Praise God from whom all blessings flow

Praise him for one hour here below;

Praise him with nickel and with dime,

Praise God we’re getting out on time.

‘It’s dead, a mechanical routine. We do the same things, ritually, week after week. I don’t get anything out of it.’ ‘My friends have voted with their feet and stay away.’ ‘Our church services are so cold, they’re like mournful funerals: everyone is so sombre and distant.’ ‘Ours are like a fowl-yard: so much chattering and giggling and irreverence.’ ‘We’ll have to rescue ours from show business!’ ‘Why not cut the preliminaries and have a better sermon?’ ‘Let’s liven it up with happier singing.’ ‘Let’s be more experimental.’ ‘Our vicar has the liturgical fidgets; you don’t know what to expect.’ ‘Let’s give people what they want or we’ll lose them.’ ‘It’s people’s duty to attend worship, no matter how dull and boring it may be.’

Something is happening to people’s expectations of worship in this television age. They want the stale water of liturgies-as-usual turned into the wine of celebration. Worship services for many are a morose experience. As the Devil says in The Brothers Karamazov, ‘Everything would be transformed into a religious service: it would be holy, but a little dull.’ But is ‘spiritual entertainment’ the purpose of worship? Do we worship to make the faithful ‘feel good’?

‘Worship’ is a contraction of the old English word ‘worth-ship’. It’s recognizing that which is worth most, in the ultimate sense. In the old marriage service a man and a woman promised to ‘worship’ each other; to accord value and worth to each other. Divine worship is a love affair too! The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks ‘What is our chief end?’ It’s ‘to glorify God and enjoy him forever’. So the worshipper’s key question is ‘What can I offer the Lord for all his goodness to me?’ (Psalm 116:12).

Worship is the appropriate response to the God who gives everything life, to the Holy One, who inhabits eternity, to the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is God our Saviour. Worship is meeting — God with us, to which we respond with wonder, amazement and awe. ‘We worship God because God is to be worshipped’. We worship not because worship benefits us (although it does), not because we need to (although we do), nor because it is relevant to our daily lives (although it is), but because God is.

Saint Benedict founded an order with the motto ‘laborare est orare’, ‘to work is to pray’. Worship is service (it’s the same word in the New Testament): serving the Lord in our praises, praising the Lord in our ministry to others, ministering to the Lord in prayerful solitude – it’s all worship. Worship is both individual and corporate, done both in ‘the secret place’ and in the redeemed community. For a devout Christian worship is all of life, and is life-long.

So worship isn’t quite something ‘observed’ or ‘attended’, it is something we are and do. As ‘we are what we eat’ so ‘we are what we worship’ and we become like the God we worship. So we step back from the rush of life and ponder its realities at an ultimate level at a special time each week. But for true worshippers every time and every place is special.

The inward imperative as we ‘come to worship’ is to ‘take the shoes from [our] feet, for the place on which [we] stand is holy ground’ (Exodus 3:5). Remember the solemn warning in Ecclesiastes: ‘Guard your steps when you go to the house of God’ (Ecclesiastes 5:1). ‘Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire’ (Hebrews 12:28,29). We had better be careful, then: the way we worship could be hazardous!

Worship in Old Testament times was sometimes liturgical, sometimes free. There we seem to have two worship traditions. One was priestly, cultic, authoritarian and dynastic, the other more congregational, democratic, prophetic and ethical. Worship was both ritual and hearty service (Deuteronomy 11:13, Psalm 40:6-8, 50:12-15, Micah 6:6-8). Christian church history has similarly seen worship move from one extreme to the other.

The New Testament nowhere prescribes a detailed order of worship. The worship of the early church comprised teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers: God meets his people in the Word, in each other, in holy communion, and in prayer (Acts 2:42), and also in the more formal Jewish worship in the Temple (Acts 2:46, 3:1, 5:12).

Paul chose a close fraternity with the synagogue. The synagogue service consisted of an invitation to prayer, the prayer itself, the reading of scriptures, a homily based on the scripture reading and concluded with the benediction. At the end of the first century there was a move toward a more structured and formal service of worship (most churches move in this direction over time).

Building on the legacy of the New Testament, the Protestant Reformation’s emphasis was on the Word and inner reality rather than the sacraments and formality. So churches in the Reformation tradition devote about half – or more – of their time to the sermon. The Age of Reason ensured a highly rational content in worship, with eloquent sermons of high literary and intellectual merit. For Calvin’s followers the Sunday service became primarily a preaching service, with communion observed infrequently.

When we worship as a congregation, we are really united with all of God’s people everywhere and at all times. Indeed, we may not realize our affinity with the strict Calvinist when we sing ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me’, or with a Unitarian (‘Nearer my God to thee’), with a Roman Catholic (‘Lead Kindly Light’), with a Quaker (‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’), as well as with ancient psalmists and modern poets.

Biblical Worship and Ours

Biblical worship was sometimes active. So we should involve the whole congregation in worship: not just singing hymns, but with responsive readings, litanies, united prayers, times of community sharing, bringing the offerings forward, moving to greet one another etc.

