Worship in a Biblical and Relevant Manner

Worship is the act of honoring God as creator, provider and Savior; expressing our adoration and dependence upon him through praise and thanksgiving from our hearts, by words and through our obedience.

Worship is a personal and corporate act of love and devotion to God. Each believer worships the Lord personally each day and as part of a local congregation. In the Old Testament, worshipers congregated in the temple on the feast days. Later, they also gathered for worship in synagogues.

It is done in spirit. Worship is deeply spiritual and often expresses itself in our emotions. Worship is very heart-felt. Worship is also done in truth. It must be worshiping God with the correct, Biblical understanding of who he is. The principles of worship may be derived only from God’s Word.
Six usual parts of public worship are recognized in God’s Word:
1. The Bible will be read for all to hear and follow.
2. The message of the preacher will be the interpretation and application of God’s Word alone.
3. The minister will welcome the people in God’s name and dismiss them with his blessing.
4. The minister will lead the congregation in public prayer.
5. The congregation will sing songs of praise, thanksgiving, confession, offering and petition to the Lord.
6. The tithes and gifts will be received as the offerings of thanksgiving from the Lord’s people.

Worship is directed to God alone and – when in the assembly – it is also done in a way that is edifying to all the worshipers. Therefore worship is both vertical (to God) and horizontal (edifying to the worshiper).[1] Because corporate worship is also horizontal, it must also be relevant to all the worshipers.

A good example of the need for relevance is found in 1 Corinthians 14:23-25 --
"So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? 24 But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25 and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!"

Tongues are a spiritual gift no longer.[2] Believers in the Corinthian church were abusing this gift (which may indicate that many of them were pretending the gift). If they were speaking in tongues in the worship service, and if an unbeliever entered, he would not be able to relate to what they were doing and would think they were crazy. The Apostle Paul vindicated the judgment of the unbeliever. He is justified in not being able to understand what was going on and what was being said.

The application for us is that even an unbeliever (seeker) walking into the worship service ought to be able to relate to and understand what is going on and what is being said. This is how people, untrained in the faith, may be converted. Language in worship that is too archaic or too intellectual should be avoided. All language in worship – in the message and in the singing – should be comprehensible and relevant.

The relevance of language, lyrics and music:
Strive to keep the pastor’s message and the lyrics understandable. Avoid archaic language with which people untrained in the church are unfamiliar. This is not “dumbing down;” this is avoiding tongues. Tunes can also be archaic and very strange-sounding to people unfamiliar with them. Historically, church music has always trailed changing styles in music.
[1] To edify means to build up. Vertical and horizontal worship, see John M. Frame, "Worship in Spirit and in Truth".
[2] Tongues. Literally languages. The charismatic gift to speak in another language unlearned. It is miraculously given by the Holy Spirit. This gift ceased with the early church. The church father’s testified to its disappearance. In 1 Corinthians 14:20-22, Paul wrote that tongues were intended as a sign for the Jews that Messiah has come.