I just began a series of lessons with my Adult Choir that I’m calling “Worship 1O1.” Yes, that’s the letter “O” not a zero. It means Worship 1-On-1. The implication is that even in corporate worship what happens is between us and God even though it is happening that way all over the room with other believers.

Several questions were raised in an article I recently read about “Worship Discipleship.” Please be aware that this term “Worship Discipleship” is not referring to the idea of using the worship service as a means of building disciples of Christ. Instead it is referring to the process of helping believers to learn about the place of worship in the life of the believer. Some of the questions raised were:

What is worship?
Why do we worship?
What are the historical roots to our Christian worship?
What theological principles undergird our worship practices?
Who is worship for?

The above order is the order in which the questions were posed, but I would like to deal with them in a different order that I think will be a better help to inform our thinking about worship. So let’s consider these same questions, but in this order:

What is worship?
Who is worship for?
Why do we worship?
What theological principles undergird our worship practices?
What are the historical roots to our Christian worship?

In this first installment of Worship 1O1 we will talk about the first question: What is worship?

I’ve lived with this definition for over 20 years. I’ve never found a better definition. It came from one of the first classes I took at Southwestern Seminary, Philosophy of Church Music. My Professor was Dr. Bruce Leaflblad and this is how he defines worship…

Worship is communion with God in which believers, by grace, center their minds’ attentions and their hearts’ affections on the Lord, humbly glorifying God in response to His greatness and His word. – Bruce Leafblad

Let’s break this down…
Worship is Relational between Believers and God.
The invitation to worship is not extended to unbelievers because they have no relationship with God. This does not mean that worship has no impact on them. To the contrary, it should have great impact on an unbeliever when they see believers whose spirits are truly attuned to the Spirit of God and who are worshiping Him in spirit and truth. But the very word communion has as one of its dictionary meanings, “Intimate fellowship.” That can’t happen when two persons have no relationship. Relationship precedes fellowship.

Worship is By Grace.
In other words, there is nothing that we have done to deserve the opportunity to come into His presence. It is by His invitation and at His initiative.

Worship is Loving God
My good friend David Walker has a habit of referring to worship as “Loving on God.” That should be the attitude of our hearts. Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-38, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” When we center our minds’ attentions and our hearts’ affections on the Lord we are loving Him. When a man truly loves his wife he gives her his attention and he expresses affection for her. The same goes for a wife loving her husband. The Apostle Paul says this:
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.            Ephesians 5:22-32

Worship is an act of Submission.
…“humbly” glorifying God… We submit our will to His Will.
“Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way. Thou art the Potter, I am the clay…”

Worship is an act that seeks to Glorify God.
This takes our personal preferences and our personal critiques of worship out of the conversation. If I am not singing for my own recognition; if the motive, the affection of my heart is for Him, then what I do in worship will seek His Glory alone, not my own glory. All the glory belongs to Him…
“I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols.” Isaiah 42:8
“For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another.” Isaiah 48:11

Worship is a Response to God…
…not to the music, not to the preaching, not to a vibrant testimony, not to a powerful prayer, but to God. The Holy Spirit can and does use all of those elements of our worship services to prick our hearts and minds, but the response is to God Himself, not just to the things we do.

Worship does not happen in rooms and is not contained in the singing of songs and the reading of scripture and the praying of prayers and the preaching of sermons. Just because you have sung songs and heard prayers and sermons and read scripture does not mean that you have worshiped.

Worship happens in and is contained in human minds and hearts. It finds its place of beginning there. It is to the human mind and heart that God is first revealed. It is the human mind and heart that must respond to that revelation. That response is prompted by the attitudes of adoration, praise, repentance, faith, and thanksgiving. Those attitudes express themselves in action, whether it is a response that calls the worshiper to the altar or a response that means a change of life as it is lived from day to day. God’s revelation demands that we do something with it. In the words of the old hymn writers… “What will you do with Jesus?” and “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all!”
If something does not happen in your heart and your mind during a service of worship, if you are not faced with the demand to respond to these attitudes of heart that can change life and that show up only in those who have truly communed with God, then have you truly worshiped? I would think not.

Worship is rooted in God’s Word.                                                                                                                              God’s word is the beginning point for any worship planning that I do. It should be the central guiding factor in determining what we do in worship and how we do it.

So, to restate the words Dr. Leafblad shared with our Philosophy of Chruch Music class so many years ago…Worship is communion with God in which believers, by grace, center their minds’ attentions and their hearts’ affections on the Lord, humbly glorifying God in response to His greatness and His word.

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