Worship Defined?

Definitely not end-all-be-all definitions, but ones I liked and wanted to share. These are from the site that Tracy shared - worshipmatters.com which has some great articles / blogs on worship from a Biblical perspective. I think we all know by now I have an unquenchable desire to define the worship (which is probably impossible in totality) of one who is truly undefinable.

Harold Best, in his book Music Through the Eyes of Faith defines worship in the broadest sense as “acknowledging that someone or something else is greater – worth more – and by consequence, to be obeyed, feared, and adored…Worship is the sign that in giving myself completely to someone or something, I want to be mastered by it. (pg. 143)

We want to be mastered the objects of our worship. And indeed we are. We worship whatever rules our time, energy, thoughts, longings, and choices. “Those who make them [idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them.” ( Psa. 115:8,

William Temple’s (1881-1944) Readings in St. John’s Gospel.

“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”

Worship is the activity of the new life of a believer in which, recognizing the fullness of the Godhead as it is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and His mighty redemptive acts, he seeks by the power of the Holy Spirit to render to the living God the glory, honor, and submission which are His due. (Robert Rayburn, O Come Let Us Worship, pg. 20)

And finally presented by the author of the blog, Bob Kauflin, proposes this definition: Christian worship is the response of God’s redeemed people to His self-revelation that exalts God’s glory in Christ in our minds, affections, and wills, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here's the whole link to the beginning of the 4 part series on defining worship http://www.worshipmatters.com/2005/11/defining-worship/

Silence is Praise

Silence is praise to you, Zion-dwelling God, And also obedience.
You hear the prayer in it all.
- Psalm 65:1 (The Message)

Don’t make rash promises,
and don’t be hasty in bringing matters before God.
After all, God is in heaven,
and you are here on earth.
So let your words be few.
- Ecc 5:2 (New Living Translation)

But the Lord is in his holy Temple.
Let all the earth be silent before him.”
- Hab 2:20 (New Living Translation)

We all arrive at your doorstep sooner or later, loaded with guilt,
Our sins too much for us — but you get rid of them once and for all.
- Psalm 65:2-3 (The Message)

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Whether we are standing, kneeling, or laying prostrate before the Lord
our (physical) posture in prayer can shape the character of our prayers in thanksgiving, humility and reverence.

In our silence, in the presence of the Lord, we cannot remain in his holy presence for long before we are reminded that we are the dust of the earth. Physical posture prepares the way for confession and confession prepares the way of the Lord.

The key to this worship act is confession, not magnification of sin. To confess is to agree with God about what is true, not to wallow in a sea of inescapable depravity. Modern Christianity has made much of the doctrine of the Fall of Humanity and litle of the doctrine of creation. Be reminded worshippers: the original state of creation is blessing and wonder, not sin and curse.
- Adapted from an article by J.D. Walt

THE RELENTLESS AND EXHAUSTING ATTEMPT TO GET IT RIGHT

Some Brief Thoughts on Worship and the Changing Tides
Rev. Chuck DeGroat
The Baby Boomer reaction to what has become known as “traditional” worship was a reaction, it seems to me, to worship that was detached, redundant, dull, lifeless. And thus, the reaction was against a detached, redundant, dull, and lifeless God.

Baby Boomer worship (or “contemporary” worship, as we often call it) has featured a more pop sound. With its broader range of instrumentation (e.g. guitar, percussion, etc.), its tendency toward the spontaneous, its “friendly” feel (friendship pads, friendly meeting and greeting times, friendly looking worship teams), and its proclivity to avoid “churchiness” (e.g. formal liturgy, spending too much time doing the sacraments, cutting corporate prayer,
etc.), Baby Boomer worship effectively tamed the traditional beast. Of course, it tried to be traditional-friendly with its occasional hymns and blended worship. But, by the end of the twentieth century, the shift had occurred. Growing churches featured pop worship, and stagnant churches could only watch and jeer with “you’ve cheapened the Gospel” and “you’ve missed the true way” cynicism.


Now, the tide seems to be shifting again. Among Generation “X” Baby Busters and children of Baby Boomers seems to be a growing discontent with both options. By all accounts, X’ers are flocking to anything different, out-of-the-ordinary, non-traditional in both the old “traditional” sense and the new pop “traditional” sense.

