Is Worship an Experience?
I have found that it is common to speak of worship as an experience. If you tell someone you visited a different church, most likely you will get the question, "Was it a good experience?"
It is hard to know what people mean by this question. It is also difficult to understand what people mean by their responses: "Oh, yeah, the music was great!" "Loved the sermon." "Great skit!" "It was worshipful." "Yep, had a good time."
So what does "experience" mean? In its broadest sense, all of life is an experience. Life itself engages the whole person. We think about things, feel, make choices, move about, relate to people and our environment and engage all our senses; we smell, hear, taste and touch. And all these experiences include emotions such as fear, trust, love, anger, fidelity, and the like.
Worship is a specific experience within the broad experience of life. But usually the worship experience is defined more narrowly.
For some, a good worship experience is cheerleading for God; a rally—"rah-rah"—for Jesus. For others, a good worship experience is more quiet and contemplative.
Lindsey Johnson sent me an interesting e-mail telling me her story of worship in both the approaches mentioned above. She writes: "I knew how to raise my hands at the right time and close my eyes and tilt my head heavenward. I knew the perfect time during a song to kneel down, when to bow, and when to jump exuberantly … I thought that no matter how I was feeling I needed to 'give my all' to Him in worship and that was how to do it."
Let me offer an interpretation of her experience. It sounds like the worship that arises from me (see July newsletter, 2003). This worship can become a "new worship legalism": "I can do it better than you. My worship is more intense and, therefore, more acceptable to God."
Next, she describes a worship experience more like the one I advocate in Ancient-Future Talk. She writes: "God taught me something new about worship—the whole time filling me with His incredible, indescribable, non-contrived, and uncontainable worship for Him. This worship nourished my heart and made me feel vibrant all over."
I interpret her second experience as worship that comes from above. That is, God is active in this worship. It is not only God who is worshiped, but it is God who acts upon the worshiper.
Worship that arises from the self is exhausting. The worshiper feels that he or she must produce worship. Essentially this kind of worship is a "work-worship." I must do it. I must act excited. I must close my eyes. Lift my hands. Tilt my head or bow my knee as an offering of my worship.
Compare this worship with a worship that actually derives from God who is at work in the assembly of gathered people in Word, sign, and gesture:
One kind of worship demands of us; the other fills us.
One worship is a legalistic effort; the other is a grace-filled gift.
One worship will tire your spirit; the other will bring you to rest.
One worship will make you think, "I did it," and the other will make you aware that God's presence has filled your heart, energized your spirit, and filled you with the sense that, in spite of all your life issues, all is well.
The first worship seeks a relationship with God through the effort of self. The second worship is union with God through prayer.
Next month I will pursue the kind of emotion each of these worships generates.
Bob Webber
Myers Professor of Ministry
Director of M.A. in Worship and Spirituality
Northern Seminary—www.seminary.edu
(See Northern's M.A. in Worship and Spirituality and D.Min. in Worship by clicking on the website.)
