Why Worship Together?

In my last post I spent a lot of time explaining the order of our Worship Services. The fact that the Gospel should shape our services is very important to me, and I hope after reading those articles you can see why. But for this article I want to change my focus from the shaping function of the Dialogue of Worship to the participants in the Dialogue of Worship and the direction of those participants’ contributions to the Dialogue. If that doesn’t make sense to you right now, that’s ok. Hopefully by the end of reading this, you’ll understand what I mean.

The first and primary participant in the dialogue is obviously God. It is He who reveals himself to us causing our response of adoration and confession. It is He who offers us forgiveness through Christ’s death on the cross, causing our response of thanksgiving. It is He who instructs us on how to live, causing our renewed commitment to Him. And it is He who offers us His blessing as He sends us out, causing us to live for Him in everyday life. Every action causes a reaction. In worship God is the ‘Actor’ and we are the ‘Reactors’. In terms of the direction of dialogue, think of this as God speaking down to earth from heaven (imagine an arrow pointing from God’s mouth down to man’s hearts).

The next participant in Worship is us. As I already stated, we react/respond to God in worship. In directional terms think of it as us sending praises from earth up to God in heaven (imagine an arrow pointing from our hearts to God). An important thing to realize is that when we send our praises up to heaven, we are doing it out of a response to God’s goodness. We are not doing it hoping that God will respond to us by blessing us. We are doing it because God has already blessed us. Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying that God does not respond to us when we seek him in worship. I am saying however, that God’s response to us is not because of our will for Him to respond, but rather because it is His will to respond to us. God wants to engage with us! What wonderful grace have we received, that the Creator of heaven and earth wants to meet with us!

Now, there are not really any more participants in the dialogue than God and us. But I do want to talk about one more direction of the dialogue. It is man to man (imagine an arrow pointing horizontally from your mouth to the other people gathered with you in the worship service). This direction of the dialogue is the most often overlooked. Often times when people come to worship they are most concerned about their own personal experience of God. They say things like, “I close my eyes when I worship because I don’t want to be distracted the other people that are around me. It’s all about me and God.” Now this is not all together a bad thing. Your personal relationship with and experience of God should be strengthened through worship. But that should not be your only focus when coming to a corporate worship service. In Worship we need each other. When one person in our community is suffering, we as Christ’s body should join in their suffering. When we sing a song like ‘In Christ Alone’ we proclaim to our hurting brother the hope that we have in Christ. When another person in the community is celebrating, we should join in their celebration as well. When we sing a song like “Grow in Grace” we are encouraging one another. Check out Psalm 95. Most of it is written in the plural. “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.” The Psalmist is urging the gathered community to worship and we do the same when we gather together for corporate worship.

In summary; in worship God speaks to us, we speak to God, and we speak to each other. Here’s an illustration of the directions. I hope you enjoy my awesome drawing skills.

In the next worship service you attend, try this on for size; think about how what you are doing would be diminished if you were doing it all by yourself. Look for opportunities to proclaim the Gospel to the person sitting next to you. Look for times when you can join into the suffering of the person in front of you (if they are suffering). And if you are at a point in your life when you feel like you can’t worship God, listen to your brothers and sisters in Christ as they sing praise to Him on your behalf.

One of the most moving worship experiences that I have ever had was the day after my friend Kyle Siegers died when I was a sophomore in high school. I was on vacation with my family in Florida at the time, and never before had I ever felt so isolated. All of my friends were back at home together, mourning Kyle’s death, and I was stuck 22 hours away. My family was at a worship service. I can remember it quite clearly. My dad was sitting behind me, my sisters to my side, and my brother on the end. We were singing the song “In Christ Alone”. Well, at least they were singing. I couldn’t sing (kind of like how I can’t type right now as I begin to relive that moment). They got to the line “No guilt in life, no fear in death. This is the power of Christ in me.” And I heard my dad’s voice singing when I couldn’t. And He proclaimed to me the hope that we have through Christ.

So I urge you, don’t come to worship thinking it’s just about you and God. Come to worship ready to encourage your brothers and sisters. Come ready to meet not only with God, but with those whom God has chosen along with you. Remember the Psalmist says, “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.”

