Monday, January 8, 2007

Thesis Chapter 3: The Mission: To Worship God

For a religious body to have a mission does not mean that it has a program that serves people or that it supports missionaries. Nor does it mean that it owns a building that is used to evangelize others. What it does mean is that a body has an essential understanding of and commitment to God’s call. For most congregations, this would be a call to worship.

To have a call to worship means the church praises, glorifies, and exalts God. The Larger Westminster Catechism says, “The chief and highest end…[of humankind]…is to glorify God, and to fully enjoy him forever.”[1] In the bible Luke 4:8 reads, “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”[2] And in Psalm 99:2, we are told, “The Lord is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.” Psalm 150:6 the says, “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”

The above verses show us God is our ruler and that he has foremost created us to worship God. Believers are told nothing shall stand in the way of their individual and corporate relationships with God, that this worship is of paramount importance for the Body of Christ, and that we are to worship continuously. Therefore, since the worship of God is fundamental to the Christian life, programs and ministries of the church take the role of confessing that active faith through the life of the congregation.

Theologically, worship is a liturgy that is a 2,000-year-old conversation between God and people; it is the “source and summit of the Christian life.”[3] The conversation began with Abraham, continues today, and will continue into the future. The early church’s worship patterns developed out of the Jewish synagogue, which was the focus of Hebrew worship and community life from the time of the Babylonian exile to the present day. This shows us that even before the biblical canon, there was worship in the churches.[4]

Historically, worship is composed of both variable and fixed elements.[5] The fixed elements are those that have been handed down through the tradition of the church and the variables are continuously evolving from the juxtaposition of the Bible with contemporary life;[6] therefore, elements that once were variables became part of the tradition, and new variables are developed daily in our churches.

The New Testament reflects the worship of the early church. There are eucharistic texts concerning Holy Communion, the bread of life discourse, the feeding of the five thousand, and the feeding of the four thousand. There are several creedal statements. There are hymns in the New Testament that include: the Magnificat, the benedictus, the gloria in excelsis, and the prologue to John. Homilies include eight speeches of Peter in Acts, ten speeches of Paul in Acts, the entire epistle to the Hebrews, a sermon in Timothy, and a sermon in 1 Peter. These elements of worship were in both homes and synagogues where liturgy, prayer, scripture, homily, Holy Communion, and benediction took place.[7]

In the United States, the church has gone through various changes from colonial times four hundred years ago to the present day. The years 1607-1789 saw the Comprehensive Congregation whose primary purpose and reason for being was the worship of God.[8] The Devotional Congregation, which evolved between 1789-1870, was a type of community that still saw worship as its primary purpose although it began to segment worship as a response to the increasingly segmented lives of its people in society at large. This division of worship took the form of prayer meetings, Bible classes, Sunday schools, devotional gatherings, and mission societies organized by age and gender.[9] Social Congregations unfolded during the years of 1870-1950 and the focus of these groups was community life formed around the people of the church. The goal of these groups was to “overcome the impersonality of large congregations, to eliminate class distinctions, to attract children and their parents, provide wholesome amusement for young people, and to draw men more actively into congregational work.”[10] Participatory Congregations became the typical style of community life during the years of 1950-1990. This ideal was the monopolization of “the lives of their members: worship, recreation, education, child-care, family life, vocational decisions...[offering to the community at large]…not simply worship but an array of other activities and services.”[11]

Today, the church in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century is in need of rediscovering its primary biblical roots of remembering and worshipping God. Worship is how God’s first person of faith on earth, Abraham, responded to his relationship with God, and this at God’s request. Therefore, the primary task for congregations in the United States today has truly become listening to the foremost call of God to worship God above all endeavors they undertake.

Worship is the primary function of a congregation in constant conversation with God. Unfortunately, over time that conversation has become instead a talk with, and response to, the pop society in which the church is imbedded, rather than conversing and responding to God in remembrance of God’s relationship with people. The personal lives of postmodern people have become cluttered with responses to God that are simply spiritual noise.[12] Americans are missing the love and nurture of God found in worship. Song of Solomon 2:4 says, “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his intention toward me was love.” And in 7:10 we read, “I am my beloved’s and his desire is for me.” Psalm 31:23a says we are to respond to God in love, and 1 John 4:19 tells us that God loved us first. God awaits our response.

This realignment of the mission of the church to the primary characteristic of praising and extolling God in community is the all-embracing umbrella that arches over every other function and goal of the congregation. The organizing vision of this is fellowship, for 1 Corinthians 1:9 says, “God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,” and Ephesians 2: 19 reads, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”

Because worship as mission of the church is fundamental, all of the ministries and social works of the church stand under its chief call and its corresponding vision of fellowship. Let us consider the mission and vision of our congregational communities, and the means to realign them according to the Word of God, worship discipleship. These are the utmost priorities in our congregations today.
[1] Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Constitution, 201
[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990)
All citations are taken from this version.
[3] Mons Teig, “Theology of Worship.” (Lecture in Luther Seminary Worship class, St. Paul, MN., 2/11/2003)
[4] Arland J. Hultgren, “Jewish Roots of Christian Worship.” (Lecture in Luther Seminary
Worship class, St. Paul, MN., 2/18/03)
[5] Ibid.
[6] Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998)33.
[7] Arland J. Hultgren, “Liturgical Materials in the New Testament.” (Lecture in Luther Seminary Worship class, St. Paul, MN., 2/18/03)
[8] James P. Wind and James W. Lewis, eds., American Congregations: New Perspectives in the Study of Congregations, vol. 2 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994) 29.
[9] Ibid., 34.

[10] Ibid., 39, 40.
[11] Ibid., 43.

[12]Jerome W. Berryman, “Silence Is Stranger Than It Used To Be,” Religious Education 94 (1999) 258, 259.

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