Worship is certainly a popular word these days. There are now several major âworshipâ conferences every year. Now that it is easier to locally record and duplicate CDs, many churches and youth groups are putting out their own worship CDs. Stacks of âBest of Worshipâ compilation CDs are promoted on late night television stations. Many popular Christian musiciansâwho normally never recorded worship songsânow have come out with âworshipâ CDs of their own. Even John Tesh, former co-host of Entertainment Tonight, has put out his own worship CDs.
Worship has been quite the rage lately. But what is âworshipâ and what is a âworship gatheringâ? These are critical questions to ask before we even think of discussing creating emerging worship gatherings.
Emerging Worship Is Not Just Singing
This book is titled Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gatherings for Emerging Generations. It is all about creating worship gatherings where new generations come to worship. But what does âworshipâ look like?
I believe to the average person, and even to most pastors, music is what primarily comes to mind. In fact, in many churches worship pastors lead the singing portion of the worship service. Like me, youâve probably heard individuals say with great passion, âI love to worship!â Almost every time, they are talking about singing.
As you read this book, you will find it has little to do with singing and music. Like many others, I desire to see worshipâand worship gatheringsâchange from primarily singing to something a lot more holistic and a lot more biblical.
Emerging Worship Is Not a Worship Service
We usually call the weekend time when a church family gets together a âworship service.â Ironically, this term used to mean a time when the saints of God all meet to offer their service to God through worship and their service to others in the church. Over time, however, the title has slowly reversed. The weekend worship âserviceâ has become the time of the week when we go to a church building much like a car goes to an automobile service station.
Most people view the weekend worship service as a place where we go to get service done to us by âgetting our tanks filled upâ at the service station. Itâs a place where someone will give a sermon and serve us with our weekly sustenance. In automobile terms, you could say it is our weekly fill-up. We come to our service station to have a song leader serve us by leading us in singing songs. All so we can feel good when we emotionally connect through mass singing and feel secure that we did âworship.â
We go to the weekend worship service and drop off our kidsâthat way they too can get served by having their weekly fill-ups. We are especially glad that our weekend service station now serves coffee in the church lobbyâitâs as convenient as our automobile service stationâs little mini-mart.
Not a Local Automotive Station
I admit that Iâm being somewhat sarcastic with the service station analogy. But Iâm not joking when I say we need to recognize that going to a worship service is not about us, the worshipers. It is not about Godâs service to us. It is purely our offering of service and worship to Godâoffering our lives, offering our prayers, offering our praise, offering our confessions, offering our finances, offering our service to others in the church body.
The description of a church gathering in 1 Corinthians 14: 26-27 says: âWhat then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.â
This was not âcome together to sit and receiveâ like at a gas station. This was everyone gathering to offer service to God and others in worship. The gathering was not primarily about meeting the needs of the individual, but centered on the worship of God and the strengthening of the whole church.
In the New Testament, the English word âserviceâ (as translated in the New International Version) is used to speak of an act of giving, not receiving. Paul spoke of his ministry by saying, âTherefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to Godâ (Romans 15:17). Paul talked quite frequently about his âserviceâ to the saints, which meant Paul was serving them.
Nevertheless, the âworship service,â where the focus is supposed to be us bringing our services to God by worshiping him, has been subtly changed to focus more on us getting served by going to the meeting.
Because of the subtle misuse of the phrase âworship service,â I donât use it anymore. I try to always say âworship gatheringâ instead. Theologically, this communicates what we are doing much better. Once again we can be the church gathering to worship God and bring our service and offerings to him and others, not individuals who come to a service to receive something. There is a big, big difference in peopleâs expectations between the two ways of looking at what we do when we meet together for worship.
So, the more we in leadership can communicate that this is a worship gathering (not a worship service), the more it will shift peopleâs expectations of what the goal is when we meet together.
Emphasizing âworship gatheringsâ is vital for the emerging church.
Emerging Worship as a Lifestyle
Worship is âthe act of adoring and praising God, that is, ascribing worth to God as the one who deserves homage and service.â The most frequent Greek New Testament word for worship is proskuneo which stems from pros (âtowardâ) and kuneo (âto kissâ). This is an act of reverence and devotion, and in biblical times often involved bowing, kneeling, and lying prostrate in reverence before a great and holy God. Worship is the way to express our love and praise to Jesus, who first loved us and gave himself up for us (Ephesians 5:25).
In a worship gathering, we create a place where we can express love, devotion, adoration, and praise to God. This should shape our planning and design. But worship is not something we do only once a week on Sunday morning or evening. Worship is a lifestyle of being in love with God and in awe of him all week long (Romans 12:1-2). It is offering our love, our adoration, and our praise to him through all of our lives.
