings of the church. Once in a while, however, I may slip into a full-orbed view of worship as described here.

A Blog in Antarctica

I didn't know that yesterday was Blogday until I read Bloggers Blog this morning. When I looked through their list of what bloggers had done for Blogday, I came across this link to a guy (Phil Jacobsen) in Antarctica. It makes me want to go "exploring" for other blogs describing life in out-of-the-way parts of the world.

P.S. Phil Johnson at Pyromaniacs has blogged about his friend Jeff Williams who is presently on the Space Station. Williams also has a blog and has posted a couple of times from orbit. Now that's out-of-the-way! But alas, no pictures.