How Much Do You Spend A Month On Snacks?

If you are like me, the number is probably pretty substantial. Coffee from Starbucks, snacks from a vending machine, fast food drive-thru, convenience foods that cost ten times as much as a prepared meal. On and on. I am pretty frugal in some ways but we have a lot of expenditures each month that are really unnecessary. I like to go to Wendy's for dinner after volunteering at the pregnancy resource center. My wife and I have breakfast virtually every Saturday at our local greasy spoon and for what we spend there (way less than $20) we could have a very nice breakfast for the whole family. So even though it seems like money is tight, in reality I have a lot of disposable income. Plus I am getting a raise starting in April, not a huge one but a raise regardless.

So this morning I signed up to sponsor a Haitian orphan at Village de Vie through the Haiti Orphan Project for $50/month. That is not a lot of money and because I personally know and trust the brothers and sisters who administer the Haiti Orphan Project I am confident that this money is going right where it needsto go to care for an orphan. So what does this money provide?

•Housing

•Nutritious Food

•Clothing

•A Full Time Caregiver (house “mama”)

•Quality Education

•School Supplies

•Uniforms

•Medical Care


That seems like a lot for $50 but money goes a lot further in Haiti than it does in America!

The point is not to wag a finger or guilt you into something, just to think. We all know we spend lots of money on stuff we don't need. How many of us really need a personal smartphone so we can access the Internet in the doctor's office or play Angry Birds while waiting on a red light? I can look at the personal spending of anyone and find something "unnecessary" or frivolous. That isn't my intent. I feel compelled to give out of love, as an act of worship, not an obligation, . God loves a cheerful giver, not a guilty giver. When we give for the work of the Kingdom I am sure we please God and that a generous gift from a cheerful heart, given in love, is received as a sweet aroma to God, not to make us right with Him but as an act of worship from a regenerate heart. $50 makes an enormous difference in the life of an orphan in a country where driving through Starbucks to get a $2 coffee is not even an option. If not Haiti, please consider where else you can worship God through giving but I certainly would encourage you to consider this cause as a great way to get the maximum "bang for your buck".

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Knowledge, Edification and Worship

Alan has a really timely (for me anyway) post this morning on edification and worship, Worship, Jesus Christ, and Gathering with the Church. Alan ends up his post with the statement: Edifying the church is worship. Lots of people would agree with that but the devil is always in the details. Namely, what does edification mean? This was timely because of something I read earlier in the week and a conversation with a co-worker this morning.

What I read earlier was a post from Credo Mag with the clever title: Put the theology book down and do something that matters. The point was that many people see theology conferences and the reading of theology books as a largely empty exercise and that we should be doing something more tangible (the text was from an opening address at a theology conference)….

What are we doing here?

I’m sure we could walk out this building and, within five minutes, find any number of hurting people desperately in need of care and attention, longing for a meaningful conversation, needing to hear the Gospel. People who are cold, hungry, lonely, and lost — forgotten, neglected, and abused by a sin-fractured world.

Yet here we sit, ready to spend an entire day presenting papers, hearing arguments, and discussing abstract ideas apparently far removed from the real needs of everyday people. How does discussing epistemology, hamartiology, ecclesiology, or the intricate details of ancient historiography really help people come to Jesus and begin healing their broken bodies and souls?

The author of the post, Marc Cortez, came back and argued that studying theology is worship and therefore was a worthwhile exercise. His comparison between modern theology conferences and the council of Nicea in the fourth century is quite a stretch but his argument is a persuasive one for many people, especially many pastors who see studying theology as an integral part of their calling.

Then this morning I had a long conversation about “church” with a co-worker. He told me that he attends a very large (four services consisting of thousands of people) church. I asked him how well he knew his “pastor” and he was pretty sure that he (the pastor) didn’t even know my co-workers name. What my co-worker liked about his church was that it was fairly anonymous, no one was asking him about his business, and the sermons have him some practical tools for everyday life.

These two examples seem quite different. The hardcore Reformed academic types spurn and mock the “give me something practical” sermons while the more pragmatic average America churchgoer sees those highly doctrinal and intellectual sermons as boring and not applicable to our everyday life. But both of them are aimed at the same thing: information. On top of that there is the “worship” component. I go to church to “worship” and to learn something that will help me. It will help me be a better dad or it will help me to understand a theological nuance better but ultimately it is aimed at something I can internalize.

Is that what we see “church” intended to do in the New Testament? I don’t think we do. Let's look at a couple of key passages…

First I would put forth 1 Corinthians 14. Paul speaks of “building up” and “encouraging” here as well. A lot. The church gathers to be built up and there is an informational component here but I don’t think Paul is concerned with the church being built up just for the sake of having better informed Christians. There seems to be more to it…

Next I would turn to Hebrews 10: 24-25….

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

We hear this passage referenced a lot, normally as a club to make you feel bad if you don’t “go to church” on Sunday but the reason we go is just as important as the going itself. According to the writer of Hebrews it seems the emphasis is on the “why” of the gathering and the “why” is that the Body is to encourage one another and stir one another up to love and good works. In other words the gathering is focused on the subsequent going, not on the gathering itself. Our edification, our “building up” is done with a purpose and that purpose is to love others and serve them. That service means caring for their material needs for certain but more importantly to minister to them spiritually, especially for those who don’t know Jesus Christ. To do that means we have to go to them, not just read about going to them or listen to a sermon about going to them. We must go but that can be scary if we are not prepared...

What about those pastors and elders and other leaders in the church? Is their role to pass on information, to make us better informed about theology or practical living? I don’t think so…

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)

Pastors are not called to impart “head knowledge”, or at least not exclusively, but as more mature believers who live praiseworthy lives worthy of imitation they are called to equip other believers to DO the work of ministry. Therein lies the issue with the sermon. Sermons are one way and the preferred way to pass on doctrine and other information but sermons are quite poor at equipping people. For example, imagine that in training people to be surgeons the training consisted exclusively of lectures. Lectures on how to cut someone open and sew them back up. Lectures on how to talk to patients and their families. Lectures on what to do when something goes wrong. Lots and lots of very good lectures and lots of discussion about surgical theory. Never any practical instruction, never any training where a student watches an experienced surgeon perform open heart surgery and talk to patients and react when something unexpected happens. Never any time when the new student performs surgery herself under the watchful eye of her instructor. Upon graduation the newly minted surgeon is given a scalpel, sent into a surgery room and told to perform heart surgery. Think they might freeze up? Little wonder most Christians have such a hard time witnessing to other people. They have been told about it over and over again but rarely see it happen. Little wonder also that many Christians are uncomfortable with ministering to those that are hurting and in need. They have read about it and heard it lectured about but have little first hand experience and in real life it is messy and scary.

So certainly the gathering of the church has a “knowledge” component to it. There is no sense in equipping people to do the work of ministry if they don’t know who Jesus Christ is or what the Gospel means. There is also absolutely a sense of “worship” when we gather but if our “worship” only makes us feel better and doesn’t drive us to love and serve others it isn’t really worship at all. Edification builds up the church (see an older post from Alan on this Edification as worship) but that building up the church is not merely educating the church but also equipping the church for the work of ministry and encouraging us in the work of ministering and the doing of good works.

Worship that doesn’t equip and encourage Christians to carry out the work of ministry is not true worship.

Knowledge without example does little to aid in ministry.

Edification that doesn’t equip isn’t truly edifying.

Mission as worship

Mission is one thing. Worship is another. The only time that they meet is when a missionary comes to our "worship service" to tell us about what he is doing, show us some slides and ask for money.