Biblical worship was also sensual: appealing to eye, ear – and nose! Do a checklist of your worship-service: what is there for the eyes (form, light, colour, architecture, dress etc.), the ear (besides voices of leader, congregation, musical instruments [see Psalm 150] and choir, recorded music, voices, special effects), taste and smell in the holy communion: what else? Touch is important: we all have ‘contact need’ since separation from the womb. In the gospels physical contact was important for Jesus as he ministered to people: so, when it is appropriate, we may hold hands to sing or pray, or clasp arms, or share an embrace as an expression of genuine Christian love. These are opportunities to say with flesh what we feel in our hearts.

However, we need to be careful we don’t call more attention to the body than to him who redeemed that body. The essence of Baalism, the worship of local gods in biblical times, was its deification of the sex instinct. Worship is not just a subjective, ecstatic, ‘feeling’ experience. It is more than ‘self-expression’. Corporate worship ought not to be an emotional tool for producing ‘conversions’. The Bible does not use the word ‘worship’ as simply a description of experience. Worship is something you do, it is a reponse to God’s word and God’s ways and God’s will, however you feel about it (although this does not mean there is no place for feelings and sensory experience).

Rudolf Otto explored the importance of the non-rational in religion and attempted to analyze the feeling which remains where the concept falls short. Otto coined the word numinous to describe ‘the holy’ after words have failed. The numinous cannot be taught; it can only be felt. It is ‘thanking God for his unspeakable gift’ (1 Corinthians 9:15). The numinous, says Otto, encompasses both boundless awe and boundless wonder, both fear and fascination. This deep, awesome aspect of all sincere religious emotion he called the mysterium tremendum (from tremo, tremble; also tremor, dread). The raw material of religious humility is the tremenda majestas, or awe-inspiring majesty of God. So we must resist the temptation to ‘domesticate the holy’, whereby our solemn assemblies become informal social gatherings, our deep communion with God litle more than friendship with one another.

A lot of our worship is intellectual, moving too exclusively in the realm of thoughts and words and ideas. It is addressed to the ears rather than the eyes. Our world is ‘word-weary’. We are slaves to the printed word. Perhaps we need printed guidance for worship, – the middle-classes are comfortable reading – but let us not forget the less well-educated persons who may not be. For them particularly we should encourage ‘folk arts’ which open new avenues to express worship and praise, provide new methods of teaching and instruction, and draw people more into an atmosphere of enjoyment and festivity. In charismatic/pentecostal churches where the Holy Spirit is invited to take over the worshipper, we have moved sometimes from the rational to the mystical. Worship needs to be rational (Romans 12:1-3) and spiritual (John 4:23), both.

We worship as whole beings: our ‘self’ is psychological, cultural, biological. We worship with mind and heart and will. We involve the emotions, genuine feelings of joy and desolation, exaltation and bereavement. Worship ought to be a living event, to which we bring our human, frail, brokenness. The Spirit helps us in our infirmities… so we can come to God with our fears, joys, guilt, anger, affirmations, tensions and loneliness. In his presence we renew our lives which are mixed up in work, conflict, love and creation. We worship with ‘all that is within us’ and ‘all that is around us’ (the wonders of creation too are an incentive to praise the Creator: see Psalm 19).

Above all, authentic worship is always Christ-centred. The early Church remained in the apostles’ teaching because Christ taught his disciples; they had fellowship because they all belonged to the Church, Christ’s body; they celebrated communion because Christ ordained it; they prayed because Christ taught them how to pray. (1)

We now turn to the various components in an authentically biblical ‘order of worship’.

1. ENCOUNTER AND ADORATION

Christian worship services begin with a Call to Worship and Invocation. Here nothing excels the Sursum Corda for feeling and dignity. The leader says: ‘Lift up your hearts’. Our response: ‘We lift them up unto the Lord’.

Adoration. Worship is the expression of a love affair between us and our wonderful God. God is not a supreme egoist who needs flattery in order to survive. Wrong ideas about God generate all kinds of evils and heresies. For example if God is thought to be the Author of our social system, this can lead to injustice perpetrated against those who question this assumption. If God is mostly ‘who I need’ our worship can be sickly and subjective.

2. CONFESSION AND CELEBRATION: SORROW AND JOY

‘Tremble with fear and stop sinning’ (Psalm 4:4). Authentic worship involves ‘diminishing one’s load of narcissism’ (self-worship). Gathered worship is a positive way of dealing with guilt. Self-examination, confession, and the biblical word of ‘assurance’ are a fundamental part of worship. Some churches, in their over-reaction to the manipulative, guilt-producing preaching of some fundamentalists and pentecostals, have overlooked the seriousness and prevalence of problems of guilt. Every worship service should provide opportunity for a realistic experience of confession and renewing an awareness of God’s acceptance and forgiveness. ‘Your sins are forgiven you’ – it’s the best news sinners can ever hear. How amazing that a holy God can have this sort of grace. The rest of the service moves into acts of celebration for that forgiveness. God and his people are reconciled. Alleluia!