*Whenever I spoke of God acting in worship in this post, please know that I am referring to all of the different functions of the Triune God. This includes Father, Son, and Spirit; all of whom play a different role in worship. Look forward to a future post in which I try to flesh out some of the different ways our Triune God works when we engage with Him. 

Do We Over-emphasize the Sermon?

One of the things I love about the Reformed tradition is its intense focus on and love for the Word of God. The Reformation came about as a result of multiple issues in the Church at the time. One of those issues was that the people of God did not have an understanding of the Word of God. This had a lot to do with the fact that Mass was held in Latin. Also there were no Bibles available in the common language of the people, they were all Latin too. You had to be a scholar to be able to read it for yourself, and if you weren’t a scholar and you went to mass, chances are you didn’t understand much of the sermon either. Thank God that we have the Word in our own languages!

The Word of God is vital in the life of a Christian. The Word of God is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! The Reformed Tradition understands this, and as a result rightfully emphasizes the preaching and proclamation of the Word of God in Worship Services.

The negative result of this emphasis on the Sermon is that sometimes the other aspects of the worship service get de-emphasized and even misunderstood. We often think of every aspect of a service in relation to the sermon. Many people think the first portion of the service is meant to get the people excited and happy to worship God, guide them through an emotional experience which then in turn will prepare their hearts to hear the sermon. Many people see the singing time after the sermon as a time that is meant to allow the Sunday school teachers time to get to their classrooms and set up before their students come. (Just an aside for your information: Martin Luther did not think this way, neither did John Calvin… read chapters three and four of Christ Centered Worship by Bryan Chappell if you don’t believe me… also if you’re going to read those chapters you might as well read the whole thing.)

Let me come right out and say it. The music before the sermon is not meant to prepare you for the sermon. The music after the sermon is not meant to give you time to get out of the sanctuary before everyone else. The music in the service is not secondary to the sermon. Music is not a tool meant to be used to prepare hearts for the sermon; it is meant to be a tool used for glorifying God and proclaiming the same Gospel that the sermon is meant to be proclaiming. (Note: The sermon is also a tool used to accomplish goal of proclaiming the Gospel.)

Our services are meant to be an engagement with God formed by what I like to call the Gospel Pattern. This is how Bryan Chappell, in his book Christ Centered Worship, describes this Gospel Pattern in the context of an individual’s interaction with the good news of Jesus Christ:

 “The gospel first affects the heart by enabling us to recognize who God is. When we truly understand the glory of his holiness, then we also recognize who we really are and confess our need of him. The gospel then assures us of the grace that he provides, and our hearts respond in both thanksgiving and humble petition for his aid so that we can give proper devotion to him. In response to our desire for his aid, God provides his Word. We heed his instruction, know that we are both charged to do so and have the promise of his blessing as we live for him (p 99).”

Our services should be formatted in such a way that every element proclaims some aspect of this Gospel Pattern. Thankfully we don’t have to come up with this format all by ourselves. We see it in scripture (check out my last post about the dialogue of worship) and we see it in many of the liturgies of the churches throughout history.

Bryan Chappell summarizes the consistent elements found within many Historic Liturgies (p 100):

                         Recognition of God’s Character (Adoration)

Acknowledgment of Our Character (Confession)

Affirmation of Grace (Assurance)

Expression of Devotion (Thanksgiving)

Desire for Aid in Living for God (Petition and Intercession)

Acquiring Knowledge for Pleasing God (Instruction from God’s Word)

Living unto God with His Blessing (Charge and Benediction)

This same Gospel Pattern should shape our worship. Not because it’s tradition. But because if we follow this pattern in worship, each element of our service will work with the next to proclaim the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ—this is of utmost importance.

So in the next service that you attend I’d encourage you to think about each element of the service individually and then think about them all as a whole unit. Think of them as different scenes in the drama that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without one of the scenes the drama might make a little bit of sense. But when all scenes are put together there is no mistaking the drama for anything but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here’s the point: the Word of God is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our entire worship services are meant to proclaim this Gospel, not just the sermon. If the Gospel Pattern is followed in our worship services, we have proclaimed the Gospel, participated in the Gospel, and personally and corporately experienced the Gospel. We leave the service having encountered the Triune God and His power to save. This is life changing!