What do you think of when you hear the word “worship”? Most American Christians would immediately associate worship with the portion of a service or meeting that focuses on singing. In fact, singing and worship have become so exclusively intertwined that it’s hard to think of anything other than singing when we hear the word “worship.” Perhaps this is why R. Kent Hughes says that, “[m]any Christians have never thought through the meaning and importance of worship.” I suspect that that is true, but what seems more important to me is not if we’ve ever thought it through, but whether we continue to think it through. I was challenged in this chapter to think through many of my assumptions about worship and worship services, as well as my preparation for worship.
One very important word hit me smack between the eyes as I was reading the chapter. That word was “spectators.” I played sports in high school and still enjoy playing them today. I also have my favorite teams in baseball, basketball and football and love to cheer for them and attend games. So I know what a spectator is. Essentially, a spectator is one who watches, i.e., one who does not participate. Is that what we’ve become, especially on Sundays during the worship service? Have we left the work to the “professionals”? I sincerely hope not, and yet I can see places in my own thinking that lead to making church a spectator sport. I begin to base judgments about the service based on entertainment values, rather than biblical values. I determine goodness or badness based entirely on my opinion and how things made me feel. Subtly, worship becomes a fickle popularity contest to see what or whom can vie for my attention successfully.
So a very real application of this would be to think through how we will evaluate (eww, such a bad word here, but the best I can think of) Easter Sunday in two days. Will we come away on Sunday liking or disliking the service based merely on how many songs were sung or if “my” songs were sung? Will we evaluate the service based on our feelings about the message, the special music, the distracting baby crying, etc.? I pray that we are rescued out of our natural shallowness regarding worship and be raised up to see that “worship is the number one priority of the church.” Hughes adds that “God desires worship above all else.” If that is true (and I think it is) how can we stand back and just “spectate”? We must dive in, participate, get involved, commune.
I loved Hughes’ appeal to the massive amount of space set aside in the Old Testament to worship. The Bible includes an entire songbook, 150 of them! Those “boring” parts of the Bible in Exodus and Leviticus are actually God saying, “Worship is so important to me that I want you to get it right!” Do we want to get it right? Sometimes I think that all we want to do is get it done.
Another important theme from the chapter is Hughes’ emphasis that worship doesn’t just happen. Now, it is true that all of life is worship, but here he we are mainly focusing on the disciplined attention to worship on Sunday morning with God’s people. Of course worship can happen spontaneously and often does! But if we only worship spontaneously, we sacrifice depth and sincerity. It’s like saying that I don’t need to exercise regularly because I’m sure I’ll be exercising spontaneously soon. Maybe. Or maybe not. Regular disciplined exercise will actually enhance spontaneous exercise. In the same way, regular disciplined worship will actually enhance spontaneous worship.
And so, Hughes urges us to come on Sundays prepared to worship. He repeats what my old music pastor used to say, “Sunday morning begins Saturday night.” What if we guarded our Saturday evenings because Sunday mornings were so important to us? I pray that reading this chapter will have reminded us of the importance of the Sunday gathering for corporate worship.
Hughes also points out something that is all too often absent in my own heart, and that is the expectancy that should accompany our thoughts of Sunday worship together. He notes the difference in times of individual worship at home and times of corporate worship with God’s people. This was brought home by Martin Luther: “At home in my own house there is no warmth or vigor in me, but in the church when the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through.” However, there cannot be real, fervent, continued expectancy if we do not know the One we are expecting to meet. Hughes rightly says that the “better informed we are, the better we can worship.” How much better equipped we are to worship when we know the attributes and character of the One we are worshiping. And of course, the intellectual meets the emotional as “[t]rue worship flows from the inside out.” Indeed, Eugene Peterson said, “Worship is an act which develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God which is expressed in an act of worship.” Hughes also points out that worship requires work. There are so many distractions, both external and internal, and we must put our nose to the grindstone to focus on worship.
There were other things I liked in the chapter, but I guess I just came away with a renewed appreciation for the greatness of God presented in the right worship of him in the assembly of sinner-saints he has redeemed. Men, what are we doing to elevate the importance of the corporate worship gathering on Sundays? Are we willing to sacrifice that movie, that game, that video game, that whatever-it-is, in order to prepare ourselves to come together before the Lord of the Universe and worship him in spirit and in truth? I confess my slackness in this area and resolve to work, to sweat, to labor at prioritizing the Sunday worship gathering. Will you join me?