Celebration: Look at these Psalms: they are a recital of God’s goodness. He has made us to be the apex of his creation: we are important (Psalm 8); his presence brings us pleasure (Psalm 16); he provides everything we need (Psalm 23); he forgives our sins (Psalm 32). God answers our prayers (Psalm 40); he takes shelved sinners and restores them to usefulness (Psalm 51); he provides grace as we grow old (Psalm 71); he gives us his word to guide us (Psalm 119); and when all others fail, he is entirely trustworthy (Psalm 146). No wonder celebration has such therapeutic value. (2)

3. EXHILARATION AND SILENCE: PRAISE AND AWE

When you were a child, and started making a noise, your parents said ‘Shh! You’re in church. This is God’s house. You must be quiet!’

But the characteristic note of the biblical worship is exhilaration. ‘Sing and shout for joy, people of Israel! Rejoice with all your heart’ (Zephaniah 3:14). ‘Praise God! for the Lord our Almighty God is king! Let us rejoice and be glad; let us praise his greatness! For the time has come for the wedding…’ (Revelation 19:7). We yell ourselves hoarse when our team wins the grand final: that’s what the people of God do when they get excited about him! Our worship is not a solemn memorial service for a dead hero, but the joyful celebration of the victory of a living Lord. In the primitive church ‘Jesus is Lord!’ was at first a shout of triumphant praise to Christ the King. Only later did it become the church’s first creed to be affirmed by those about to be baptized.

Just this morning I read the litany towards the end of the Church of England’s Morning Prayer in their 1980 ‘Alternative Service Book’ – Minister: ‘Let your priests be clothed with righteousness.’ People: ‘And let your servants shout for joy!’ – and wondered what would happen in an Anglican church if the people actually did that!

For centuries mainline Protestants have been conditioned to associate restricted expression with reverence. In the presence of God we are expected not to sing too loudly, speak too forcefully, or move too excitedly. We are to conduct ourselves as decorously as we would in an eighteenth century drawing room… With Miriam beside the Red Sea, David before the ark, or the Prodigal with his homecoming friends, Scripture pictures reverence in the form of excited dancing. Reverence to the psalmist thunders with full-throated, orchestral praise. (3)

You have probably heard the story of the little jester who was too small and lame to be a soldier, and thus entertained the royal family with his tumbling and juggling. One day a priest found him in the cathedral – up before the high altar – going through his entertainment routine, and he asked him why he was behaving thus in God’s house. To which the jester replied: ‘It is all I have, the only gift I know how to give. And because I love God so, I wanted to offer him my best.’ Francis of Assisi heard that tale and took the jester as his model. He resolved to be God’s juggler, his holy fool, celebrating by word and deed the joy of the Lord.

There is a place for exhuberance in our worship of God. Once when David got carried away in his worship, his wife Michal ‘despised him in her heart’. So I guess we need a word of caution: white Anglo-Saxons with their northern European heritage are more akin to Michal than to David when it comes to enthusiasm. They’ll have to be ‘eased’ into true exhilaration!

Silence: Worship and awe. All authentic worship has an element of mystery. Jacob at Bethel in the story of Jacob’s Ladder exclaimed: ‘What an awesome place this is! It must be the house of God; it must be the gate that opens into heaven!’ (Genesis 28:17). The appropriate response to awe is silence, and wonder. And there is healing power in quietness and rest. There should be silence after the reading of Scripture, and maybe at other times.

4. SOLITUDE AND COMMUNITY: FASTING AND FEASTING

God meets us, personally, alone, in solitary places: Jacob at Bethel, Moses before a burning bush, Isaiah in the temple, Jesus in the wilderness, Paul in a ‘third heaven’, John on an island. Corporate worship is the coming together of those who have met God in private during the week.

Worship and community. Fellowship is caring for one another, as we are cared for by Christ. It is the sharing of joys and sorrows. It is in true Christian community that we experience and demonstrate the fellowship of Christ. So in the early church absenteeism was considered to be spiritually disastrous (Hebrews 10:25). A church – however large – must not resemble an assembly of strangers. Put 10-15 minutes – sometimes more or less – into your worship-time for people to share their lives with one another.

This time begins with ‘passing the peace’, or greeting one another, in an appropriate way. Traditionally, the ancient practice involved clasping hands and saying to one another ‘(name) may the peace of Jesus Christ be with you’ to which the other responds ‘And with you too, (name)’. We do not need to be rigid: perhaps we could simply introduce this segment with ‘Let us greet one another/exchange some sign of peace’. Passing the peace is much more than a gesture of friendship: it is, as one liturgist puts it, ‘a sacrament of unity in the Spirit.’