That is kind of the attitude that dominates the church world. Not in those words but certainly in how we act and what we emphasize. Dave Black calls that false division out with a new essay, Missions As a Lifestyle of Worship. Here is an extensive quote, I hope Dr. Black doesn't mind:

For this reason, I can’t be content any longer to talk about a missional theology without at least exploring its implications for its transformation potential. God’s concerns are much bigger than the typical church’s concerns. Take worship for example. Understood biblically, worship is not a gathering of individual Christians seeking an intimate experience with God. Rather, worship is the offering of our lives sacrificially to Him daily (see Rom. 12:1-2). Worship is not merely an occasional activity of the believer. Instead, it defines the core of Christian discipleship: We are called to be worshippers in every sphere of life by participating in the Triune God’s mission in the world. This can take place only through intentional “neighboring” practices and in relationship with non-Christians. The key is for ordinary Christians (like you and me) to develop their capacity to serve their neighbors in love. The work of the Spirit is crucial to this renewed participation in society. Christians are to embody the ethics of Jesus before a watching world, providing it with a limited but powerful glimpse of what it means to be a bearer of God’s image. The Gospels clearly present Jesus as constantly moving into unfamiliar territory across cultural barriers and social lines. And at the heart of it all is the cross – the profound need for reconciliation through Jesus Christ, in whom God has acted to overcome the enmity of human sin. True Christian discipleship always means taking part in Christ’s ministry in the world in a dynamic yet concrete fashion.

Thus, when we speak of worship today, a much wider definition is needed. The church does not gather in order to worship. Believers gather as worshippers who have found their vocation in sharing in the community of Christ as He sends them like sheep among wolves to minister to the needs of others. This, as I said, represents a major paradigm shift in my own understanding of Christian worship. As I see it, too much of what passes as Christian worship today is unaffected by the world. It stands aloof, isolated, and ingrown. The incarnation and crucifixion are sung about but the realties behind these truths are rarely put into practice. Rather than participating deeply in the life of the world, the church holds itself apart from the world. This leads, in turn, to a highly individualistic conception of discipleship – a kind of anthropocentricism focused solely on an individual relationship with Jesus that fails to take into account the wider fabric of the Christian community, not to mention the Triune God’s life and activity with all creation. What remains is a watered-down, emasculated version of worship in which the vocation of the church as a missional, worshiping Body is severely diminished.

I spent quite a bit of time in the mindset that is prevalent in the church, especially in the conservative, highly academic corners, that sees "worship" as the purpose for the gathering of the church and "worship" defined as making believers into smarter, more discerning and theologically astute Christians. The assumption was that we needed to constantly refine our doctrine within the church, making disciples who were theologically mature (as we defined it) and this would inevitably lead to service and evangelism (i.e. inviting people to church). The problem with this mindset is that rather than leading to the assumed results we end up with Christians that are better and better informed and less and less engaged in mission. Church becomes an end in and of itself rather than a vehicle to reach a greater purpose, the purpose of carrying out God's mission in the world as His ambassadors.

A study of the New Testament gives us a far more robust, vibrant faith. It takes Paul out of the imaginary study full of scrolls where he spent his time preparing sermons and puts him out among the lost preaching Christ, working for a living among unbelievers, encouraging and equipping the church for the work of ministry so that they would not become overly dependent on him. It shows us a church under unimaginable persecution but simultaneously filled with joy, living in community and on fire for missions. There was little room for denominations, seminaries, committee meetings and mission boards because there were simply too many people who needed to encounter Jesus. I read the New Testament and then I look around and wonder what happened. It seems that comfort, ease, affluence happened and we have found it easier and more comfortable to turn inward, acting more like the world every day and yet reaching that same world less and less. We need to get back to the church as a distinctive, salty witness to the world that is not only distinct from the world but reaching that same world for Christ.

Old is not inherently Biblical and new is not necessarily worldly

Worldliness is a bad word. It is also a rarely defined word. Typically "worldly" really means "stuff that those people I don't like do" and almost always is directed at the latest fads. Having a coffee bar in your church? Worldly. Electric guitars? Worldly. A pastor who wears an open collared shirt instead of a suit and tie? Worldly. I don’t know of anyone who would embrace being called “worldly”. There just isn’t really a context where this is a positive term.

So at the White Horse Inn a recent post, Does Worship Really Need To Be Exciting? , referenced a book by an atheist who infiltrated the wacky world of evangelicalism (Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple). Out of the mouth of an unbeliever we find that Kevin went to Thomas Road Baptist Church (the church Jerry Falwell founded) and found the “worship” service there was an exercise in overstimulation. Score a point for sober, liturgical (non-Baptist of course) churches!

It is only tragic that it takes someone posing to be an evangelical to point out something that the “experts” themselves either can’t understand or chose to suppress—i.e., that the excitement of contemporary “worship” is more driven by consumerist impulses than genuine gratitude or spirituality.

If you’re drawn toward exciting, contemporary worship settings, know this—we all are! But this is not because it is right; not because it is proper; not because God is truly putting a burden on our hearts to pursue worship of him in this way… it is because all of us prefer to worship ourselves! All of us are idolaters who fashion gods in our own image!

If we like video clips, well then God must want us to watch those while worshiping him. If we like rock music, God must like it too. If we like to sit in church with our feet up, drinking a cafe mocha, then there can only be one reason for this—God must want nothing more than for us to sit in church with our feet up, drinking a cafe mocha! Whatever we like to do, God likes to do it too, right?

After all, we’re too genuine to be self-centered, right? Idolatry is only practiced by people out there, isn’t it? What we want to do just feels so right—how can you argue with that?!?!

I thought the feet up and relaxing while drinking a café mocha thing was hilarious since the early church met in homes, with the meal as a central part of the gathering and likely did so while reclining. The first thing that the early church did was probably not to install pews and pulpits so people would be forced to sit up straight and face the front of the room where the pulpit was.

Of course since the early church met in a form that looked nothing like even the most Reformedest churches and probably looked a lot more like a big family get together, the question can easily be flipped around. Of course God wants nothing more than for us to sit in church in a suit and tie, in a pew, staring forward, sitting and standing when told, listening to one guy up front speak for about 45 minutes and perhaps passing around “a nibble and a sip” in lieu of the Lord’s Supper. Turns out that what we think of as proper “regulative principle of worship” settings might just be as man centered and worldly as the most boisterous contemporary gathering.

I of course had a few comments on this notion:

Perhaps the somber, sober rituals of liturgical worship with its comfortable rhythms is every bit as appealing to the human desire for entertainment as the high production value Thomas Road service. Not all worldly entertainment is necessarily modern. Back a few hundred years ago what we think of as a properly sober “worship service” was high culture.

Rather than asking if a “worship service” is supposed to be modern worldly or older worldly, perhaps we should ask why we don’t see either form in the New Testament church. We might ask why we don’t see a ritualized Supper and instead see shared meals as the centerpiece of the community of the saints, why we see 1 Cor 14:26 as the model of church interaction and mutual edification rather than a one man show monologue sermon. Just because something is more than fifty years old doesn’t mean it is Biblical and just because something seems more modern doesn’t mean it is worldly.

The dirty secret of suit and tie fundamentalism and high church liturgy Reformed "worship" alike is that you can be every bit as worldly with a somber, button-down meeting as you can with a latte bar and a preacher with groovy glasses and skinny jeans. This is the same issue we see with the MacArthur-YRR kerfuffle. Focusing on externals like the clothing style someone is wearing is prime evidence of a largely worldly understanding of worship and the gathering of the church. That doesn’t mean that clothing choices are inherently value neutral. A woman who is dressed immodestly is immodest whether she is wearing a short skirt or she is wearing a sensible dress but is dolled up with make-up and adorned with flashy jewelry. It does mean that when we declare one culturally meaningful clothing style to be OK and another to be inherently worldly, we are missing the boat.

