An interesting piece from Phillip Jensen on evangelical worship.
In it Jensen observes:
many evangelicals are choosing to turn away from the evangelical faith when it comes to their worship. Our worship should reflect our theology. In fact it nearly always does reflect our theology. Unfortunately sometimes what it reflects is confusion in theology. When we say we believe in evangelical theology and yet worship in a different fashion it reflects our lack of understanding of our own theological position.
If you’ve never encountered the Sydney Moore College/Anglican/evangelical doctrine of worship, also known as ‘Knox-Robinson’ you’ll find it briefly outlined here:
We worship God in all of life, not specifically in church. Because church is part of all of life, worship is also part of church activity. Indeed the whole of our church activity should be worshipful. But it is no more worshipful than the way we drive to church, or clean our teeth before we come to church, or take our grandmother to lunch after church. Worship is the way in which we live in obedience to the word of God. When we come together in church we gather to hear His word, to encourage each other to love and good works, to sing His praises, to pray to Him and acknowledge our faith in His name with His people. All these are good, right, proper and true activities of Christian congregational life. However, that is not what the Bible means by worship, for worship is the broken and contrite heart that obeys God in every aspect of life. Thus it is misleading to welcome people to church by welcoming them to our ‘worship service this morning’. Or to persuade people that they need to go to church because they need to worship God.
This understanding of worship simply won’t concede that while all of life is the Christian’s reasonable service, or worship, that God is still pleased for His people to express that worship by gathering at a particular time and carrying out particular activities during that time. God is pleased to give and grow faith as we engage in certain activities, hearing the Bible and listening to preaching, prayer and praise, participating in the Sacraments. While our life’s activities are an offering of service, or worship, the Bible does not teach that our faith in nourished and grown by brushing our teeth or eating lunch with Grandma. A biblical understanding of worship is not either/or in this case, it is both/and.
Sometimes it almost seems like ‘all of life is worship except for Sunday mornings when we hold meetings for mutual edification and encouragement’. A semantic baby seems to have disappeared in the effort to dispose of a volume of semantic bath-water.
The article goes on to evaluate the actions of that take place during ‘Christian gatherings’ on the basis of their benefit for corporate mutual edification
Whenever evangelical worship is put forward people always ask: ‘but what of … ?’ Sometimes it is: ‘what about the beauty of holiness?’, by which they mean the holiness of beauty. Frequently there is the appeal to art, music, dance, silence, drama and the songs of the book of Revelation. The variety of activities within congregational life can be enormous. But the purpose must be that of edification. The purpose is not to put us in touch with the divine. It is the gospel word that puts us in touch with the divine. The reading of Scripture is our touch with God for it is God reaching us. If drama, music or art are going to be helpful in building us in our Christian life then by all means let us be musical, dramatic and artful! However most of these activities are not in fellowship particularly edifying. To gather together in order to sit in silence is not a particularly edifying sense of fellowship. It may have a moment of helpfulness in order to get us ready to listen to what the word of God has to say or to spend some time thinking about it before we should speak to each other, but we can sit at home alone in silence just as satisfactorily and it is very hard to love and stir each other up to good works by being silent.
Even as one committed to a view of biblical view of corporate worship as articulated in the Westminster standards, I found Jensen’s comments in this section of the article useful in contemplating how best to use prayer, reading of the Scriptures, preaching, the Sacraments and praise in ways that both affirm that we experience God’s presence because of the Gospel alone, and also affirm our corporate experience of that grace.
An interesting article that informs and challenges conceptions about corporate worship gatherings.
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