Then we share our joys and sorrows, learnings and aspirations. Psalm 66:16 invites us to ‘Come and listen, all who honour God, and I will tell you what he has done for me…’ If there’s a celebration or a bereavement or a tragedy, let people verbalize their feelings. Encourage them to tell brief faith-stories about the theme of the service. (Last Sunday I preached on social justice in a Baptist church; during the community-time there were a couple of stories from people who had suffered an injustice, or participated in bringing justice to bear somewhere). During this interaction we share our needs and find support from others. And after the benediction some serious counseling or praying with others can begin to happen.

If God is saying something to someone for the benefit of the whole church now is the time for them to share it. (Usually, such a ‘word from the Lord’ ought to be ‘checked out’ by the pastor/s first especially if it’s highly charged, and will affect the community of faith in a significant way). Then there’s a ‘hey kids’ time. Then someone who can do it sensitively in the spirit of this worship-segment will mention the ‘notices’, but they’ll be disguised as ‘opportunities for ministry and prayer’! ‘Announcements’ are often given as a sort of ‘commercial break’; surely we can do better than that! One or two may (briefly) seek recruits for visiting a gaol, or developing a Spanish ministry, or to join an social justice group, or visit homes for a community-survey or whatever.

Covenant is an important ingredient in building community. A covenant is more than a contract. Covenants bind us together by voluntary intent, and the ‘penalties’ for breaking the covenant are relational. Contracts carry legal obligations and penalties, and the consequences of breaking the contract involve specific monetary or judicial punishments.

A covenant is also more than a creed. Creeds tend to be exclusive, emphasising the ‘truth’ thus excluding ‘heretics’ who might see reality differently. Covenants on the other hand are relational rather than propositional. They describe the way we will act towards each other in love. So covenants are dynamic, creeds static. Creeds tend to represent an understanding of the faith which was locked into one period of history. Surely it is fundamental to a dynamic, progressive theology that ‘God has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word.’ Creeds are outdated as soon as they appear. If you must have them use different creeds – perhaps four or five a year. Perhaps you might rewrite the creed in modern idiom. When a new creed is introduced to the congregation, rehearse it in silence before saying it aloud. Use the same creed or covenant several weeks running.

Here’s a modern covenant statement, adapted from one produced by the United Church of Canada several years ago:

We humans are not alone, we live in God’s world. We believe in God: who created and is creating, who has come in the true man, Jesus, to reconcile and renew, who works within us and among us by his Spirit. We trust him. He calls us to be his church: to celebrate his presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil. We proclaim his reign over us and the whole world. In life, in death, in life beyond death he is with us. We are not alone: thanks be to God! (4)

Every Christian community ought to be bound together by some form of covenant, which is renewed periodically (say, once a year). Such a covenantal community is thus more than a loose association of persons who come and go at will: they voluntarily take upon themselves serious obligations towards others. Such covenants may be repeated together at membership reaffirmation services.

Pastoral prayer. If preachers prepare what they say to us for God, pray-ers should also prepare what they say to God for us. Rambling, predictable extempore prayers filled with cliches can be as sterile and filled with ‘vain repetition’ as ‘set prayers’. All we are doing is hearing another person say their prayers out loud. Rather, as Isaac Watts said of ‘free prayer’: it is the result of a work of meditation before we begin to speak. ‘Free’ churches should use more of the church’s great heritage of prayer; ‘established’ churches should be open to more freedom and spontaneity. Some important tests: can people enter into the meaning and spirit of the prayer? Is it relevant to the theme of the worship and the needs of the community?

Our public praying should include contemporary concerns. It will intercede for a world where conspicuous consumption and greed are ruining the environment, where there is increasing ethnic violence, torture and rape, a disappearing ozone layer, drug abuse and associated crime, and pandemic loneliness. The prayer will take us to Main Street, Capitol Hill, Downing Street and Red Square, as we pray for God to redeem us in our history.

A note about posture in prayer. In biblical days and since our bodies reinforce prayer-attitudes: bowed heads, hands lifted in adoration or supplication or reverently folded together, kneeling, even lying prostrate on the ground are all appropriate at various times.

And let’s all say ‘Amen’: it means ‘that’s right!’ (or ‘right on!’), ‘I agree with that!’, ‘may it be so!’, ‘that’s my prayer too!’.

One writer notes that worship in some of the most beautiful parts of the world is often dry:

In my visits to parts of the country noted for scenery, I have seldom been impressed by the depth of religious devotion of the inhabitants. On the other hand, trips to [barren sandy places] have sent me home pondering the religious dedication of so many people in those areas… I am sometimes tempted to claim there is an inverse ratio of religious devotion to natural beauty. (5)

Similarly, some of the deepest worship I have experienced have been with Russians, Romanians, Koreans, and people in North-East Brazil, all of whom have known what tough times are all about.

Fasting is abstaining from good things to be open to receiving better things. Where there is a surfeit of good things we become de-sensitized to the needs of others and to the beauty of the Lord. Fasting reminds us of our dependency, our fragility, our pilgrimage here. So when we fast – from food, or talk, or sex, or movies, or sport, or whatever – we are fine-tuning our spirits to get on to the wave-length of the Spirit of the Lord. Try it regularly!

