Making music and singing all of worship doesn't make sense.
It's like calling dinner = pizza night, even when you aren't eating pizza. Don't
get me wrong, I like pizza, just like I like singing and making music to God to
glorify Him, but that is not the whole picture of worship at all. Too much
pizza will make you sick and does not make for a balanced and healthy diet. So
in the same way, our worship should be balanced and healthy as well.
When I hear "lets worship" in church, it almost
always means singing and music. But let us stand back a little. Where is
worship even defined? It is all defined in the Bible right? Where does the Bible ever
equate music and singing as worship? There is never a direct 1-to-1 correlation
ever mentioned in the Bible at all, at least I haven't found one and I've
looked pretty hard (
http://www.openbible.info/topics/singing). Whenever music
and singing is mentioned, whether it is David singing in the Psalms or playing
with his lyre, the Israelites singing after a victory, angels making music with
heavenly instruments, or when Paul and Silas bust out of prison with their
voices (Acts 16:16-40), in ALL of these cases the Bible uses the word
praise.
Now praise is a form of worship (
http://www.gotquestions.org/difference-praise-worship.html), and it is a form
that is intertwined with beauty and creation (God created humans with voices to
sing and intelligence to craft instruments that make beautiful sounds
correlating to natural harmonics and overtones), and we definitely ought to
praise God. But it isn't the only form of worship out there, and we shouldn't
call it as such. Again, dinner shouldn't be called pizza night (unless you are
a TMNT) nor should you
only eat pizza.
That is why back in the day, musical worship was called singspiration, because
you sing and...get inspired (I guess). Another pastor called it pre-worship, explaining that worship is everything that comes afterwards. Many churches and
services are starting to call worship team as praise team (worship team leaders
as praise team leaders). Actually, a few churches are going a step further and
calling the pastor the worship team leader, because well...isn't that the
truth? Heck, the entire congregation should be called the worship team, instead of just a group of people at the front, because that's what Church means.
I always stress this, but our entire lives ought to be a continuous
act of worship (Romans 12:1). Our prayers are a form of worship (Matthew 6:9-13). Reading the Word
and living out the Gospel are forms of worship (Colossians 3:14-17). Listening
to a sermon is also a form of worship (Colossians 3:14-17). Helping the poor,
giving to the needy, encouraging our brothers and sisters, and preaching the
good news to non-believers are all forms of worship (too many verses). Even eating food can be
worship (1 Cor. 10:31). Anything and everything that we do that glorifies God
and recognizes Him as sovereign can be called worship.
I write this blog post because I'm just sincerely worried. I worry that the epidemic of Biblical illiteracy is just gonna get worse. I worry that the average Christian is spending more time in musical worship than all other forms of worship combined. I'm worried because I've heard people are suggesting to eliminate sermons (as if teaching wasn't also worship) to increase more musical worship time in church. Should I be worried?
