Worship Principles

From the LOCH A TUATH NEWS April 2001

The subject of worship ought never to be far from the hearts and minds of men and women. Our Shorter Catechism taught us long ago that our chief end, or purpose, in life, was to give glory to God. Life, as someone has put it, ought not merely to contain acts of worship; it should be an act of worship.

That means that we can do one of two things with our lives -- we can either consecrate them to God, and live in a way that will honour and worship him, or else we can live as practical atheists, as if there was no God at all. Atheism, however, will be difficult to justify on the Day of Judgement.

Christians, of all people, ought to take worship seriously. It was in order that they might worship him that God took his people out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 34:10-14), and worship remains at the very heart of Christian living. Jesus himself reminds us that worship arises out of what God is -- he is Spirit, and his worshippers must worship him in spirit and truth (John 4:24).

Jesus' statement means that worship arises out of theology. We need to know what God is, and what he is like, before we can worship him. The nature of God is theology proper. And we can only get to theology from the Bible -- we cannot know God except by way of God's self-revelation and self-disclosure.

But for many Christians today, that is not happening. Many churches have driven a wedge between theology and worship. My interest in this subject was stirred by a recent report from an American Seminary which had surveyed 41 denominations and concluded that churches which changed over to a much more informal, contemporary and modern style of worship were more likely to grow. Megachurches -- defined as those with over 1,000 regular participants -- have already changed their worship style to include worship groups and contemporary styles.

The problem I have with this is not that I am against church growth. Nothing would thrill me more than to see our numbers swelling, and our church growing. The fact that it is growing in places as diverse as South Korea and South Uist thrills my soul. And I cry to the Lord -- "Don't forget Back!"

But true worship must never begin with desire for growth. Statistics must never determine style. I have no doubt at all that we could have as many people in Back Free Church as Wolfstone attracted to Coll Centre if our approach to worship was the same as Wolfstone's approach to entertainment. But then I don't think it would be worship at all.

The only determining factor in our style of worship -- as in everything else -- must be the sufficiency and the authority of the Bible. After all, the primary audience of our worship is not our people but our God. We come to church primarily to give our worship to him, and only then can we get the blessing from him.

Whether we stand or sit to sing and pray, whichever version of the psalms we use -- Gaelic, English, Contemporary -- whatever version of the Scriptures we use -- these are not the issue here. These need to be discussed prayerfully, and applied considerately. And the Bible warns us that formalism does not necessarily mean that we are worshipping in spirit and truth. God, after all, looks on the heart.

But what we need to stress in this postmodern, confused world of ours, again and again, is that without doctrine, our doxology is meaningless; and without heart-worship, our theology is barren indeed. Whatever we adopt in the way of style, let us pledge ourselves to a worship rooted in Scripture, that reacts fittingly to the self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ.