Worship Together?

We seem to be living in a church culture where most people's definition and understanding of what worship is all about would probably involve something to do with singing and music. Often in church settings when we use the word 'worship' we actually mean 'music'. The worship leader is actually the music leader. "Let's move into a time of worship" acutally means "let's start singing".

Now, I'm not for one second suggesting that music and singing has no place in worship. Firstly, I'm a musician; I love music and I love God and I love the church so the more I can combine the three the better. But we need to remember that worship is so much more than only singing or music. And I'm not talking about the whole "Worship-is-a-lifestyle" thing either. I mean within our corporate gatherings, when a bunch of Christians get together to worship God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for who he is and what he's done for us, worship means more than music. Worship and Singing are not words that are interchangeable.


The Church has been going a long, long time. That means corporate worship has been happening for a long, long time. And, actually, there isn't a whole lot wrtitten explicitly about the musical practices of the early church in the New Testament. In the first description that we get of the early church's worship that we get in Acts doesn't even mention singing at all. It says that

" They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:42-47)

The more astute reader may want to say something along the lines of "A-ha! Jimmy you have it wrong. It clearly says 'Praising' " to which I will gladly congratulate you on your observational skills but point out that our interpretation of praising, largely based on the culture we are part of, may include music and singing but there is nothing explicitly in the passage that indicates that music was ever a factor in their praise.

Singing however is mention elsewhere in the text. Jesus sang a hymn on the night he was arrested before his crucifixion. Mary sang her 'Magnifcat' prayer-song. According to my research on Biblegateway.com (which involved typing in the word SING and seeing how many times it comes up) the word SING appear 101 times in the Bible. Only 5 of them are in the New Testament (SANG also only appears 5 times in the New Testament, and three of those are in Revelation!). So if singing wasn't a big deal in the life of the early church, why is there so much of an emphasis on it now?

Well, back then there was singing. We know at least 150 of the songs they used; they're the Psalms. These songs were used to united the people in telling the story of God and Israel. Songs, passed down through the generations, told the story of the group. The early church undoubtedly adopted this tradition. Parts of Philippians 2 is regarded by many scholars to be lyrics of one such song.

The closest equivilent to this type of song use is the old hymns. Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, Fanny Crosby, they wrote thousands of hymns between them to teach the church who God is and to sing the story. Fanny Crosby wrote 'Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine... This is my story, this is my song'. These phenomenal songs have lasted hundreds of years because they're loaded with truth and theology that is timeless. They gave us meolidies and lyrics to help us sing the story of God.

Worship is about recognition of who God is - these hymns reveal something about God, they help us recognise who he is and they help us respond together to him. Songs that help us sing the story.

So, what about the contemporary songs? There are hundreds and thousand of new songs being written; some are great, some are not so great. Putting the quality of the song aside for a moment, somewhere along the line the emphasis of community based worship shifted to an individualistic one. It mirrored the culture. Culture evolved into an individualised place til the point where even now we have iPlayer, iPods and the like - Individually controlled media customised to one person's preferences. In a worship setting, corporate worship drifted from gathering together to share a common experience as one people to a collection of indvidiuals enjoying, or not enjoying, their own one-to-one encounter with God, there just so happened to be other people there too.

Worship became a commodity: I didn't like that new song. I'm bored of that style. I want to sing new songs. I didn't get much out of the worship today. I didn't feel God. The truth is, Worship is not about us it's about God. We worship God for who he is. In his grace he reveals himself so we can recognise him and respond. It's about recognising who he is and hsaring with others who experience that same recognition and responding together by telling the Church community (and the wider community too) the Story of God.

If songs help us do that, Great! But if they don't, have we got the courage to stop writing them for a while, stop singing, leave the music alone for a season?
Maybe poems will help us tell the Story. Communion can help us tell the story, so can pictures or video, the spoken word, prayers, food and drink (read through the New Testament and you'll see the church is founded on food! Eat Cake and Worship!) can all help us tell the Story of God and our part in it and how we can share in it together...

Worship isn't limited to singing the same old songs,
it's about coming to creatively share in the story of God... together!