Dear en,
Is ‘worship’ a good biblical description of what we do in church when we meet together, e.g. set prayers, singing etc? Your two-part feature ‘Reformation worship’ (September & October en) begs this question throughout: I suggest that the answer is no.
If worship is an outward, truthful demonstration of the heart’s homage and adoration of the one worshipped, and we ask how as post-Ascension, pre-heaven people we should worship God, a summary answer is Romans 12:1 – living sacrifices. This is not principally what takes place on Sunday, but what takes place Monday-through-Saturday (and Sunday as well!)
I’m sure many of us subscribe to the slogan of ‘whole-life worship’, but the way some of us talk we seem to confine worship to what happens at church meetings, or even more narrowly to the sections of church meetings when we sing (and ‘move into a time of worship’, led by the ‘worship-leader’). With a couple of disputed exceptions, Christians are not at all described as worshipping when they meet together between Pentecost and Heaven, rather we meet to encourage each other (Hebrews 3.13) and so that the church may be edified (1 Corinthians 14.5).
I don’t think there’s an evangelical church in the land that doesn’t call its meetings ‘services’ (the church I belong to certainly does). But this is almost completely unbiblical, with Acts 13.2 the only possible exception. Our meetings are not services which we render to God, as if he needed anything (Acts 17.25), instead they are meetings, or assemblies, and we should call them so.
I hope all this is sufficient to show just how deeply embedded an unbiblical view of worship has become in evangelical culture. I reckon it is the area most in need of genuine reformation within our Bible-based churches today, hence this letter!
Yours sincerely,
