by Jessica and Jeremy Martin-Weber
With so many different voices out there calling for what “true worship” should be, I sometimes wonder what we could possibly add to the conversation. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer material and resources available for and on the subject of worship. And when you try and follow the next big thing in the worship revival, too late you find you’re already behind the times and committing the latest worship crime against the church. Last year’s buzz words are this year’s cringe points and you’re hit full in the face that in some places the “worship wars” aren’t over. In fact, they’ve either only just begun or just look a little different. So, what’s the point?
"1Be careful what you do when you enter the house of God. Some fools go there to offer sacrifices, even though they haven't sinned. But it's best just to listen when you go to worship. 2Don't talk before you think or make promises to God without thinking them through. God is in heaven, and you are on earth, so don't talk too much. 3If you keep thinking about something, you will dream about it. If you talk too much, you will say the wrong thing.
4God doesn't like fools. So don't be slow to keep your promises to God. 5It's better not to make a promise at all than to make one and not keep it. 6Don't let your mouth get you in trouble! And don't say to the worship leader, "I didn't mean what I said." God can destroy everything you have worked for, so don't say something that makes God angry. 7Respect and obey God!" Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 (CEV)
As I start up this blog to enter into an already existing conversation I feel that we must first remind ourselves of the point. Why are you here? Is it to learn what the latest trend is? Is it to have your feelings or viewpoints validated? Is it out of a fear of being left out? Is it to escape spending time with God? Is it to feel empowered as you enter into the conversation? To learn more about worship forms, thoughts, ideas or something else? Some of these aren’t bad motivations, but to me, it seems that we can talk an awful lot about worship and forget why we’re having that conversation in the first place. Any one of those reasons can easily become the whole point. So before we enter into any kind of discussion on music selection, experiential elements, tech solutions, video or sound, worship style, life-style worship, complex worship philosophies, or anything else related to worship, we need to remember that worship is serious business. Before it’s anything else, it’s a time shared between us and God, individually and collectively. In our excitement to learn and talk about worship, could we be leaving God out of it? Have we made promises to Him that we have neglected? The passage above from Ecclesiastes has some very important cautions that we throw to the wind far too often as we get embroiled in the complexities of this new ipod world. The cautions: Be careful. Keep your promises with God. Shut up. Listen. Obey. Mean what you say. Remember Who you worship. Worship.
What happens when these other reasons, good as they may be, become an end in themselves? What if talking about worship becomes the point? Perhaps we need to consider the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…" Exodus 20:3-5 (NIV). We must ask ourselves, are we worshiping the Lord our God or are we worshiping worship and therefore ourselves? Have we fallen into a kind of idolatry of worship? In the quest to discover “true worship” I sometimes fear that we allow talking about, reading about, and thinking about worship to substitute for actual worship. Real worship has nothing to do with worship wars, traditional vs. contemporary, liturgical, non-liturgical, seeker-sensitive, purpose driven, postmodern, emerging or anything else that’s likely selling on Amazon right now. All of these topics are worth our consideration but in the midst of impassioned debates we must be very careful to still be worshiping. God has no desire for our philosophy of worship to be “sound” if we are profoundly lacking in the area of actually worshiping Him. God desires our obedience to Him as our worship, not all that we can learn. It’s time for pastors, worship leaders, worship teams and committees, church leaders and indeed all of the body of Christ to ask themselves what it is we are worshiping. When was the last time that you sincerely spent time in worship, time invested to bring glory to God alone. Not time to learn more about worship, not to analyze the latest trend, or to critique someone else’s worship but honest-to-goodness poured out and broken worship of the One and only True God. Being up to date on the latest worship trends isn’t all that important. Fighting for the traditions of meaningful worship experiences is not the intense battle to be spending all your energy on. Constantly looking for what “true worship” looks like is no excuse to neglect worshiping our Lord. I look forward to discussing worship but as we begin I want to be sure we don’t neglect God’s Word and remind ourselves of the point, to worship Him. For some of us it may be time to log off the computer, put down a book, put a conversation on hold, turn off a CD, cease the studies, and worship.
But the time is coming--it has, in fact, come--when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter. It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself--Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration." John 4:23-24 (The Message)
