I will give you all my worship?

Dale Dirksen
Special to ChristianWeek

My first encounter with the Vineyard was in the early 1990s. I was on a five week sabbatical from my “worship pastor” responsibilities. At first, I was your typical nervous conservative evangelical—wondering if I too would become expressive and passionate about worship—leading to dancing, shaking and the like.

But as I felt the intimacy of the Vineyard songs, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. I couldn’t even sing. I think this was an essential discovery of holistic response to a very immanent God who really wanted to embrace me for who I was. It was incredible! It was “worship.”

Over the years since then, the passion of that experience wore off. I sometimes found myself searching for it—in the latest songs, or a more innovative worship band or even dabbling in some historic liturgy. But I never experienced that exact same thing again. So, I began to ask the question “what is worship anyway?” I suspect I am among many others asking similar questions these days.

Although the powerful feelings of intimacy and passion are very important and valuable, they are not ultimately the best focus. In a sense they are byproducts of the real thing—the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we go for the byproduct we often miss out on the real thing. A good reminder for me is that true worship must begin with God, not with myself.

When you study worship in the Bible you quickly find that all examples of true worship begin with God—whether it’s Moses and the burning bush or the Apostle Paul writing in Romans 12. A fairly common way of describing this is that true worship involves a revelation/response dialogue. God must be revealed first, and then we humans can respond appropriately.

When we try to respond without being careful to look for Divine revelation, we almost always end up focusing on ourselves, our experience, our passion, our “joy.” Then we are likely to make big claims about our incredible worship so that even God will be amazed. “I will give you all my worship” sounds impressive but might be a dangerous exaggeration. Remember what happened when Ananias and Saphira attempted to exaggerate their offering to God in Acts 5?

So, how can we make the revelation/response dialogue practical in our corporate worship? First, we need to look at the structure of our worship services. God centered worship begins with deliberate attention to the revelation of God. The best place to find this is in the Bible. Beginning corporate worship by reading, singing, preaching Scripture is an important first step to God centeredness.

Putting scripture first

Simply put, reading and preaching of Scripture should happen earlier in our services. In the community of faith where I participate we have been trying to find ways to always allow for some kind of appropriate corporate response to the reading and teaching of Scripture. Often it is songs or silence. Communion is also a very powerful way to respond. It is thankful “remembering”, recognizing the Lord (I Cor. 11:29), and a holistic, participatory act of obedience.

Second, we need to use right terminology. Virtually no one actually believes that the only worship we do is singing. But for so many believers, the word worship is consistently assigned to song. If you don’t believe this, ask someone what they thought of the worship last week in your church. They will almost always respond with some comment about the songs or the worship band. Have you ever heard someone say, “well…first we worshipped, then we prayed, then we had a sermon.”

It’s time to reconstruct our language by saying “let’s continue to worship by giving as we share in our offering time,” or “let’s worship as we listen to the teaching of Scripture.” Avoid saying “let’s have a worship time before we listen to the sermon.”

Third, let’s get tough with our songs and other participatory actions. Sometimes leaders actually tempt people to commit the same sin that Ananias and Saphira committed. We tell them to sing words like “take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold.”

Huge cost must be carefully counted. Jesus was pretty clear that we need to count the cost before shooting off about how committed we are. As leaders, we need to be careful to invite people to participate honestly.

My early 90s experience was real and very important to my relationship with God. But learning to grow from these kinds of experiences is essential too. I want to make sure that criteria for “good” worship is oriented on God, not myself. I suspect you feel the same.

Dale Dirksen has more than 20 years of professional ministry. He has degrees in music, Christian education, and leadership, and a doctorate in Worship Studies. He currently teaches in the areas of worship and church ministry at Briercrest Seminary and is also the lay pastor of a church plant in Moose Jaw, SK.