Here is the thing. Some people like the high church liturgical service. Some people like the rock-n-roll contemporary service. Neither of them looks like the early church and neither of them is supportable in other than the most ancillary way from Scripture so both of them are equally worldly and designed to appeal to our personal tastes and preferences. We have been conditioned to think that cultural religious traditions that are a few hundred years old are somehow more representative of a millennia old church than cultural religious traditions that are only ten years old. New is worldly, older is Biblical. A pipe organ is OK, a synthesizer is not (and by the way, synthesizers are never OK no matter the setting).

That is not to suggest that a lot of the stuff going on in “contemporary worship services” is not worldly. I think it is. Is it more worldly than the worship services of many traditional churches? Not really, not when you look at it from a big picture view. The structure of the worship service, traditional or contemporary, is designed to appeal to people. It provides a religious experience of some sort in a controlled and limited fashion. For the most part someone else is doing the prep work, you just have to show up and observe. It is typically predictable, safe, consistent and hassle free. In a word, it is worldly.

We need to quit fussing and feuding over the peripherals in the church and get back to studying the Scriptures earnestly and examining all of our most treasured traditions in light of what we see. Many of these arguments are fighting over something that has never been seriously questioned at a fundamental level in the first place. If we want to stamp out worldliness in the church we need to stop letting the world define the church for us.

Leviticus 10 and the New Covenant church

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the LORD has said, 'Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.'" And Aaron held his peace. (Lev 10:1-3)

The account of the sons of Aaron and the unauthorized fire gets a lot of air time in certain parts of the church. I have used it before to argue for a specific and narrow view of how the church should gather, a view that oddly enough looks just like a peculiarly Reformed understanding of the church worship service. Is that a proper understanding and application of this event?

Nadab and Elihu, the sons of Aaron, came before the Lord in a manner not prescribed by Him. For their disobedience, God struck them down with fire and likewise commanded Aaron to hold his peace about the sudden death of his sons. The gist of the argument is that God takes worship very seriously. The Sunday morning gathering is a worship service aimed at God. Ergo how we worship on Sunday morning is important to God. The message is that we need to be awfully careful about how we conduct the Sunday morning “worship service” because God takes worship of Himself quite seriously.

That is the argument. The argument however raises as many questions as it answers.

Here is the big question I have. Is the account of Nadab and Abihu applicable to the Sunday morning gathering of the church, or any gathering of the church for that matter?

That it turn raises other questions.

Is the gathering of the New Covenant church of Christ a considered a “worship service"? In other words, is "worship" the primary purpose of the gathering?

Does God command specific actions when the church gathers in the same very specific and rigidly defined way that He did when the Israelites performed the worship rituals in the Tabernacle/Temple?

Did the manner and purpose of worship change with the transition from the Old Covenant to the New?

Another question. Is the “worship service” as we traditionally understand it a faithful reflection of New Covenant worship and is it a faithful representation of the purpose and form of the gathered church we see in Scriptures?

Here is my take but I am interested in your thoughts on this as well as other Old Covenant worship rituals.

We must, as God’s covenant people, view everything through the filter of the New Covenant in Christ. We are on dangerous ground when we look back on this side of the cross and try to interpret Scripture, especially in the New Testament, through the filter or lens of the Old Covenant. If the New Testament is clear on anything it is that Christ has instituted a new and better covenant and that the old covenant is obsolete and fading away. The Anabaptists focused on the New Testament, not to the exclusion of the Old but in recognition that the Old Testament is full of types and shadows that point to Christ but in the New Testament Christ is revealed in His glory. This focus on the New Testament was the source of much of the criticism and persecution that was directed at them by Magisterial Reformers and Roman Catholics alike and also the reason for many of their counter-cultural views of the church and doctrines like baptism. As followers of Christ our central focus necessarily is on the New Testament where we see the unfolding of God’s promise in Jeremiah 31: 31-34 of a new and better covenant, not like the old. We see it instituted at the cross and remembered in the Supper. We cannot and should not desire to go back to the Old Covenant but rather should focus on the glory of God revealed in the New Covenant and read the Old in light of our position as recipients and beneficiaries of God’s grace in the New.

Furthermore, the purpose of the gathered New Covenant church is not to engage in worship rituals but to be edified, equipped and encouraged to do the work of ministry out in the world. In many ways worship is as much (or even more) what we do “out there” than it is what we do “in here”. The concept of worship under the New Covenant is less a specific set of rituals done in a time, place and manner than it is a continual life of worship. This corresponds with the idea that God doesn’t dwell in a physical place but rather His spirit makes His dwelling place among His people.

I absolutely think that Leviticus 10 and the account of the sons of Aaron are pertinent today because they show us just how serious God is about His holiness and about worship of Himself. I just don’t see that we can make a direct or even indirect correlation between the worship of God in Leviticus 10 and the gathering of the New Covenant people of God today.

Thoughts?

What is worship?

Alan Knox made this comment in response to a previous post:

And if you don't think that working to support yourself and your family and others is worship, then you don't understand what Scripture says about worship.

What?! You mean worship isn't a specially controlled and scheduled activity, something we do on Sunday morning that mostly involved us watching someone else? In fact working to support our families and to minister to the needs of others is every bit as much an act of worship as "going to church"?!

Hmmm, that is a bold claim. What does Scripture say?

I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. (Act 20:33-36)

So Paul sees working and giving as acts of worship and makes no mention of doing so by donating to the church general fund. Well what does Jesus say?

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." (John 4:21-24)

So worship is not based on where we go but the Spirit and Truth we do it in. So we can worship anywhere, anytime and not just here or there. How did we get so far from Scripture that we have decreed certain buildings as holy space, certain men as holy men, certain times as holy hours and seasons? A lot has to do with the error of going back to the Old Testament to find how the New Covenant church should worship. I have seen (and have done this myself) Christians referencing a famous event in the Old Testament that is supposed to speak to Christian worship, the strange fire offered by Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron in Leviticus 10:
Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the LORD has said, 'Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.'" And Aaron held his peace. (Lev 10:1-3)

Under the Old Covenant, we saw lots of specifics on how to worship and where to worship and those specifics were quite clear and had serious consequences if you flaunted or ignored them.

So why can't we use Nadab and Abihu and the prescriptions of the Old Testament to order the New Testament church? Because under the New Covenant the focus is on who we are worshiping and pretty thin on specifics of how to worship Him. The rules and very specific ceremonies of the Old Testament were types and shadows of the infinitely better to come. The Scriptures are mostly silent on the specifics of Christian worship not so that we can turn back to types and shadows but because the focus is not on doing specific acts in a proscribed way. Instead of being confused by that, we should rejoice that we have so many ways to show our worship of Jesus Christ to our unbelieving friends, neighbors and family.

So we didn't go to a building to "worship" Jesus this morning. I did go next door and cleared my neighbors driveway with my snowblower since her snowblower isn't working. I have to think that being the hands and feet of Jesus is at least and perhaps more a legitimate demonstration of worship than "going to church" to watch someone else perform acts of holy tradition. I don't write that to say "Look at how pious and holy I am! You should be more like me!" because I know all too well how rarely I act in a way that is worshipful and faithful. My point is that when you limit worship to specific acts in a specific building at a specific time, you limit the real joy of worshiping Christ and making your whole life an act of worship instead of dividing our lives into "church time" and "my time".

The Scriptures don't limit our worship to holy times and places and neither should we.

Muzzling God's people

I asked the question yesterday: is your default posture in worship passive or active? Here is what led to that question.

I've never met him but Bob Kauflin seems like a great guy, although he makes me a little jumpy with his outbursts during songs. As one of the leading figures among conservative Christians in the arena of "worship", Bob gets lots of questions from other worship leaders on how he leads the congregation. A recent post, How Does a Worship Leader Cue the Congregation? , raised some serious questions for me. In his response Bob gives a brief list of ways to cue the congregation to start singing, all of which are probably excellent from a pragmatic standpoint in the church culture we live in.

