At the “Service of Reconciliation” the evening after the senior pastor resigned rather abruptly several spoke positively of the second worship service. Many along the lines of “as long as people are worshiping the Lord who cares what instruments they use?”
A little background. A couple years ago University Baptist Church went from one Sunday worship gathering (blended – traditional or contemporary style varying week to week) to two Sunday worship gatherings. The first “traditional”. The second “emerging” – as in “reach the emerging generation with more multisensory fluid participatory worship”. The senior pastor burned a lot of chips to pull this off and continued to take some heat over the move. There are some who think he resigned because of ongoing dissatisfaction with the second “emerging” worship gathering – both the style and the fact it occupied the more desired 11:15 a.m. time slot. I do not think that was the main point of conflict – but in such situations perception matters as much as reality.
(For the record I supported and still support this change.)
Anyways – so people at this “Service of Reconciliation” talk about how wonderful and important and necessary the second worship service is. More to the point they talk about worship. We should be glad that youth and young adults are here to worship God.
This prompted me to wonder “is every activity ‘worship’ just because we feel it is and call it such?” Just because a group of younger people play guitars and drums and lift their hands and say “we are worshiping God” does that make it worship? And while we are at it just because a group of older people sing from the hymnal to beautiful organ music and never lift their hands yet say “now this is worshiping God” does that make it worship?
What is worship?
What must worship include in order to be (authentic Christian) worship?
(Is an activity “worship” just because we say it is?)
This question has been on my mind a great deal since seminary. Partly because I was fortunate enough to take Introduction to the Old Testament with Samuel Balentine. Partly because of my interest in biblical studies in general the issue of ritual in particular – a topic which has gained interest among biblical scholars in recent years.
In his book The Torah’s Vision of Worship – and much of what Balentine taught in that Old Testament class came from his book as he was researching and writing it – Balentine notes that the subject of worship in the Old Testament has faded since the 1960′s and the work of H.-J. Kraus, R. de Vaux, H. H. Rowley, and W. Harrelson. Indeed there is no entry on “worship” in the massive and scholarly 6-volume Anchor Bible Dictionary.
Last Sunday I decided to discuss the issue of “worship” for the “evensong” service Sunday evening. (With the senior pastor gone the minister with college students and I will share responsibility for that gathering.) Developing two sermons is a bit more than I can handle in a week so typically what I share at evensong is a “conversation in outline” – some questions quotes and points on a topic such as “what is repentance?” Decided to talk about “what is worship? and what must worship include?”
And why should we even care?
My intent was not to critique this or that worship gathering (traditional or “emerging”). But it troubled me that when people in this church talk about “worship” it is unclear they have any conceptual or theological framework for doing so.
Do we even know what we are talking about?
So let me share from last Sunday evensong.
Balentine notes:
In 1969 Harrelson observed that a re-examination of Israel’s worship could help with the problems confronting the community of faith in an ‘ecumenical and post-Christian age’. Given the perceived secularism of that time Harrelson argued that a study of Israel’s worship could contribute toward restoring the quality of relationship between God and humankind and toward restoring and reappropriating God’s design for the world (Torah’s Vision of Worship, 4)
Those are two important issues not only for ancient Israel but for the Christian church today:
- how to restore the quality of relationship between God and us (humankind in general or the Christian church specifically)
- how to restore and reappropriate God’s purposes for the world which he created and is creating still.
Worship is important.
Okay but what is it exactly?
We could approach “what is worship” etymologically.
English “worship” from Old English weorthscipe or “worth + ship”. Ascribing worth to God.
In German Gottestdienst “divine service” or Verehrung = “worship (in the sense of veneration)” or Anbetung = “worship (in the sense of adoration)”.
In Hebrew *h-l-l = “worship” (perhaps from a root which means sing or shout) or *h.-w-h as in hishtah.awe(h) = “bow (oneself) down” or `aboda(h) = “service” (similar to Gottesdienst) or *y-d-h as in ho(w)de(h) = “praise/thank” (perhaps from a root which means to throw or cast).
In Greek proskuneo = “bow down” (probably the most common term in the New Testament) or doxazo = “glorify/praise” or latreo = “worship (in the sense of ritual worship)”.
But etymologies only take us so far because ultimately words do not have meanings so much as they have uses. How are these terms used? Nor do they entirely answer the questions “what is worship? and what must worship include (to be authentic Christian worship)?”
I suggested five things.
First. And this is an assumption/assertion – the book of Psalms is our primary textbook for the language of prayer and praise. Therefore the language of the Psalms – not to mention the use of the psalter – needs to be present in our worship.
Second. Christian worship must be Trinitarian. One would think this is obvious but it is not. At the ACMI conference last summer (Association of Christians Ministering with Internationals) I noticed how so many of the prayers and songs and how much of the presentations was about Jesus. Follow Christ. Believe in Christ. Worship Christ. But what about the Father and the Holy Spirit? I have the same mild critique of emerging worship by Dan Kimball. He says emerging worship focuses on Jesus. I say Christian worship is not just about Jesus – it is about God fully revealed as Father Son and Holy Spirit. Authentic Christian worship needs to be Trinitarian – not just “Jesus-centered”.
Third. Worship needs to be consistent with Christian tradition. This is going to be a bit controversial. And the intent is not to make us slaves to the past. But can we at least be familiar with the past? With how Christians have worshiped through the centuries? We might want to pause and reflect before we do something that breaks radically and dramatically with centuries of Christian teaching and practice.
Fourth. Biblical examples. When people in the Bible are “worshiping” – what exactly are they doing? What do they do? What do they say?
Fifth. In his book Doxology and Idolatry Walter Brueggeman directs us to the Psalms scholar Sigmund Mowinckel who argued that “worship makes a world”. This may sound strange and can be difficult to understand. But when we worship we are either (a) describing the way the world is or (b) describing the way the world can be. A simple example is to say “Jesus is Lord” during the persecutions under the Roman Empire. Not only is that the way the world is – it is also a “counter-world” that challenges the “reality” of the Roman emperor. So when we worship we need to pause at times to consider what kind of a world do we make with our worship?
Similarly in the recent study of ritual scholars note that rituals have at least three primary functions:
- rituals make reality (something new)
- rituals maintain reality (continue something)
- rituals repair reality (fix something that has become broken)
Think about worship and rituals of worship in Scripture. We ordain someone to the ministry. Each month we celebrate Holy Communion. We pray for those who mourn. Perhaps not the best examples but you get the idea.
Let me close with another quote from Balentine:
My thesis is that the Torah conveys a ‘vision’ of worship. It portrays worship as a principal means by which a community of faith (or a community seeking faith) attains clarity about God, God’s design for the world, and the role of humankind in implementing and sustaining the world of that design. (4) [emphasis added]
Granted Balentine addresses specifically the vision of worship in the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) but I would suggest this may apply to our understanding and practice of worship in general.
