The Pastor's Book (eBook)

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Sunday Worship

By Douglas Sean O’Donnell

In this opening chapter, we will consider various aspects of what is undoubtedly the highest calling of the church—worship of our great God.

I should warn you—Kent has Quaker roots, and I Roman Catholic. What a former Quaker and Roman Catholic might together say about worship in the free-church evangelical tradition warrants careful and cautionary reading. Kent’s first memory of Christianity is the 1949 Los Angeles Billy Graham crusade. His Southern Baptist grandmother took him to the huge tent set up on the corner of Washington and Hill Streets. “The dressed-up crowd, the young evangelist’s blue eyes radiating in the spotlights, and cowboy Stuart Hamblen singing ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’” are a few of the memorizes etched in his mind.1 After the crusade, Kent attended Vermont Avenue Presbyterian Church. Of that experience, he recalls, “It was there, hushed and seated with my mother along with other reverent worshippers in the dark, Scottish-kirk ambience of that old church, that I began to sense the transcendence of God and to be drawn to Christ.”2

Christ drew Kent to himself in a saving way as a teenager through the Christians at Granada Heights Friends Church. While this was a Quaker congregation, the worship style was eclectic, blending aspects from free-church traditions such as the Methodists, Nazarenes, and Baptists. The church’s “liturgy” looked like that of many evangelical services today: a season of congregational singing (including gospel songs and choruses, with perhaps a hymn and a choir number) followed by a sermon. It did, however, include a short time of silence, a vestige from the Quakers’ traditional silent meetings. One aspect of worship this congregation was not silent about was evangelism! And like his church, Kent regarded evangelism as the Christian’s highest calling. However, this emphasis, as God-ordained and honoring as it was, deemphasized, as least in Kent’s mind, the purpose of corporate worship. He reflects: “I certainly never gave any thought as to the purpose of our Lord’s Day gatherings, other than as a venue for preaching.”3 Even his embrace of Calvinism before seminary never led him to theological reflection on worship.

It was only after seminary, as Kent served as a youth pastor and then church planter, that serious reflection began. Hughes described the atmosphere from which his many thoughtful questions, such as, “Is this authentic worship or entertainment?” arose:

Irreverence became widespread. Congregational prayers were often a mindless stream-of-consciousness offered in a “kicked-back” cannabis tone. Mantra-like music was employed to mesmerize worshippers, and preachers were replaced by “communicators” who offered bromides strung together with a series of relational anecdotes.4

During his twenty-seven years as the senior pastor at College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, Kent’s philosophy and practice of congregational worship was honed. He has thought long and hard about answers to questions such as:

• What do the Scriptures have to say about corporate worship?
• Is our worship Christ-centered and God-honoring?
• How should the Bible be read, sung, and preached?
• Should we use creeds?
• How do we celebrate the sacraments?

In what follows, I have summarized some of his thoughts and added my own.

To say something of my path to serious reflection on the topic of corporate worship, I will simply add that the nineteen years I spent at St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Parish, two years at Willow Creek Community Church, and nearly twenty years as a pastor/church planter with College Church all influenced me, with the emphasis of influence falling on the latter. My times at College Church and its church plants—Holy Trinity in Chicago, Christ the King in Batavia, Illinois, and New Covenant in Naperville, Illinois, where I helped develop various orders of service, write a philosophy of music, and plan and execute special services—refined my own thoughts on the matter. To see if I’ll advocate a blend of the sign of the cross, a splash of holy water, smooth jazz soloists, comfortable auditorium seating, expository preaching, and “A Mighty Fortress” on the organ, you’ll have to read on.

WORSHIP—ALL OF LIFE AND EVERY SUNDAY

Kent and I have both been to Oz and back—the island of Australia, that is. In fact, I am there now, serving as a lecturer at Queensland Theological College in Brisbane. Our major Oz influence, however, comes from the Sydney Anglicans, especially those associated with Moore Theological College. Kent credits Graeme Goldsworthy, William Dumbrell, Peter Jensen, and Phillip Jensen, among others, for clarifying his view that worship is more than what happens on Sunday. In the New Testament, worship clearly embodies all of life!

The biblical evidence is conclusive. Jesus’s coming fulfilled Scripture’s promise of a new covenant (cf. Jer. 31:31–34). And it is most significant that the entire text of this substantial prophecy is recorded in Hebrews 8:7–13, in the midst of a section (Hebrews 7–11) that asserts there is no longer any earthly sacrifice, priesthood, or temple because all have been fulfilled in Christ. There are no longer any sacred times or sacred places. Under the new covenant, Christians are thus to worship all the time—in their individual lives, in their family lives, and when they come together for corporate worship. Corporate worship, then, is a particular expression of a life of perpetual worship. This is what worship is: “Day-in-day-out living for Christ, the knees and heart perpetually bent in devotion and service.”5

Thus, with the New Testament perspective in mind, as Christians we must center our worship on Christ as the temple, priest, and sacrifice; and we must reject traditions that advocate for sacred spaces—“sanctuaries,” “tabernacles,” and such—as well as for an ordained “priesthood,” along with any elements of the levitical cultus of Aaronic vestments, altars, and bloodless sacrifices.

That said, the designated place where Christians worship is, in some sense, set apart. It is not a sanctified place, but it is a special place—whether it is St. Paul’s London or the DuPage Children’s Museum (where my church worshiped for a number of months before we moved into another rented space). Moreover, while we embrace the priesthood of all believers, we recognize that a church is not a church without appointed leaders (elders and deacons), as the Pastoral Epistles make clear. Lastly, individual devotion does not negate gathering on the Lord’s Day to worship the risen Lord until his return. We should make it our habit to gather to encourage one another (see Heb. 10:25), each person prepared to build others up (1 Cor. 14:26), knowing that Sunday through Saturday, as brothers, we are called “to present your [plural] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your [plural] spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1).

But why do we gather on Sunday? The New Testament, perhaps surprisingly, speaks little on this issue. The emphasis of the New Testament is on mutual edification, as is clear in Hebrews 10:25 (“encouraging one another”), 1 Corinthians 14:26 (“When you come together. . . . Let all things be done for building up”), and the gatherings described in Acts. Evangelism is also mentioned in 1 Corinthians 14. The hope of a Spirit-filled assembly would be the “unbeliever or outsider . . . falling on his face,” worshiping God, and declaring that “God is really among you” (vv. 24–25).6 Beyond edification and evangelism is the obvious: exaltation! If the church’s desire is that the unbeliever “worship God” (v. 25), then there is little doubt the believers should be on their faces before God as well. Views that advocate that corporate assemblies are merely to edify believers or evangelize unbelievers miss the plain fact that if Christ is not lifted up in praise, no believer is edified and no unbeliever is saved. When the New Testament speaks of God’s people gathering to pray (to God), sing (to God), and preach (God’s gospel), it assumes exaltation. Christian worship encompasses the threefold goal of edification, evangelism, and exaltation. And those three aspects of public worship intersect and support each other on many levels.7 From our acclamation of God, the church is built up, and unbelievers tremble and (Lord willing) trust! As Hughes puts it:

I have come to see that while all of life is worship, gathered worship with the body of Christ is at the heart of a life of worship. Corporate worship is intended by God to inform and elevate a life of worship. In this respect, I personally view how we conduct gathered worship as a matter of life and death.8

CLARIFYING CORPORATE CHRISTIAN WORSHIP

“Life and death”? Those are strong words. What does it matter how we conduct our Sunday worship service? As long as “all things [are] done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40), aren’t all aspects of our edification/evangelism/exaltation liturgy acceptable? Before I answer...