29 March, 2024

Worship/Service: A Conversation Between Paul and David

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by | 27 January, 2008 | 0 comments

By Mandy Smith

Last year I started a new job that means I will never get to worship, or so I have been told. It is my responsibility every Sunday to help others worship by overseeing the sound board, musicians, PowerPoint, seating, bulletins, and Communion cups. No time for singing or sitting or listening. No worship for me.

As part of this new job, I got a subscription to Worship Leader magazine and, while flipping through it, I became convinced of something we already know: “worship leader” has come to be synonymous with “music minister.” Of the 51 advertisements in the magazine, 29 were for instruments, CDs, or songs, (i.e., music).

We all know worship isn”t just music. Every time we have a sermon series about worship, we remind people that it”s not just about singing. But then the rest of the year we go back to calling our song sets, “worship sets,” and our musicians “worship leaders.”

Yes, worship can be music, but could it be more?

One magazine advertisement gave me hope that we”re starting to look into that possibility. It promoted a Web site called Experience Worship (see www.experienceworship.com) that has the admirable goal of exploring the true nature of worship. But, again, upon visiting the site I found a limited understanding. The site is trying to get outside of church and beyond music, which is commendable, but most of the stories of worship I found there were about sunrises and sleeping children and mountaintops.

Yes, worship can be about euphoric experiences, but can it be even more?

BIBLICAL CUES

Many of our biblical cues for worship come from David, the exuberant dancer and musician. And so it”s only natural we have learned that worship is music and elation and emotion. But what would worship look like if, in addition to David”s approach, we got some worship cues from Paul?

Paul doesn”t talk a lot about worship, but when he does it”s usually in the context of the Jewish tradition, in discussions about circumcision and sacrifices. That is understandable, since the Old Testament sense of worship had a good deal to do with sacrifice. As worshipers brought sacrifices from their fields and flocks, they brought together everyday life and spiritual practices, the products of daily work into sacred space.

Unfortunately, in our contemporary setting, we have separated worship from daily life. In Romans 12:1, however, Paul provides a new pattern for worship (new for first-century believers and new for us): “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God”s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God””this is your spiritual act of worship.” Instead of offering dead animals, we are now to offer up our very lives, which are more valuable to God because they allow us to offer ongoing acts of sacrifice.

Paul goes on, in Romans 12, to describe the various gifts and functions of the members of the body, putting a very practical spin on worship. For him it is not just bowing and singing weekly, but serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing financially, leading, and showing mercy daily (12:6-8). In fact, the word used for worship in this passage is related to work and is often translated “service.”1 If worship in the Old Testament was largely synonymous with sacrifice, worship in the New Testament is synonymous with service (living sacrifice), inside and outside of the service.

WEEKLY WORSHIP?

But we are in the habit of squeezing worship into an hour and into a building. Anne Ortlund, in Up With Worship, writes, “Weekly worship is the highest corporate act of the body of Christ. It is the visible demonstration that he is “˜Priority One” to us and to our church. . . . We must center our church schedule around it.”2

I would heartily agree with this statement except that by “weekly worship,” Ortlund means the weekly church service. Even the groundbreaking authors, Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo, who challenge church assumptions in Adventures in Missing the Point, do a bit of point-missing themselves. McLaren spends the entire chapter on worship dealing with music styles and lyrics. Then Campolo responds to McLaren by highlighting this oversight and goes on to establish a broader definition of worship: “Holistic worship involves not only music, but prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, and offering. Worship requires adoration, confession of sin, supplication, and petitions, climaxing with dedications.”3

In my opinion, both men miss the mark. And we all miss the point every week. If worship is supposed to be unceasing, a way of life, then the weekly service is one of many occasions to worship. The Sunday service is special and significant, not because it”s our opportunity to worship, but because it”s a joint celebration of the worship that has been going on all week long, an occasion to remember the reason for the work, and a time of preparation for the Monday-to-Saturday service in the week to come.

EXHILARATING AND EXHAUSTING

All this may explain why I love my new job, and why it doesn”t bother me that I don”t get to “worship.” For me, last Sunday”s service meant moving chairs, making extra copies of the bulletin, picking up trash, turning down the lights, turning up the lights, and making some announcements. I didn”t get to sit. I didn”t do much singing. And I almost missed out on Communion.

But I”ve never worshiped so much in my whole life. I”ve never worshiped so hard my whole life. It”s exhilarating and exhausting, just like the rest of my “worship” as wife, mother, and writer. But that”s what living sacrifice feels like.

This is not about changing what we”re doing, but acknowledging that what we”re already doing is worship, if we devote it to God. There”s music and there”s euphoria at times, but there”s also small daily choices of service, simple acts of selfless love, and perseverance, lots of perseverance. It”s the kind of worship that makes you sweat, the kind that means you”ll need a nap in the afternoon.

That”s what worship/service looks like. And I wouldn”t go back to sitting in a pew for all the world.

________

1K. Hess, “Latreuo,” in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Colin Brown, ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Pradis 5.0, 2002). See other uses of various forms of the same Greek word and how it has been translated in John 16:2; Romans 9:4; Hebrews 9:1, 6; and Philippians 3:3.

2Anne Ortlund, Up With Worship (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2001), 44.

3Brian D. McLaren and Tony Campolo, Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel (Grand Rapids: Youth Specialties, 2003). I daresay that these authors, given the opportunity to respond to my critique, would agree that worship is a lifestyle. My point is not that they don”t believe this but that their narrow definitions of worship both reflect and reinforce the church”s narrow definitions.




HOW CAN OURS BE A CHURCH OF WORSHIP/SERVICE?

“¢ Include a weekly “How I worshiped this week” segment in your service (or bulletin or Web site) and each week ask church members to briefly share how they served God at work/school/home/in their community. If appropriate, ask them to bring the “fruit” of their labor (whether it”s a person they helped or a product they created).

“¢ On a regular basis (perhaps between series) devote an entire service to celebrating the worship/service that goes on through the week and promoting opportunities for that kind of worship.

“¢ Present opportunities for volunteer service as opportunities for worship. Blur the separation between Sunday worship and Monday”“Saturday worship by incorporating some elements of the Sunday service into Monday”“Saturday service: have Communion together before cleaning the neighborhood, sing a song or two before (or while!) serving at a soup kitchen.

“¢ As you encourage church members to find and develop their gifts, do it with Paul”s assumption that having a gift means using it and that this can be an act of worship (whether it”s the gift of singing or the gift of plumbing).

“¢ Since Paul tells us to present our bodies and our lives as acts of worship, ask people to consider: What is your life? What is your body? Is it talents, energy, time, health, money, job, family, home? Whatever way we define our bodies and lives, how can we give them in living sacrifice?

“¢ Invite church members to keep a worship journal to reord the ways they worship every day. Maybe these could be shared in the form of online blogs.

“¢ Advise those who crave the “high” from David”s brand of worship that they may be in for a surprise. While Paul”s brand of worship can be exhausting, there”s also a high that comes from hard work and from seeing the fruits of your labor. This is also an opportunity to raise the question of why we worship. Should we do it to get a buzz? Can worship be an act of sacrifice?

“”M.S.




Mandy Smith is associate pastor with University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has written many articles and is author of the book Life is Too Important to Be Taken Seriously: Kite-Flying Lessons from Ecclesiastes (HeartSpring/College Press, 2004) and a forthcoming women”s Bible study on Paul. Recently, she created and coordinated “The Collect,” a citywide art-from-trash project. She is married to Dr. Jamie Smith, New Testament professor at Cincinnati Christian University, and has two delightful children.

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