Starting Point
Too often we take our ideas about church from the subculture around us. Instead of asking ourselves, “what is a church supposed to be, according to scripture?”, we look around to see what other churches are doing and chart our course from them. This is also true of our attitudes about worship. By removing our focus from our proper authority and substituting a host of false values, we tend to get caught up in side issues and drift farther away from our true course. As a result, we end up debating style, mode, instrumentation and other minor issues, looking to arbitrate even these problems by our limited cultural-historical experience or, even worse, by mere personal preference.
This does not mean that we should be advocating a retreat to some primitive and basic pattern in our church, as if only those activities specifically mentioned in scripture are allowed and all other practices or activities are forbidden. Instead we look to the underlying attitudes and basic definitions established by the Word of God and test any additions, developments or changes by those standards. The starting point must always be the Biblical idea of worship.
The Biblical Idea of Worship
The English word “worship” comes down to us from an older form of the word “worthship.” It means to ascribe worth to someone or something. One immediately thinks of Rev 4:11, “You are worthy, Oh Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.” Scripture constantly reminds us that no false God, no man, or any created thing is worthy of worship, but God alone.
In the original biblical languages, words for worship give further insight into this concept in ways that we have often forgotten in our own contemporary concepts of worship. A handful of Hebrew words are translated into the English word “worship.” The most frequently used is “shachah,” which means to bow down or do homage. This includes not just bowing down but, to some degree, submission to a superior.
There are also a number of Greek words that can be translated into English as “worship.” Two are of special importance to our discussion. The most important and the most frequently used is the word “proskuneo,” which is literally “to kiss toward,” again reflecting the idea of showing reverence and allegiance.
A second word often used is “latrenuo,” which carries the foundational idea of serving or ministering. The emphasis in this case is on our action in obedience and not on the narrow sense of a time of worship set apart from life. To worship God in this sense is to be His servant and to do His bidding. Clearly this involves a lifetime and not just a few moments on Sunday. A Christian’s whole life is lived as a prayer to God. This word also reminds us that worship can be used two ways: a narrowly defined time or action, or the broader understanding of all of life. To forget this is to misunderstand the basic Biblical idea. As David Peterson has observed in his study of worship:
“Although some of Scripture’s terms for worship may refer to specific gestures of homage, rituals, or priestly ministrations, worship is most fundamentally faith expressing itself in obedience and adoration. Consequently, in both Testaments it is often shown to be a personal and moral fellowship with God relevant to every sphere of life.”
The Sunday Gathering
The Sunday assembly of the saints is not a worship service in the narrow sense of the word “worship.” It comes as a shock to most people today, but the New Testament nowhere refers to the regular gathering as a worship service. British New Testament scholar I. Howard Marshall has written:
This vocabulary (worship service) is not applied in any specific way to Christian meetings…Christian meetings are not said to take place specifically in order to worship God and the language of worship is not used as a means of referring to them or describing them…to sum up what goes on in a Christian meeting as being specifically for the purpose of ‘worship’ is without New Testament precedent. ‘Worship is not an umbrella-term for what goes on when Christians gather together.’
This is of course counter to what we experience in the language of the church today. It is important to note that the New Testament church was not modeled after the temple worship. The temple was the place where God’s elect met God, whose presence was represented by the Holy of Holies, and they then responded in sacrifice and praise. In the New Testament the meeting place is in Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The particular location is unimportant; we can meet God wherever we are without seeking his presence in a special place. Nor is there any longer necessity for sacrifice; Jesus is our sacrifice. As a consequence, our gatherings are not restricted to the narrow definition of worship. The New Testament writers speak of church gatherings primarily in terms of edification, instruction, prayer, ministering to one another, encouragement and celebration of the ordinances.
The model for New Testament gatherings became that of the synagogue, the place which was called “the house of instruction.” Comparing first century synagogue meetings with first century church gatherings shows remarkable similarity. Both were made up of the basic elements of prayer, scripture reading, instructional time and music. While neither gathering is typified by the expression “worship service,” worship in the broader sense, and to a lesser degree in the narrower sense, does take place.
However, we must be careful to avoid the trap of seeing the meeting alone as constituting worship in the narrowest sense or the equally errant thought of dividing the morning activities into worship activities and non-worship activities.
Worship Time is not Limited to Praise Singing and Prayer
Too often we talk of a “worship team” leading worship, and then after worship the Pastor comes and teaches on the Bible. All of this has the aroma of platonic thought—the idea that particular spiritual activities are on a higher plane than more “mundane” tasks such as instruction and study of God’s word.
