What is worship?

Singing or sacrifice?

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

Matt Redman recently penned an article for Christianty Today titled, Why Worship Leaders Need Theologians.

He writes:

Twenty years ago, I wrote to key pastors, preachers, and theologians asking them a simple question: “What are some essential themes of Scripture that are lacking in our current worship expressions?”

Many of the replies referenced God as creator, God as judge, and God as Trinity. While they offered positive comments about contemporary worship music, there was a sense of challenge: For the good of the church and the glory of God, we must do better.

Later in the article he ponders the question:

A couple of decades later, I wonder how much progress we have made. Worship music has evolved and progressed creatively, showing up across more musical genres than ever before. The production aspects of our expressions have moved forward too. But can we say the same about the lyrical, theological content?

The article basically explores the idea that contemporary worship songs and worship leaders are not sufficiently telling God’s story or engaging His community in deep and meaningful expressions of worship. Redman seems a bit lost about exactly where things are breaking down and stumped about how move forward, but he ends with this sentiment:

My prayer is that the church will grow in this area—seeing ever deeper and truer songs—and leading worship services that help us to behold Jesus like never before.

However, I wonder if it’s not just the songs, song writers, and song leaders that are at the root of the issue, but our entire concept of worship. When Christians today speak of worship they are mostly referring to the song portion of a “worship service”. These services function as inspirational events that engage them in a gratifying, emotional moments with Jesus. This is fine. There’s nothing wrong with believers having moments of intense emotional gratitude to Jesus for what He has done. But according to Paul, that’s for you to do privately. When we gather together, it should be for clear communication that builds up everyone. If we continue to persist in these modern forms of worship then we are remaining in infancy, never moving into the space where worship requires sacrifice in every part of our lives around a set of community habits. Nowhere in the New Testament is there a command or even an example of “worshipping” like this. So then, why is this the most common expression of worship in Christianity today? It’s because we like to boil things down to representational expressions and then treat them as if they are as meaningful as the real thing. We do this with worship, with prayer, with the Lord’s supper, with our weekly gatherings, etc. We take things that Jesus intended to be significant community habits, reduce them to rituals that retain no trace of their original meaning or purpose, and then we convince ourselves that those rituals are faithful representations of the New Testament patterns.

We are stuck in infancy. Never arriving at the place where we understand that the gospel is not merely an entry point, but a whole new system around which Jesus is building a global family according to a particular set of patterns and principles which His Spirit revealed to the apostles; and that Christ’s plan for His family is for it to be organized into networks and clusters of churches who shape their entire lives around one another in such a way that their lives together are kerygmatic… a reenactment of the gospel, which stands in stark contrast to the culture around them.

This is what Paul is trying to help the church in Rome understand, when he writes to them ahead of his arrival. He wants to make sure they have fully grasped the gospel’s implications and are building their community life around it, with everyone prioritizing one another, even over their own needs and households, sacrificing their entire lives in order to build one another up and “add to their numbers”. (Rom 12:1-2) The more they understand and implement ahead of time, the more quickly he can hape them into a base for taking the gospel to the outer reaches of the Roman Empire.

Paul also makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 14, right after his poetic description of what love looks like in the context of the weekly gathering (the setting for 1 Cor 11:17-14:40), he strongly admonishes the Corinthian church that their gatherings should not be just a collection of individuals engaging in intense personal moments of thanksgiving to God (since that can be done in their own homes), but their gatherings should be defined by everyone contributing, according to how God has gifted them, in a way that builds everyone else up, helping them shape their lives around Christ’s plan. Paul uses himself as an example. He says what would be the point of him traveling all the way to Corinth and then engaging in a personal, emotional moment with Jesus? He could do that anywhere. The same concept should be applied in our weekly gatherings. If everyone isn’t engaged together in the same conversation, being built up and better understanding how to process their own lives, then it’s not a church gathering, but something else. Paul even goes so far as to compare their ecstatic expressions to pagan temple worship. Mimicing the pagan rituals that call on their gods to come and inhabit the idols they have built for them. But Paul says that Jesus’ Spirit already inhabits His communities, so they need to take their bodies and perform the sort of work that makes meaningful contributions in their church communities and in their cities and stop trying to conjure up the Spirit.

We need to reconsider, not just our worship practices, but the entire professionalized institution of worship. While it’s true that others may have created it, we remain largely bound to a set of practices and priorities that do not reflect the truth that Jesus is building an actual family, and that He expects us to live together in that reality.

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Scott Canion is based out of the NYC area and is part of the METRO equipping team, a network of global leaders who are establishing churches that are families, patterning themselves after Acts.