The meaning of worship

Every Sunday we gather in buildings around the country and around the world. And this gathering has become the defining act of the Church. When 'outsiders' explore joining the faith, Sunday is often where they start. When denominations seek to differentiate themselves, Sunday is one of the primary places where this can be seen. When generations and languages and cultures seek to express their faith, Sunday is the platform on which they stand.

Why should this be? What is the significance of this weekly gathering that it should carry so much weight? These are important questions to ask when, on the one side, so much energy and money is spent on Sunday's worship, and on the other hand, so many people are leaving the Church because of dissatisfaction with Sunday. In the light of this, one simple shift may help us to find a way to worship practice that is healthy and life-giving.

Worship as Context:
Most of the conversation about worship starts with what we do – what songs we sing, what instruments we use, what structures (or lack of) shape our services. But the truth is that worship, at its heart, is not something we do, but something we are. Every human being is a worshipper. We are hard-wired to offer our allegiance to something beyond ourselves. Whether it's science or spirituality, a person or a god, a thing or an ideology, human beings will find something to form both the centre and the context for their lives. Whatever it is that gives us meaning, direction, a set of values and a focal point for our living and loving – this is what we worship.

What this means is that most, if not all of us, fall (at least at times) into a functional atheism. We sing and proclaim one thing with great vehemence on Sundays, but then live around a completely different centre of gravity. While singing and praying a Gospel that is supposed to be good news for the poor, we spend the rest of the week trying to pretend that the poor don't exist. While celebrating community and sharing on Sundays, we return to our individualist, consumerist lives on Monday. By making worship about a few small activities, we have released ourselves from the call to make the worship of Jesus the context in which all of our relationships, ethics, finances, work, leisure – and praying – are done.

Sunday in Context:
But, once we make the shift to worship as the context – the realm, the kin-dom – in which our lives are played out, Sunday begins to take on a whole new role. Instead of being the beginning and the end of worship, Sunday becomes the place where we seek to learn the priorities and values that must guide our lives. Rather than making Sunday the time and place where we “worship”, we embrace the gathering as a call to allow the light of the Gospel to search our motives and actions and point us in the direction of authentic Christ-likeness.

In today's Church all too many of us follow the Church rather than Christ. We follow worship rather than Christ. We follow our preferences rather than Christ. Perhaps it's time to return to the only One who is truly worthy of our worship. And to make worshipping – following – Jesus the primary reality in which we live.

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John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.

A Good Life

If I ever doubted the value of faith, this week my doubts were completely erased. I have journeyed through grief with many people over my years of ministry, but I have never experienced it first hand in the way I have in the last ten days. On Sunday the 10th of October my father died after about six months of struggling with heart failure. He was just a few weeks short of his eightieth birthday.

What amazes and comforts me as I walk through this whole experience is not so much the faith I have that his life continues after the demise of his body. Rather it’s the impact his life of faith had on me and my family while he was still alive, and the effect this had on the funeral service, on our acceptance of his death when it came, and on our journey together as we grieve.

My father was no saint. He was stubborn, opinionated and loved a good debate when he was bored - which meant he would often take an opposing position even if he didn’t believe his own argument. He was unremarkable in many ways - an ordinary guy who loved his wife for more than the 56 years they were married; an entrepreneur who had good instincts and who did well enough in business to feed his generosity to friends, family and the underprivileged. He was a committed church member for pretty much his whole life, and loved singing in the various church choirs he was part of. His was a simple life, but it was a life that is most accurately described as “good” - which is why it had the impact that it did.

On that Sunday morning as I drove home from the services I had been leading I listened to my brother’s shaky message breaking the news, and I found myself laughing and crying at the same time. I wept because I felt hollow and empty at the loss of a mentor, a friend and an anchor for my life. But I laughed, because there was nothing to regret. Dad had no unfinished business in his life. I know he would have loved to have been around for his sixtieth wedding anniversary, but I also know he was ready to die. He had lived and loved with commitment, passion and a determination to stay close and connected with those who were important to him. He died a man who was very deeply loved, and with no enemies left to gloat.

There are men of my age who can find nothing in their lives that their fathers taught them. This is not the case for me. As I watched him sacrificially and whole-heartedly love my mother, I learned how to be a considerate and self-giving lover. As I watched him pursue dreams with tenacity over years, I learned not to give up, and to stay true to myself and my calling. As I debated religion and politics with him I learned how to ask good questions and how to think for myself. As I watched him apologise for his mistakes, I learned to face my own failures and take responsibility for my messes.

I am not the first person to lose a father, and I certainly won’t be the last, but I am so grateful that my father was a man of faith. His commitment to Jesus, made him a good man, and I am a better person because of his influence. Now as I grieve him, I also celebrate him - and the faith that made his life so rich and full and good. And so, if I ever doubted the value of faith, I do so no longer.
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John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.

New perspectives

How do you feel about the state of the world today? Do you feel the world is improving, or do you believe that it is sliding inexorably into chaos and evil? These are important questions. Our answers determine how we relate to this world, how we interact with others - particularly those who are different - and how we understand the role of our faith in our earthly existence.

Unfortunately, too many of us see the world extremely negatively. We have been taught that the world is going to get worse, until the time when it is ultimately destroyed and when we are evacuated to another realm called heaven. And so we look for - and find - evidence that evil is winning the battle over this planet. We see our faith as an insurance policy that guarantees our salvation when God finally swoops in and destroys it all in a final conflict with the forces of darkness.

But, I’m not sure that this is a biblical perspective. In fact, the story I read in Scripture is almost the exact opposite! What I see in the Bible is God creating a world and pronouncing it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). I see human struggle and brokenness often bringing pain, but also human nobility - given and inspired by God’s Spirit - bringing goodness, healing and restoration. I see Christ proclaiming that God’s reign is among us in this world, and teaching us to pray that God’s reign would come more fully to earth and work among us here (Matthew 6:10). I see a purpose in history in which God teaches us and challenges us to become more compassionate, more generous, more selfless and more attuned to God’s presence and purpose for creation. And, within the evil and pain of our world, I see this glorious vision being played out. In this scenario, faith is the commitment to live according to this glorious vision of God. It is not a guarantee of safe evacuation, it is a recruitment call to service here and now.

There are a number of spiritual practices that help us to get God’s perspective on the world, and that empower us to live from this new perspective, but perhaps the primary one is praise. The practice of praise is a simple, but powerful activity. Praise can be spoken or sung; offered in silence or in sound; enacted or simply imagined. However we may choose to express our praise, though, we can never engage in this activity without being changed.

Praise requires awareness and reflection. The heart of praise is the recognition of who God is. When we take the time to slow down, and focus our awareness on God, to open the eyes of faith to God’s presence and purpose, to reflect on God’s attributes and actions, we are inevitably filled with a vision of God and God’s reign. And then our hearts cannot help but cry out in awe and wonder, in adoration and in surrender to the mystery. As we regularly open ourselves to the praise experience, we enter the world with open eyes and hearts, and we cannot help but see God’s presence and activity everywhere. And then, the ultimate act of praise happens - we choose to participate in God’s saving, beautifying, restoring, glorifying work.

How we see the world - what perspective we have on it - is a direct reflection of how committed we are to the discipline of praise. And if the world needs anything right now, it is people who bring hearts of praise into every situation and moment. May we be those people!
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John van de Laar is a Methodist minister, liturgical consultant and the author of the book Food for the Road – Life Lesson from the Lord’s Table. He holds a Master’s Degree in theology from UNISA, and is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is married to Debbie, and they have two sons.
Visit www.sacredise.com for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts.