I’ve been reading Exiles (Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture) by Michael Frost and I liked his take on Paul’s definition of worship. Paul writes:
“Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is true worship” (Romans 12:1)
Frost says:
“In the church we are so blinded by the contemporary use of the term “worship” that we take it to literally mean nothing more than the corporate singing of praise to God. When someone says that our reasons for being is to worship, we can be fooled into thinking that our highest calling is corporate sining. I;m not against corporate singing, of course, but according to Paul, my spiritual act of worship involves sacrificing my body, my volition, my actions. He then goes on to counsel the Romans about what this would look like in practice. He lists the following ats of true Christian worship:
- To not conform to the norms of society (v2)
- To humbly express sipritual gifts in practical ways (v3-8)
- To love others (v9-10)
- To be spiritually zealous, hopeful, patient, and prayerful (v11-12)
- To be hospitable and generous (v13)
- To live in harmony, with munificence and charity toward unbelievers (v14-21)
So this is worship! We have to stop isolating mission from worship, and acknowledge that when I act charitably toward someone, I give glory to God. When I share with someone about my friendship with Jesus, I am worshipping God. Mission, then, is an expression of Christian worship. In fact, I’m prepared to say that it is the central and most powerful expression of worship. In Romans, Paul’s argument about worship continues throughout chapters 13-15. He persists in emphasizing the rule of love as an expression of worship. We are to love those in authority by submitting to them lawfully (Rom 13:1-7). We are to be gracious to new beleivers (Rom 14:1-12) and work to maintain unity in the church (Rom 14:13-23).”
2 Comments
I have a big pet peeve about people using the word “worship” just to refer to the singing at church. I loved how a previous church home would break down the service into “worship in song”, “worship in giving”, “worship in the word”, etc. That isn’t to imply that worship is limited to a church service, but that every part is just a different way of worshipping God, not just singing.
Good to see you still plugging Exiles. It is a very challenging read. I am going through it with my church leadership and our discussions of the topics have led to some really interesting conclusions. The biggy is that we do so much that we don’t have time to be christians. We seem to be talking ourselves out of quite a lot of “just having meetings every Sunday”.
The other interesting point is that we are not concerned with post-modernism as this is just a new philosophical slant that makes sense of a lot of modern life. It is really a blind to distract us from the fact that we live in a post INDUSTRIAL age. Our society has consistently put forward industrial solutions to societal problems. Uneducated people? A sausage machine education system that suits all the people that can learn from being told what to think. A church that isn’t engaging with God? A meeting that leads them to God along an established road. This works for a small majority but a large minority are excluded. I regularily hear the phrase “were they in the same meeting as me?” especially at conferences. As if God can only hold one conversation at a time. Unfortunately our platform led worship and preaching only allows God to speak one word at a time…
It’s time to move on. Thanks for pointing me at Michael Frosts book, it has moved me to the end of a one way street that leads to a new expression of church. One that has only one thing in common with our established model, the big celebration meeting.
Cheers, Mark