More Beautiful Worship

Words can be weird.

I remember being in English and grammar class learning new words. There was an activity that came up in our workbooks on a regular basis simply called Context Clues. The object of the activity was to figure out the meaning of a new vocab word using the paragraph surrounding the word. This was a hefty task for 4th or 5th grade Robert. How was I supposed to figure out what superfluous or subservient meant? Sometimes I got the meaning correct, other times I was close. Sometimes I was wrong altogether. Though I wouldn’t have known that had I not had a teacher to correct, guide, and give clarity to these things.

 I notice in a lot of churches and worship services, this word “worship” tends to not get very much attention. The only times we mention worship from stage in many Sunday gatherings are when we thank the band for leading us in worship. Wasn’t that some great worship? Let’s stand up and worship together. There are other times too when we want to try and expand the definition and it becomes too vague and loses focus and clarity. Worship is anything to the glory of God. Worship is expressing yourself to God. While these aren’t wrong, they’re not completely and cohesively right.

 No matter how we teach or don’t teach on worship, we are always saying something about what we think or how we feel about it. When we only relate worship to the band singing and playing, then the definition of worship is reduced to “the music I hear or sing on Sunday.” The modern worship genre added a new shade of definition to this too: the music I hear on Christian radio. When we only encourage expression or energy in our worship, it runs the risk of quickly turning into a tool that serves us and our emotional needs or wants. When we focus too narrowly on what we get out of it, it quickly becomes something it was never intended to be.

 Worship is more than our music. Music is a beautiful part of our worship services, but it is not the whole. We cling to verses that speak of God being enthroned on the praises of His people and create a whole theology of worship off of two or three verses scattered through the whole of Scripture. I wouldn’t condone this kind of hermeneutic. Yes, since the beginning of the church, music has been used by the church to offer adoration, confession, thanksgiving, prayers of all kinds. I love how Matt Boswell says this, “We’re not just trying to pick songs to sing for the weekend, but to carry us through our lives.” These songs carry our prayers and thoughts of God that can carry us through our ordinary worship through the week.

 Worship is more than our experience or feelings. Eugene Peterson helps shed some light on this, “Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.” I remember growing up and being told by my mom that I had to apologize to my sisters if I was annoying them. My mom didn’t care if we meant every word, but we still had to look at each other and I had to say “I’m sorry.” And if I was given a gift as a kid, sometimes my mom had to remind me to say “thank you”. Worship does not seek to exclude our feelings or our experience. The Psalms are the church’s oldest book of prayers that we still pray often and it is flooded with human emotion that helps us speak what is in our hearts when we can’t always find the words. But worship seeks to “tune my heart to sing thy praise” as the old hymn says. Worship is a place for us to refocus our attention and affection.

 Worship is more than Sunday. I can’t say enough how important it is for Christians to continue to gather together and worship. I like the John Wesley quote “There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.” But we can also say this: Sunday is not the main event. Sunday worship is a moment for the church to glorify God, be built up and encouraged, and then sent out to live on mission as the Kingdom of God. But our worship has just as much to do with what we sing in church as it does with how we treat our neighbors or those we dislike. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1-3). To worship is to live like Jesus.

 Worship is more than what we get out of it. I want to be clear here: the object and recipient of our worship is the triune God, not us. I remember my first visit to an Anglican prayer service. The first couple of times were sort of novelty for me. But I had a sort of epiphany on the third or fourth visit. I remember sitting and thinking about halfway through, “Man, I’m not getting anything out of this.” And right after that, I thought, “That’s not the point.” Worship services that provide us only what we want might not always serve the need of our souls. We may never escape our preferential nature when it comes to what clothes we wear, what our music sounds like, how our room is lit, or any of these things. But if you find yourself “not enjoying a worship service” or like me, not getting anything out of it, consider that you might be invited in that moment to reorient the focus of your worship. If you find that a worship service doesn’t have the energy that you’re looking for or didn’t feel like it did something for you, perhaps you’re invited to rethink what happens in worship.

 If you ask a doctor what to do to become a healthier person, they’ll tell you the usual things: eat better, exercise more, sleep more, drink more water, avoid certain foods in large quantities. Doing one of these things can be marginally helpful, two could bring a little improvement. But to incorporate all of these into our lives would revolutionize it! Worship still has to do with all these things, but it is also more than what we think. More beautiful worship brings our music, our feelings, our gatherings, and our experiences to the table with the rest of what we sing, do, say, sing, and pray. Worship forms us.