Tullian Tchvidjian’s blog posts, articles and books are worth reading.
He has just concluded a six post series on worship at his blog, On Earth As It Is In Heaven.
There are some folk out there who seem to have taken the truth that all of life is worship and somehow arrived at the position that 166 hours of the week is worship, but for two hours on a Sunday morning we have a meeting for fellowship and instruction.
I think this is because corporate worship properly understood nurtures covenant theology, which in turn nurtures an understanding of a definite or limited atonement. Some folks like their amyraldianism (look it up), and so end up with meetings.
Tchvidjian affirms the unique dimension of Church life which is corporate worship.
Some excerpts and links to the full posts:
Worship Is A Big Deal – Part 1:
I didn’t understand everything the preacher said that morning, and I didn’t like all the songs that were sung. But the style of the service became a non-issue as I encountered something I couldn’t escape, something more joltingly powerful than anything I’d ever experienced, something that went above and beyond typical externals. Through song, sermon, and sacrament, the transcendent presence of God punctured the roof, leaving me—like Isaiah when he entered the temple—awestruck and undone.
I was on the receiving end of something infinitely larger than grand impressions of human talent. God and his glorious gospel were on full display. It was God, not the preacher or the musicians, who was being lifted up for all to see. It wasn’t some carefully orchestrated performance (which, believe me, I would have seen right through). Rather, I was observing the people of God being wrecked afresh by God’s good news announcement that in the person of Jesus, he had done for them what they could never do for themselves. In and through the praising, praying, and preaching, the mighty acts of God in bringing salvation to our broken world were recited and rehearsed. Read the whole post…Worship Is A Big Deal – Part 2:
Because Scripture is the all-sufficient Word of God, I believe with Calvin that everything we do in worship must be prescribed in the Bible. But the application of the regulative principle does not need to be narrow, as is often assumed. Because the Bible instructs us with its methods as much as it does its material, our scope regarding what God commands in worship is deep and wide. For instance, recognizing the various literary genres of Scripture—history, story, poetry, prophecy, epistle, and so on—should demonstrate that stylistic diversity is something God himself employs and enjoys. Therefore, shouldn’t stylistic diversity be something we celebrate in worship? In other words, God is telling us something about how to worship him by the way he communicates, not just what he communicates—both style and substance are prescriptive. Understood this way, the regulative principle allows for much more variety in worship than some have concluded.
Read the whole post…Worship Is A Big Deal – Part 3:
This high and lifted up greatness of God is what Isaiah encountered—a God who is majestically and brilliantly in command.
All this means we ought to come to worship expecting first and foremost to see God. We come to encounter his glory, to be awe struck by his majesty. A worship service isn’t the place to showcase human talent but the place for God to showcase his divine treasure. We gather not to be impressed by one another—how we sound, what we wear, who we are—but to be impressed by God and his mighty acts of salvation. We come to sing of who he is and what he’s done. We come to hear his voice resounding in and through his Word. We come to feel the grief of our sin so that we can taste the glory of his salvation. We gather to be magnificently defeated, flattened, and shrunk by the power and might of the living God.
This is in stark contrast to the world’s insistence that the bigger we get and the better we feel about ourselves, the freer we become. That’s why many worship services have been reduced to little more than motivational, self-help seminars filled with “you can do it” songs and sermons. But what we find in the gospel is just the opposite.
Read the whole post…Worship Is A Big Deal – Part 4:
All too common today are polarizing tendencies in worship that fail to reach the whole person. For instance, in some churches, how a Christian thinks is far more important than how a Christian feels. Worship in these churches is primarily geared to informing the mind. But when it comes to feeling God, they remain stoic. These churches turn worship into a classroom for learning.
Other churches do well at “feeling” in worship but do “thinking” poorly. In these churches, worship is primarily geared to engaging the emotions—thinking is far less important than feeling. These churches turn worship into a therapist’s couch for emotional highs and healing.
Still other churches conclude that neither our thoughts nor our feelings toward God are as important as what we do for God. In these churches, worship is primarily geared to the will—the goal of worship is to get the worshippers to give more, serve more, or take some other action.
But notice Isaiah’s varied response to his encounter with the glory of God. He responds intellectually to God’s presence—there’s no question in Isaiah’s mind that God is who he is: “My eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (v.5). In the same verse, there’s also an emotional response—he feels the presence of God in his heart: “I’m undone.” Finally, there’s a volitional response—having encountered the living God, Isaiah is ready and willing to do God’s will with his entire being: “Here am I, send me” (v.8).
Read the whole post…Worship Is A Big Deal – Part 5:
Churches for years have struggled over whether their worship services ought to be geared toward Christians (to encourage and strengthen them) or non-Christians (to appeal to and win them). But that debate and the struggle over it are misguided. We’re asking the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions.
Like many others, I once assumed the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, but after they believe it, they advance to deeper theological waters. But, as Tim Keller explains it, the gospel isn’t simply the ABCs of Christianity, but the A-through-Z. The gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life; it’s the fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day. Once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel but to move them more deeply into it. After all, the only antidote to sin is the gospel—and since Christians remain sinners even after they’re converted, the gospel must be the medicine a Christian takes every day. Since we never leave off sinning, we can never leave the gospel.
To describe his condition as a Christian, Martin Luther employed the phrase simul justus et peccator—simultaneously justified and sinful. Luther understood that while he’d already been saved from sin’s penalty, he was in daily need of salvation from sin’s power. Read the whole post…Worship Is A Big Deal – Part 6:
When we gather together for worship, we ought to come reaching up, starved for God, ready to feast together on the good news that, in the person of Jesus Christ, God has descended to us because we could never ascend to him. Feasting on God’s gospel together through prayer and preaching, sacrament and singing, provides us with the faith, hope, and love we need to be good news people in a bad news world.
We should not, however, only look back to what Christ has done, we should also look ahead to what Christ will do. We remember the past, but also rehearse the future.
Read the whole post…
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