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Worship Is for God, Not Me

Posted on by Bill Kirkwood

Worship is for God instead of for me.

Most Christians, when asked who worship is for, will quickly say of course worship is for God. However if we dig a little deeper, a different answer may arise. Worship oftentimes becomes about the worshiper, not the One being worshiped. This second entry in my “Reimagine Worship” series will help bring the real object of worship into focus.

Why do you attend worship?

Through the years I have asked people why they attend a worship service at their church. Some responses have been:

  • “It’s just what I do on Sunday morning.”
  • “I like sitting with my friends from youth group.”
  • “My mom/dad/wife made me come.”
  • “I need my weekly pick-me-up.”
  • “I look forward to meeting with God with my church family.”

The answers fall into 2 categories- worship is for me, something I need or I do for myself or someone close to me, or worship is for God. That last answer is the best one (although #1 is good too, Sunday worship is a good habit to develop). Gathering to worship God with our church family should indeed be the high point of our week. This answer touches on the communal nature of corporate worship—that it’s not just about “me and God,” but it’s about “us and God” (which we’ll explore in a couple weeks). But too often we attend worship because we want to get something. I need more joy. I want more peace. I like to talk to my friends. I often walk through the doors still focusing on myself. If I seek a particular experience maybe I’ll get it and maybe I won’t. But if I seek to encounter the Living God in worship I will almost certainly experience what he wants me to experience, and that is where true transformation occurs.

Our culture encourages individuality

Face it, we live in a consumeristic, narcissistic, self-centered culture. Almost everything we do centers around “my” wants, needs, and preferences. Whether scrolling through our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snap Chat feeds, we are always evaluating whether we will look at a particular story or pass it by. I have to admit when I’m watching American Idol I begin to sound like Simon Cowell, and can be very critical of each singer. So often we bring these preferences into the worship service. How often have worship planners heard the following:

  • “I didn’t really like that new song. Don’t do that one again”
  • “How come we do so many new songs? I can’t keep up with them all.”
  •  “How come we do the same songs over and over? I’m bored with them.”
  •  “Why does that person lead so much? Their voice irritates me.”
  •  “Why do we sing so many hymns? They’re hard to sing”
  •  “Why don’t we sing more hymns? They have great theology.”

These statements reveal the self-centered nature of the one speaking. They come to worship wanting their desires and preferences met. 

Many modern worship songs center on the individual’s experience with God. While a song may mention what God or Jesus has done or who he is, when we look closer at the lyrics, the song may really be about how I feel about what God has done for me. As an exercise, examine the lyrics of the songs you sang on Sunday and identify the main subject of the song. How many I’s, me’s, and my’s are in the song? While there is certainly a place in a service for a song that centers on my experience of God, most of what a church needs is to center their communal attention on who God is—his attributes and character. 

In all the reading I did for my doctoral degree at the Institute for Worship Studies, one quote by Marva Dawn has stayed with me: “The content of our worship music and preaching must proclaim primarily the splendor of God, rather than our feelings about him.”[1] Feelings can vary from person to person, but God’s character does not change. That does not negate one’s feelings, but they are simply not as important as the God we worship whose glory arouses those feelings in the first place. After all, your experience of God (or a songwriter’s experience) may be very different than mine.

So what do we do?

For worship planners and leaders it is crucial that we use the 75 minutes we have on Sunday to combat the self-centered culture our people live in all week. The first few minutes are absolutely critical as we help people transition from an individual “out there” to part of the community “in here.” The focus of our calls to worship, our songs, prayers, and sermons must point to who God is, not how we feel about him. While there is a place for personal response and reflection, keep the focus on the Savior. For those sitting in the seats, prepare your hearts to meet with the living God. Be aware of his presence in the room, of the holy space you are entering, of how he is moving not just in you but among everyone gathered. If the songs center on the first person singular, keep your focus on the character of God the song points out. It takes effort. You can’t just sit back and expect worship to happen automatically. Trust the Holy Spirit to move you and your church.

Remember . . . worship is for God, not for you.

[1] Marva Dawn, “Worship to Form a Missional Community,” Direction 28, no.2 (Fall 1999): 139-52, accessed July 19, 2021. https://directionjournal.org/28/2/worship-to-form-missional-community.html.

Worship In and Through Christ

Posted on by Bill Kirkwood

I was invited to teach a class on worship at my church which centered on seven concepts of worship which form the foundation of my worship philosophy known as “reimagining worship.” This entry begins a series that will explain each of these.

Worship is in and through Christ, not just to Christ

The first concept is that we worship in and through Christ instead of just worship directed to Christ. For most of my worship-leading life I thought of worship solely as my expression of devotion and praise to God. As I experienced more and more of life with Christ I wanted to offer my sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15). Of course I would acknowledge that everything we do, including even the act of accepting Jesus, is driven by God through his Holy Spirit. But I saw worship more as something I did in response to his love.

