A Vision for PNW Churches (Part 2): Worship
Worship is by far the most important cultural event in human society. What happens there deeply forms our view of God, our view of ourselves, our view of the world, and how we live our lives. For the church to become a robust cultural force in the 21st century, we must reclaim the historic vision of biblical, Reformed worship. This is the source from which all the springs of cultural renewal must flow.
In the first article of this series, I explained my desire to articulate a fresh vision for PCA churches in the Pacific Northwest for the coming generation. While the vision of the gospel-centered movement in the last generation celebrated important truths about salvation by grace in Christ alone, and inspired many to plant churches and share the gospel, it often left important practical matters of the Christian life and culture insufficiently addressed. In the article to follow, I would like to offer more clarity, particularly in the areas of worship, family, education, institution-building, and politics. This article is on worship.
“We believe that preaching should be practical, teaching people how to think and live.”
I said in my previous article that the gospel is the engine empowering God’s people to live for Christ and seek his kingdom on earth. Worship, as the primary way people experience the gospel, is the core component of that engine.
God’s law says that the guarding of the Sabbath(“ to keep it holy”) is of utmost importance to the spiritual integrity of the church. “Holy” means devoted to the Lord. The Sabbath was to be a day for a holy convocation (Lev. 23:3), and is the weekly feast day for the church. It is a time for the Lord to pour out his gifts of grace on his people and to sanctify them among the nations of the world (Exo. 31:12). The king of heaven has appointed a time weekly where his people must enter his throne room and meet with their God (Heb. 12:22–24).
How are we to approach this time together? Below are four biblical principles that guide us:
1. Corporate Worship Is Covenant Renewal
Our church understands worship to be primarily a time of covenant renewal between the Lord and his people. By that, I mean that the Lord is reconfirming the bond he has with us, his bride. He is reminding us of his faithful promises, washing away our sins, hearing our prayers and praises, and meeting with us at his table. It’s like when a husband and wife embrace each other in love, reminding each other of their vows (“I will never leave you”); the Lord does the same with us.
Throughout the age of the Old Covenant and the age of the Church, covenant renewal worship has taken the same basic shape (see Lev 9:15–22). It starts with the cleansing of sin (sin offering), then the worshiper ascends into God’s throne room to hear from his word (burnt offering). The movement concludes with the worshiper eating with God at his table in his presence (peace offering).
Given that offerings are how covenants are formed and renewed, worship as a whole is understood to be sacrificial. Even the preaching of the Word is understood by the New Testament authors as a sacrificial act: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow …” (Heb 4:12). This is sacrificial language. In worship, we become living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1) joined to Christ, and our lives are offered to the Lord in gratitude for his abundant grace.
2. In Corporate Worship, We Hear from All of God’s Word
As a natural implication of covenant renewal worship, we believe that the whole counsel of God should be taught to God’s people on the Lord’s Day. This is because the Bible is the covenant document by which God our king rules his people—all of it.
Short pastorates in local churches and evangelistic preaching have both caused a kind of “canon within the canon” where books like the Gospel of John or Ephesians receive repeated treatment, but large portions of the Old Testament are never taught to God’s people. Therefore, we expect the churches we plant to teach systematically through whole books of the Bible without skipping difficult or strange passages, and drawing from every section of the Bible (the Pentateuch, historical books, wisdom literature, the prophets, etc.).
The Bible is God’s covenant document by which he rules his people. Since the Scriptures are written for our instruction, we believe that preaching should be practical, teaching people how to think and live. In other words, the church needs applied theology. Theology that does not just stay in our heads, but becomes incarnated into every aspect of our lives. Our people need to learn to connect the dots between the ancient texts of the Bible and the cultural pressures we face in our everyday lives. That’s why sermons talk about everything: family, emotions, money, sex, work, church, doctrine, culture, politics, and the church’s mission.
3. Corporate Worship Is an Embodied Act
As worship is an act of offering our whole selves—including our bodies—as living sacrifices, the experience should be embodied. We humble ourselves before the Lord by kneeling. We lift our hands together in praise. We eat the body and drink the blood of our Lord at his table—every week. Though all of these are spiritual acts, the Spirit dwells in and forms us through our bodies.
We also use our lungs to fill the room with the sounds of praise. The Lord is “enthroned on the praises of Israel” (Ps. 22:3). Singing is a skill that needs to be taught to our generation. We live in a culture where people don’t sing together regularly, so many people have not grown up learning to sing. Especially with the loud bands of modern worship, many evangelicals have not seen the need to learn. We need to teach our churches to sing by making a systematic plan to train them. Just as we would systematically teach them in theology, we must teach them in song. Singing is an essential part of discipleship, and it is a skill that we need to learn to do with our bodies.
4. Corporate Worship is Primarily for God’s People
In the dialogue of covenant renewal and liturgical worship, the conversation partners are God and his people. While non-Christians may be listening in, the service is not primarily for them. Such an emphasis sets it apart from the contextualization models of both the seeker movement in the last generation, and the more current gospel-centered movement. Protestants always have done some level of contextualizing (e.g. speaking in the vernacular), but this has been over-emphasized and has sought to accommodate unbelievers too much. Most unbelievers who have not grown up in the church actually come with very little expectation. (It is more dechurched people who complain about traditional church forms.) Christian worship is about welcoming our neighbors into a new kind of world that ought to feel foreign and strange to them. This all can be done without losing a hospitable and evangelical spirit to those who are visiting (see 1 Cor. 14:23-25 on care for the outsider and unbeliever). For the preacher to address questions an unbelieving visitor might have during the sermon, or explain things in a way anyone can understand, is actually a service to the believers as well. A warmth and welcome should be a hallmark of the Christian community. Nonetheless, the worship service is primarily for the Lord to meet with his bride, not to meet with unbelievers.
“We long for reverence and awe.”
Lastly, because of the seeker-sensitive desire to be welcoming to non-Christians, much Christian worship has lost a sense of the transcendence of God. The emphasis on grace (and some of the feminizing of Christian worship) has accented the immanence of God (he is close to us, loves us, is kind to us), to the point of neglecting the more sobering truths of God’s judgment, omnipotence, wrath, and demands for our unquestioning obedience. Ironically, we see many people actually turning to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches because the human heart was made to wonder at the profound otherness of God. We long for reverence and awe.
The communal act of gathering for worship sets Christianity apart among the world religions. While on the surface the mosques of Islam and the temples of Hinduism might look similar to churches, neither religion understands its observers to be made into a communal body like a local church. Muslims attend any nearby mosque mainly to do their acts of submission to Allah. Hindus come to the temple at varied times to bring their offerings to their gods and receive a blessing. Christianity alone is supremely a religion of love and community where by God’s love we are washed of our sins, formed by his word, and incorporated into Christ’s body through the sacraments. The world is given the offer to enter this community by the blood of Christ.
Worship is by far the most important cultural event in human society. What happens there deeply forms our view of God, our view of ourselves, our view of the world, and how we live our lives. For the church to become a robust cultural force in the 21st century, we must reclaim the historic vision of biblical, Reformed worship. This is the source from which all the springs of cultural renewal must flow.
