Do Worship

As I talk about worship, I easily find myself thinking “what is worship and how do we go about worshiping?” I am very pleased to find that most people when asked this question will say that worship is our lives. As the corny t-shirt says, we were “Made to Worship.” Great, we made to worship, but I seem to lose people when I talk about what being made to worship implies. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an announcement guy say “wasn’t that great worship?” or a pastor say “we are going to have more worship in a minute,” or even a worship leader say “Let’s get ready for (some) worship!” I would certainly have enough money to pay someone else to write my blogs. The problem is that we have been conditioned to compartmentalize worship. Worship is something I 1) do at church for 15-20 minutes near the front half of a church service 2) do while cranking Tomlin at 11 as I cruse through town or 3) am only participating in when I feel the Lord moving. I heard a youth pastor explain worship like this “we are like lightning rods, and worship is happening when God is striking those lighting rods.” Seriously? Worship seems to have become synonymous with God responding to us or specific songs and feelings. When we feel God’s response worship has been accomplished.

In our attempts to be contemporary and unleash passion in worship we have created strict boundaries to what (and when) actions are worship. This is worship music, this is worship time, when this song plays it is the worship portion, the sermon is definitely not worship, or my favorite tweet of all time “My favorite worship music is the kind I can go nuts to.” And in a way the expectation of feeling in worship is a significant part of these boundaries. There needs to be a line drawn that says there is a difference between this false “time to do worship” and doing worship. Robert Webber says “Worship is Doing God’s Story.”(1) According to Scripture God’s story has a lot more to do with creation, redemption and recreation than it does with whether an up-beat song is better to worship to than a slow song.

Even Christ dealt with this. When talking to a Samaritan woman at a well, the woman basically asked “Isn’t our worship better than their worship?” And Christ responded “No, you say you worship on this mountain or in this temple, but there will come a time where you will worship in Spirit and in Truth.” (2) To worship in Spirit and in Truth. Wow. To worship in Spirit – to worship with the entire family of believers throughout the ages, to worship with one breath at the eternal wedding banquet, one voice to the Father, in the name of the Son, through the Holy Spirit and to do it in Truth – United and living out the Triune message in the world. This doesn’t sound like the Sunday morning “do” worship to me. Worship shouldn’t just seep into the cracks of my life; it should be what every brick of my being is made of. And it isn’t even a matter of should because it is whether we know it or not because well, we were made to worship.

Are there elements that are more conducive to a worshipful mind set? Sure. But let us not get carried away. We must continually question whether or not a worship of moods and creative resources has surpassed our worship of the Creator.

1 - Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God's Narrative. Robert Webber. Baker Books, 2008.

2- From John 4:21-24