I visited a new church this past Sunday. Honestly, I liked it – they are doing some great things…but it is not home. During the pastor’s message he echoed a common sentiment that seems to be something of a cliché among Christians: we were made to worship God.
This is true, but only to a limited extent. Without a proper framework this can actually be a somewhat damaging idea.
When I became a Christian, I attended a fairly charismatic church that had lively worship. Lifted hands, dancing (here and there), weeping, speaking in tongues…worship sets would be 45 minutes long. I loved it! In fact, we often talked like worship was the real reason to go to church – the sermon being an interruption to the Holy Spirit’s real work.
This was worship. This was what I was being told we were created for. This was what eternity would be like: singing, dancing, speaking in tongues, etc.
I like to worship. There are even times when I would rather do nothing else. But, then again, there are other times I would rather do anything else.
The problem is that the word “worship” has, unintentionally, taken on a meaning that does it injustice. The way we often use the word designates it as primarily referring to that time of music and singing in the middle of a church service. We try to avoid this, but we cannot escape our own lingo. Almost any pastor will tell you that worship is not just our time of singing, and yet they use the word almost exclusively to refer to the singing.
But that is not worship. And that’s why it is risky to say that we will worship God throughout eternity.
Worship, according to the Bible, involves the entirety of our lives – it is not something that only religious people do. Worship is not a religious thing at all. It is a human thing – like breathing or sleeping. We do it unconsciously and the object of our worship can be determined by looking at our lives.
It is true, actually, we will worship God throughout all eternity. But that is not limited to the singing of songs. In fact, singing is but a small part. To say that we will worship God throughout eternity is to say that we will live with God and that our lives will reflect the goodness and worth of Him.
And if that is true for eternity, it can be true now. That is what it means to be God’s people. That is our created purpose.
That is worship.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | Church, Heaven, Worship
So, how do we begin to refer to what we do on Sunday mornings? We’ve been talking about this as a staff… do we call it worship through singing? It is misleading to call it “worship” because there is so much more to worship than singing praise songs on Sunday morning. Great thoughts!
Matt…great question!
Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers. That said, I don’t think it would be at all harmful to say that you’re going to worship God through singing or even that you’re going to enter a time of singing without referring to it as worship at all. If you go with the former, though, I would balance it with the other aspects of the service: worship through tithes and offerings, worship through the sermon, etc. – but then you run the risk of being somewhat cheesy.
Let’s just invent a new word altogether. Any ideas?