Yes, “contemporary” worship has become the new “traditional” worship to Gen. X’ers for the exact opposite reasons that Boomers rejected detached, redundant, dull and lifeless pre-Boomer traditionalism. Contemporary worship reacted by making the transcendent and detached utterly immanent, replacing the dull with saccharin friendliness, the lifeless with hyperactive liveliness, transforming liturgical redundancy into spontaneous redundancy
(e.g. repeating choruses over and over like it wasn’t planned!). Boomers succeeded in making the transcendent relational, but relational like an annoying hyper-friendly next-door neighbor whose supposedly spontaneous pop-in visits are becoming stomach-turning events.

Perhaps this is why my Gen. X peers are flocking to the “high church:” liturgical Reformed, Episcopal, Catholic and Orthodox churches. In a recent email, a 30-year-old friend wrote, “I’m tired of this me-and-my-sweet-Jesus cheesiness… Whatever happened to reflection, contemplation … prayer?” The reaction says less, I think, about a preference for liturgical high-church style, and more about a sense of authentic meeting with God.

In fact, my hunch is that style is quite irrelevant to my generation. While in England, I had the opportunity to visit an Episcopal church with an upbeat, guitar-led worship time. The worship leader was young. He looked like the lead singer of Jars of Clay. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his hair was still wet. He was upbeat, but real. He was reflective, but not morbid. And he worshipped. He was a lead worshipper. No plastic smiles. No plastic surgery. Just a genuine sense of communion with God. We sang fast and slow. My eyes glanced variously upward towards the stained glass windows, and downward to the kneeling bench and ancient concrete floors where men and women for centuries before me had worshipped. Something happened that day. I felt connected with old and new, relational and transcendent. I worshipped.

Now, I’m not proposing a new paradigm or a new program. I’m not favoring a massive overhaul or a radical new method. What I am wondering about both in my gut, where words don’t always work, and out loud through this new computer that will also be old some day, is if we’re not just at a place where honesty and sincerity matters more than style. I wonder if the deep exhaustion we feel isn’t just a symptom of a profound desire to put away the artificial gimmicks – the new people-friendly church language, the marketing, the fancy clothes, the Ken and Barbie greeters, the relentless catering to the church consumer - and to get on with worship. I wonder if the Gen. X skepticism isn’t tied to a basic distrust of the integrity of market-driven “institutions,” including the church. I wonder if we’re not just yearning for an authentic experience of connection with the transcendent, no matter how we get it – drugs, sex, alternative lifestyles, music, mysticism. I wonder if we’re not just looking for God because he’s been lost in this mess called “worship wars.”

A friend skipped church last week. Her reason wasn’t one of rebellion, or laziness, or even cynicism. When I asked her, she simply said, “I just wanted to spend time with God.” Could it be that we’ve spent so much time trying to get it right that we’ve lost a genuine sense of connection to God?

It’s worth thinking about style, and its worth being biblical, whether you call it the Regulative Principle or the Peter Principle or the Victoria Principal. It’s worth the time to practice music ahead of time, and to print out bulletins (or what do we call them now – programs?!), and to do overheads, or power-point, or needle-point, or whatever you need to do to get ready. It’s worth testing the mics, and testing your heart, and testing the spirits, and testing your pastor’s Bible knowledge, and all that. It’s worth doing all of that “stuff” that makes up a worship service.

Perhaps, though, it’s worth giving up some of it too. Perhaps it’s worth thinking through (translated for my fellow Presbyterians: “formulating a committee”) where your church is, where my church is, and where our
hearts are when we’re doing worship. How? I’m not sure. How do you quantify this mystical, ephemeral sense of connectedness with God and each other? How do we measure authenticity – an authent-o-meter? A connect-o-meter? How do you simplify, and what do you cut? My hunch is that it’s worth, at the very least, checking out our own motivations. It’s worth taking a look at what we’re experiencing and who we’re experiencing. It’s worth taking at least one worship planning committee meeting to ask the question, “Is God showing up when we worship? Are we showing up? Really showing up?” It’s worth taking a look at our relentless and exhausting attempt to get it right, facing what it’s doing to (rot out) our hearts, and re-forming that place and time when we come into the unique and special presence of God and each other. It’s worth it. He’s worth it.

Come and Fall

I've been writing a lot lately for some reason. Deep inside of me there is this thing, just rising up and creating song, exuding lyrics to be sung to our God. Here's a little old-school type of chorus I've been building around. It came out of a time of singing "Resting" with m wife one night this week.

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Come and fall, come and fall on us
Hear our call, come and rest on us...
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That's kind of been my cry as of late, that God's Spirit would come down and descend on me like during the day of Pentecost with the disciples. And that's my prayer for our church, well for THE CHURCH as a whole too; God awaken us to your very presence and desire to commune with us in our lives. That's what it's all about, that's the heart beat of every man, woman and child, whether they have found it or not, we all search for the same thing.

