This week we will continue to look at church values with Christian Worship in mind. Often times we use that word without ever having a clear definition of what it really means or entails. While serving as a youth pastor at a large church, I was asked to be on a committee which reviewed our worship services. A fellow committee member proposed a question for the committee at our first meeting, “What is worship?” I remember the many different answers, all containing truths, but mostly centered around individual experiences of worship. Some thought of certain songs they liked, while others thought of experiences on a beach or the woods that they found worshipful. Still others thought of moments of spiritual bliss or feelings they had. Our task of defining worship was getting harder and more complex. The more we studied, the more we realized we were looking at things through our cultural lenses of individualism rather than what we are given in Scripture. As we studied the Bible we eventually had to distinguish that there was both worship as practiced by individual Christians, (i.e. individual Psalms and prayers) and also corporate worship as practiced by Christians as we gather together. (i.e. Dueteronomy, Ezra, corporate Psalms, Epistles, Revelation) I’ve often pondered on this in the years following my work on this committee. I’ve hear different churches talk about worship and they almost always mean different things. So what exactly is worship?

I like what Dr. Gibson writes, “Worship is the right, fitting, and delightful response of moral beings – angelic and human – to God the Creator, Redeemer, and Consummator, for who he is as one eternal God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and for what he has done in creation and redemption, and for what he will do in the coming consummation…” (Reformation Worship, p. 2)