I once served a congregation as their Minister of Ministries. That was, in fact, my actual title. I had no weekly assignments to preach or to lead worship. My responsibility was the administration of our church’s rapidly growing and hard to manage ministries. Still, I was frequently called on to preach or to lead worship. I learned a number of important lessons about myself and congregations in those days.
Here’s one lesson that was not so pleasant. Many church attenders come to worship services with their own agendas, ideas and intentions that may or may not necessarily align with God’s desires from His people when they gather. Furthermore, the disparity between some church folk’s expectations and God’s is often most evident in people’s reaction to music styles. In other words, church people, Christians, can and often do get downright ugly about music in church!
One author a few years back called this phenomenon “worship wars.” When you think about it, these “worship wars” are not new. I remember the angst in our church over the influx of new music from the Jesus Movement of the sixties and seventies into our traditionally hymn-oriented services. Centuries ago, there was no small disagreement over the use of certain new worship songs whose tunes or melodies bore striking similarity to popular bar tunes. Still, for the sake of teaching powerful theology even when we sing, hymns by the likes of Martin Luther have prevailed over their critics. Before Earth’screation, the original “worship war” took place in heaven when Lucifer decided he wanted to have things his way.
These types of considerations, and more than one grumpy churchman, led me to conclude I preferred preaching over leading worship if I were given my choice. When anyone leads worship, people’s ideas about music seem to cloud our judgment and distract from our focus on God and God alone. Music in worship gets all tangled up with personal preference. But when I preach, I have the confidence to stand and declare, “This saith the Lord!”
This Sunday things are a little bit … different, different from my experience years ago and from our shared experience here week to week.. A number of our leaders are out of town this week, including Randy Weaks and several of our regular worship leadership group. So, as you will observe, we have a somewhat surprising array of worship leaders this morning, chiefly yours truly. The necessary adjustment and the preparation this week have reminded me of some very important realities about worship that have long informed and inspired my worship in a corporate setting.
1. Biblical worship is not about us (churched believers); it is not about them (unchurched unbelievers); and it is not even about the music; rather, worship that is rightly called biblical is first and foremost about God.
2. Public worship requires private worship. Put another way, I cannot expect to honor God with my worship in the congregation of praise if I have not first worshiped Him in the closet of prayer.
3. Biblical worship is best understood as a production in which the leaders are prompters for the players, the congregation, as they “entertain” an Audience of One, God Himself.
4. Jesus Christ promises that “where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). Were that reality to lay hold of our understanding today, were we to become even mildly aware of the profound nature of His promise and His presence, whatever happened the next hour in this place would most definitely be worship.
5. Moreover, God’s Word declares that He is enthroned as sovereign, as King, by the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3)!
6. All congregational worship should be contemporary worship – that is, it should be relevant and meaningful to the congregational context.
7. The words used in Scripture to describe worship of King YHWH are dynamic and active (Psalm 96).
To the ends of the earth until the end of time!
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