I found this blog post fascinating simply because it is necessary. Being a “worship leader” means that you have to somehow let the people in the pews know when they are permitted to participate because they will assume that they are not welcome to participate unless told otherwise. The default, if you will, is that gathering with the church is a passive activity for most Christians. In an hour long service, you might spend 12-15 minutes singing along with everyone else but the rest of the time you are sitting in your pew and watching the proceedings, neither expected nor permitted to speak.

Most Christians bring nothing to the “worship service” other than a warm body that sings along on occasion and a check for the offering plate. People feel like they have “worshipped” if they sing a few songs dictated by the worship leader and listen to a sermon in a holy place (i.e. a church building). Worse in my eyes is that people think they are fulfilling the purpose of the gathered church by attending a service and watching and listening mutely because that is what we have been taught. That passivity is a horrible disservice to the church and has been the status quo for five centuries (and a carryover from the 1000 years prior to that).

As I am reading through Pagan Christianity, it is confirming a lot of what I have come to believe, that the traditional gathering of the church is, by design, set up to muzzle the people of God. Rather than a place of mutual edification, encouragement and exhortation, it has become row upon row of mute Christians watching a performance. Almost everything we traditionally associate with the church has the effect of muzzling God’s people: the pew, the pulpit, the worship leader, the monologue sermon, the tightly controlled and scheduled service, even the way “churches” are set up have the effect of creating an atmosphere of passivity. Think about a traditional church with say 100 people in the pews. If halfway through the sermon, the preacher stopped and asked Joe in the fifth pew what he thought, everyone would freak out, especially Joe! Joe wouldn’t know what to say because the idea that he has anything to contribute to the meeting is completely foreign to our understanding of “church”. Someone who wanted to ask for clarification in the middle of a sermon would get the stink eye and be hushed. A Christian who wanted to offer a prayer but who was not on the schedule and had not been invited would not be able to do so.

The church as we see portrayed in the Scriptures is a place for Christians to come together to minister to and be ministered to. It is a place of participation and mutuality without hierarchy and where Christians can edify, pray, sing, teach, exhort and admonish one another. That phrase “one another” appears so often in Scripture but practically speaking we see the church as “one and all the others”. How have we perverted the very vehicle designed to provide “one anothering” and mutuality into a barrier to Christians ministering to one another?

A Two Million Ton Idol

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal having to do with the history of the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, The Splendor and the Scandal. Taking over 100 years to complete, this structure played an integral role in the Reformation because of the impact of the selling of indulgences to pay for it had on Martin Luther. I have to say that as an architectural and artistic structure, having never been there, St. Peter’s Basilica is by all accounts a magnificent accomplishment and a wonder. From the standpoint of a place to worship Christ? Quite the opposite. What a completely inappropriate place to allegedly worship Jesus Christ, our Lord who rode a colt into Jerusalem and dined with poor fisherman and other sinners around simple tables. That this place is viewed by so many people as a holy place speaks volumes about the extent of human self-delusion.

There is a quote in the article from historian Edward Gibbon that is a true statement for different reasons than the author of the article intended. He describes St. Peter’s Basilica as:

"The most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion."

That is exactly right. I can think of no other structure that epitomizes the empty ritual and formalism of man focused worship. St. Peter’s Basillica is like so many other man made edifices that know no denominational boundaries. They seek to create a “worshipful” atmosphere that is so foreign to the life of a Christian and yet so much a part of our culture. The architecture of cathedrals and churches across the world are designed to create and enhance a worship experience that is frankly a false one. The theatrics are more sophisticated but the emptiness is the same. Not much has changed in the thousands of years since the molding of the Golden Calf and nothing exemplifies that better than the white washed tomb of St. Peter’s Basilica built in large part with money stolen from simple people led astray by false shepherds who played upon their ignorance to fleece them.

In the Reformation, the Reformers took down the crucifix, replaced the altar with the pulpit and declared it to be good. The problems with Roman worship did not end with correcting the issues of justification and authority. They went to the very heart of what it means to be a Christian, how we should live in the world and with each other, how we worship our God. Those great men of old reformed the doctrine, reclaimed the Gospel but retained the Roman form of worship.

Christ is not found in palatial temples or massive cathedrals. He is not found in empty rituals or rote repetitions. He is found in the simple gathering of His people to pray, to open the Word, to break bread and be in fellowship together. Christ did not seek worldly acclaim or opulence when He sojourned among us. Why would His people seek to honor Him by exalting our own accomplishments, edifices and education?

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matt 23: 27-28)

Prepared sermon or a participatory meeting?

A post at The Assembling of the Church, Sermon Central, got me thinking about sermons, sermon preparation and participation.

In recent years, I have made something of an idol of the sermon. The longer, the better. The more prep time, the better. Of course the more Reformed, the better. A twenty minute sermon was mailing it in, 45 minutes was adequate and an hour was better. I often stated quite confidently that the entire gathering should be prepping for the sermon. The most qualified man should give the sermon and everyone else should listen. I have long been a fan of expositional preaching. Open the Bible and preach the Bible from the Bible. I still think this is a great way to get into the Word. What I am wondering though is two-fold: should that be the focal point of the local assembly? Should that be something that is a passive monologue, one man preaches every week and the rest sit silently?

This is a hard one for me. I know both from experience and from reading the New Testament that there is not much justification for a “one man show” style of teaching in the Bible. I always look for command and example, is there a command for something or is there an example of something? I don’t see either when it comes to monologue preaching to believers. To unbelievers, sure. But not to the church. Still, I like the predictability of it. You show up and you get a 40 minute sermon like clockwork every week. Nice and tidy. I absolutely am convinced that we need to get into the Bible a lot more than we do currently. At least with lengthy expository sermons people are getting the Word. I am less convinced that it is healthy and Biblical in spite of my own personal bias in favor of lengthy, in-depth expository monologue sermons. I have to wonder if it is healthy, healthy for one man to do all of the preaching and for the rest of the people to be passive observers. It is little wonder that so many Christians have become spiritually atrophied and so many pastors are burned out.

The other thing that I started thinking about was not just that the sermon is the focal part of the weekly service, but how much time and effort is invested into that sermon in the week leading up to the Sunday service. One of the most unquestionable features of the contemporary church is the professional, vocational paid pastor who spends a sizable chunk of their week in sermon preparation.

Ligon Duncan, in an article for 9 Marks, came to the number of eight hours per sermon in prep time being appropriate. If a “full-time” pastor preaches two unique sermons on Sunday, that would mean that adequate prep time is 16 hours per week. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was not and am not an eight hours of preparation per sermon kind of guy. I normally would read over the text several times during the week, jot down notes as they came to me and assemble the final product on Saturday night. I spent even less prep time on Sunday evening sermons, usually just a rough outline of the text. Oddly (or perhaps not) I think that the Sunday evening sermons were “better” than the Sunday morning sermons I spent more prep time on. I was working a full-time job when I was also a bi-vocational pastor, so I often jotted notes during the day and worked on ideas on my laptop at lunch. I often thought it would be wonderful to be like my “full-time” brothers who had so much more time available to prepare a sermon each week.

Again, at the risk of further alienating my fellow Reformed believers, is it the most appropriate use of funds to pay a pastor to spend 2 or more days a week sequestered in their office preparing for a 45 minute monologue sermon on Sunday morning? To be a pastor in many churches means having a seminary degree with classes on preaching, owning lots of commentaries, reading books on preaching, attending seminars on preaching. There is a ton of focus on sermons because sermons are the focus of the gathering of the church. It sounds great to the ears, a firm commitment to verse by verse expository preaching by a man with seminary training. I don’t think it is as faithful to the Scriptures unfortunately.