We are to adore the Lord all week, not just at âworship gatherings.â Our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our marriages, our families, our jobsâeverything should be offered to him in worship. This includes what we think about, what we do, what we say, what we eat, and what we spend time doingâthey are all acts of worship.
It is so important to make sure we know worship is a lifestyle and those in our churches also know it! How extremely sad that we have trained people to think that worship primarily happens when they come to church and sing.
It is my hope that the emerging church will be extremely careful to embrace and teach a biblical view of true worship.
Reclaiming a Holistic Form of Worship
This book is specifically about emerging worship gatherings. Our focus will be on exploring different ways that emerging generations are now coming together to adore, praise, and ascribe worth to God. A refreshing thing is thatâvirtually across the boardâwe are moving away from a flat, two-dimensional form of worship in our gatherings. There is a definite move away from worship services simply composed of preaching and a few songs. We are now moving toward a much more multisensory approach comprised of many dimensions and expressions of worship.
We now see art being brought into worship, the use of visuals, the practice of ancient disciplines, the design of the gathering being more participatory than passive-spectator. Instead of the pulpit and sermon being the central focus of worship gatherings (at least in most evangelical churches), we now see Jesus as the central focus through a variety of creative worship expressions. True, every preacher says that Jesus is the center of their preaching! What I mean here is that teaching and learning in the emerging church happen in various ways; itâs no longer only one person standing on a stage preaching to everyone else.
I realize some peopleâs blood pressure may begin to rise as soon as I mention moving away from a preaching-and-singing-a-few-songs worship service model to a multisensory approach to worshiping God. Someone actually told me that younger people only need preaching verse-by-verse through the Bible. He insisted that anything else is distracting and useless. Some individuals have warned me that emerging churches are going all experiential and throwing out Godâs Word. Other individuals have leveled the criticism that emerging churches are wrongly changing the historical way the Church has worshiped.
When I hear these types of comments, I question whether that person has truly ever studied church history. I wonder if they have ever looked in the Bible at the various ways worship gatherings happened. I know I might have felt the same thing they doâif I had never begun taking a biblical and historical look at worship through the ages.
Embracing the Historical Diversity of Worship
For the longest time, I assumed that the only biblically sound worship gathering was the tradition I had experienced in my evangelical, conservative church: a few songs, the sermon, a closing song, and communion thrown in once a month.
As I studied church history and the history of worship, however, I was amazed. The way I had personally experienced and defined a worship gathering was by no means what has been happening throughout the history of the church and the history of Christian worship.
It is critical for emerging church leaders to take the time to step outside of our personal or denominational view of what âchurchâ and âworship gatheringsâ are supposed to be. When we back out and begin to open our eyes to other denominational approaches to worship and differing global approaches to worship, we will find so much beauty in the diversity of ways that people worship God.
I highly encourage church leaders to study and explore the history of worship. I highly encourage church leaders to ask why you even do the things you currently do in your worship gatherings. You may be surprised to discover that many things you do are forms of your denominationâs origin culture and not from the Scriptures themselves.
It will be interesting in heaven because worship there probably wonât be the worship we are used to in our local church! I think it is important to realize this, so we wonât judge other churches who worship differently than we do. There is more than one way to worship God in a church gathering. We need to recognize and celebrate that! In fact, many forms of worship emerged throughout biblical history.
Emerging Worship Is Not New
It is important to understand that emerging worship is not simply âthe new thing,â nor is it simply the âhip, new way to worship.â As we read the grand story of the Bible, we see that culture and time have changed worship throughout history. Various forms of worship have emerged throughout the story of God and man. Until Jesus returns, we will see many new expressions and forms of worship change in churches within various cultures.
The Bible repeatedly talks about new emerging forms of worship. This cannot be considered âtrendy.â We are simply part of another time period undergoing change in how emerging generations ascribe worth and praise to God. This type of change has been happened over and over throughout history.
In Genesis 4, Abel gave God fat portions from the firstborn of his flock and Cain gave God some of the fruits of the soil. Although Cainâs worship was not pure, we see these brothers already had an established form of worship.
In Genesis 8:20, we see Noah worship by building an altar and sacrificing burnt offerings. These offerings were different from the sacrifices that Cain and Abel offered. Another form of worship emerged right after the flood.
In Genesis 13:18, Abraham built an altar to the Lord as an act of worship. He created a sacred space and used memorial props as a form of emerging worship.
In Genesis 28:22, we see another form of emerging worship. Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. He ...