Ancient-Future Talk
Experiencing God in Worship

Hello and welcome back to Ancient-Future Talk. For the past several months I have been raising questions about how God is experienced in worship.

Last month I compared effort-centered experience with grace-filled experience. One respondent argued that both types of experience were in fact about the self and that worship should not raise questions about self (even grace-filled experience); it should be concerned about matters such as faith and obedient response.

I agree on the one hand. I have written that the test for worship is obedience. You know you have worshiped if you live in obedience to God. However, I am here asking a different question: What is the role of feelings in worship?

Some Christians distrust feelings so thoroughly that they say, "There is no role for feelings in worship." I know, I have been told that.

But others are so feeling-oriented that feeling is everything. "I just felt it," they will say. You may be asking, "What's the problem?"

I see it on two levels.

It's a problem for the preacher and the worship leader.

If worship is all intellect, then you have to worry about developing the "Aha." If worship is all feeling, then you have to figure out how to "create" a good feeling.

I am suggesting grace-filled worship is an entirely different focus.

The focus is on God's action to rescue the world. This worship proclaims and enacts God's mission in world history: to renew the face of the earth. By thankfully remembering God's saving history and anticipating God's final redemption in the new heavens and the new earth, truth shapes us.

Does this truth touch us on the level of experience? Does it warm the heart, fill the spirit with trust, find expression in joy, birth hope, incite faith, and motivate loving deeds?

Yes! I call this a grace-filled experience. We remember God's saving deeds. God fills us with a grateful response.

What does this mean for the preacher?

Quit all the motivational sermons! Stop trying to entertain people! Just preach the Word!

I once heard a young guest preacher preach an exegetical sermon on the holiness of God (Isaiah 6:1-6). No illustrations, no gimmicks. Not even polished. The people rushed him. The thirst for God's Word watered a barren land. Most of our congregations are spiritually dehydrated.

What does this mean for the worship leader?

Stop trying to manipulate us into feelings! Stop trying to entertain us with your bands! Stop trying to imitate the world! Stop showing off!

Just be real, genuine, authentic, and humble. And draw from the music treasures of the whole church. The plate of contemporary worship music is getting very boring, old, and it is too focused on the self anyway.

Sing truth. That grabs the inner person.

Thanks. To be continued.


For information on Ancient-Future Worship resources, click here.
For information on Worship Education, click here.




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.)

IWS offers courses leading to the Master of Worship Studies (MWS) and Doctor of Worship Studies (DWS). All courses meet for one week on our campus in Jacksonville, Florida. Work is done before the course meets. Work is completed in three months with your teacher/mentor using long-distance technology.

Eating together is one of the most important things we do to establish and express community at IWS. Eating is the context for establishing relationships and transforming casual relationships into deep, lifelong commitments.

There is no pecking order when we eat. Sometimes a student will eat with a particular faculty member, but mostly students and faculty plop down at the nearest table to talk and get acquainted more fully with a person from another class.

Karen Lewis, our food service director, together with her family, loves to cook. They are there early in the morning to late at night, serving fresh, delicious homemade food and scrumptious desserts.

Around the table, great conversations develop: conversations about faith, ministry in the academy, and ministry in the church.

Sometimes discouraged hearts are lifted; other times a word of wisdom and direction is heard.

But most of all, deep bonds are established and wounds are healed as people talk through ministry issues and learn from each other. Ministries are empowered. Lifelong relationships are made. Fellowship, even fun, is experienced by all.

"Eating together is one of the most important things we do to establish and express community."