So what is the alternative? I fancy myself to be a pretty good teacher and one of the things I really strive to do is draw people into conversation when I teach. Make them think, encourage them to participate. The best Sunday school classes I have taught were the ones where I spoke the least, where my role was to draw people into the conversation. The least effective were the lectures where I did all of the talking. I liked the lessons where I spoke the most because the focus was on me, but I also know that people learned more when they participated more. In spite of that, I then turned around and gave a monologue sermon because that was just what I was supposed to do. Why? Just because that is what pastors do, they preach in the second half of the service. I daresay I am far more effective in teaching when I am leading a group that is all participating than standing up front and talking for 45 minutes.

Last Sunday, as we gathered for the Lord's Supper, we met in the room around the table of bread and wine as we do every week. No one has a liturgy or even a program. No one is leading. Every man in the room is welcome to share as he is led, whether in prayer, or requesting a hymn or opening up the Word. It is unscripted and open, just a room of redeemed sheep edifying, praying, uplifting one another. Sometimes there is silence for several minutes, quiet reflection and prayer. Gasp! It is uncomfortable for me, I want something to fill in the silence. I crave that order and predictability. Participatory meetings are not orderly in the sense we think of in the contemporary church structure. They are not disorderly per se, but when we think of “orderly” we are thinking programmed, scheduled, regimented, regulative, liturgical, “order of worship”. I think Paul’s concern was less that we had a bulletin to follow and more that meetings not be chaotic.

This is not to demean preaching. I love preaching, I love to listen to preaching and I love to preach! Preaching is eminently Biblical. Teaching is eminently Biblical. A monologue sermon preceded by days of preparation? Not so much. What is becoming clear to me is that often the brother who works a regular job, has no theological training and is just praying or opening the Word has far more meaningful things to say than the famous preacher who spends his week preparing for a sermon. Singing a song extemporaneously is more meaningful than singing a battery of songs selected beforehand or watching a choir performing on stage. Prayer from different men as they are led is often more meaningful than one guy praying on behalf of the rest of the room. We need to examine our church practices from Scripture and ask ourselves if they are truly fulfilling the spirit and letter of what we see in the Word or if they are merely manmade inventions designed to replace what Scripture commands and describes. As I try to do that, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of realizing that I have been wrong about the gathering of God’s people for a very long time.

Assembly Line Worship

When we hear words like “assembly lines”, “economies of scale”, “specialization”, “division of labor”, “mass production”, we normally associate those with industrial production. But here in the America, it struck me recently that a lot of the way we approach church is heavily influenced by our free-market capitalism, rugged individualism and approach to mass production. Stay with me here…

In a typical American evangelical church meeting on Sunday morning, we start promptly at 11. One person, often the pastor, prays on behalf of the entire congregation of 25 to 2,500 people. Then one person leads us in singing or we sit and other people sing at us in the choir. Then one person, again the pastor, stands up and gives us a few announcements, calls up the ushers for the offering, one person prays for the offering, and then one person stands up and preaches for 30-45 minutes. He then finishes by praying for us while we bow our heads and listen. We head home, confident that we have worshipped.

How did we get here? Is that Biblical worship? Is that how the disciples worshipped?

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 minister”. We pick the very best person, based on some dubious qualifications at times, and put them in charge of aspects of our “worship”. 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.

We have Wednesday evening prayer meetings where we pray together. Sunday school where we (hopefully) focus on the teaching of the Bible. We have a separate service for the Lord’s Supper, or at least we segregate the Lord’s Supper from the rest of “worship” and make it into an infrequent, special event. Instead of an integrated worship where fellowship, prayer, teaching and breaking bread blends together, we have made them into separate events carefully orchestrated to be done in a timely fashion. This isn't an issue of orderly worship, if you have ever rushed from Sunday school to the sanctuary you know how chaotic that can be! What it has become is a subcontracting of worship out to others.

Is this happening because we are results oriented people? We want a particular outcome from “worship”? I think it is. Worship is commoditized, with the more units of worship produced, in as efficient manner as possible, the better. Some churches have grown so large that they have three services and that is a mark of a “successful” ministry. Why don’t they break into smaller groups to fellowship in? Because it is way more efficient to have 1000 people in three services under one pastor in one building than it is to have 1000 people meeting in 40 groups of 25. This is why we have churches like St. Andrews Chapel building multi-million dollar palatial edifices, so more and more people can pack into a building and receive their units of worship in as efficient a manner as possible.

Sure, small gatherings have a myriad of issues. What to do with the kids, who is going to teach, how do you pay the bills, what if one family leaves? The trade-off? You get to know the people you worship with, you can pray for them without a list of “prayer requests” because you are intimately familiar with their problems and their dreams. Everyone serves and shares the burdens because no one can be too specialized. I just think that small groups achieve the intent and goal of fellowship far better than packing auditoriums with people. Big groups have their place. There will be hundreds of people at the theology conference I am going to next weekend in Grand Rapids, but as much as I enjoy the teaching what I really enjoy is spending time at lunch and dinner with friends and fellow believers. I can listen to the teaching later on my iPod, but I can’t replicate the closeness of fellowship among a small group of Christians.

Is genuine fellowship possible in a big church? I imagine so with a lot of work. Can you have a small church with virtually no fellowship? Absolutely, I have been there. But all in all, I think we would be much healthier as a body if we focused on fellowship whatever the format or setting, and less on producing the maximum number of worship units in the most efficient manner possible.

More on worship

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, 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. This is kind of my synopsis of what I am thinking:

I would say that we expect too much from corporate worship and not enough from worship outside of Sunday morning.

What does that mean?

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. We have far more opportunity for witness and service in the time we are not in “church” than we do when we are “at church”. Again, not to discount the value of the Word preached, corporate expressions of the Lord’s Supper, Sunday school, corporate prayer etc. but even if you are a really churchy type of person, you are still only spending 4-5 hours a week “in church”. I see far more opportunity to worship in family life than I do in organized church life, and in a more meaningful way.

I definitely still see a vital place in the Body of Christ for particular and purposeful gathering, even meeting in a “church” with a planned our service and order of worship.

But that is only part of the worship life of the Body of Christ. My hope in this conversation is to get us away from the dichotomy between “worship” and “the rest of life”. Not so that we diminish the value of corporate worship but that we magnify the worship exhibited in a life dedicated to glorifying God in all that we say and do.

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Worship, regulative or normative?

Now we come to the “how” of worship. We have identified at a very surface level the “who” we worship and the “why” we worship Him. So what does that look like, what are the practical ramifications of this identification? There are two primary schools of thought here, the regulative and the normative principle. The basic definitions are as follows (I know these are rough definitions)

The Regulative Principle of Worship: Only what is expressly commanded in worship is to be permitted and practiced.

The Normative Principle of Worship: Only what is specifically prohibited should be rejected from worship.

Many people in the Reformed school tend toward the regulative principle. So that is naturally where I would come down. Fie on those electric guitars and power point! But in the sage words of ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso: Not so fast my friend!

First is the regulative principle of worship Biblical? I mean it certainly sounds Biblical and lots of Reformed types get really agitated about it. What Christian wouldn’t agree in principle that we should worship as dictated by the Bible? But there are a lot of steps to take before you can say: this is the way we are to worship in the New Covenant church based exclusively on the Scriptural dictates.

Second, is it really regulated by Scripture or by tradition? The reason I ask that is not to be difficult or smarmy (well, maybe a little smarmy) But when you dig deeper into it, a lot of what people think of as being regulative in the Scriptures really isn’t. Case in point:

Terry Johnson wrote a piece about idolatry in worship for Tabletalk titled Pluralistic Worship and I think he inadvertently demonstrates the exact sort of behavior that he is decrying.

