Theology of Worship
(avg. read time: 5–10 mins.)
Worship is such a complex set of phenomena that a description of this length could never do it justice. Unless you follow ancient liturgies, which still leave room for insertions and improvisations, many decisions go into planning worship services and how every decision, no matter what it is, communicates something, whether good or bad, intentionally or unintentionally. But those decisions—whether for ancient liturgy or not-so-ancient orders of worship—should be informed by a sound theology of worship. I have not devoted the research to this field as several other experts that I know (and the many that I do not). But I articulated a theology of worship for a class in seminary which, surprisingly, has held up well for the most part, which I present here as a brief statement of a theology of worship that I hope will be beneficial for others to think about worship.
First, it is necessary to define the term “worship” (I have decided to provide a general definition and then describe it in its Christian form). The literal meaning of the English word is, “to ascribe worth.” While that meaning is a helpful and necessary foundation for understanding what constitutes worship, the word has a wider meaning in both reference and implication than ascription of worth. All worship is ascription of worth, but not all ascription of worth is worship. In view of the different words used for worship in the New Testament, the different practices commonly associated with worship, the close connection between theology, worship, and ethics entailed by the unifying anthropological picture presented in the Bible, and the fact that worship has both an individual and corporate dimension, I think the best overall definition of worship is the submission and orientation of one’s entire self/life according to an object/subject (i.e., that which is “worshiped”). This definition also highlights that the shape of worship is determined by the object/subject of worship. Whatever is worshiped is acknowledged as being central to one’s worldview and will thus form the stories told, the symbols used, the praxis performed, the theory used as a framework, the aims guiding the trajectory of life, the motivations for actions, and the beliefs espoused.
Christian worship is shaped by the Trinitarian God revealed in and through Jesus Christ. This peculiar shape of Christian worship has multiple layers of significance, of which I have decided to highlight two here. First, this Trinitarian God who has created humans in the divine image is actually the primary actor in worship. God the Father is the Creator and Sustainer of the worshipers; Jesus is the Lord and Savior around whom the individual and corporate identities of believers are constituted and he is the one who said that where two or three are gathered in his name, there he is with them (Matt 18:20); and the Holy Spirit is at work to sanctify and glorify each member of the body and the body of Christ as a whole, empowering those same members to participate in worship, especially through provision of spiritual gifts. Second, since this God is the God of holistic redemption and deliverance, worship and mission are concomitant realities and sets of actions devoted to this God. This claim is demonstrated in that the God who is the subject of Christian worship is the Creator God who has made it his mission to renew his creation, reconcile it to himself, restore its shalom, remove evil from creation (since evil keeps creation from fulfilling the purpose for which God created it), and establish the proper function and flourishing of creation under his kingship (i.e., the kingdom of God). To worship this God is to participate in that same mission—the missio Dei—the fruit of which God has given us the grace to receive and respond to with delivering joy. Such participation is the very essence of what it means to be the image-bearers of God he created humans to be.
Of course, in order to communicate the mission of God, to understand what it means, and to participate in it, worship and mission inherently involve telling the story of God and his actions in creation. The first songs dedicated in worship in the Bible—such as Exod 15; Deut 32; and Judg 5—tell stories of YHWH’s action. The three major festivals of Israel—especially the Passover—tell the stories of YHWH in their own fashion. Many Psalms are liturgical songs summarizing the story of Israel and YHWH’s action in their history. In the New Testament, where the connection between worship and mission becomes much clearer, the gospel proclamations in Acts tell the story of Jesus as the climax of the story of Israel and the world as a whole, giving special focus to his death, resurrection, and exaltation. Elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor 15:1–4; Phil 2:6–11; Col 1:15–20), it is also shown that these stories appealed to in evangelism functioned as central to worship. The Jesus traditions coalesced in the Gospels were passed on as stories told in the setting of worship. The two central religious rituals for the earliest Christians—baptism and the Eucharist—function as crystallized narratives. In Rom 6, Paul outlines the story of baptism as participating in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. In 1 Cor 11, he similarly brings out what Jesus had said in the institution narratives of the Gospels that participating in the Eucharist is participating in the life of Jesus, proclaiming his death when body and blood were separated, and anticipating the consummation of the kingdom and new creation, into which Jesus in his resurrected body has already gone forth. All of these points demonstrate to me that worship is fundamentally narratival and all acts of worship should be dedicated to telling and participating in the story of the God we worship.
