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| What is Christ-Centered Worship? |
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| Tuesday, 04 August 2009 19:00 | |||
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When I come into the worship service each week, I need to come to the cross. I am a weak, ignorant sinner who has not gotten it all right during the week. I have messed up. I was short with my wife. I yelled at my son. I checked email for the fifth time when I should have been reading my Bible. My desire for God has been lagging. I need to sing songs that acknowledge that I am a weak sinner, worthy of condemnation, under God’s wrath, but have received the grace and mercy of God at the cross. I need to hear, say, and sing the truth about who I am and what God has done for me. I don’t want merely a token hymn or song that mentions Christ in passing in the midst of a steady diet of celebration and commitment. What am I celebrating? Why would I commit my life to God? Take me to the cross, show me the bleeding Savior who has died for me, and risen that I might have hope. Show me the glorious Savior that is worthy of all devotion and praise. Take me deep into the suffering of Calvary and show me the Savior who was wounded for my transgression. Now that is worth celebrating. I need to be reminded again and again of what God has done for me. My focus is too often and too easily taken off of Christ and on to myself. I too often tend to think about what I should be doing for God and forget what He has done for me. I become self-focused too easily. Life can be confusing and overwhelming, and I don’t always know how to respond, or I respond in a sinful way. When I come to worship on Sunday, I don’t need a heavy burden of needing to drum up heartfelt emotional commitment out of no place when the worship service begins. What I need is worship songs that give an honest assessment of who I am and what Christ has done for me. I need to hear about the glories of the Savior who lived and died and rose again for wretched weak sinners like myself, to the glory of God. My focus needs to be taken off of my performance, my intelligence, my problems, and my circumstances. My focus needs to be taken to Christ. What is Christ-centered worship? It is worship that is about what Christ has done for us, not about what we do for Him. It is about exalting the excellencies of Christ’s work on the cross, not about exalting the excellencies of our commitment to Him. It is about the objective work of Christ on the cross that makes me right with God, not about my subjective fluctuating feelings about God that make me alternatively feel close to God or far from God. Most of all, it about more of Christ and less of me. I have nothing to offer or commit to God outside of what He offered to me at Calvary through His commitment to do His Father’s will in accomplishing our salvation, to God’s glory.
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Hits: 1391 Comments (4)Subscribe to this comment's feedChrist centered
Karl,
Thanks for the reminder to keep Christ the center of our worship. I wonder if this prevailing attitude has contributed to the types of questions that are so often asked in missions literature and conferences. The question "How can we design worship so that the culture of Thai people (or any other people that we are missionaries to) is fully expressed?" is asked so often that it often times seems that nobody is asking the most important and vital question "Is Christ central in this worship?" May I reccommend Michael Horton's book A Better Way - Rediscovering the Drama of Christ-Centered Worship. http://www.wscal.edu/bookstore/store/details.php?id=17
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August 05, 2009
Worship
Hey Karl
One of the problems we have is defining "worship" as all that happens in the pre-sermon phase in church on a Sunday, normally accompanied by music. Worship is so much more than that. True worship is not something that we "go to" or "participate in". It is a life lived to Christ's glory and to that end, it can only logically happen if he is indeed at the centre of it. Because of our flawed definition of worship, we are hoist by our own petard. By making the weekly singing of songs our only, or main, expression of worship, we cannot choose one particular form and make that normative for everyone. I am sure that there are people coming in to church who can truthfully sing "you are all I want" or "I offer my life to you". So we have to be inclusive in the type of songs we sing and we have to be eclectic in the instruments we use. Best solution though, is to help everyone get a proper understanding of the meaning of worship - that way the songs we sing on Sunday become less important (because they are not the primary expression of our worship) and it doesn't really matter if we sing about the cross, our desire for Christ, his goodness to us, or our service to him.
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August 05, 2009
Worship is all of life, but weekly church worship meeting is special time of worship
Hi Nick, I chose to use the common definition of worship (i.e. music/songs) in my post in order to stay on topic rather than try to cover too much but I agree with you that our entire lives should be an act of worship to God, not limited to a weekly meeting. It is unbiblical to limit worship to a certain period of time on Sunday morning and think that we have done our "duty" for the week. I am of the conviction that the entire worship service is worship - the prayer is worship, the preaching is worship, the Scripture reading is worship, the singing is worship.
However, the weekly worship service is a special time of worship that is distinct from the rest of the week. When I am fixing my bike, or making dinner, or sweeping in front of my home, all of these things should be done to the glory of God, and thus are worship. However, the weekly worship meeting when I gather together with God's people is a time specially devoted to listening to God and speaking with God through the teaching of the Word of God through singing, prayers, preaching, teaching, and so forth. It is a time the people of God to come away from their other work during the rest of the week and listen to God is a way that is difficult to do on your own when you are involved in the daily tasks of life. And I think that the content of the songs do matter. There is a place for various types of songs with various emphases but the songs should be focused more on what God has done for us and our response to that. If the regular diet of songs becomes all about what we do for God in order to get him to do what we want Him to do then our worship is self-centered, not too much different than animistic worship that uses religious rituals and specially worded chants to produce the desired outcome. And Chris, thanks for your comment. It was good to chat with you about that today at the LLC. As for the Horton book on Christ-Centered Worship, I think I'll borrow your copy when your family is done reading it. 
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August 05, 2009
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In a number of Thai churches I have noticed that the type of worship songs selected fall into three general categories: 1) “I offer you my life” 2) “Pour out your Spirit” and, 3) “I want to be close to you”. This emphasis is hardly unique to Thailand as much of modern worship songs here are heavily influenced from the West. These type of songs have a time and place yet it seems that in some churches, these are almost the only type of songs that are played. As we sing the same basic things over and over again, I have begun to wonder, “Where is Christ? Where is the cross?”. It seems to be a glaring oversight to not have songs about Christ and his finished work on the cross as a mainstay of Christian worship. 
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