Has the time come when the sanctuaries of evangelical Protestantism must be cleansed of everything that reflects the world of entertainment? Our Reformed forefathers took axes to the altars, and they whitewashed the walls of medieval churches. If our analysis of worship that entertains is correct, similar iconoclastic fury must be shown, and soon, in our houses of worship lest they become houses of mirth: theater seats pulled out; stages broken up; dancers and actors banished; musicians' and choirs' roles redefined as that of simply supporting and enhancing congregational singing; pulpit, table, and font restored to their proper places; pastors moved back behind pulpits; and simple services of the Word read, preached, sung, prayed, and seen (in the sacraments) reestablished. What was once indifferent can be considered indifferent no more, not if Reformed Protestantism is to continue to practice purity in its worship and avoid idolatry. "Little children," says the apostle John, "keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).


Irony alert! Perhaps the idols are not just contemporary music and stools in place of pulpits. In decrying these ruffians with their modern music, he is affirming a return to a system and structure that is all tradition and no Scripture. Where is the pulpit in the Bible? You would think that Paul wore robes, led a liturgical service and preached a 45 minute sermon from behind a wooden pulpit. In other words, he is casting aside one sort of manmade worship service in favor of another manmade worship service and don’t you dare stray out from behind that pulpit!

There is a great deal to be said about this question of how we worship God. In fairness I get what Mr. Johnson is saying, worship should not be about entertaining the people sitting in the pews. Our object of worship, our focus of worship is Christ alone. But we need to approach this very, very carefully before pronouncing anathemas on those who worship in a way that doesn’t jive with our church traditions.

First we should be very cautious in how we apply the Scriptures here. Nadab and Abihu were not engaged in New Testament worship, but were engaged in Old Covenant, pre-cross worship that was very specifically laid out. We are reading through Exodus as a family, and the care and attention to detail given for the construction of the tabernacle is similar to the very specific, very clear directions in the rest of the Pentateuch regarding the temple worship system. The Old Testament is very specific in the how, where, when of worshipping God.

But we no longer worship in a temple, we no longer have a sacrificial system. Therein lies the problem. We no longer worship in the same manner as the Israelites did, so we can only apply limited guidelines of Old Covenant worship to the New Covenant church. There are not clear lines of equivalency between forms and styles in the Old and New. The biggest problem is that the New Testament itself is very vague on worship, talking quite a bit about the meaning of worship and some of the basics (fellowship, singing, praying, breaking bread) but very little in terms of specifics (what music to use, how the service should be ordered, where the worship should be held).

There is always a danger that the motivation behind church practices is not to be more faithful but instead is to separate ourselves from “those people”. This happens in all denominations and church traditions. You see it in Baptist churches where they gripe about churches that don’t do “altar calls” as being opposed to evangelism. Charismatics who question the authenticity of your salvation if you don’t exhibit “sign gifts”. Presbyterian churches where rigid adherence to the proper confessions, liturgies and worship traditions sets you apart. All designed to show that by the way we worship, we are the ones truly following Christ and therefore you aren’t. Denomination after denomination after denomination has made their claim to be the one that is truly exhibiting Biblical worship. The problem is that Biblical worship is not so easily defined.

The New Testament is awfully vague about the specific of worship, of how it should look. We read descriptions that tells us a few things about what occurred in the church: prayer, teaching, singing of psalms, spiritual songs and hymns, fellowship, the breaking of bread, service and discipline. But that gives us a lot of latitude in how and where we worship.

There is a potential danger, a very serious one, in the regulative principle of worship because it makes laws and commands where none exist. The New Testament does not proscribe an order of worship, or even that we worship in a particular kind of place. We tread on thin ice when we try to apply Old Testament temple worship commands to a New Testament church fellowship. There is a place for and a need for the holding of truths, but we should not let that be an excuse to enact barriers to worship for the sake of enacting barriers. I am not advocating a free for all in worshiping the One whom the angels surround and cry “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” Some expressions of worship are inappropriate not because they fail to follow the proper liturgy but because they fail to express worship of the Sovereign Lord of the universe, and instead become man-pleasing, self-exalting idolatrous mockeries.

I don’t much care for contemporary Christian music. I don’t much like the use of PowerPoint during sermons. I really don’t like “special music” and I really, really don’t like it when people applaud during worship. But are any of these things specifically proscribed for worship? Not that I see. Should we just sing Psalms? I ask the question that I always ask, is there command or example in the New Testament. Lets look at two examples where Paul uses basically the same language to describe the same event.

addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, (Eph 5:19)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Col 3: 16)

Some would say that this is just referring to the different types of psalms, but I think that is a stretch. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just say singing psalms, I would think that would be comprehensive enough. I fear that exclusive psalmody, while not something I have studied as closely as I should, is an example of applying a manmade rule to the Word. It is my understanding that Calvin, in his commentary on Col 3:16 also rejects the exclusive psalmody argument that these are three ways of saying "Psalms".

A gathering of believers in a home is not less a valid or a more valid expression of Christian fellowship than a gathering in a church with a liturgical, Psalter hymnal only, no piano service. We can follow every rule, real and imagined and still not be in spiritual worship of Christ. The pendulum can easily swing too far in either direction, either overly exuberant, truth devoid emergent style worship of an amorphous Jesus or a rigid, spirit-less liturgy. There is nothing wrong with liturgy or with exuberance as long as our worship is tempered and balanced. A key clue appears in John 4 and the woman at the well.

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4: 23-24)

That is a very important passage. The woman at the well has questioned Jesus about where worship should take place. The importance of worship, not to stretch this verse too far from it’s context, is in worshipping the Father through the Son in the Spirit not merely based on religious forms (worship here and not there).

John Frame examines this entire concept in a helpful essay,
A fresh look at the Regulative Principle, and asserts that there are two types of regulative principle, one being the more broadly based one found in Scripture and another that far more restrictive, which Dr. Frame finds both unhelpful and unsupportable in Scripture.

The discussion above, in my view, is a fairly complete statement of the regulative principle, both as it is found in the Bible and in the explicit statements of the Reformed confessional standards. But to those who have studied the traditional discussions of the regulative principle, it will seem rather sketchy. In those discussions, Reformed thinkers have labored over concepts like elements, parts, substance, essence, accident, forms, expressions, and circumstances (further subdivided into circumstances with and without religious significance, and those necessary and unnecessary to the orderly conduct of worship). In my opinion, these concepts are not helpful, and using them to add further restrictions to the broad regulative principle is not scriptural. In this part of my essay, I will describe those additional restrictions and explain why I object to them.

Dr. Frame' essay is very sober stuff, well worth the reading.

Ultimately the Scriptures give us pretty broad guidelines for fellowship and worship. Is it too much to say that what counts is the object of our worship, the purpose of our worship, the truths of the Gospel far more than the mode of worship, the order of service, the location we worship in? Shouldn’t the measure of our worship be how pleasing it is to God, and is that measured by adherence to forms and strictures that are often manmade at the expense of Biblical worship balanced in Spirit and Truth.

If you meet in a home, worship to the glory of God. If you meet in a school, worship to the glory of God. If you worship in a little country church, worship to the glory of God. If you meet in a shiny new church that seats 2000, worship to the glory of God. If you are worshipping for any reason other than bringing glory to God, it doesn’t matter where or how you worship because it becomes idolatry.

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Why do we worship?

In the last post I asked the “who” question: Just who is it that we are worshipping? Not who do we think we are worshipping or who does modern culture tell us we are worshipping, but who does the Bible reveal to us that we are worshipping? Hopefully that got you thinking about Christ and who He is revealed to be. Now I want to approach the “why” question.

First, the reasons we don’t worship. OK, that is clumsy wording. First, these are not reasons why Christians worship. That sounds better.

We don’t worship to be saved

It is an article of faith that salvation is apart from human effort or action. Salvation is accomplished through the cross and received by faith which is a gift from God. God does not trade our worship and devotion for salvation. In other words, we worship because we are saved, not in order to be saved.

