Distractions to Worship
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called “Distractions to Worship“.I thank God that he has given me many opportunities to worship him in response to many things that some people would consider “distractions”. How do you respond to “distractions”?
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Saturday night, several friends met in our home for dinner and great conversation. We’ve been meeting together every week or so since last March (see the post called “Fellowship of Faith“). During the week before, I had the chance to talk to one of my neighbors who was struggling in her life. I had invited her to our Saturday evening get togethers, but she did not come. To be honest, I was disappointed. One of the purposes of our meeting together at our home on Saturday evenings has always been to have a safe environment to introduce our neighbors to the gospel and to other believers who are living out the implications of the gospel.
So, I was disappointed that my neighbor did not come to our house last Saturday evening. However, my disappointment did not last long. Soon, I could tell that God was doing a great work in the lives of the people who did gather together. There are so many things that we talked about, and so many ways that I was challenged and encouraged that it is difficult to decide what to write about. But, there is one thing in particular that stands out.
Several people brought up that they had been distracted from worshiping God by various things in their lives. Some people were distracted by strained relationships with other brothers and sisters in Christ. Others were hindered in their worship of God because of certain situations or circumstances that they were going through.
But, as we think through this issue, we must first ask what we mean by worship. If we are talking about singing songs or listening to a teacher or giving an offering or attending a meeting, then we are not talking about worship the way it is described in Scripture. Can these things be a part of worship? Certainly, but they do not constitute worship. In fact, worship – either personal or corporate – can occur without any of those activities taking place. Also, all of those activities can take place, but it does not mean that anyone is worshiping. Instead, worship is an attitude of the heart that is revealed in action. Worship is obedience to God. When we obey, we worship.
If we feel that we cannot worship because something is distracting us, then we are either misunderstanding what it means to worship, or there is sin in our own life. Usually, when we say that we are distracted from worship, we mean that we are interrupted while singing or can’t hear the preacher, or something to that effect. But, as I said previously, we are not limited to certain activities.
We no longer depend on a priest to offer intercession and sacrifice for us. We now have a high priest (Jesus Christ) who is never distracted and never fails in his duties. Plus, he makes us priest, so that we can offer spiritual sacrifices ourselves, both individually and corporately.
We no longer need a temple in order to enter the presence of God. Now, the Spirit has made us – again individually and corporately – into the temple of God and God dwells within each of us through the presence of His Spirit. We do not require the work of another person in order to commune with God; God is already communing with us.
We no longer need certain rituals and activities in order to present ourselves before God. Jesus has already carried out the only ritual necessary to bring us into the presence of God: his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Now, since we are indwelled with the Spirit of God, we have direct access to God.
Thus, no one can do anything to prevent our worship (response in obedience) of God. No circumstance or situation can prevent us from worshiping God. God has provided everything that we need.
For example, consider the situation where you are sitting among a group of believers, listening to someone teach. The teaching is very inspiring and challenging. You are really enjoying it. Beside you, a baby starts crying. Can the crying baby distract you from worshiping God? If we assume that you can only worship by listening to the teacher, then the baby would be a distraction. If we assume instead that the way you respond to the crying baby and the baby’s mother reveals your obedience to God, then you can continue to worship – even if you cannot hear the teacher. Perhaps, in this situation, worship would require you to give up your seat and stop listening to the wonderful teaching in order to help out a weary, young mother by walking around with the crying baby. If, instead, we respond to the crying baby by becoming angry at the “distraction” and the loss of an opportunity to listen to Bible teaching, the baby is not truly a distraction – the baby is simply revealing the sin in your own life.
Once again, if we recognize that activities and rituals do not equal worship, then we should also recognized that we cannot be “distracted” from worship by outside interferences. Instead, the only thing that can “distract” us from worshiping God is sin.
I wish that I could say that I brought this up last Saturday night, but I didn’t. It was another very wise brother who started the conversation. But, as we talked about this, several people begin admitting that it was truly sin in their own life that was hindering their obedience to God. Thus, another person’s actions or atitudes were not distracting someone from worship. Instead it was his or her own pride and self-centeredness. Circumstances and situations do not hinder our worship. Instead, it is the person’s own selfish expectations that are hindering their relationship with God.
Can we admit that only our own sin can hinder or distract us from worshiping God?
