Keeping with the Theme of Worship

Dr. Monte E. Wilson
Evangelical worship is becoming an oxymoron. Our songs are either belted out in the same mindless intensity with which we sing our football team’s fight song, or we are crooning romantic ditties that would be more at home in an old 1930s B movie. Irreverence has become so rampant in our worship services that one would not be shocked to hear of deacons walking up and down the aisles yelling, “Popcorn, peanuts, sacraments!”

There are many reasons for the denigration of worship in modern evangelical churchville. There’s the dumbing-down effect of public education, 150 years of revivalism that—armed with songs geared to working up the masses—approaches church solely as an evangelistic crusade, and the drive to compete with MTV and be “relevant” (i.e., more like the world), thereby pleasing the tastes of the congregation. Each of these dynamics perverts our ability to appreciate any music that is not simplistic and emotionally intense. All of this together erects almost insurmountable barriers we must overcome if we are to truly worship the Lord.

WORSHIP: ACT OR EXPERIENCE?

For the modern evangelical, worship is defined exclusively in terms of the individual’s experience. Worship, then, is not about adoring God but about being nourished with religious feelings, so much so that the worshiper has become the object of worship.1 When we study the ancient approach to worship, however, we see that the church did not overly concern itself with feelings of devotion, but rather with heartfelt and biblically informed obedience. Moreover believers had a firm grasp on the fact that when they gathered “as a church” (1 Cor. 11:18), their worship was to be a corporate expression. Church worship was not a gathering of individuals but of the body of Christ.

Christopher J. Cocksworth notes that the two underlying elements of the evangelical consciousness are existential and theological. In other words, there is a wedding between piety and theology; an apprehension of the Gospel and a communication of that Gospel.2 Tragically, much of evangelical worship today has chosen to divorce what must remain married if there is to be God-glorifying worship. Some have abandoned any quest for piety, preferring a pharisaical doctrinal purity. Their “worship” services may be correct in every fashion, but they are void of any sense of true devotion or of the life of the Holy Spirit. Others—probably the majority in modern American evangelicalism—have utterly neglected any commitment to the content of the Word and have ended with narcissistic “worship” services where everyone drowns in a sea of subjectivism and calls it “being bathed in the presence of the Holy Spirit.” These people come to church exclusively to “feel” God.

I am not discounting the worth of the conscious presence of the Holy Spirit. I am saying that although the apostolic and primitive church emphasized worship as an act of obedience, we see it solely as an experience. Why? Because “church is for me. Sunday worship is to be centered on my needs and desires. Never mind what the Father desires and commands. I am at the center. My needs are paramount. Meet them or I’ll go to church elsewhere.” The ego reigns supreme.

Where did we go wrong? Historically, as I have noted, evangelicals have been defined by engaging and experiencing the truth of the Gospel. Now, however we are defined solely by experiences, the validity of which is “proven” by the word of the believer. Subjectivism and existentialism are redefining biblical worship. When did we evangelicals trade our rich inheritance for the poverty of revivalistic or MTV-style worship? ~ read the rest...