Archive: Why Not Emphasize Worship?

By Charles W. Keyson, Editor, Good News Magazine

Trial balloons are starting to float upward, borne on freshening political currents of the 1980 General Conference. Various pressure groups are jockeying to determine what will be the official emphasis of our church from 1980-1984. Will it be world hunger, ethnic minority church empowerment, and evangelism again? Raising money to undergird our church-related colleges? Or what?

Probably it will do no harm to float one more trial balloon: why doesn’t the United Methodist Church put its main emphasis on worship during the next quadrennium?

Some are making this suggestion, and I heartily agree. It would make good sense to pay attention officially to one activity without which the church ceases to be the church. It is not hard to imagine a church without apportionments, autocratic national agencies, COCU, church-supported political lobbyists, perpetual meetings, etc. But who can imagine a church without worship?

I am not talking about worship in terms of formal, printed prayers … elaborate liturgies to be dutifully read … rigid and unimaginative following of a calendared church year … flowing robes and stoles of proper color. Instead, I speak of worship as the upward soaring of the heart and mind into praise and adoration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I speak of worship as God addressing us uniquely when a believing congregation gathers to seek His Word, His will, and His presence.

Behind the Iron Curtain, communist governments have tried to strangle the church. They often forbid churches to engage in education, youth ministry, or in efforts to change or challenge the political status quo. Prohibiting these church functions, the communists think, will destroy the churches. But worship is permitted because secularists consider it unimportant.

Reports coming from the “underground churches” indicate surprising vitality. Forbidden to do anything except worship, churches are thriving.

A recent American visitor was astonished, and thrilled, with the vibrant faith he found among some Christians in Iron Curtain countries. Said he: “They crowd the churches and they boldly risk imprisonment, loss of jobs, and open persecution—all for the faith! I cannot get over the contrast between this robust faith and the tepid, anemic churches we have here at home.”

It would be a great irony if the communists, seeking to destroy the church, unwittingly made it stronger by eliminating diversions which may distract the church from its supreme responsibility: worship. What an irony if in America, where the church is totally free, it got so deeply involved in secondary matters that its worship became cold and dead.

What might happen if our church invested four years of serious effort in vitalizing United Methodist worship?

Vital worship makes Christians vital. And perhaps the greatest problem facing our church is how to infuse vitality into thousands of slumbering, self-satisfied, spiritually-dead congregations. How shall we cause millions of marginal church members to give God higher priority? How shall United Methodism escape the condemnation Jesus Christ declares upon churches which have fallen away from their first love for Him and have grown lukewarm? (Revelation 2:4-5; 3:15-16)

If we could answer these questions, the church would have no problems about money-except how to spend it all. Nor would we have any shortage of Christians getting involved in the world.

In many ways, our UM Church is like a great, immobile machine … needing only to be plugged into the source of energizing power. This power-source is God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! People are best connected with Him through vital corporate worship in which God (not man) is glorified and congregations are thus edified. This happens when the Holy Spirit exalts Christ through God’s written Word, the Bible, and the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion.

In other words, rich, warm, genuine Biblical worship is what the church must recover if it is to escape from being petrified, ossified, and secularized. Yet it would be blasphemy to consider worship as a four-year gimmick which will raise our sagging budgets and fill our empty pews! Jesus gave the right order when He said, “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33, New International Version) If we seek after United Methodist worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24) then God will take care of any genuine needs the church and its people may have.

What could be done during a four-year official emphasis on vitalizing United Methodist worship?

1. 1. Ways could be found to involve laypeople significantly in worship—to thus end the stony spectatoritis which so often chills our worship.
   2. We could recover the joy of singing-not only the “familiar few,” but we could learn to appreciate the many beautiful hymns which belong to our heritage.
   3. More vital worship could stimulate the writing of new hymns. For new hymns are born in times of vital faith; there is little incentive to create new songs of faith when worship becomes remote, secularized, impersonal, and stiffly formalized.
   4. Preaching could be improved, so that each week every UM congregation would be edified by eternal truth explained and applied to the actual life-needs of people in our pews.
   5. Congregations could learn more about worship. Many have never been taught the significance of responsive readings, offerings, public prayers, organ preludes, creeds, hymns. That is one reason why many lifetime church members just “go through the motions” Sunday after Sunday. Can we blame them for being less than enthusiastic when worship has so little meaning?
   6. The meaning and importance of Communion and Baptism could be clarified. We need to purge away misleading terms (like “Christening”) and sacramental bad habits (like private baptisms, which remove baptism from its proper place as a sacrament of the Body of Christ).
   7. The teachings of Scripture could be given fresh relevance by creating fresh responsive readings and statements of faith from the Bible. We could use the best contemporary Bible translations in order to edify the majority of our people who do not think in the language of 1611.
   8. People could be familiarized with the Bible by providing pew Bibles in every church and encouraging their use during our worship services.
   9. The depth of worship can be enhanced for many people by beautifying our sanctuaries. It is not necessary to equate ugliness with proper Protestantism. Beauty, after all, is one characteristic of true holiness.
   10. We could encourage pastors and people to pray naturally, easily, and from the heart. There ought to be many in each church who could lead others to the throne of grace.

It could be exciting if our church decided to spend four years stressing the central importance of worship!