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Church and Worship
Recently many authors have referred to this concept as "lifestyle worship." Today’s WORSHIP QUOTE goes a step further—suggesting that worship as such was not the focus of the early church’s gatherings. The provocative authors are Anglican evangelicals doing college ministry in Australia. [Please note that I have included both a short and a long version of today's WQOTW.] CHURCH AND "WORSHIP" [short version] The purpose of church is fellowship with God’s people around God’s Word. We worship in every aspect of our lives day by day as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. To confuse the two, as most evangelicals seem to today, is a drastic error. — Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, "Church/Campus Connections," in TELLING THE TRUTH: EVANGELIZING POSTMODERNS, D.A. Carson, general editor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, p. 202-203. ISBN 0-310-23432-8 CHURCH AND "WORSHIP" [a longer excerpt from the same source] At this point, many readers may be thinking, "But don’t we basically go to church to worship God, and isn’t this what Sunday supplies that the midweek parachurch activity cannot?" That this view is so common among evangelicals today is testimony both to our lack of serious engagement with what the Bible actually says about church and to our short historical memories. We write as Anglican evangelicals whose denomination has basically been destroyed by this view of church and worship over the past 150 years. When we hear evangelicals talking about church being worship, and our buildings being sanctuaries, with the Lord’s table as an altar, it is greatly disturbing, not least because it is so biblically wrong. All the language of temple, altar, sanctuary, service, priests, and offerings is taken up and fulfilled in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest. He is our temple, our tabernacle, our offering, our sacrifice, and thus our whole lives are our spiritual worship as we obey him and do his will. We do still worship in church—but only in the sense that we breathe in church. We don’t go to church to worship any more than we got to church to breathe. The purpose of church is fellowship with God’s people around God’s Word. We worship in every aspect of our lives day by day as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. To confuse the two, as most evangelicals seem to today, is a drastic error. You certainly won’t find the two confused in the New Testament . . .. These ideas no doubt go somewhat against the grain. We have sat, Sunday after Sunday, for years on end, hearing our pastor say, "We welcome you today to our hour of worship." Yet study the Scriptures and see. — Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne, "Church/Campus Connections," in TELLING THE TRUTH: EVANGELIZING POSTMODERNS, D.A. Carson, general editor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, p. 202-203. ISBN 0-310-23432-8 Happy New Year! Chip Stam Director, Institute for Christian Worship School of Church Music and Worship Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Louisville, Kentucky www.carlstam.org www.sbts.edu |