In light of the above conception of baptism and the Eucharist, it is important to reflect on the roles of these rituals in Christian worship. I think we Protestants should de-emphasize the practice of the altar call as this act has often taken over the significance usually attached to baptism. It is thought that at this point, not at baptism, the person makes the public declaration of faith and that the congregation thereby accepts that person into the constitution of the community. I think an adoption of catechesis would be helpful to break this link and re-establish the connections with baptism. But in any case, the Church as a whole needs to emphasize that it is at baptism that the person acknowledges they are entering the community who participates in the story of Jesus, not at the altar call. That altar call is simply the first step in the right direction (of course, I realize that the altar call also has a function of response for believers, but perhaps we can maintain that outlook without using it is as a time to announce that someone has made the decision to become a new member of that congregation). I am, of course, also here assuming a framework of believer’s baptism. I think only believers are the proper recipients of baptism as it is supposed to be a conscious declaration of one’s dedication to participate in the story of Jesus, thus serving as an act of pledged allegiance.
As for the Eucharist, I advocate what I call a loosely closed communion. To use the image of a door, if open communion is an open door, my view is of a closed door that is not locked. That is to say I do not advocate closed communion in the old sense of closed only to members of one’s denomination or one’s local church. It should be open to all people, regardless of tradition, who acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. Based on 1 Cor 11, I think only believers should participate in the Eucharist because the meal inherently acknowledges participation in Jesus rather than anyone else (cf. 1 Cor 10:16). But Paul does also apply further restrictions based on the believer’s self-examination of readiness to receive the Eucharist. In view of this fact and with an awareness of the difficulty of enforcing this practice of closed communion, I think the best approach would be to have one or more tables on which the Eucharist is offered set up in front of/around the sanctuary and to invite people to come up to the table(s). I realize this practice could run the risk of having a non-Christian participate in the Eucharist without conversion, but I am not sure there is any more practical way to emphasize the self-examination necessary to participation without also arbitrarily closing off people who could be true believers.
Now let us return to more general considerations of corporate worship. Corporate worship involves individuals coming together to acknowledge their unity, expressing it as one body performing unified worship in times dedicated to reflecting upon and expressing the common story of participation in the missio Dei. The corporate unity is expressed through common participation in one body of worship praxis while the diversity of that congregation is expressed through the different actions and features that serve as varying points of entry and heightened interest. In light of these truths, particular practices should only be adopted by a congregation if they can authentically reflect the identity of that congregation in its context.
Indeed, in worship there are two foci, signified in the New Testament by “prayer” and “prophecy”. That is, worship involves glorifying God and edifying/sanctifying people. Given the connection between worship and mission and the nature of worship as storytelling, telling the story of God and participating in it inherently glorifies him and edifies his image-bearers by lift them them into this same story. The actions of God are turned back to him in praise and prayer as we remind ourselves of his story. Our mission also consists of telling that story and calling others into it, which thereby edifies them when they submit to the call. Furthermore, the two-pronged work of worship follows what Jesus taught are the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love others as ourselves (i.e., to love the God in whose image he created us and, as a consequence, to love other image-bearers of that same God).
Another point which follows from this framework of worship is that it should be multi-voiced. As indicated in Rom 12:3–8 and 1 Cor 12—and expounded upon in chapters 13 and 14—God gifts people according to his will for the edification of the body of believers. When people use those diverse gifts and contribute their voices to worship, it works to the glorification of God who gave those gifts and to the edification of others for whom God gave those gifts (of course, edification of the exerciser of those gifts also follows as he/she fulfills the call God has placed on his/her life).
A further dimension to this multi-voiced character of worship is to have multiple people declare their story in the context of the telling of God’s story. The call to worship and mission is a call God places on everyone. When multiple people tell their stories in the context of God’s story, they proclaim how they participate in that story and thus how they follow the call to worship and mission. Multi-voiced worship in this fashion also has the virtue of being reports from the front of the latest chapters of the missio Dei working out in history.