Meaningful Worship

Last week as I was in my car listening to a radio station, I heard a commercial for a church in the area. This church prided themselves as a place where one could hear a relative and contemporary message, and a song service that would allow one to experience meaningful worship . This instantly caught my attention.Just what is meaningful worship? And to whom is it meaningful? God or me? If it’s meaningful to God, how do we know one church’s worship assembly is any more meaningful to God than another? Does God tell one church that their worship is more meaningful to him than another church’s worship? What is the criteria for meaningful worship? How I feel, or how God feels? How can we know how God feels, unless we search his holy Scriptures? How I feel should take a back seat.

Since when does our worship to God have to be meaningful to me? Why am I even a part of the equation? When did worship become all about me?

I’m all for contemporary worship. But I think our reaction to former liturgical, ritualistic, tradition-bound, “boring” worship assemblies has led some to swing to the opposite side. Now we speak of contemporary, meaningful, spirit-filled assemblies. Although not wrong in and of themselves, I wonder if churches who promote such assemblies are losing the real focus of worship. In our post-modern culture, the emphasis seems to be more and more on ourselves rather than God. We want to be “touched” in worship. We want to be “moved.” We need to experience a freshness to the assembly. We want the preacher to tell us stories that lift our spirits and draw forth various emotions. We want to sing (or hear) songs we like and “connect with.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love singing contemporary songs and hearing contemporary messages. I’m not at all opposed to livening up our worship assemblies and make them more of a celebration to God and less of a funeral service. I personally believe we should eliminate songs from our repertoire that people cannot understand (i.e., “Night With Ebon Pinion, Brooded O’er the Vale.” What is that?). I believe we should read publicly from translations that are written in modern language that don’t leave listeners scratching their heads saying, “Huh?” (I’m sorry, but the NIV, NCV, NLT, TEV, or any other translations are NOT going to send people to hell!) I believe our preaching should be biblical, yet relevant for our culture (kind of like Jesus did). But let’s keep the emphasis where it has always deserved to be: on the LORD!

Although the primary emphasis is God, the secondary emphasis of our worship is others around us. Our worship is not just vertical, it’s also horizontal. Paul tells the church in Colossians and Ephesians that our singing should be done to teach and encourage one another. This is why I hold the strong convictions mentioned in the above paragraph. If I’m teaching someone, shouldn’t they understand what I’m teaching? If I’m encouraging someone, shouldn’t my encouragement be comprehended? This is why, when I preached, I spoke to where the youngest audience member could understand me.

Is there anything wrong with leaving a worship assembly encouraged, strengthened, feeling closer to God or fellow Christians? Absolutely not. But let us remember that the worship assembly was never designed to be a therapeutic, self-help session to make us feel better about ourselves or to help us feel okay with the sinful life we’ve lived the previous six days. The worship assembly was designed to draw us into the presence of Almighty God, and there, be changed by the power of his Holy Spirit. When I’m convicted of sin in my life and turn it over to God, that’s meaningful worship. When my broken relationships are healed through an encounter with God’s Spirit, that’s meaningful worship.

God, may worship be to YOUR honor and glory, not mine. Forgive me when I make it more about me and less about you. Amen.

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• The God of Inconsistency?
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~ by hawkman64 on July 19, 2007.