We talk about worship, but why do we worship and how?

Archive: In Quest of Worthwhile Worship

by Ben Patterson, Reprinted from The Wittenburg Door[1]

The Word of God has fallen on bad times. That statement is hardly news to anyone who, over the last decade, has cared about the subject. Nor should it be particularly surprising to those who, although not consciously occupied with it, have found themselves yawning through Sunday service after Sunday service, sensing something was wrong but hard pressed to say just what.

In most Protestant churches, the quality of preaching provides the most convenient scapegoat. One critic has described the church as a group of conventional people gathering each week to be addressed by a conventional little man who seeks to persuade them to be more conventional. That may be true, but I no longer believe that analysis is sufficient to explain why Christian worship has deteriorated.

A better clue to what has gone wrong with worship can be found, ironically, in the volume of materials that have come forth in the last decade to revitalize worship. In the vast majority of these, the effort has been directed toward making worship more contemporary and spontaneous, more focused on the experience of the worshiper. And the effect has been that of putting a cardiac patient on a high cholesterol, high salt diet. What caused the sickness in the first place is being prescribed as a cure. Tragically, at every point where Christian worship has ceased to be Biblical, we have offered non-biblical solutions.

But let me back up a bit and ask the question: what do we do when we worship God? Answer: we do essentially the same thing I did when I watched on television … a replay of the University of Southern California’s great 1974 victory over Notre Dame.

“But,” you protest, ”you knew everything that was going to happen!”

That is precisely the point. watch that game over and over again because I know what will happen. You do the same thing whenever you again tune in to your favorite television program. The outcome is never in doubt on Columbo or the Waltons. What you watch is the dramatization, in story form, of certain values about life and its meanings, its problems, and solutions. These programs are what some social analysts call ritual dramas. They reaffirm what we believe by telling a story.

Christian worship is ritual drama. The story of God’s mighty saving acts in Jesus Christ is once again retold in one way or another; our values and beliefs are held up and we respond by offering our thanks, our praise, and our obedience.

This scenario can be seen spectacularly reproduced in capsule form when John reports to us his vision of the heavenly worship in Revelation 5. The Lamb of God stands upon the throne of God surrounded by the 24 elders and “myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” of angels. The apostle tells us he hears them singing a new song:

Worthy art Thou to take the scroll and to open its seals, for Thou wast slain and by the blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth (Revelation 5:9,10).

Then everyone shouts praise with a loud voice:

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing! To Him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever! (Revelation 5:12,13).

It’s all there: the story of what He has done, is doing, and will do; His atoning death and resurrection, His creation of the Church and His promised final victory over sin and death. It’s drama and praise, a story and accompanying thanksgiving.

And notice one fundamental reality of this heavenly worship. Who is putting on the drama? The Lamb or the congregation of elders and angels?

It is not the lamb, but rather the congregation. And this is the point that must be hammered home if we are to recover the meaning and vitality of Christian worship. Soren Kierkegaard saw it clearly when he said that on earth, as in heaven, God is the spectator, the audience, so to speak, and we are the performers, the players, the actors. Those who lead in worship are the prompters or directors. Together with the congregation, they retell the story, proclaim the message and offer their thanks, their praise, and their obedience.

Three great implications flow out of this text and this understanding of worship. The first has to do with the historical nature of worship.

God is a God of history. He is the one “who was and is and is to come” (Revelation 4:8). For this reason, truly Biblical worship must be an act of remembrance. Anamnesis is the Greek word translated “remembrance” in the New Testament text concerning the lord’s Supper. It means much more than a memorial, a jogging of the memory. It means to re-tell and re-present the story, to look back in present tense and give past realities present existence.

One of the great conceits of this generation is that it has little or no regard for history. The “now generation” sees the past as hopelessly archaic and as obsolete as it sees its elderly. The religious version of this attitude is the notion that God did nothing between the end of the first century and 1978.

So-called worship renewal efforts regularly capitulate to this aspect of the Zeitgeist[2] by ignoring the need to sensitize Christians to the fact that our God of history was alive and active in 417, 1143, and 1841 as well as now. To be Biblical, Christian worship must never tear itself from the great hymns and confessions of all the times and places of the church. To see worship renewal so overwhelmingly in terms of contemporaneity is to give it more of what made it sick.

The second implication has to do with preparation. If indeed we are the performers in worship, then we should come to worship prepared.

Imagine your chagrin if you paid $20.00 to hear Vladimir Horowitz play a piano concerto, and you arrived at the concert hall only to have him show up late and apologizing that he had not practiced much that week due to other pressures in his schedule, and expressing the hope that perhaps the relaxed spontaneity of an unrehearsed concert would be enjoyable to you.

How much more should Christ, who ransomed us with His blood, expect us not only to show up on time for our performance, but to have thought through carefully what we are going to do together? Again, so much current literature on the renewal of worship betrays a captivity to the myth of spontaneity, another article of faith for our generation. The myth is that if we could just dismantle structure, conventions, and traditions, we would be free, spontaneous, direct, and truly ourselves.

I must confess that, for me, this myth has great appeal. But it runs contrary to everything else we know in human experience. Ask the great achievers of history—the Platos, the Bachs, the Albert Einsteins—if their achievements had anything to do with spontaneity. They will answer that hard work, discipline, and self-denial had everything to do with it; spontaneity very little.

Not much that is worthwhile and substantial proceeds from mere spontaneity. Anyone who has thrilled to watch Nadia Comaneci perform on the parallel bars and the balance beam must admit this. The freedom and apparent spontaneity of her movement is the result of endless hours of austere discipline, both physical and emotional. Should it be any less so for the worship of God?

The technical word for the ceremonies and rituals that take place in the worship of a gathered religious community is “cult.” It comes from the Latin colo, which means to cultivate. What a rich image! The cultivation of soil and plants is to an exquisite Japanese garden what a quality cult is to a healthy Christian life. In both, hard work and much thought and discipline are the key, not mere spontaneity. …

The third implication has to do with the focus of worship. Christ stands at the center, not the congregation. The language of worship renewal belies the fact that it has missed this fundamental truth, too often referring to what happens on Sunday morning as a “worship experience.” The experience referred to is not how Christ has experienced our praise and thanksgiving, but how we, the so-called worshipers, have.

The question every Christian worshiper should ask on the way out to the parking lot each Sunday morning is not, “What did I get out of it?” but, “How did I do? ” We are the performers; God is the audience. Revelation 5:10 tells us that Christ has made us “priests to our God.” Priests perform tasks. Worship is a task.

But again, much of worship renewal has bowed to the spirit of the age and allowed itself to get trapped into a consumer approach to worship. The narcissism of our times has left its stamp on the church and many Christians come to worship drastically out of focus. There to “get religion” rather than to give adoration. But God is not there for our enjoyment, but for our obedience. Enjoyment comes later.

Solidly Christian worship will never come from a people who have the expectations of a consumer oriented, narcissistic, amorphously spontaneous “now generation.” The answer of our dead worship is not to try to worship God in the ways that have killed His worship. Rather, we must seek renewed minds as to why it is we worship, and what it is we do when we worship in the first place. Repentance and a renewed mind are what we need, not capitulation and a bastardized faith.

[1] used with permission from the April/May 1978 issue of the Wittenburg Door, San Diego, California. Ben Patterson was at that time a contributing editor of the publication.

[2] Spirit of the age in which we live.