A Worship Perspective

A few articles back, I noted the benefit I receive when I consciously sit back and listen to what others have to say, and share it, than when I steadfastly seek to write about the things that I want to say. Such is the case today. Some very dear friends shared a quotation with me. Their son shared it with them, and his minister, who was quoting J.J.M. Roberts, shared it with him. Roberts’ quotation is found in “Worship and the Hebrew Bible: Essays in Honor of John T. Willis”, and specifically in a section entitled, “Contemporary Worship in Light of Isaiah’s Ancient Critique”. That’s a long-winded way of saying the quotation, contained in this article, is certainly not original with me.

Christendom, today, is in the midst of worship wars. Worship in the sense of our Lord’s Day assemblies. As congregations re-think and re-shape their worship “presentation”, in the hopes of alluring the “un-churched” into their assemblies, others resist any attempt to modify long standing practices. To compete in a world of short attention spans, and multi-media sensory attraction and overload, some church leaders are tempted to modernize their worship assemblies to draw crowds. Others believe such is compromise with secularism, or worse. Those that would attempt to be more contemporary would argue that they are not changing for the sake of change, but changing for the sake of relevancy. Whatever the spin from those who advocate change, it sounds an alarm of tampering, with scripture and truth, to those who resist. Thus, the battle lines, of the worship wars, are formed, and, sadly, many congregations are robbed of the peace and unity that is required for acceptable worship.

Those who resist the contemporary change will argue that God is the focus of worship, and resist any deviation from long standing practices, even though those practices are probably the result of changes in earlier generations. And, certainly, that doesn’t encompass all the changes being suggested, tried, and incorporated in today’s Lord’s Day assemblies.

On the other hand, those who advocate contemporary change claim that God is the focus of worship, and we should all be interested in making our worship more meaningful, even if change is required to do so.

So, both sides claim to want to please God, and both sides claim the other side is self-absorbed, and self-serving. Both parties would claim to not “get anything” out of a worship style practiced by the other camp. To one, the other is nothing more than entertainment and a production. To another, the other is dead, and ritualistic. Both arguments are based on the “activity” being the driver of meaningful worship. Both are wrong in their placement of the act(s) being the stimulant of true worship. My reading of Roberts’ statement crystallized the true stimulant to true worship.

Roberts stated, “Any practice, if it lasts long enough, can be cloaked in a theological justification, but there is a profound difference between a theology that shapes a congruent pattern of worship and a theology that simply adapts itself to patterns of worship forced on it willy-nilly by quite un-theological forces and concerns.”

“In Isaiah’s day, the human crowds were still present for worship; it was God who had opted out. The problem for religious leaders then was not how to get the people to come back to attending worship; it was how to get God to attend. It might be wise even in the present to look at worship from that perspective.”

“Perhaps we are spending far too much energy trying to figure out how to adapt worship so as to interest and attract a disinterested public. Perhaps we might better spend our time trying to please a potentially disinterested and increasingly irritated God.”

That is powerful! It not only rebukes those who would secularize worship, but those who would endure the time as robots. The point of Roberts’ statement, as I see it, is that God must be in attendance for true worship to occur. When He has “opted out”, it matters little whether we have maintained our past practices or introduced a new brand of worship. Regardless of one’s enthusiasm for the contemporary presentation, true worship does not exist when God is not in attendance. And, regardless of the practice of the time honored worship style, true worship is non-existent when God “opts out”.

I view Roberts’ statement as a strong rebuke to those who would intentionally secularize our assemblies to allure the un-churched, but I also view his statement as a warning to those who think that “staying the course” in activity is an indicator of God’s attendance.

The level of meaning in your worship, and my worship, is not contingent upon the human activity. That kind of thinking is shallow, and self-deceiving. Meaning, in worship, derives solely from the approval and attendance of God. And I suspect, if He is not approving, He is not attending. So, whether the human crowds are present, or not, God must be present. And if He is, we will know it, and our worship will be meaningful, to God and to us, as it is intended.