Worship Matters

In all the talk about worship "styles" and the friction and fracture caused by different worship styles in the same church, it is necessary for pastors, worship teams, lay persons and others to spend some time thinking and reflecting theologically on the purpose of worship.

Before congregations go like a bunch of lemming off the cliff and into the peaks and valleys of what is called "contemporary worship" they do well to look again and reflect from a biblical and theological perspective about what worship is about. In a work by Cornelius Plantinga Jr. and Sue Rozeboom’s called Discerning the Spirits: A Guide to Thinking about Christian Worship they refer to this theological work as “discerning the spirits”: “…what we clearly need is a particular gift of the Holy Spirit, namely, the ability to discern spirits- to identify them, to tell them apart, and to disentangle them from the Spirit of God” (1).

As many new churches seek to make worship relevant, meaningful, and experiential, it must be recognized that expressions of worship cannot be divorced from the cultures in which they are practiced. However, not all in culture is worthy for worship and it is imperative for the church, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to discern what spirits are of God and what needs to be disentangled from the Spirit of God.

Instead of jumping on the anything but 19th century pipe organ sucks view of worship, or the let's play AC/DC and show video clips from Spiderman 3 to illustrate Gospel truths bandwagon; pastors, worship leaders and those charged with leading God's people in worship do well to ask some hard question before diving right in.

Questions like- What is the purpose of worship- to glorify and exalt God or to help people come to faith? Can't it be both? Do we do what we do to be "cool" or do we do it because it helps persons become worshippers and bring glory to God? Who is the "audience" in worship? Do we seek to please God first or people first? It is worth pondering.