I Will Be Regarded As Holy - Part 3

If worship, then, is to be an everyday act, an ongoing lifestyle, where does the typical Sunday morning come in? Corporate worship is an integral part of the lifestyle of worship. Most American Christians have lost sight that the primary thrust in Scripture is toward corporate worship as opposed to private worship. Our great love for the concept of a “personal Savior” has blinded us to the large emphasis placed on “us”, the “Body of Christ”. Worship is not about us as individuals; it is about the corporate Body of Christ joining together to glorify God. While this is made up of individuals, we are focused as a single organism to be a display of God’s glory to the world. Thus, the importance of corporate worship in the Church can hardly be overstated.

In its original design, the worship service was not a “refilling station”, but a download of a week of worship. Thus Paul says, “When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification” (1 Cor. 14:26). Corporate worship is designed to be a sharing time in which we mutually impart God’s work in our lives and encourage spiritual maturity for the purpose of edifying one another (Eph. 4:11‑16). Further, the gathering place is not the local church building. According to Heb. 12:18-24:

You have not come to a mountain that may be touched and to a blazing fire, and to darkness and gloom and whirlwind, and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word should be spoken to them. For they could not bear the command, "If even a beast touches the mountain, it will be stoned." And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, "I am full of fear and trembling." But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.

We differ from the Old Testament approach in which they could be struck dead for approaching God. We are now allowed access in the name of Jesus into heaven itself. All true worship occurs in heaven, “Mount Zion”, “the city of the living God”, “the heavenly Jerusalem”. And true worship is corporate, including “myriads of angels”, all believers everywhere, “the spirits of righteous men made perfect”. (Note that believers, not unbelievers, enter into true worship – the focus of so many churches on the unsaved is not biblical.) All true worship occurs in the presence of “God, the Judge of all” and “Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant”. This type of worship cannot be entered into lightly. As the author of Hebrews goes on to say, acceptable worship must be “with reverence and awe” (Heb. 12:28).

How would that affect the typical Sunday service? I’m afraid that the disparity between what is and what should be is so large as to be an unbridgeable gap. The biblical picture of church, such as in Acts 2:42, 1 Cor. 14:26, and Eph. 4:11-16, is so different from what we see today that I believe a church that practiced it today would be considered cultish and renegade. (In light of the Regulative Principle of Worship, this is an alarming thought. The people of God are not interested in doing church in the way God intended?) So what type of changes would one see if we began to concern ourselves with biblical worship versus contemporary views? The first thing that would have to go would be the idea of a stage in the front of the church. A “stage” speaks of performance, and the concept of performance smells more like theater than worship. In fact, the function of a church service is not to entertain believers (or, worse, unbelievers). The function is always to glorify God, call attention to Him, and edify the Body of Christ. The confusion, these days, seems to be the focus of attention. Is the attention to be focused on the front and the people doing the work on the stage (preacher, worship leaders, etc.) or is the attention to be focused on God? While most would certainly answer, “God”, current practices indicate otherwise. Lighting, musical approach, sound, stage presence, and arrangement all point to a performance to be enjoyed by an audience rather than a worship service located in heaven in which a congregation is to be engaged.

If, on the other hand, worship is to be focused on God, then He would be the audience, not the congregation. In this scenario, everyone shifts. The “performers” are not those in front; they are the congregation itself. Those who lead are not the performers; they are the prompters. If there is a “front” of the church, it would be as prompt box. Perhaps you remember the idea in the old theaters where a sunken box was in front of the stage for a prompter to feed lines to the actors. In these arrangements, the prompter was not to be visible to the audience; he was only for the performers. And in these situations, the orchestra was not lighted; they were below the audience’s line of sight. The spectators needed to hear them, but they didn’t need to focus on them. They were accompaniment, not the focus. All that went into making the show was behind the scenes, with the show being simply the performers, their acting highlighted by sound, lighting, music, etc. In churches today we have turned this whole concept around. We’ve lit up the orchestra, put the prompter in front stage center, and turned the lights out on the performers. Often, when the worship team has finished their “set”, we applaud their performance, completely missing the fact that we were to be the performers, not them.

If worship is first defined as bringing glory to God, then bringing glory to the performance on stage is not only incorrect, it is sin. If worship is defined as a focus on God’s worthiness, then we have entirely missed the boat and elevated people above God. We have sold biblical worship down the river in favor of our culture’s competing offer – entertainment.

A typical Sunday morning worship service, then, would look radically different. Even if we choose not to accept the biblical examples of Acts 2:42 or 1 Cor. 14:26, our services would change markedly. Currently we have, typically, several components of a worship service. There are announcements, a necessary but obtrusive process that keeps people informed while interrupting the worship. There is the song service that carries varying weight, from the primary focus for a half hour to a fifteen-minute warm up band for the preacher. There is the preaching, apparently the ultimate purpose in a Sunday morning service. And there is the collection of money, a distasteful but necessary practice. There will sporadically be other parts, such as baptisms, baby dedications, or the Lord’s Supper, which must be dealt with as they come.

Imagine, then, a worship service in which all parts of the service were . . . worship! Imagine a service in which announcements are intended to spur us to love and good deeds rather than distract us from worship. In this vein, the announcements would exist to point to God and His work in the church. Far from detracting from worship, this approach would stimulate us to focus on God. Imagine a service in which the singing was aimed away from performers (“worship team”) and their performances and toward the character of God. This is a particularly tenuous concept. It is necessary, for instance, for singing not to be haphazard or poor quality. If it is, it becomes a distraction. On the other side, if the quality is the emphasis, it becomes a performance rather than a pointer. The singing, then, would need to have sufficient quality not to put people to sleep or offend the ears while not being a “professional” event. Two clues here would be a total disinterest from the performers (congregation) or, on the other side, a round of applause from the performers (congregation). Imagine a service in which the collecting of money was an act of worship, the natural response of a grateful people. Giving would not be a necessary evil, so to speak, but the delight of a blessed congregation. It would be part of the performers’ (congregation) act of worship to the Lord. In this atmosphere of announcements, singing, and giving that are focused on God, the heart attitude would naturally be focused on listening . . . to God. The sermon would no longer be from a skilled orator, but from the Lord through His word. This would be what a worship service would look like without actually switching to the totally unfamiliar concepts of 1 Cor. 14:26.

Before I go on, let me spend a moment more on the singing portion of this worship service. Two aspects of the singing of worship music need to be addressed. The first is the purpose and the second is the execution of the singing.