Our primary point of contact with the church is the Sunday morning worship gathering.
I’ve grown up in church, so I’ve sat through services almost every Sunday for 30 years, and in all of those we’ve sang, someone has preached, and sometimes other stuff happens, depending on the church and the service–prayers, offerings, recitation of creeds, baptisms, the Lord’s Supper, announcements.
At Resurrection, for example, we have embraced some elements in our services that many churches in our tradition have not typically embraced–reciting creeds, confessing sin, observing the Eucharist weekly, responding to a call to worship at the beginning and singing the doxology at the end. Some of these things can feel very different, but other things are just subtly different. Some people like these things, others do not.
Which leads to questions that we should ask. Questions like: Are we just supposed to do what people like? Why do we do what we do on Sunday mornings? What do the Scriptures teach about the worship of God’s people? What must we do? Like, what is essential or commanded? And what is sort of optional–maybe it’s cultural or merely an issue of preference? And what’s the point of those things? What do these things accomplish? What’s missing in my life if I don’t do them?
These questions are both deeply theological and intensely practical. I am convinced that recovering a robust, biblical, theological understanding of worship will lead to the renewal of the church. It’s trendy to talk about mission, and it’s also good and right to talk about mission. But as Piper has famously quipped: mission exists because worship does not. Meaning the point of our mission is the worship of God among the nations.
The big idea we’ll focus on in the coming weeks: Christian worship remembers, rehearses, and anticipates the story of God in the world.
Worship is not where God joins our story; it’s where we join God’s story. Here we behold him together, we magnify him together, and together we are shaped for a life of loving service for the glory of God and the life of the world.