In the early church, a central emphasis was the reading and exposition of the scriptures. Only later did the focus shift from the word to the sacraments, following a more mystical bent. The protestant reformation again emphasized the centrality of the word.
Two of the earliest glimpses we have of a regular church gathering are Ephesians 5:15 – 21 and Colossians 3:15 – 16. In both cases the singing of “hymns, psalms and spiritual songs” involves an instructional or edifying element. We are to sing songs to God, but in so doing we also speak to each other.
If we compare the two passages, we see there a direct relationship to being filled with the Spirit (Eph.) and dwelling richly in the Word of Christ (Col.). There is no separation between activities of “worship” and activities of instruction; they are the same.
Worship is a Subjective Response to Objective Truth
One reason we make this strange and artificial separation between worship and instruction is that we tend to think of the sermon as a mental process and worship as an emotional or spiritual process. This is often reinforced by a horrible misreading of Ephesians 5:15-20:
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is frequently used to suggest that worship is primarily emotional—rather than getting drunk on wine, we should get “drunk” on the Holy Spirit. But notice that the entire paragraph is a series of contrasts: unwise vs. wise, foolish vs. understanding, and drunk vs. being filled with the Spirit.
The picture of worship given here is not that of unrestrained emotion over static truth; instead what is urged is a wise, informed lifestyle, filled with the Spirit which brings self-control. It leads to a thankfulness for who God is and what He has done for His people.
Worship involves all of man, not just parts of man. It is based upon God’s revelation of himself, and therefore involves content and propositional truth. We should think of worship as a subjective response to objective truth about God.
Theologians speak of this in terms of “revelation and response.” In other words, we learn about God and His works from His revelation and then respond in an appropriate way, bowing before Him and following His instruction. The starting point is truth: content about God.
The Emphasis Must be on God and not Performance
If truth about God is our starting point, then it follows that we must always keep the focus on God and His truth, not on style or performance. While we should strive always for excellence, what is excellent must not be judged by our culture’s definitions of style, but by fidelity to the truth of scripture. From this flow some specific applications.
First, we must not confuse preaching with oration, as we are prone to do in evangelicalism. The expression “apt to teach” has more to do with the equipping of the person to encourage with sound doctrine and refute false doctrine than it does with mastering rhetorical style. In our day, the test too often is whether the person can entertain an audience and inspire them.
Second, the emphasis of our music—as we “speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs,”—is to be on the content of what is sung and not on the emotional response of the hearer. Music can be both an aid to remembering as well as a way to manipulate. It is sometimes a fine line between the two. St. Augustine relates his struggle between these two aspects in his classic Confessions:
Sometimes, I seem to myself to give them more respect than is fitting, when I see that our minds are more devoutly and earnestly inflamed in piety by the holy words when they are sung than when they are not. And I recognize that all the diverse affections of our spirits have their appropriate measures in the voice and song, to which they are stimulated by I know not what secret correlation. But the pleasures of my flesh – to which the mind ought never to be surrendered nor by them enervated – often beguile me while physical sense does not attend on reason, to follow her patiently, but having once gained entry to help reason, it strives to run on before her and be her leader. Thus in these things I sin unknowingly, but I come to know it afterward.
. . . I am inclined – though I pronounce no irrevocable opinion on the subject – to approve of the use of singing in the church, so that by the delights of the ear the weaker minds may be stimulated to a devotional mood. Yet when it happens that I am more moved by the singing than by what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned wickedly, and then I would rather not have heard the singing. See now what a condition I am in. Weep with me, and weep for me, those of you who can so control your inward feelings that good results always come forth.
Very few of us struggle with worship with anything approaching the depths of Augustine. If the tune is catchy, we are often happy to give it a whole-hearted endorsement, no matter what the words say. This has led to a great corpus of Christian music that is doctrinally and biblically unsound and panders to excessive sentimentality or elevates ourselves and our feelings to center stage. It is indicative of our age when the major discussions of music in the church center around questions of style—chorus or hymn—instead of the real issue, which is of solid content extolling God. Just as we are careful what we teach from the pulpit, we should be careful what we sing and what we pray.
Conclusion
As we strive to keep these goals, we recognize that our efforts will not be perfect and pray for God’s protection and grace. May we develop a passion for God founded in who He is and respond in gratitude for what He has done.