Where’s the Worship?

Editor’s Note: This editorial by a guest author put to words a topic that my wife and I have been contemplating for the past few months.  Namely, where does worship fit in our return to simple, reproducible, organic worship of Yeshua?

Source: Brandon O’Brien, Out of Ur Newsletter

Perhaps the single greatest contribution of the missional movement—however we define “missional”—is its insistence that the restoration of the world, the perpetual expansion of the gospel, has been God’s central activity from the beginning of time. Not only that, but the conversation has helped us realize that we have enjoyed several hundred years time when we could assume that most people (in the West) were Christians, so that our missionary impulse has cooled. Those days are over. It’s time for the church to start actively advancing the mission of God again.

What I fear has been lost in recent years is an emphasis on the importance of worship. Now, I’m thrilled to death that people are increasingly recognizing that worship (more specifically, music) shouldn’t be used as the public relations wing of the church to draw in crowds. Worship is not a tool for church growth or a means to any end, really. And it’s nice to have a break from all the arguments over appropriate methods and styles of worship.

There has been a general transition, in American culture at least, toward perceiving all of life as sacred and, therefore, nearly every activity as worship. Serving my family dinner is worship; editing an article to the glory of God is worship; loving my neighbor as myself is worship. Combined with this, the missional movement has reminded us that the Sunday morning gathering of the church is not its most important event. I think we’ve over corrected, and many of us have decided that it’s not important at all.

There are some streams of Christianity that would argue that worship, not mission, is the chief purpose of the people of God. The Westminster Catechism says, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” The purpose of mission, then, is to connect more people to God, so they can glorify and enjoy him. So mission serves worship, not the other way around.

It seems to me that at the very least, worship and mission are the twin pillars of the Christian experience. It may well be that we have focused on worship for centuries now to the neglect of mission. And it is a blessing we are recovering our calling to the nations. But as we’re rethinking missions, let’s also rethink what it means to be a worshipping community—beyond music and style and lights and PowerPoint. After all, the gospel is for all people, and it is our duty to take it to them; but the closing scenes of Scripture are a great multi-ethnic choir singing songs of praise to their Creator.

One Response to “Where’s the Worship?”

1. Cynthia Stephens says:

   July 29, 2009 at 9:26 pm

   I like what Andrew Murray says about worship in The Andrew Murray Daily Reader on page 24, Worship in the Spirit. Funny…he didn’t mention the word music or “worship team”, “praise and worship”, etc…