A light came on for me in a class taught by Dr. Constance Cherry (author of The Worship Architect, The Music Architect, and recently Worship Like Jesus) at the Robert Webber Institute for Worship Studies in Jacksonville, FL. We examined Hebrews 2:11-12 which says:

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying,
“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

Let me clarify who’s who in this passage:

For he who sanctifies [Jesus] and those who are sanctified [believers] all have one source [God]. That is why he [Jesus] is not ashamed to call them [believers] brothers and sisters, saying,
“I [Jesus] will tell of your [God’s] name to my brothers and sisters [believers];
in the midst of the congregation I [Jesus] will sing your [God’s] praise.”

Jesus our Worship Leader

Citing Psalm 22:22, this passage reveals that when the church assembles, Jesus Christ is truly present in our midst. What is he doing there? He is telling us about his Father, his Father’s name, his Father’s love, his Father’s attributes. What else is Jesus doing? He is singing God’s praise right along with the congregation, his brothers and sisters. Hebrews 8:2 puts it this way:

. . . we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, . . . 

The Greek word translated ‘minister’ here is leiturgos, which also means a liturgist, one who leads a liturgy (an order of worship). When we gather as a church—the body of Christ, Jesus Christ is our ultimate worship leader. He is right there in the middle of us telling us about his Father, leading us in worship, and singing praise to God along with us.

Now for those of us who have true faith is Jesus Christ, we know that he resides in us though his Holy Spirit (Galatians 2:20: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me). As I said above, we must acknowledge that everything we do must be done in and through Jesus Christ who lives in us. Applying this to our worship, Scripture is very clear that when we gather as his church, we do not worship in our own strength, and our praise is not just what we perform to our God. True worship begins as we acknowledge that we worship in and through the Savior who lives in us. 

When you walk through those doors this Sunday morning, surrender to your leiturgos, your Worship Leader, and worship the Triune God with all your heart empowered by his Spirit. 

Pagan roots of Christmas and Easter(?)

Posted on by Bill Kirkwood

It began with a simple Facebook post from a friend who, after taking down Christmas decorations on Dec. 27, asked when others dismantled their decorations. Some had already taken theirs down while others, wanting to preserve some Christmas cheer at the end of a dreary year, wanted to keep them up longer. A few mentioned the traditional season of Christmas which lasts for 12 days, ending on January 5. They would undecorate after Christmas was over on January 6.

In reply to my comment about these 12 days of Christmas, one friend-of-a-friend brought up the topic of whether I would agree that Christmas and Easter had their roots in historical pagan celebrations. My short answer was “No to Easter, maybe to Christmas.” The answer required a lot more space than FB etiquette called for, so here goes . . . 

Our celebration of Easter Sunday (or more properly Pasca or Resurrection Sunday) flowed out of the Jewish celebrations of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost (a 50 day observation following the Feast) which in the first century had already been celebrated for about 1300 years. We must realize that at the time of the exodus almost the entire world, except for this group of Hebrew slaves, was pagan. There were hundreds of gods and thousands of shrines and temples to these gods. Paganism was the culture of the day . . . the water they swam in. This was also true in the time of Jesus. Remembering that the first Christians were Jews, we can understand that Passover, the Feast, and Pentecost were part of their upbringing, their major holidays, like Christmas and New Year are to most of us. But for these early believers Passover took on new meaning as they celebrated the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus. In fact for the first 300 years of church history Pasca was not a day, it was a period of 50 days. Celebrating something as monumental as a risen Savior required more than a day . . . it required 7 whole weeks!

While there were almost certainly pagan celebrations of springtime in those days, the true roots of our Pasca/Easter holidays flow out of the Jewish holidays which had already been practiced for over 1000 years.

Now Christmas, on the other hand, may have had its roots in the pagan festivals surrounding the winter solstice. There are 2 main theories of how December 25 came to be the Festival of the Nativity.

1. The Romans observed Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra, the god of the sun, during this time of year. In the 4th century Christian leaders, seeing hordes of pagans entering the church, began adopting the festival of Saturnalia, saying that its final day, December 25, was Jesus’ birthday. The hope was that a pagan holiday would be transformed into a Christian celebration. Unfortunately the result was that many of these “converts” continued in their pagan practices, and Christmas was a raucous season of revelry and debauchery.

The problems with this theory are twofold- no early Christian writers refer to changing the Christian calendar in this way, and it would be unlikely, during a period when Christians were martyred for standing against the pagan culture, that leaders would deliberately adopt a pagan holiday as Jesus’ birthday. 

2. The second theory of the roots of Christmas has to do with calculating the date of Jesus’ death. Early Christian Fathers believed that a perfect life would begin and end on the same day. In the year 200 Tertullian calculated that Jesus died on March 25 on the Roman (solar) calendar. Therefore the perfect Savior was also conceived on March 25. Jesus was born a perfect 9 months later on December 25. Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. This theory was affirmed by Augustine around the year 400.

So now you see why I replied as I did to the query of the friend-of-a-friend. Our Easter/Pasca celebration had its roots in Jewish tradition, and Christmas perhaps had some tradition in pagan holidays. Either way, for followers of Jesus there is nothing pagan of these sacred days when we celebrate the two most significant days in human history.