Jeremy is currently abroad on a mission trip, sharing the love of Jesus in the Dominican Republic. This week’s guest post is by Nathan Parker, who serves on the pastoral staff with Jeremy at FBC Seymour.
Worship. What comes to your mind when you hear that word? For some, it’s a lighted stage with a band playing the latest Hillsong tune. For others it’s a traditional sanctuary with an organ and a choir singing Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” For the most part, at least in the American church today, our first thought when we think about worship is usually about music.
This point is best illustrated by our language and the way we use the word “worship”. We have “worship” leaders (singers and musicians) who lead the “worship” part of the service (the singing). We hire “worship” pastors (like myself) who oversee the church’s “worship” activities by choosing music and leading the musical ensembles. We argue over which style of “worship” is the best (usually the musical style we ourselves prefer), or which “worship” presentation method is best (projection screen or hymnal). And when someone asks us what the “worship” is like at our church, we generally describe it in terms of musical style (traditional/contemporary, hymns/choruses, upbeat/mellow, etc).
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love what I do as a “worship” pastor, and I believe music is an important and central part of the corporate worship of the church. After all, the Apostle Paul tells us to “let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts” (Colossians 3:16). But when we define worship solely in terms of musical participation, we miss at least 3 things:
1. It is possible to sing “worship” songs and NOT worship God. That is a sobering thought. We can sing true words about God without it impacting our hearts. If we’re not careful, we can can become as the Lord described the people of Israel in the days of Isaiah, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13). True worship is primarily an attitude of the heart focused on God, not an activity.
2. It is possible to worship God without singing. Just in the Sunday gathering alone there are many ways we worship that don’t involve singing. We worship through prayer, through giving our offerings back to God, and through hearing and responding to the Word of God proclaimed in the sermon. While worship does include singing, it is not ever limited to singing.
3. The most important thing in worship is our worship’s object. God Himself must be the object of our worship, and our focus should be on who He is, what He has done, and what He desires for us to be and do in the world. The larger our view of God, the smaller our petty personal preferences become. As the hymn chorus states so eloquently, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” If you want to deepen your worship, enlarge your vision of God. As A.W. Tozer states so powerfully:
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.
We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God (From The Knowledge of the Holy, emphasis added).
May God grant us a greater vision of Himself, and thereby deepen our worship and widen our impact in the world, for His glory!
If you want to deepen your worship, enlarge your vision of God.