Worship and the Sacraments. A sacrament is ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.’ The word comes from the Latin sacramentum, the term used for the coin given to a soldier when recruited to serve the Emperor.

For people in tune with the Infinite God everything is sacramental. But the Lord serves us especially in ‘the sacraments’ of water, bread and wine.

Baptism is an ‘acted creed’. ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven’ ought to be our response at every baptism. Baptism is the rite of entry into the church. It is ordination for ministry. It ought to be the time when a person receives the fullness of the Spirit, and before the congregation is assured of his or her ‘Spiritual giftedness’. The baptismal service should have some sort of creed or covenantal statement to express the body of beliefs and commitments of the church into which the candidates are being baptized. The Apostles’ Creed was originally called the Baptismal creed. The mode of baptism, the amount of water used and the age of the baptized may vary from church to church. The more important factor is that one is baptized in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The time is coming, hopefully, when more churches will recognize each other’s baptism in this way.

The Lord’s Supper, or ‘eucharist’, is really high drama. The early Christians thought of Christ in terms of the past (‘remember me’), present (‘you proclaim the Lord’s death’), and future (’till he come’) (1 Corinthians 13:13, Hebrews 13:8). The Communion is not just a private affair between an individual and Jesus, but a public act of the entire assembly, a public sign of our intention to be united with each other. There is great value in a weekly celebration: in Acts 20:7 coming together for this purpose on the Lord’s Day is mentioned as though it were a matter of course. There may also be other occasions where Christians can meet around the table of the Lord. At the time of eucharistic celebration we might make another opportunity to get right with one another. Sometimes let us move around and say something meaningful to another: a word of encouragement, confession, maybe a plea for forgiveness.

Do it differently sometimes, and think about what you are doing. For example, for churches where people come to the front to receive the bread, why not take it to them, symbolizing the good news that grace meets you not after you become worthy, but in order to help you become worthy? Perhaps servers of the wine could position themselves around the meeting-place, and people go to them. That is, as grace is given to us freely, we have to be willing to receive it: I will get up and go and claim the gift Christ offers. If the elements are normally served to the congregation, let them come to the front to receive them sometimes. Or serve each other. Or sing some meaningful worship-songs during communion.

We are invited to give thanks in all things, at all times. In everything! If it wasn’t Paul writing those injunctions I could hardly believe them: he knew what hardship and trouble and plans going wrong was all about. In every time of worship we ought to be invited to ‘count our blessings’.

5. RECITAL AND PROCLAMATION: SCRIPTURE AND SERMON

Worship as Drama. The Good News has come to us dramatically. Worship is thus an unfolding drama that moves through various acts to a climax of sacrificial self-offering to God. So worship services should move with dramatic power, not for aesthetic but for religious reasons. How should an interaction with the King of kings be conducted? God and his people are communicating to each other.

Worship and Scripture. When we hear the Scripture read we are listening to the voice of the living God. We don’t listen to the Bible reading simply to learn something interesting. Our silent prayer is always ‘Beyond the sacred page I seek you, Lord. My Spirit yearns for you, O Living Word.’ The Bible readings should be somewhere near the preaching, to make clear the connection. I like the discipline of the lectionary; it ensures our readings and preaching range over the whole Bible. But don’t follow it slavishly: in biblically literate congregations there is merit in preaching consecutively through various books of the Bible, with rotating themes from Old Testament, Gospel, and Epistle, interspersed with ‘special days’ (Trinity Sunday, Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, Easter etc). In my view you don’t need Stewardship Sundays: expository preaching will regularly address money-issues in their biblical contexts.

The reading of scripture should be done well. In some churches the Bible reading is as exciting as if someone read a telephone directory! Train your readers. Introduce the reading with a sentence or two describing its background. Use drama, dance, mime, and audio-visuals to assist in ‘sitting where the readers first sat’. God wants his word understood; the scriptures were written in the common languages of their day, so use a translation closest to the language we speak. I was brought up with the King James Version of the Bible, and love it, but in fairness to others who don’t speak Jacobean English any more I use a translation like the Good News Bible or the New Revised Standard Version. After Scripture is read, be silent to listen with the heart.

Worship and preaching. ‘Going to worship’ is more than ‘going to preaching’. In the U.S. church advertisements in the local paper often have ‘Dr. [So and so] preaching’. As James White points out, ‘The question we have been accustomed to hear from someone who missed church was, “what did he say?”‘. Preaching is not done well in many churches. Homilies in some liturgical churches are polite sermonic essays which won’t offend – or change – anybody. Well-educated preachers in some mainline churches fill their sermons with theological abstractions. Pentecostal preaching is often a loud reiteration of exhortations lacking theological substance. And other churches which may have better preaching often don’t know how to be ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ in their worship.

