Well here it is folks! My first blog
post! Let me start things off with a brief explanation of what this blog is
intended to be. Essentially it is precisely what the blog name indicates. It
will be a compilation of my thoughts on various issues: politics, religion and
theology, sports, pop culture, entertainment, etc. For my first blog post I
would like to focus on an issue of religion and spirituality.
Today I attended an after-church,
bring your own lunch board meeting at the church where I currently serve as
Youth and Young Adult Pastor. The meeting was supposed to be a coming together
to discuss issues related to the previous quarter’s Sabbath school lesson on
witnessing and evangelism. There was one item on the agenda: how can we as a
church facilitate church growth and evangelism? However, as can be expected,
the discussion went terribly awry.
People began to complain about their
pet issues of what was going wrong in the church and why it isn’t growing.
Blame fell on other churches, the youth department, dry worship services,
forgetting the fundamentals, lack of commitment, and of course the pastors. I
heard explanations of how young adults aren’t coming to church because they
aren’t being “fed” which probably has some truth in it. However, I would like
to raise one question tonight: Is that what we’re really here for? To be fed?
Is that why we come to church? Is that why we drag people out of their beds at
8 o’clock on Sabbath morning, guilt them into coming to Sabbath School, and
have them sit for 2 hours in a service? To be fed? I think this a gross
distortion of what biblical worship is supposed to be.
There are several requirements of
biblical worship and none of them
have to do with “style” or musical preference. For tonight's purposes I will mention only one of them. Biblical worship is about God and God alone. Nowhere in
Scripture will one find anything saying that worship was designed to glorify,
uplift, magnify, or edify humans. Throughout biblical history, the purpose of
worship was to glorify, uplift, magnify and edify God.
We see the earliest instances of
worship with Cain and Abel in Genesis 4:3-5. Cain brings an offering to God
which God does not accept, but He accepts Abel’s. The Bible does not
specifically tell us why God rejected Cain’s offering and accepted Abel’s but
it does give us a few clues. First, it says that “Cain brought an offering of
the fruit of the ground” and Abel brought an offering “of the firstborn of his
flock”. The text suggests that Cain just brought any fruit while Abel specifically brought the firstborn of his flock. This suggests that Abel’s offering was
actually a “sacrifice” in the truest sense of the word. Abel brought the
firstborn, the best of the flock. Cain just brought whatever he wanted and
thought God would accept it. The point is that Abel’s worship was a sacrifice,
and Cain’s worship self-motivated. Cain wanted to keep the first and best for
himself.
In the sanctuary service established by God in the tabernacle worship was all about God's intervention into human life and how He would ultimately reconnect us to Himself. David revolutionized Israel's worship life by providing music, poetry, and liturgy. The New Testament featured small, intimate, house-worships due to the underground beginnings of the church and the climate of persecution. So biblical worship is diverse, complex and multi-faceted. But it has one constant: It is always centered on God.
How does this apply to our current
understanding of worship? It tells us that worship is about God, who He is, and
what He has done for us. Worship should never be motivated by self-interest.
Paul tells us in Romans 12:1 that our “reasonable service of worship” is to
present our bodies as “living sacrifices”. In essence, we come to church not
primarily to get, but to give. We give ourselves to God! We come to worship and
praise Him for who He is and what He has done. Any blessing we receive out of
it is a by-product, not the end-goal. It is the same as returning tithe and
offering. We return tithe and offering 1) because it belongs to God, 2) because
we trust God to take care of us. We should
not return it only because God has promised to bless us if we do. The blessing
is a by-product, but not the reason. Until we get out of this mindset that
worship is about us we will continue to fight and go round and round about
worship styles, forms, traditional verses contemporary, drums verses no drums,
and “black” worship verses “white” worship. Our focus is completely in the
wrong place. Worship is about God not us. If we offer Him whatever we have with
a sincere and open heart I believe that He will accept our worship and we will
indeed be “fed”.
If there was any goodness or merit
found here, that goodness and merit is from the Creator. If there were any
flaws or errors, those were mine. Blessings