Your everyday, ordinary life
Almost two years ago, when I was part of a group blog called “Life in the Journey“, I wrote a post called “Your everyday, ordinary life“. One of the quotes in my post yesterday reminded me of what I had written in that post two years ago.
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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m reading various sections of the New Testament in The Message. I finished reading the book of Acts Saturday night, and I was looking through a couple of passages Sunday morning, when I read this passage:
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him. (Romans 12:1-3 The Message)
I love this sentence: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. This is truly the desire of my heart, and I believe it is the type of worship that God desires – worship that comes from the everyday, ordinary life that has been transformed by God… “by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him”.
Yes, God is concerned about our obedience in the big things, but when we learn to lay before him our “sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life”, then we begin to understand what it means to worship him in spirit and in truth. I’m not sure that we can worship God in the big things, if we have not learned to worship in our everyday, ordinary life.
For two of the last three Sundays, I’ve been teaching on the topic of “trust in the Lord” from the Proverbs. The main text was Proverbs 3:5-6 – Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. (ESV) As I studied the phrase “trust in the Lord” in Proverbs, I realized that if we truly trust in the Lord – that is, find our security or safety in him – then that trust will demonstrate it through our lives in obedience (Prov 16:20), humility (Prov 28:25), and complete submission to him (Prov 29:25).
Again, this trust is demonstrated in big ways in our lives – our families, our jobs, moving to a new location, etc. – but it is primarily demonstrated in the small, everyday, ordinary decisions that we make – the way we speak to a friend, the way we spend a small amount of money, the way we get upset when our favorite television show is pre-empted.
Trust God in the small things, and the big things will fall into place. Worship God in the small things, and the big things will fall into place. Forget about God in the small things, and the big things will be for ourselves and not for God.
I’m learning – I hope others are learning – that God is interested in my everyday, ordinary life. Can others see God demonstrated in your everyday, ordinary life?
Asking questions
I met Jack (“Flight Level Musings“) at the “Developing a Biblical Ecclesiology” seminar last March. In his latest post, “??????Questions??????“, Jack gives us a list of questions that he intends to ask people. I think these are good questions for all of us to consider:
- What does the bible say about the gathering of the saints?
- What is the purpose of the gathering of the saints?
- What is a church service?
- Is the gathering of the saints or worship service the place for believers to participate or spectate?
- What is a worship service?
- When does the worship service start?
- What does the bible say about the worship service?
I’ve been asking some of these same questions, and turning to Scripture for answers. The answers that I find there are not always what I thought I would find.
Sing Song = Worship?
A good friend of mine used the phrase “sing song” for the singing time of our meeting. Why do so many call this time of singing “worship”? Here are two interesting blog posts that ask the same question in different ways:
David Nelson talks about “Disney World Worship” in the third part of his series “A Curmudgeon Weighs in on Evangelical Worship, Part 3“.
ASBO Jesus’ cartoon #684 gets right to the point.
What do you call worship? What does God call worship?
Efficient Production of Worship Units
Arthur’s post (at “the voice of one crying out in suburbia“) called “Assembly Line Worship” parallels and complements my previous post “How much organization is necessary?“
Arthur says:
We have compartmentalized, segregated, divided, specialized worship. In fine American tradition, we have taken the assembly line idea and put it in place in the church. One person leading prayer, one person teaching, one person praying is efficient. Having lots of people teach doesn’t work, some people aren’t great at it, so we will hire someone professionally, with the right credentials, to teach and preach for us. It is his specialization, like a worker in an assembly line who attaches widget A to part B. That guy over there is a good singer, so we will hire him to lead the singing for us. That woman is good with kids, so she is in charge of nursery. That guy is young, has cool hair with lots of product and gets along with kids. He is our “youth ministerâ€. We pick the very best person, based on some dubious qualifications at times, and put them in charge of aspects of our “worshipâ€. Meanwhile the bulk of us will sit back in our pews and drop money in the plate to express our approval, like buying tickets to a theatrical performance.
Read the entire post. He raises some very good points.
Edification as Worship
JT at “Between Two Worlds” points us to several lectures concerning worship in his post “Lectures on Worship“.