Good preaching on its own will not fill churches anymore, but bad preaching will empty them. The preacher stands between heaven and earth, speaking for God to us, and strengthening our faith, hope and love. Good preaching is inspired and inspiring, bringing the Bible to life, and life to the Bible: it is rooted in the biblical text but relevant to our needs. Good preaching is pastoral (comforting the afflicted) and prophetic (afflicting the comfortable). It is interesting, warm, ‘confessional’ (the preacher is a sinner needing grace too), dialogical and interactive. Preaching, according to Phillips Brooks’ famous dictum is ‘communicating truth through personality’. The best preachers are ‘bilingual’, understanding the terminology of theology, but also communicating plainly in the language of the people.

But good preaching exalts Christ: our response is not ‘what great oratory!’ but ‘what a great Saviour!’ Good preaching has both heat and light: heat without light leaves us scorched and brittle; light may help us ‘see’ (and as Horace Bushnell once said, there can be no preaching worth the name if there is no thinking), but knowledge without faith won’t save anybody. Good preaching touches mind and heart and will: we learn, we love, and we change. It goes without saying that good preaching is not constantly negative, opposing anything and everything. We shepherds sometimes spend too much time mending fences and not enough time feeding the sheep. There will always be a prophetic dimension to our preaching, calling us to repentance. Sometimes, in our unwillingness to offend, our message is so muted and implicit that it has no cutting edge, and the main point virtually escapes the listener.

Try something different sometimes. How about a sermon preached from behind the congregation, or from the middle of a row, or with a child in the preacher’s arms? Don’t be ‘gimmicky’: always explain the reason for changes. Does the sermon always have to come ‘after half-time’? Can it be broken up sometimes, and interspersed with other worship- activities to reinforce the main points made? Maybe groups of pastors who preach from the same lectionary can get together each week to study the text: one of them prepares a full-length sermon/exposition for discussion.

6. CALL AND RESPONSE: THE WORD AND THE WORLD

Christianity is par excellence the religion of the Word. When we speak, we disclose ourselves: so does God. He has spoken in various ways – nature, history, conscience, prophets and ultimately in his Son (Hebrews 1:1,2). Jesus Christ IS God’s word to us. He also speaks through his written word, the Bible. And the word of the Lord comes to us in the living voice of the church as it proclaims, preaches and teaches.

In true worship God speaks, we answer, God speaks again, we respond. ‘The Lord said to [Jeremiah]’… ‘I answered…’ ‘But the Lord said to me…’ (Jeremiah 1:4-7). ‘I heard the Lord say, “Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?” I answered, “I will go! Send me!” So he told me to go…’ (Isaiah 6:8-9). Conversation is two-way dialogue. So is worship.

Response. When God speaks, we respond. Over and over in the Bible God tells us he is not pleased with worship that’s just words or formulas, and does not lead to a changed life. Indeed if worship does not change us it is not true worship. As Jesus, God’s Word, was totally obedient to the will of his Father, so we must respond with our total selves (Romans 12:1,2).

For many the offering is an uninspired necessity. As we ‘praise the Lord’s glorious name’ we will ‘bring an offering’ (Psalm 96:8, 1 Chronicles 16:29). The offering – whether of money, or baskets of firstfruits, or commitment to serve (‘those who want to pursue ministry to the deaf go to the far corner’), or signing a petition – happens best towards the end of the worship-service, as a response to all that has gone before. And yet a case can be made for the offering to happen near the community-time: it is also a ‘collection’ for the needs of others. Perhaps once a month have a special offering for the poor, to be disbursed at the discretion of the pastor/s and elders. Perhaps at a special service invite people to bring an object which represents their vocation, and place these ‘tools of trade’ (hammer, book, pen, stethoscope) on the communion table in an act of consecration. True offerings are ‘spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 2:5).

Worship divorced from sacrifice is neither biblical nor Christian. That’s why the New Testament refers to the whole church as a ‘priesthood’. The ‘priesthood of all believers’ doesn’t mean the church should be a democracy: it means the whole church is ‘priestly’, offering spiritual sacrifices to God. The post-communion prayer in the Anglican prayer book says ‘Father, we offer ourselves to you as a living sacrifice, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.’

Worship and mission. A seminary teacher shocked our class with this statement: ‘You learn nothing in church. You learn by doing!’ When Benedict founded his order of monks their motto was ‘laborare est orare’, ‘to work is to pray.’ These two aspects of daily existence must go together. If the Word remains words, it does not come to its full potency. The word must become flesh again. Indeed, if mission involves justice, mercy and faithfulness (Micah 6:8, Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42), then worship without these mission-components is not worship. The Lord says to us through Amos ‘I cannot delight in your ceremonies. Spare me the sound of your songs! But let justice roll down like an ever-flowing stream.’ (Amos 5:24). ‘I cannot tolerate your… festivals. When you lift your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Though you offer countless prayers I will not listen… Cease to do evil and learn to do right. Pursue justice and champion the oppressed…’ (Isaiah 1:14ff. see also Mark 7:6-8). Worship is like what happens to jumbo jets when those planes are taken out of duty for a while to be overhauled. The check-up is not an end in itself: it is to make sure the jet is capable of serving people better.

