by Parrish W. Jones, Ph.D

©2005 All rights reserved.

Malachi 1:6-10

Romans 12:1-13

Today, we consider the third of the Great Ends of the Church which is the maintenance of divine worship. It is important to recall that none of the ends is to be considered as if it were a compartmentalized element. All of the ends are an aspect of what it means to be the church. Last week we considered the shelter, nurture and spiritual fellowship of the children of God and next week we will consider the preservation of the truth. Both of those take place in worship but are not totally carried out in worship and worship plays a role in both of those ends.

We hear the word maintenance and often think of just keeping something up—painting the house or replacing rotten wood or taking the car for a break job. We call that maintenance. However, it's one thing to just keep something going, it is another to keep it in good or very good condition. To achieve this Great End of the Church requires vigilance in the face of the tendency in us all to let inertia have its way. We must consistently work to keep worship in very good shape.

So what is worship? It may be hard to define, but most of us know it when we see it and know when we do not. During a children's sermon, I asked the children at my church in Pennsylvania what worship was. One of the boys responded almost without thinking, "The only time I get to sit with Mom and she isn't always getting up to do something." That surprised us all because Mom had been promoting the idea of children's worship because her son who had just spoken was "bored" in worship. Parent and child had differing views of the same thing.

Our Directory for Worship describes worship in this way:

Christian worship joyfully ascribes all praise and honor, glory and power to the triune God.  In worship the people of God acknowledge God present in the world and in their lives.  As they respond to God's claim and redemptive action in Jesus Christ, believers are transformed and renewed. In worship the faithful offer themselves to God and are equipped for God's service in the world. (W-1.1001)

This description says essentially two things: 1. Worship is focused on God and 2. results in the transformation and renewal of those who attend.

It is easy for us to forget what the main thing of worship is. Worship is not about me personally except as I am a part of "the people of God", the body of Christ. The object of worship is God, the creator and sustainer of the universe; Christ, the redeemer of the creation; and the Holy Spirit, the presence and wisdom of God in us, among us, and to us.

That being said people often end up placing particular elements or forms of worship ahead of God. If we cannot have worship our way, then we want it no way. Certain elements become more important than the purpose of the element. We forget all too often that our inculturation and socialization in worship is just that. It is what we are accustomed to. What we do is an aspect often of our culture not of any divinely determined necessity.

Our Form of Government recognizes as much when it says, 

The church in its witness to the uniqueness of the Christian faith is called to mission and must be responsive to diversity in both the church and the world. Thus the fellowship of Christians as it gathers for worship and orders its corporate life will display a rich variety of form, practice, language, program, nurture, and service to suit culture and need. (G-4.0401)

We are at an advantage at Summit because we are able to provide what could be three distinct worship services to suit culture and need. One of the things about which I have become aware over the years is that churches, no matter how homogeneous they look, are made up of multiple cultures. Generational differences lend to that reality.

My daughters are culturally distinct from Mary Ellen's two children and less than a half generation separates them. The most obvious differences in culture regard the arts and, in particular, music. Last week I mentioned that one of the hymns was unfamiliar but still a beautiful hymn whose message went well with the sermon. It was not a difficult hymn and has a very pleasing tune to most ears. However, as I was greeting people, someone made the remark that "I still prefer that old time religion."

That's all right and I do not wish in any way to be critical of the person. I sort of know what the person meant given the generation from which the person comes. Old Time Religion is that experience of religion that was most prominent in the 30's and 40's and lingered as the primary mode of worship and music into the 50's, 60's and 70's. I would be the last to want to disparage those who feel that way because I know many such persons are faithful in every way to the church and its ministry and would agree with what I am about to say.

The reason our Book of Order says what it does regarding cultural need is because worship is about lifting up God and the work of God in the world in such a way that people first come to know Jesus as their savior and then grow in that faith. So worship is the front line of mission and evangelism. Therefore, worship cannot be stuck in the 50's. It must enter the 21st century.

It is also true that people have differing emotional and spiritual ways of responding to God. There is nothing wrong with the way our sister churches chose to worship God because as John Calvin wrote: "Wherever the Word of God is purely preached and received and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists" (Institutes of the Christian Religion. John T. McNiell, ed., Ford Lewis Battles, trans. Westminster Press, Philadelphia: 1960. 4.1.9.)

Those who are drawn to Presbyterian churches usually come looking for a theological emphasis that is peculiar to us. They also tend to stay with us because our theology and our worship form speaks to them emotionally and spiritually in a way other churches do not. Liturgy is an aspect of that peculiar feel.  However, we put together our worship experiences, we need to maintain our peculiar approach to faith and worship that does speak from generation to generation.

Whatever we decide to do as a church with worship services we must remember what the main thing is in worship. If we start trying to satisfy everybody's wants in worship, we will lose sight of the main thing. Worship then becomes a mess of stuff put together on a needs based model. Then worship becomes about us, not about God.

In his book Purity of Heart, Soren Kierkegaard was concerned about this very subject in the mid 19th century. He wrote that the people of the churches of his day in Denmark had forgotten the main thing in worship. They had come to view the minister and choir, organist and soloists as the actors in worship. Those in the congregation were the audience. He wrote that in fact all those in worship were a part of a drama performed as an offering to God. Each person was an actor who sought to provide a pleasing performance to God. The leaders of the drama—the minister, musicians and others—were there as prompters in the drama giving cues to the congregation on how to perform and what to say.

One of the things I like about being a Presbyterian and our liturgical tradition is that I am a participant drawn into the drama and my role remains that. I am here not to perform for you. I am here to direct you in our common offering to God. Our witness to others is not made by being relevant but is the evidence of our sincerity and the faith that is seen in our worship.