All Christian worship is post-salvation. In other words there is no such thing as Christian worship by an unregenerate person. Only those who are born-again participate in Christian worship. An unregenerate person may “go to church”, they may bow their heads when we pray, they may sing along side us, they may listen intently to the sermon and take notes but until the Spirit works upon their hearts, they are not engaged in true worship of God. Further, any worship outside of Christian worship is a form of idolatry whether atheistic self-worship or Muslim worship or Mormon worship or Hindu, Buddhist, whatever. Any worship that has as its object of praise and adoration anything other than Christ is inherently idolatrous and blasphemous. It is too easy to get caught up in religious pluralism and make erroneous statements like “We all are worshipping the same God in different ways”. The reality is that there is room for two kinds of worship, proper worship of God and idolatry.

We don’t worship Him to gain something for ourselves

Tread carefully here. We gain nothing from worship. Nothing tangible. There is not a return on investment. If we give money, food to our neighbor, visit someone in prison, sing songs of praise, prayer of thanksgiving God doesn’t shower us with blessings. Don’t misinterpret that. God is constantly blessing His people, but there is not an equivalency where X units of worship = Y units of blessing. The great lie of the health, wealth and prosperity preaching is that worship and blessing are part of a marketplace, commodities to be traded and exchanged. God blesses us in spite of our feeble attempts to worship Him. We may feel uplifted by praising God, or doing works of mercy. But ultimately worship is an act of gratitude and adoration directed to the one who saved us, and we worship in spite of any blessings we receive. After all, He saved us from our sins. Isn’t that enough?

We don’t worship Him because it makes Him more than He is.

God is not made more godlike by our worship. He doesn’t seek or demand our worship to pump Himself up. The God of the Bible is not one in a pantheon of gods who seeks more followers to make Himself more powerful. God is God whether everyone worships Him or no one worships Him. Truth is not measured by numbers, and the validity of God is not measured by numbers of followers. Statistics like this religion or that is the fastest growing are interesting but ultimately irrelevant. I don’t care if there are 6 billion Muslims and 1 lone Christian, it doesn’t make Islam real and it doesn’t make Christianity false. Worship is not a numbers game.

So why worship? Why bother? If you are a Christian, you are already saved so why not send God a nice thank-you card and move on with our lives. Why all the fuss over worshipping Him at all?

We worship Him because we are designed to worship something. Before we were saved, we worshipped all manner of idols, most often ourselves. Give me a person and place them in an unfamiliar setting and they will eventually end up worshipping something. They may not call it worship, but that is what it is. Whether their career, or their pleasures, or their family, or sports, or money they will find something to focus and heap their attention on.

When we are saved, our entire view changes. Not our every thought, or desire or deed but our view. In spite of our failings and sins, in spite of the times when we stumble or lose our way, the Christian will always return his gaze to the Son of God. We look to Him because whenever we look away, eventually we realize how futile our worship of anything else is. Christ is the sole object of true Christian worship because He alone is worthy to be worshipped and worship of anything else leaves us unfulfilled.

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. 2 Sam 22:4

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. Psa 18:3

For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. Heb 3:3

Christ is worthy in a way that far transcends any human being, thus I believe the comparison to Moses as a comparison that the Hebrew audience would understand. Moses was the ultimate prophet for Jews, and in comparing Moses to Christ we see that even the greatest of men is but a pale shadow of the glory of Christ.

In Revelation we get a deeper view of His worthiness to be worshipped in His triumphal return.

“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Rev 4:11

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Rev 5: 11-12

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” Rev 5: 9-10

He is worthy to open the scrolls, He is worthy because He created all things and He is worthy because by His death He redeemed all things to Himself. We worship Him because He, and He alone, is worthy of worship.

The why is easy. We shouldn’t even ask why we should worship Christ, we should ask why would you worship anyone or anything else?

A call for a new Reformation in the church: Who do we worship?

I have found myself drifting more and more into thoughts of “how” and “where” we should worship and in doing so, while recognizing that those are valid and valuable questions, I have neglected my personal study and reflection on some of the more important and foundational questions pertaining to Christian worship.

Before we even examine the “how” of worship, you need to answer the “who” and the “why” of worship. The answer may seem easy on the surface: “I am just worshippin’ Jesus!” but the reality when you dig deeper is that who God is by no means is a settled question in the church. The “why” is one that even fewer people have given much thought to. I know I have often approached worship without the proper gravity and reflection on who I am worshipping and why I am worshipping Him. A lot of this has been spurred on by some conversations I have had online regarding the so-called “regulative principle of worship” but before I delve into that, I want to spend some time in reflecting on who the Body of Christ is worshipping in our personal, family and corporate expressions. After that I want to get into the “why” we worship “who” we worship. Only after that do I want to get into specifics on the "how" and "where" as I try to get that cart back behind the horse where it belongs.

The answer to the question of “who” we worship is more than merely “God” or even a list of the attributes of God. The attributes of God are valuable to understand and given short shrift in our study of the Word, but a list of attributes is inadequate to answer the question of who He is. We can only and must only turn to the Word, for that is where He has revealed Himself to us. The image of God has been terribly tarnished by many who name the name of Christ. I don’t think most of it is a willful act, although in some cases it is, but it is something that needs be redeemed.

First and foremost, God is holy. I know some people focus on God is love, but I assert that we cannot even begin to fathom God’s love until we squarely face God’s holiness contrasted with our sinfulness. God is not merely a much better person than we are, He is holy on an order of magnitude that separates us from Him infinitely outside of His intervention. When I think of the holiness of God, I instinctively turn to Isaiah 6.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isa 6:1-5)

That image is one that captures the awesome and awful majesty of God. The seraphim who dwell in His presence sing eternally of His holiness and dare not even look upon Him, covering their eyes and feet. The great prophet Isaiah, in seeing the King is “undone” by what he sees for he recognizes that he and all of humanity stand condemned before the throne.

How carelessly we tread in the presence of our Lord! How cavalier we are in the handling of His Word!

Because of God’s holiness, He hates sin. Not just doesn’t much care for it, or is displeased by it or is disappointed by our behavior. Sin doesn’t hurt God’s feelings. God hates sin. We ignore or gloss over that truth at our own peril because God is not an impotent being who dislikes sin but can do nothing about it.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. (Exodus 12:12)

We read that and gulp. To make ourselves feel better, we often throw out “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” to try to make God seem more fair. Two problems though, first that doesn’t appear in the Bible and second just the opposite does:

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. (Psalm 5:5)

The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. (Psalm 11:5)

(These verses raise a question outside of the scope of this conversation: If God loves sinners but still sends them to hell, what does that say about God? He is impotent to stop them from going? Anyway, that is not the topic at hand.)

But what about Jesus, He is all love isn’t He, not like that mean God of the Old Testament? Hardly. The Son of Man is not a hippie flashing peace signs and holding love-ins with sinners.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. (Matt 25:41)

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. (Rev 1: 12-16)

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 20: 11-15)

This is one of my favorites and it should send a chill down your spine to think on the Lord of Hosts coming in glory…

Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. (Rev 19: 11-16)

Six times in Matthew alone Jesus speaks of outer darkness or the fiery furnace where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. So Jesus is no 98 pound weakling getting sand kicked in his face at the beach. He willfully humbled Himself in the Incarnation, but make no mistake about who He is. He is not going to be on the outside looking in, plaintively crying for us to let Him in so He can love us. He is riding that door down mounted on a warhorse!

One of the assurances of the Christian in this life is that God is just and will set all things right when His Son returns to sit in judgment. When faced with iniquity and wickedness in the world, when bad things happen to “good” people and evil people prosper, our comfort is that it is not our place to punish the evildoer, it is His. He comes not as a humble servant on a donkey, but as a conquering Lord riding on a white horse arrayed with the armies of heaven for war.