So worship and mission go together.

The introverted church is one which puts its own survival before its mission, its own identity above its task, its internal concerns before its apostolate, its rituals before its ministry… An introverted church is an apostate body, for it denies the essential quality of the Church – the testimony of reconciliation in the world. Where worship is divorced from mission, this in-turning is frequent. The Christian congregation then becomes a group of people performing religious exercises; it no longer shares in the mission of Christ for the world and so behaves like a religious club, with concern for its members but with little recognition of responsibility for the life of the community at large. The cultic group fosters and builds up the spiritual life of its members in isolation from the world. (6)

To be a Christian is to be on mission with Christ somewhere amidst the agonies of history. When Baptist theologian Harvey Cox was drafted into being a paratrooper in World War II he says no one had to coerce him to listen to the instructions. When it dawned on him that very shortly he would be up in a plane and pushed out the door, he had a high motivation to get all the help he could in the process! The same is true of the Christian who is ministering in the world. That’s why Dom Helder Camara in Brazil and Mother Teresa in Calcutta are out of bed at four or five am. to pray the office: they could not survive in their ministries without it.

Worship and Evangelism. If our worship does not issue in evangelism it is, again, not true worship. The average western church-attender has listened to 8,000 sermons and 15,000 prayers and after all that most have not led another to faith in Christ! Is evangelism bringing others into the church or sending disciples into the world? Both. Paul mentioned the possibility of unbelievers ‘coming to church’, being convinced of their sin by what they hear, then falling down and worshipping God, confessing, ‘Truly God is here among you!’ (1 Corinthians 14:24,25). Indeed, in Australia, the churches winning the most non-Christians to faith have the longest worship services! After all, the church can be said to be (in Karl Rahner’s words) ‘that part of the world where God’s hidden presence is made visible, tangible, audible and evident’. In Sri Lanka, Youth for Christ workers tried to attract young people to their evangelistic meetings with games – something they had learned from Western evangelical churches. It didn’t work nearly as well with Buddhist youth, who were more interested when the Christians began their evangelistic services with joyful worship. British Anglican evangelist David Watson’s festivals of praise were similarly effective throughout Britain and elsewhere in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Workers with the India Evangelical Mission, ministering among tribal groups, will often ask non-Christians if they can use their homes for a time of worship. Instead of preaching to them, they hold a service of song, prayer and worship which deeply impresses the family and opens them to listen much more readily to the presentation of the gospel. (6)

The climax of worship. What is the high point of the drama of worship? The preaching of the Word, as Luther thought, or the offering of prayer (Calvin), or the ‘altar call’ (Finney)? In the sacraments, it is receiving bread and wine, or when water is applied to our bodies in baptism. If the Lord’s Supper is the high point, perhaps it should follow the preaching. Or, perhaps the order should vary a little Sunday by Sunday to highlight different aspects of worship. A service conducted from behind the communion table, with all that is done focussing on the eucharist can have a powerful dramatic effect.

The ‘altar call’ happens occasionally in mainline churches, and regularly in fundamentalist and pentecostal churches. This practice is fairly recent, arising out of American revivalism: the church got on quite well without it for many centuries! However, that said, I like the idea of people being invited to be prayed with for any need they may have, at any service. There may be a dangers with the idea that ‘stepping out for Christ’ confers some magical ‘instant grace’. Someone has called this ‘evangelical sacramentalism’.

The charge and benediction links worship in the house of God with worship in the world. The ‘charge’ challenges the congregation with a series of commands or imperatives to carry out in the world whatever the Word has brought to us that day. The benediction follows in the same breath, with the promise of God’s presence, grace and power to enable us to fulfil such a charge. The charge and benediction are two sides to one coin; they are not a prayer, but an offering from God to the people through God’s spokesperson. This can be a great empowering moment – a powerful, verbal, blessing on the people of God as they go to do battle with the world the flesh and the devil. Listen to the benediction: it’s much more than the ‘full stop to worship proceedings’. It’s God strengthening and comforting us as we translate what we have experienced together into real life. Pastors: work on your benedictions: pronounce them with feeling and fervour; link them with the theme of the worship-time, and vary them. (Still Waters Deep Waters, High Mountains Deep Valleys, and Rivers in the Desert, published by Albatross, Sydney, each have 52 different benedictions you can use). Perhaps the congregation can sometimes respond to the charge and benediction with a spoken or sung response.

7. TRADITION AND SPONTANEITY: ORDER AND FREEDOM

Our Christian worship comes to us out of the past. The story of worship has three ancient strands: Jewish, Pentecostal and Sacramental. Most of the debates about worship from the second century onwards have centred on one or more of these legacies.

