Vibrant worship - Vibrant Church (Part 2)

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

Today, we talk about the second answer that I came to when trying to figure out why there was a marked disparity between the services I led and the accounts of worship in scripture.

As I was thinking about this week's posting, I felt that I should mention this week that all my thoughts and ideas are exactly that. I speak out of my personal experience and what I have found to be true in my journey as a worship leader and facilitator... Wrestle (if that is what you do) with what I have to say, think about it, discuss it, but also arrive at your God-guided and inspired truth for your journey as a worshipper. My hope is that as we all seek for God's best for Woodvale, we shall arrive at the same place because we serve a God that wants to reveal his will to us for our lives and for our church.

Ok...

So my discussions with lots of people and my own reading led me to another revelation as to why it seemed like scripture offered one thing and yet our experiences seemed to tell a different story. It can be simply encapsulated by the phrase "Worship is a lifestyle". If you have been a Christian as long as I have or even longer, I am sure that you have heard this phrase tossed quite a bit. "Worship is a lifestyle", "worship is a lifestyle", "worship is...

The problem with overly used and recycled christianese catch phrases is that the truth that they so succinctly encapsulated at one point is lost and all that is left is the phrase minus the truth that we set out to find.

Now that the rant is over, let me further unpack what worship as a lifestyle means to me.

It starts with realizing that all creation - that includes you - exists for God's pleasure and that your whole purpose on this earth is to bring him glory. Just as an amazing painting brings glory to the painter, if our lives are patterned after what God wants and we allow his transforming power to refine us into what he wants, our lives become wonderful masterpieces that bring glory to God. This means that our worship breaks beyond the constraints of the Sunday worship services and reaches far beyond into our jobs, homes, and every other aspect of our lives.

I am a firm believer that God cannot be mocked and so if our lives do not "worship", our corporate act of worship is shallow and empty because our lives contradict the words that we sing or speak.

Romans 1: 20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature— have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made

Sometimes finding worship within yourself is a next-to-impossible task and so it helps to look at God's creation around us (people, animals, plants, etc...) as a source of inspiration for your worship. Sometimes worship can flow out of us (perhaps it should do so more often) out of our recognition of God's hand at work in his creation...

I used to go to an annual christian camp in Uganda at the most beautiful and picturesque place that I have ever been to. Every morning as the sun rose over the calm waters of Lake Victoria, without a doubt, there would be one or several people so amazed by the sight that they would burst into a discordant version of "great is thy faithfulness". Every year, every morning, every camp without fail! I always laughed at it when it happened, but I think that it was one of those situations where worship ceases to be about navel gazing and becomes about creation inspiring us to worship God.

Another small story...

My Dad used to occasionally drag us to one of the most boring (it's boring in my memory because I was turned away from God) fellowships ever. Most times, instead of having a preacher or teacher, the greatest chunk of time was spent giving testimonies about what God had done in peoples lives. I particularly remember one fellowship where a moving testimony was given and almost after every account of God's hand at work, the whole group (with the exception of skeptical me) burst into a song of praise. I've often looked back at that point in time and wished that the church would find inspiration to worship corporately based on the account of what God is doing in somebody's life in spite of the personal circumstances that one may be going through.

This worship as a lifestyle - a life that brings glory to God, and worship that is birthed out of God's work in creation then becomes a weekly, monthly, or annual journey that has it's peaks when we gather together to worship corporately. Last week's reference to the psalms of ascent is a beautiful illustration of this journey. David's worship was not confined to the temple, but was a part of his daily journey. It comes as no surprise therefore, that lifestyle of worship birthed some of the most meaningful songs of worship that the world has ever seen.

I do not know whether I have shared this with you guys before... forgive the repetition if I have. I think of every service as a part of the journey of worship that people are on (whether they realize it or not) before they get into the service and after they have left. However, I cannot take people on a journey into the presence of God if I have not walked that journey on my own.

A people characterized by vibrant worship are not a people for whom worship is confined to the church building walls and restricted to a 20-minute time slot on Sunday morning or Sunday evening. Vibrant worshippers are better described as people that are living a life that first and foremost brings glory to God, and secondly embark on a journey of worship that is inspired by what God is doing in their personal lives and in creation around them.

A people that walk the journey of an authentic and growing relationship with God that brings him glory learn to grow in their expectation of what God can do and this energizes the times of corporate worship. Therefore for us as facilitators and leaders of worship, before we even stand before the congregation and attempt to engage them in a journey into the presence of God, we must first ask whether worship is a central part of our lifestyle before anything else. If it is not, we are wasting time trying to take people on a journey that we ourselves have never been on and do not have the roadmap for.

I am glad to be a part of what God is doing here at woodvale... even more pumped about the fact that all around me I see people that have a passion to connect people with God. Let us therefore spur each other on further in our understanding of worship as a lifestyle and go deeper than we have ever been before as individuals and as a church in our journey of worship.

Have a great week!