Wrestling with Worship

A few dats ago I have a good conversation with a dear friend that started stirring many thoughts and questions in my heart about "Worship". I have been involved on various levels with the worship ministries at the two churches I have been a part of over the past 14 years and yet I still wrestle with questions like...What is worship? How should I worship? What does authentic worship look like personally? What does it look like in the church?

As the questions started to swirl in my brain, rather than stew in my overwhelmed state, I pulled a book off of my shelf that I had read a couple of years ago as I wrestled with the same kinds of questions. The book is called Unceasing Worship by Harold Best. I skimmed through the chapters and read passages that I had underlined during my frist read. I was encouraged, not beacause I found all the answers neatly summerized, but because I found truths that gently nudged me to think deeper on the root of the problems I encounter when I wrestle with worship.

This is How Mr. Best begins his book...

Worship is at once about who we are, about who or what our god is and about how we choose to live. It is about something that is quite simple but wrapped in a mystery. It is about God himself, who has but one face and whose face has been clearly shown in the person and work of his only begotten Son. It is about a world in which worship takes on a thousand faces. It is also about Satan, dressed as an angel of light, disarmingly attractive yet inherently false, whose faces are cleverly multiplied and whose one desire is to undo what has already been done from the eternities.

The thousand faces of worship contain both deadened and lively countenances. They are the lost and the found, all of whom are continuous worshippers, for as the title of this chapter states, nobody does not worship. We begin with one fundemental fact about worship: at this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone - an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ. Everyone is being shaped thereby and is growing up toward some measure of fullness, whether of righteousness or of evil. No one is exempt and no one can wish to be. We are, every one of us, unceasing worshipers and will remain so forever, for eternity is an infinite extrapolation of one of two conditions: a surrender to the sinfulness of sin
unto infinite loss or the commitment of personal righteousness unto infinite gain. This is the central fact of our existence, and it drives every other fact. Within it lies the story of creation, fall, redemption and new creation or final loss.

In reading this passage I see that my questions of when and where worship should happen are not the right questions to be asking, at least not at first. Because worship is taking place in every heart in every corner of all the world. Worship is not an exlusively Christian word. It seems that the really question is Who or What am I worshiping in this moment? And this is a question that we must ask ourselves in every moment.

Later this week I will be entering into a conversation with a small handful of people from my church to discuss the worship ministry at our church. It is my understanding that this time will be for sharing ideas and casting a new vision for moving in a new direction in our times of corperate worship. And as I think of the words above I feel a little conflicted in stepping into the conversation. This meeting seems a call to ask the how and when questions but I don't think we have yet truly visited the Who and Why questions.

I know that deep in my core I was made to be an unceasing worshipper and one who is whole heartedly wrapped up in Christ. But I also know that my vision often times gets cast to far and I overlook the need to answer the questions of who do I worship and why. I want to ask those questions fervently over the next few days and weeks. I want to center my heart back on the one for whom it was created.