The Jewish legacy, particularly through the synagogue centred on the word of God in the scriptures. The sacramental legacy, of the Upper Room and the Lord’s Supper, focusses our attention on the Cross of Christ and the heart of the gospel. The legacy of Pentecost [puts its] stress upon freedom and power through the presence of the Holy Spirit. When any one of these elements is exalted at the expense of the others, worship becomes distorted and impoverished. If any one of them is left out, the result is disastrous. Each of them has to be present in the overall experience of worship. (8)

So worship is much more than a few ‘preliminaries’ before listening to the preacher. When the sacramental element is emphasized to the exclusion of the other two, worship may become sacerdotal or sacramentarian – and the grace of God [is] promised as if by magic. In such churches preaching has often not been given a large enough place. That too is a distortion… There have been times when Pentecostal enthusiasm has been excessive and unhelpful. Paul addressed this kind of chaotic informality in his day. Everything must be done in an orderly way, he insisted… The absence of a lectionary of Bible readings in non-conformist and pentecostal chuches means that these congregations are often exposed to selective, biassed and unbalanced expositions selected at the whim of the pastor and guest preachers. Then we have the amazing incongruity of a preacher in an American fundamentalist church inveighing against candles in the sanctuary, yet he had two national flags on the platform! Dean Inge sagely concluded that when the church marries the spirit of the age, she will be left a widow in the next generation.

Two major trends are emerging: so-called ‘free’ churches are incorporating more liturgical components into their worship, and the more liturgical churches are moving towards greater freedom of worship form and content. Liturgy or no liturgy (actually every church has a liturgy: I could tell what would happen next, often by whom saying what, in our ‘unliturgical’ Brethren assembly when I was a child!), the real issue is how to use the forms we have. Liturgy is not the biggest barrier to the outsider, if it is explained, and if there is training in the theology of the liturgy, and if the worship-leader has a warm, sincere and inviting manner.

Oscar Cullmann in his book Early Christian Worship found that free worship took its place in the early centuries of the church’s history alongside liturgical forms. He notes that if it had been possible to maintain this harmony in the service of worship, the formation of Christian sects would have been effectively checked. There is also a development within New Testament times. For example, the early social meal (agape) later became a more formal eucharistic service.

So in worship our flexible and changeable experiences encounter the currents of the church’s institutional traditions. These traditions remind us of an unchangeable God. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. So it is not necessary to polarize between structured and unstructured forms of worship. (The largest church in the world, the Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea, has quite formal prayers – including the recital of the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed – alongside fervent free prayer.)

Some people like worship services to be formal, predictable, ‘traditional’. Others prefer informality, spontaneity, ‘freedom’. You won’t please all these people all the time in all your worship-times! What is the answer? Partly, the ‘trads’ and the ‘mods’ ought to give and take a little: so add some spontaneity to your traditional services, and some traditional liturgies to your free celebrations. In addition, if your church moves to two morning worship services, make one more (but not exclusively) traditional, the other more (but not exclusively) free.

Some churches and individuals who have rejected ‘formalism’ have gone to the extreme of conducting very sloppy and undignified services. On the other hand, pageantry and ceremony can be a shield behind which we mindlessly hide. We make up in show for what we lack in depth. Both ritual and freedom can contain the seeds of death. When the form becomes rigid, valid repetition becomes ‘vain repetition’, a sterile ritual. Freedom must not be allowed to degenerate into chaos, and ritual must not be allowed to degenerate into a dead formalism.

The three key questions behind the formulation of a worship service are therefore pastoral (what is the life-situation and culture of the worshippers?), theological (does the service adequately demonstrate the attributes of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ?) and historical (what has God been teaching the church through the ages?).

On the latter point the World Council of Churches’ Uppsala Report insists: ‘Since Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, an essential continuity governs the worship of the church in all ages, cultures and situations. This is not to ask that modern worship is to be restricted by past experiences of the church. It is to insist that it involves respect and gratitude for what God has taught in the past although we are still free; it is a gold coin rather than a gold chain’.

‘Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’ (2 Corinthians 3:17). ‘We have not worshipped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit… Until God touches and frees our spirit we cannot enter this realm… Our spirit must be ignited by divine fire.’ (9)

Whatever one’s temperamental characteristics, as a condition of genuine worship we must be in awe before the amazing mystery and splendour of the Lord, Jesus Christ, before we can worship. Such worship is the response of grateful hearts before the transcendent majesty of God whose glory we see ‘in the face of Jesus Christ’.

Footnotes:

1. Bernard Schalm, ‘Biblical Directives for Worship’, Christianity Today, September 14, 1973, p. 17.

2. J. Daniel Baumann, ‘Worship: the Missing Jewel’, Christianity Today, November 21, 1980, p. 28.

3. Robert Wardlaw, an unpublished paper on ‘Worship’ p. 5.

4. See an amplified form in Robert D. Dale, To Dream Again (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1981), pp. 131-132.

5. John Drakeford, ‘The Simplicity of Silence’, Leadership/84, p. 114.

6. J. G. Davies, Worship and Mission (London: SCM), pp. 16,17.

7. Leighton Ford, ‘Worship and Evangelism’, World Evangelization 13:43 (June 1986):2.

8. Stuart Frayne, op.cit., p. 16

9. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 138-139.