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The Music Exchange

How to have awesome worship at your church

What is the worship like at your church? Give yourself the following test to assess how it is doing as regards worship.

* Is it lively, vibrant, varied, high quality, using session musicians?
* Or is it too loud, of dubious quality and unrehearsed?
* Is it full of reverence and wonderfully understated, using a professional choir and organist?
* Or is it dour, lifeless, religious, with a robed choir that tries its best?
* Does it draw you in, melt you down, flip you over and leave you weeping for joy?
* Or does it leave you as cold as a bag of fish fingers from Iceland?

The thing about these questions is that they express feelings not about worship, but about the style of music at a particular church. It's one of the beauties of the way that God created us, that we all have different tastes, and our senses are impacted by different stimuli. How then can there be so many different ideas about worship?

What is worship?

There are five words that mean worship in the Bible, and only once is the word attributed to corporate church activity (Acts 13.2), and never is it linked solely to music or singing. Biblical worship involves the sacrifice of the life of the whole believer to the God who himself gave everything in mercy to his children (Romans 12.1-2).

Paul goes on in the rest of his letter to the Romans to define worship as building one another up, not judging each other, showing hospitality, even paying taxes. Worship is a beautifully rich and diverse commitment of a life lived wholly for Jesus. Therefore, worship may involve music but can't be defined by it.

The real test

So, what's the worship like at your church?

If the members love the Word of God, are building each other up to maturity in Christ as they speak and sing to each other, if they are faithful in reaching the lost through the gospel, if they carry their crosses daily, are not judging each other (even if the music doesn't suit their tastes), if the church has clean toilets, if the PA system is operated sensitively, if the church has paid its copyright licence...
...then the worship at your church is awesome.

Richard Simpkin