Let us search and continue to search that God might come and fall on us, and cover us and lead us to where He is going. Praise Him for He is mighty indeed.

Worship <> Music, but can Music = Worship

Paul Baloche (writer of Open the Eyes of My Heart) writes,

"Worship is not music, but music can be worship. God must love music, because the bible says there's a lot of it in heaven and invites us to come before his presence with singing (Psalm 100:2). ... as a Christian songwriter, especially a worship songwriter, what you do is lead people in expressing their love and worship to the Lord - honoring, adoring and venerating him. You have the holy privilege of putting words into the mouths of God's people - wonderful words that they might not have thought of saying to the Lord before..."

Check out this resource and the article Paul wrote entitled "How Worship Songs are Born" at this new resource that Koral showed me. Sign up, sign in and head over to the Frequent Thoughts on Worship section.

http://www.worshipfrequency.com/UserRegistration.php

I found this really inspiring to write and to think about our community as I do that. I hope you guys do as well.

Just one more question - if you were at church yesterday (2/4/07), did you sense a bit of a breakthrough in worship? I really did, and I sensed that was happening congregationally, but I can never be certain, so your thoughts are appreciated.

W

The Warmth of Worship

It's been a while, so I thought I would try a new post to stimulate some conversation and dialogue on our parts as lead worshipers...

Today while I was getting ready for the day a thought hit me concerning worship. I was thinking about what Louie Giglio (the head of Passion) is always saying (as he tries to unpack worship and why we do it to young adults), "Worship is our response to God." And I think there has been agreement on this point and mini-definition for all or most of us based on previous discussions at this blog (and if you are new, feel free to read back to see where we started this whole conversation).

This was my somewhat fresh thought surrounding the idea of worship and what it is and what we are actually doing when we worship God and our motivation behind it.

"Worship is not a physical connection... It is a physical response to a spiritual connection"

And by physical response I mean it's what we do to show our devotion, not necessarily singing, not necessarily bowing, raising our hands etc. but even our physical prioritization of our time, where we place Him in our daily lives. That is worship AND most importantly this physical response is based on (and here's the kicker) a 'required' spiritual connection.

So I would go so far to say that if you are "worshiping" God in song (for example), but you are not spiritually connected to God by salvation through Jesus Christ, then you are simply singing. The same can be said for our service, study of the Bible and a load of other disciplines.

The key is that it is two fold and circular. We worship mainly in a physical way, because we are physical. However, our worship is reliant on a spiritual connection to God. And the reverse can be said as well, in that when we have a spiritual connection to God, our obvious response to his greatness and fame - is to worship Him. We give our lives, our time, our attention etc. as a sacrifice, in a willing fashion b/c of His love for us (Rom. 12:1).

It's not a perfect definition, and I'm not really looking to define worship here, I was more hoping we could look at it from a different perspective and look at it with a different spin.

As always your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Lyrics

I wanted to share a few thoughts from a book I'm reading which is a teaching aid for writing congregational worship songs which are 'contemporary.' I thought the following things were both challenging and encouraging as we seek to write to worship songs for the body of believers in which we exist. I think some of these thoughts are practical, while others are more spiritual, but I truly hope you are encouraged to speak into the lives of those around you through your experiencing of God. Added italics are my thoughts...

Words are so powerful. God spoke creation into being with a word and His Son is described as the Word. (see John 1: 1-5)

Reflect the Universal: We all share universal experiences. The same stories and emotions repeat themselves endlessly in human experience. The same great themes of love, loss, sacrifice, hope, war and death move people everywhere we need to connect with those universal experiences and emotions (I always try to be mindful of evoking emotions - because God is not an emotion and I believe that worshiping Him is a choice and should not flow ONLY out of emotion.)

Express Reality:
Write from your own faith experience remembering that you only need to be on the journey, not to have arrived.

The worship songs that we find in the Bible come out of deep personal experience and that should be the template for us.

Avoid falling into the trap of trying to say too much. Make sure that every word counts and contributes to the message of the song. Strong lyrics are generally built on short phrases rather than long rambling lines... Maintain a clear focus in your song - don't try to cover multiple topics in one song.

Express Old Truths in New Ways:
...you need to see your faith through fresh eyes. Those fresh expressions will then stay in the mind and the heart...
example: 'A place that has to be believed to be seen' by U2 ('Walk On'). The songwriter (BONO) has reversed the usual phrase "has to be seen to be believed' to create a memorable line.

Overall, I just encourage you to simply write and trust that God really wants to say something to our church - scratch that, His church, and that He would use you!