Vibrant worship - Vibrant church (Part 1)

At the heart of a vibrant church is a people characterized by vibrant worship.

I have found that almost every single mention of worship in scripture is coupled with an incredibly spectacular encounter with God. I challenge you to walk through scripture… you will come to the same observation. All sorts of people in all sorts of places worshipped, saw the hand of God move and had encounters with his power and presence that to the church in this day and age could very well seem like complete mythology.

The more I read these stories and heard about God’s move in communities all around the world today, the more I found that I was forced to ask the following questions:

Why was it that our worship services were so devoid of the evidence and corporate experience of God’s presence?

What did they know that we do not know or that we know only in part?

Through discussions with friends and through reading of scripture, I came across some interesting answers

The first one is that a relationship with God builds your love for him – your passion for him as we talked about last week - and your expectancy in worship. This great expectancy at what he is going to do germinates vibrancy in our individual and corporate worship.

I hope that for all of you reading this, it is obvious that experiencing God through worship has to be prefaced by a relationship with him and we have access to the father through his son Jesus – John 14. No one comes to the father except through me… Jesus says

Talking about vibrant worship and passion for Jesus before talking about a relationship with him is like putting the cart before the horse, because love blossoms through the growth of relationship.

Therefore, the better you know somebody, the more you know what to expect from him or her. I have found this to be true through reading scripture and through my own personal walk with God… and because our God is a wonderfully creative, adventurous and all powerful father, it only makes sense that spending time in his presence is something of great wonder and mystery. Encountering this wonder and mystery enables us to approach his presence with expectation and takes a dull and uninformed expression of worship to a place of passion, expectancy and vibrancy.

I find an interesting example of this expectation and passion for God in some of the psalms of ascent that David wrote in particular Psalm 120 – 122. David starts with a cry of distress in psalm 120, but his distress is transformed to a song of anticipation in psalm 121, and then the full expression of the expectation comes out in psalm 122. Why is the psalmist glad so soon after expressing his distress? I believe that the reason for this is that his relationship with God was at such a place of intimacy that there was more than just casual anticipation, but a real eagerness to meet with God because he understood that God was in control of every situation whether he was in distress or not. This fueled his worship and praise. Is it any wonder that scripture later speaks about David as a man after his own heart?

In trying to get myself to be more psyched up about worship, I felt like I was being disingenuous if I was not finding my passion for God from what he had done in my life. I have come to discover that if I am lacking in the relationship department with Jesus, I have one of 2 options when I come to lead the congregation at Woodvale in corporate worship. Either I can pretend that all is well and ignore any conviction or condemnation, or more often than not, I fall into the dispassionate category because I know that standing before God and pretending that all is well is a mockery of him.

Hebrews 4: 12 - 13

The reason I believe that vibrant worship is at the heart of a vibrant church is because vibrant worship is something that cannot be faked. Passionate, unrestrained, uncontained worship is not something that you arrive at in ignorance over what the transforming power of God can do. You see, anybody that has come in contact with God and is walking in a growing relationship with him is a force to be reckoned with. The bible is FILLED with examples of this.

I am further persuaded that the expression of vibrant worship has to start with the people that God has gifted and positioned to be participants in leading his people in worship. This means that EVERYBODY on the worship team – production, singers, instrumentalists – have to be walking in this before we can expect that the church will experience it as we do. In my first few postings on this blog, I mentioned to you all that the picture of worship at Woodvale is a giant mirror to the picture of worship on the worship team. If our desire is to see a vibrant church, we must become a people of vibrant worship… and this has to be spearheaded by the team that facilitates worship on a week-by-week basis.

This week, I invite you all to a season of examining the area of vibrant worship and the foundation of it all – your relationship with Jesus. If you are in a place of stagnation and therefore unable to find your passion for Jesus, please be honest with somebody in your small group or on the team and pray about it. I believe that victory in this area starts with being honest about your walk with God and sharing it with somebody that can stand with you and pray you back into a healthy relationship with your savior and creator.

Next week we shall talk about another answer that I came to when examining the disparity between examples of worship in scripture and what we see in our contemporary setting.