But Jesus Christ is also not just the new sheriff in town coming to clear out the villains and save the day. It is a hard truth, but even those of us (which is most of us) who think that we are the good guys will find in the Word that we are actually wearing black hats, not white hats in this Western (not to be confused with black and white cowboys). Praise God that He is indeed also a God of not just wrath and judgment but also of love and mercy. Were God nothing but a God who is holy, just and wrathful He would still be deserving of our worship but our worship would be all of fear, and not at all of love. But that is not the God we worship because of one word: grace. His grace, His love, His mercy to those who were His enemies is a splendor to behold.

He dwelt among us, the Father sending His only begotten Son to take on flesh…

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

He humbled Himself, poured Himself out to be like us…

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2: 5-11)

He knows our suffering…

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Heb 2: 14-18)

He died for us, laying down His life willingly...

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10: 17-18)

He did so not because of anything good in us, indeed He died for us while we were yet sinners…

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5: 6-11)

Christ didn’t die for good men, He didn’t die to make good men better, but He who was infinitely righteous died for those who by nature are children of wrath and self-made enemies of God (Eph 2:3 )

In the greatest and most unexplainable act of mercy sublime, Jesus Christ, very God of God, became sin for us and bore in His flesh the wrath that we deserved so that we might be found righteous before God based on His merit.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor 5:21)

On the cross He fulfilled the demands of the Law, he bore the penalty in His flesh and with the wounds in His hands and feet He settled the debt forever. He was pierced for our transgressions and by His stripes we are healed….

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isa 53: 4-6)

And it all happened on a cruel cross, a symbol of shame that has been turned into an emblem of hope for countless Christians purchased by the blood of Christ, the debt paid, the trespasses forgiven…

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Col 2: 13-14)

THAT is who I worship. The Sovereign most High and Holy, most Merciful and Loving. He and He alone is worthy to be worshipped. That is who I pray to, plead with, love, adore and fear.

That is but a tiny sliver of who God is revealed to be in His Word but even that brief intro should suffice to show that the One we worship is due and deserving of all worship, honor and glory.

Next, the question “why” do we worship?

Love or Truth?

Must we choose?

Can we choose?

It is apparent that some who have rejected the institutional church have not become a more Biblical gathering but have instead become a “Not an Institutional” church body. There is a great danger in being defined by what you are not. We are not this. We are not that. Great, but what are you? So what then is church all about? It is not about dividing ourselves into factions based on where and how we worship, it is not about lording our education over the ignorant sheep (especially since even the most educated of men is no better than a sheep!). Nor is it about being condescending about our rejecting of the institutional church and reveling in ignorance.

What do I advocate? Simplicity in worship. The early church was not fancy. They met in homes because they frankly had nowhere else to meet (but there is nothing inherently correct in meeting in a home or incorrect in meeting in a building). Acts 2:42 tells us what the church was focused on and it was four things: the apostle’s teaching, the fellowship, praying and the breaking of bread. That is pretty simple. They didn’t give these four things passing interest while concentrating on committees or even, dare I say, while doing humanitarian acts of compassion. They were “devoted” to these things (ESV), “continually devoting “ themselves in the NASB, they “continued stedfastly” in the KJV. All of which demonstrates to us that this was not a minor aspect but rather an integral part of the life of the church. The role and life of the church has not changed in 2000 years despite our efforts to complicate it.

As I see it in the Scripture, the church exists to carry out these four functions: teaching one another in the apostles teachings (captured in the Word of God preserved inerrantly for the edification of the church and to convict the elect of their sins when preached). Fellowship among the saints which takes many forms, and in which the form is far less important than the fellowship. Our friend James is coming over to our house tonight, and in that we are in fellowship with the saints. Corporately praying with and for one another, not as a laundry list of aches and pains or other things that are best left to the sovereign mercy of God, but to exhort, lift up, rebuke and comfort one another. The breaking of bread in “love feasts” and in the coming together for the Lord’s Supper. When we add to this list, we risk diluting it. At the risk of causing a stir, is evangelism a function of the church? It certainly is a commandment to believers individually, but is it a role of the church? Think before you answer that one.

These are the four fundamental functions of the church. They are things which rightly cannot/should not be done alone or by the individual believer alone. It is hard to pray together by yourself. You can and should pray personally, but also corporately so that you can lift and be lifted up in prayer, and prayer itself is a vital form of worship. This is the area I struggle in the most. I am not sure what we need to do differently, but I know something needs to change in the prayer life of the church. I think it would certainly help if we knew each other better (see below) and had a more correct view of the sovereignty of God in relation to our prayer life (which can only come through study and teaching).

The apostles teachings are something shared and taught in the church. I don’t see any mandate or any room at all to ignore theology and doctrine in the life of the church. Being saved is not a mandate for being ignorant. Much of what Paul wrote was a reinforcement of doctrines, because evil men will creep in and teach false doctrines. Even in fellowship settings. Look at Jude 1:12-13 where we see the false teachers in te assembly and at the love feasts, pictured in the ESV as hidden reefs, lying under the surface to cause wreckage. False teachers always have and they always will threaten and seek to infiltrate the church, and if the church is not devoted to the apostle’s teachings preserved for us in the Word, they will have no idea when the false teachings are presented by these wolves. The big danger of the emergent church is not only that there are false teachers in their midst but that they have unilaterally surrendered the apostle’s teachings by de-emphasizing theology to such a degree. Certainly it is easy to overemphasize theology, as I have in the past and I still struggle with, and it is a danger that we have knowledge about God instead of a knowledge of God. But our frailties and proclivities should not dissuade us from learning and teaching accompanied with prayer and humility.

I have crabbed a lot about how little we focus on the Lord’s Supper in the (institutional) church. Not only that but just the general breaking of bread with one another is important as well. Think about the New Testament, especially the Gospels, and think how often food and meals are mentioned. It is an enormous part of the life of the church, to sit with one another and eat. Jesus first public miracle was at the wedding feast at Cana where He changed water into wine (John 2: 1-11). The Last Supper (Matt 26: 17-29). The parable of the Wedding Feast (Matt 22:1-14). The wondrous image of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Rev 19: 6-11). All of the food and wine images of the New Testament. We neglect this to our detriment. I don’t think that a quarterly ceremonial Lord’s Supper observance and a fellowship meal on the fifth Sunday really fulfill the spirit of the “breaking of bread” we see in Acts 2:42.

Fellowship encompasses all three of the above and more. Spending time together other than when mandated to do so by church schedules is an amazing blessing. How many people have you gone to church with for years and never stepped foot in their homes? I have been guilty for too many years of having my “friends” (many of whom were not in any way believers) and my “church family”. I would never take my friends to church and I really had little desire to hang out with the church family except when I was supposed to. I am getting better at this, but I still have a long way to go. The better I get to know someone, the more we share of our lives, the easier it is to pray meaningfully for and with them.

That brings us full circle to simplicity in worship and simplicity in the church. Simplicity and truth in concert. Worship in Spirit and Truth (John 4: 23-24). I yearn for a living, vibrant church life where we love one another because we know one another. A church life where we gather for teaching, for worship, for prayer, for fellowship. A simple church where simple sinners worship their infinitely just and holy God in the manner prescribed by Him in His Word. It is time to shed those things that complicate the church: budgets and salaries, dissension over schedules and silly stuff, committees and programs. We are called as Christians to evangelize a lost world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and as the church to assemble with the saints who have been called. The more stuff we try to pile on that, the more we lose sight of the purpose of the church. Yet we may not, we cannot sacrifice truth for the sake of simplicity in the church.

Can we fulfill the noble mandate given us while meeting in a building?

YES!

Must we meet in a building with an orderly, regulated worship service?

Certainly NOT!

Must we choose between loving one another and knowing more of our Creator?

Unequivocally NO!