I was delighted to see that the first few lectures were given by David Peterson, author of one of my favorite books Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship (IVP 2002). (If you haven’t read this book, you should.) I was also delighted to see the title of Peterson’s fourth lecture: “Meeting God in the Gathering of His People“.
Then, as I started listening to this lecture – hoping to hear what I had read in his book – I was thrilled when Peterson says at the very beginning, “Edification is the lost factor in alot of our discussions about worship”. Yes!
Later in the lecture (around the 34 minute mark), Peterson begins defining “edification”:
And in Christian terms, “building” means founding, maintaining, and advancing the church in God’s way. Now that definition needs to be set aside of what I think are some fairly common misapprehensions.
First of all, a lot of people think that edification purely has to do with education – that it’s a purely intellectual activity. And so you say, “Was that an edifying sermon today?” “Yes, I learned alot”. hmmm… well, that’s not exactly what the Bible means by edification as we will see.
Or, I’ve heard people come out of a symphony concert, “That Beethoven was very edifying tonight”. And what they mean is, “I felt good about that Beethoven. My that was exciting!” I feel good. That’s not edification either.
Edification is a corporate concept. It has to do with founding, maintaining, and advancing the church in Gods way.
Peterson goes on to exegete several passages of Scripture to demonstrate that edification means both adding to the church in number, and also increasing the maturity of the church corporately. Edification of a process of growth and development for the whole church. He says, “Edification is a corporate motion. It occurs when Christians minister God’s truth to one another in love, seeking to express and encourage a Christ-centered faith, hope, and love.”
At one point in the lecture, Peterson talks about the blurring of distinctions between the vertical aspect of worship (between God and us) and the horizontal aspect of worship (between us and other people). He says (around the 21 minute mark):
So the three things can be happening together: 1) God can be speaking to us. 2) We are ministering to one another. 3) And we are responding to God. It’s silly to make artificial distinctions between the vertical and the horizontal…. Is not worship also listening to God, ministering to one another, declaring his greatness, preaching, testimony, singing. The whole thing needs to be thought of as intricately interconnected – the vertical and the horizontal… That’s really at the heart of what I’m trying to say to you this afternoon.
As John told his readers (1 John 1:3), our fellowship with one another is truly fellowship with God the Father and the Son. Its time for us to recognize that we usually demonstrate our love for God by loving others, and we serve God by serving others – especially in a corporate context.
As we build up one another – as we exercise our gifts to serve one another and as we speak to encourage, instruct, and admonish one another – we are worshiping God. The horizontal aspects of worship and the vertical aspects of worship become blurred. However, if we fail to edify one another, then we have neither the horizontal nor the vertical aspects of worship – regardless of what we do or say.
As Paul told the church in Corinth, whenever we come together as brothers and sisters in Christ, everything we do should be for the purpose of building up one another – that is, seeking to express and encourage a Christ-centered faith, hope, and love. If we are not edifying one another as the church, then we are not worshiping.
More on Worship
David Nelson, Academic Dean at Southeastern Seminary, wrote a very good post about worship last week called “A Curmudgeon Weighs in On Evangelical Worship, Part 2“. He begins his post like this:
A substantial amount of what is said about worship by evangelicals today is folderol. That means foolishness or nonsense. I could have just used those terms, but I like the word “folderol” better. Emotional states don’t constitute worship, nor does music, nor does a particular order of service. The genuineness of worship is not determined by the building in which the church gathers, the technology we use in a service, or how trendy our clothes are. In fact, I would argue that worship in the Bible is not even primarily focused on the gathered assembly but is more often a matter of a way of life within the context of the community of faith that lives among the world in order to propose the truth of a better world. Worship is, put another way, the believer’s response in all of life to the Great Commandment (to love God) in light of the Father’s demonstration of His immense love toward sinners in Jesus Christ by His Spirit.
I read accounts like this more and more these days. And, I’m excited about articles like the one written by Dr. Nelson. From the articles that I’ve written lately concerning worship (“Worship again” and “Romans and Worship“) as well as some older posts about worship (“Here I am to worship“, “Worship Service“, and “Learning to worship together“), most of my readers know that I agree with him.
But, how does this play out from believer to believer and from church to church? Why do we continue to hear the term “worship” associated with music, a place, a time, an event? Why do we continue to use terms such as “worship service”, “worship hall”, “worship leader”, “worship music”, “worship band”, etc.?
