What is worship? I have been pondering this question for a while… The reason I think about this now is I just preached a sermon 2 days ago on the mark of discipleship of weekly worship. Notice that is weekly not weakly worship. I have read a lot about worship and leadership of worship, but I always wonder what others think worship is…
Is worship the one hour (as long as your pastor is not long winded!) you get recharged for the 167 other hours in the week? Is worship something you do only in the walls of the church, or with other members of your congregation in a gathering on Sunday morning? or if you are part of a radical church maybe you gather on Saturday night or some other night or time to worship…
Is worship something we do only as a gathered body, or is it something we do on our own?
I wonder about this, because I also have an interesting interpretation on what the church is. We tell our children on Sunday morning that we are getting ready and going to worship, and we can not go to church. Why is it we can not go to church? Because we are the church.
There is a song by Richard Avery and Donald Marsh that goes: “I am the Church, you are the Church, we are the Church together. All who follow Jesus all around the world, yes, we’re the Church together. The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.” We can not go to church because where ever we are, we are the church! So we go to worship. But can we go to worship?
Yes worship is the gathering we do as a community to give praise and thanks to God, and it is the service we do as the people (Liturgy – literally means the work of the people). We in service praise God together and commune with each other and God. But is this really what worship is? Just one hour out or the week…
I believe worship is a lifestyle, and a way of life. We were not created to worship God, as if God needs someone to worship him to make him complete! Never. We were not created for worship to God, because this again points us to God not being fully complete in and of himself and needs his creation to somehow complete him by worshiping him. This does not mean that God does not desire us to worship, he does not need us to worship him and there is a big difference between desire and need! I believe, as is pointed out in Mark Driscoll’s blog post (found here), and is said by Harold Best in his book Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts, we were created worshipping and are continually worshipping every hour of every day. Our lives our pouring out to something all the time. We are giving something worship – we are giving something worth and value and placing it as the most important thing in our lives at that point in time. So we are constantly worshipping.
No matter who we are, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Athiest we are all constantly worshipping. We are giving something value, which is the meaning of the word worship, Worth and state of being…
So what do you think? Is worship like pray a consistant daily thing?
aSacredRebel 