Reflections on Worship

Our modern English word worship derives from the Old English worth-schip, a piece of information that leads us naturally to realize that the primary motivation for worshipping God is that He is worth it! If we were to ask "How much is God worth?", we would quickly respond, at least intellectually, that God is worth all that we have, all that we are, and more -- infinitely more.

Now that leaves us with a bit of a dilemma: "If God is worth infinitely more than all we have and all we are, how can our worship ever reflect the worth of God?" Fortunately for us, Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. It is Jesus who offers to God the perfect delight, the perfect obedience, the perfect sacrifice that alone represents the worship that God is worth.

We are invited to join into the perfect worship that the Son offers to the Father. And every worshipping community begins by worshipping as it can, and not as it cannot -- which is good news indeed, as it offers us a freedom in worship that we otherwise could never presume to have.

As freeing as that is to know that we can approach God worshipping just as we can, we should never think that it is sufficient just to stay there. Rather, every truly worshipping community ought to be striving to reflect the worth of God in its worship in ever new ways -- ways that stretch its worship longer and wider and higher and deeper. To fail to do so would be to cease to worship the God that is truly worth all that we have, all that we are, and more.

This, I think, has powerful implications for our tendency to engage in Worship Wars in our churches. To speak of needing to worship in the style we prefer seems to be changing the focus of worship from God to something else: the feelings we get when we worship, perhaps, or maybe the theological ideas we have about worship. As a result, our expression of worship becomes narrower and shallower, rather than broader and more expansive.

And if it is true that we are formed by our worship, then a shrinking worship will form us into less rather than more, and a worship that migrates from God to anything else will form us into idolators rather than Christ followers.

What a challenge this is then for worship pastors, and for all who lead a community in worship even if only by their own participation! We must be gracious enough to allow the community to begin worshipping as it can, from the place from which it finds itself. But we must also be challenging both the community and ourselves to expand our expression of worship as befits a God who is worth all that we have, all that we are, and much, much more.