When I think of the times that I worshiped God last week, I certainly recall the time that I met with the church last Sunday. But, I do not consider my attendance to be worship! No, I worshiped when I encouraged, taught, comforted, loved, etc. my brothers and sisters. I also worshiped as we ate together. But, there were other times that I worshiped as well. For example, when our family and some friends helped someone move last week, we worshiped.
Neither time was more “worshipful” than the other, unless, of course, I was being more obedient at one time than the other. Similarly, I cannot separate worship into “vertical” demonstrations of worship (directed toward God) and “horizontal” demonstrations of worship (directed toward other people). When we serve others, we serve God. When we love God, we can’t help but love others.
In reality, understanding worship as we see it in Scripture, is difficult and simple. It is difficult to worship because we recognize that it is impossible for us (on our own) to worship God the way he desires or the way he deserves. We would naturally prefer to worship ourselves. It is simple to worship because we recognized that we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and (super)-naturally everything that we do and say can be worship – a life lived set apart for God, which will necessarily result in a life lived for others.
But, even though we often recognize that all of life is worship – as David Nelson wrote in his article, and as others have written – our culture, our language, and our practices often demonstrate otherwise. I can’t change church culture. However, I can change my language and my practice. I’ve been trying to make those changes over the last few years – often struggling against church culture. I wonder… is there anyone else out there who has started changing their language and practice? Is there anyone else out there who is willing to start?
Romans and Worship
This post continues the discussion of worship – see my post “Worship again“. In Romans chapters 1-11, Paul tells his readers, among other things, that both Jews and Gentiles alike are justified, sanctified, and glorified by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Beginning in Romans 12:1, we find that Paul uses several “priestly” words in association with followers of Jesus – “present/offer”, “sacrifice”, “worship/service”:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1 ESV)
These followers of Jesus are now priests of God. The word “worship/service” (λατÏεία – latreia) along with the verb form is especially interesting because that word group is used to indicate the work of priests in the Old Testament.
There is another cluster of “priestly” words found towards the end of the book of Romans:
But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:15-16 ESV)
In this passage, Paul explains that he is a priest of God as well. Just the Roman believers were to work as priests of God, so did Paul. But, what does this “priestly service” look like? I think we find this described in the passages between Romans 12:1 and Romans 15:15-16.
What does “priestly service” look like for a follower of Jesus? It begins by recognizing the grace of God, and serving others through the gifts that he gives to all his followers through the Spirit. (Romans 12:3-8) “Priestly service” continues through the way we interact with one another – beginning with genuine love, but including hospitality, blessing and rejoicing, etc. (Romans 12:9-21)
“Priestly service” for the follower of Jesus also includes responding correctly to government authorities. (Romans 13:1-7) To emphasize the importance of love, Paul again instructs us to love one another – this is not just a feeling, but a manner of living. (Romans 13:8-14) Our worship/service also includes accepting one another and not judging one another – even concerning “religious” concepts. (Romans 14:1-15:7)
How do we “worship” God? We worship God in the way that we serve, submit to, love, and accept one another. When do we worship? Well, we worship when we serve, submit to, love, and accept one another. What if we’re not doing these things? Then we’re not worshiping.
What if we’re singing and listening to preaching, but we not demonstrating love to those around us? Then we’re not worshiping. What if we’re demonstrating God’s love to those around us, but we’re not singing nor listening to preaching. Then, we’re worshiping.
Looking at Romans 12-15, we see how worship to Paul has very little to do with what Christians often call worship today. Can singing and listening to preaching be beneficial. Sure. But, we should not confuse these with worship.
If we wish to express worship/service to God in ways that he finds pleasing and acceptable, then we will take Paul’s instructions to the Romans seriously: we will demonstrate genuine love, submit to governmental authorities, love through the way that we live, and accept people just as they are – the way that Christ accepts them. Of course, its easier to attend a “worship service”.
Worship again
I’ve enjoyed the discussion about worship over at Arthur’s blog “the voice of one crying out in suburbia” (see his posts “A call for a new Reformation in the church: Worship, regulative or normative?“, “Good thoughts from John Frame on the Regulative Principle“, and especially “More on worship“). In that last post, he says:
I think I ended up being more narrowly focused in my post on worship than I intended. My point when I started thinking about this was not to throw mud at the RPW (regulative principle of worship), but instead to question the more broad sense of worship in the church. I have long sought a more pure worship form in Sunday gatherings (which I defined as being more “Reformed”), and I am still sympathetic to that desire, but that is not the end all of the Christian worship experience. I am concerned by an attitude in myself that if we “go to church” on Sunday, we have fulfilled our worship quota for the week when nothing could be further from the truth…
One, but only one, expression of a life of worship is corporate worship. That statement is not to denigrate or diminish the value of corporate worship, but to recognize that culturally and traditionally we expect to see the pinnacle of our worship to take place in a church on Sunday morning but that may not be the reality and probably shouldn’t be. We may affirm the idea of constant worship being a part of our general lives, but we still use the term “worship” in reference to corporate church gathering and focus our worship attention on the corporate expressions which I believe has led to an unhealthy delineation between worship and “the rest of the week”.
The disconnect between Sunday morning piety and the other six days where we live differently are crippling to the church.
(What follows is not a response to Arthur or to anyone who commented on his posts. Instead, his post, epsecially the last one, triggered me to think about worship again.)
Arthur brings up something that I’ve noticed as well. It is very difficult to discuss “worship” in the context of the American church (and perhaps in other nations as well, I don’t know) without the discussion centering on the church meeting. In fact, some readers probably bristle because I used the phrase “church meeting” instead of “worship service”. However, we must realize that the inclination to associate the church meeting with worship did not arise from Scripture.
Go ahead and study… you should. Studying the association in Scripture between the church meeting and worship is one of the reasons that I became interested in ecclesiology. But, that study also encouraged my interest in worship – not singing and praying and preaching, but worship, from the perspective of Scripture. And, as I studied worship in Scripture, I found that worship has more to do with how I live my life than what I do on Sunday mornings – although that is certainly part of it – around 1% of it (1-2 hours out of my 168 hour week). So, why do we act as if that 1-2 hours is 90% of our worship (or even all of it)?
In fact, our Sunday church meeting is not the entirety – not even the majority – of my “corporate worship” – that is, worship along with other people. What do I mean? Well, I work with other people; I live with other people; I invite other people to my house; I go to other people’s homes; I serve with other people. These activities happen throughout the week and should be lives as worship in the presence of other people, and since many of these people are believers as well, they are (or should be) worshiping also – corporate worship.
But, our worship principles (think regulative and normative principles of worship) are not very helpful in these times of worship – the majority of our worship. Whether the church sings hymns or choruses or chants or psalms does not help me worship God during 99% of my week. Whether the pastor’s teaching is expository or topical does not change how I worship God when I’m at dinner with friends. Whether we stand when we read Scripture or not does not tell me how to worship when my friends are visiting my home.
Yes, we need to talk about worship. We need to think about worship. But, more than that, we need to worship – we need to live a life – a whole life – 100% life – that honors God in everything that we do. As long as we continue to use the word “worship” as slang for the church meeting, I do not think we will understand what it means to worship. We will continue to caught up in things like what to sing or how to pray or how to teach – things not covered in Scripture at all – and we will the most important parts of life – walking daily with God, trusting him with every aspect of our lives (yes, even that insignificant aspect and yes, even that huge national problem), showing his mercy and grace, loving others, worshiping.
Worship Service
Two years ago, Margaret, my wife, had ankle surgery. While she was recovering, several of our brothers and sisters in Christ took care of her, our children, our house, etc. while I was at work. I wrote about this in a post called “Worship Service“. Given my series this week about semantics, I thought this would be a good opportunity to use the words with their scriptural meanins. So, here is a post about real worship service.
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We have seen various worship services during the last few weeks while my wife is recovering from her ankle surgery.
Several people prepared dinner for us, and many of them did not drop the food off, but stayed with us and spent time with us.
Some friends came over to our house and cleaned while I was at work.
Other friends picked up our children and took them where they needed to go, because Margaret could not drive.
There are many, many, many other acts of service that people did on our behalf. I believe that God sees this type of service as an offering of worship to him. Consider these verses:
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies–in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 4:8-11 ESV)
Have you participated in a worship service lately?