I love my city! It is a delight for me to host people; I’ve even considered being a professional tour guide. When I prepare for people to visit Chicago, I ask them what they enjoy doing. I want to know if they are fans of sports, museums, shopping or entertainment. Knowing what they want allows me to craft a tour that will fit their desires. I love taking people to places they want to go.
As a Chicago native, I also know that there are places that they need to go. There are foods they must eat and sights they must see to fully experience our great city! There is a restaurant in my neighborhood that invented a plantain and steak sandwich called a Jibarito.[1] Whenever friends come back to visit, they beg me to take them again. While Chicago pizza is an “I want it,” the Jibarito is an “I didn’t know I needed it.” A good guide takes you to places you want to go, but a great guide takes you places you need to go—even if they are not on Lonely Planet’s top ten.
Worship leaders take people where they want to go. We help them enter into God’s presence and encounter God in ways that are familiar and comforting. In addition, we take them to places they need to go to understand God more deeply. We guide them into a fuller experience of God’s character, which is a difficult task that takes both theological and experiential wisdom. The problem with our worship, though, is that it doesn’t often take that second step. It could be that the leader hasn’t experienced the “need to go” realms of worship him- or herself, or the fellowship is resistant to anything that’s not familiar.
At Urbana, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s triennial mission conference, thousands of students from different countries worship in multiple styles and languages. Imagine twenty thousand people from various nations, languages and ethnicities in worship exalting the name of Jesus. It’s an awesome sight to see a multiethnic group of emerging leaders proclaiming their love for Jesus in various expressions. Throughout the week they expand their worship vocabulary in ways that exalt God.
Participating in this multiethnic community singing and dancing is an incredible experience. A gathering like this reminds us of Revelation 7:9-10:
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:“Salvation belongs to our God,who sits on the throne,and to the Lamb.”
The vision at the end of Scripture shows us that the worship of God is a multilingual, multinational, multiethnic celebration of God’s glory. Urbana is like seeing this vision in live action!
As the director of worship for Urbana, I am very intentional with the worship experience; I take people not only where they want to go, but where they need to go. This is done by choosing a diverse team, learning various styles of music and trying to offer the gifts of the global church. These students have likely had many experiences where they are worshiping with people just like them and in ways that are familiar. Why not give them a glimpse of heaven on earth?
Worship at Urbana is a foretaste of the kingdom of God in all of its diversity. The experience communicates prophetically about what worship can look like today in our churches. Urbana is no ordinary church service. Those who have been to Urbana have only one way to describe the experience: “It’s just like heaven!”
As a worship leader and urban missionary, I desire to help people understand how worship and mission intersect. Worship is a response to God, the only one who is worthy to receive glory, and mission is the call for us to invite others to that same response. The apostle Paul says it well in Romans 12:1: “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 your true and proper worship.” Congregational worship helps us encounter this missional God and live in response to who he is and what he’s about. We need our hearts and minds aligned with Jesus Christ and his mission to live lives of sacrifice and service. Looking up to God and acknowledging him for who he is becomes a catalyst for mission.
Through this book, I hope to help us as worshipers move from being consumeristic observers of God to engaged participants with God. I want us to understand where we need to go and provide some explanation of why we need to go there. We must have expression that results in mission. First, we’ll look at how the mission of worship begins with experiencing the fullness of God as we engage in different forms of worship and learn from different cultural traditions. Second, we’ll explore the mission of worship as embracing God’s mission of proclaiming and demonstrating his kingdom of reconciliation and justice.
Purpose 1: Experiencing God
Worship often begins by taking people where they want to go. We all want to experience God in ways that are familiar. Our way of relating, whether to God or people, develops naturally out of our personalities, experiences and cultural preferences. This preferred way of relating with God affects how we approach congregational worship. For example, some folks enjoy worshiping through reflection, while others through celebration. It is important for our felt needs to be met in worship so that we can connect with God in ways that are relevant to us as individuals. This also allows us to have an authentic experience with God in the context of our community. We are speaking a language that is fluent and makes sense to us.
A few years ago I introduced a Kenyan worship song for a missions Sunday at my church. Although the congregation seemed to enjoy the new form of worship, I could see them nervously smiling as they danced. After a few minutes in Kiswahili, I transitioned into a well-known contemporary worship song. With eyes closed, feet planted and hands lifted high, the congregation came alive at a new level. I knew I had them when their arms hit the sky! This expression was clearly more natural to them. When effortless adoration and praise springs up, it is because it comes naturally to us.
While it is natural to desire an experience of God that “fits” us, we can sometimes be egocentric or community-centric instead of God-centric. Just because something is natural to us does not mean it is good. Our natural tendencies can also be affected by the Fall. We are created to worship, but in our fallenness, our worship is often ethnocentric and self-centered. We can become worship consumers looking for worship the way that we look for the latest smartphone or electronic device. When it comes to the modern consumer of worship, comfort is king!
We live in a culture in which people want a customized tour that takes them only where they feel like going. This is easy to do in the American context, where there are so many choices. I am sure we can all recall conversations when we have either heard or said, “I was not feeling worship at that church.” About this consumer approach to worship Pam Howell of Willow Creek Community Church writes:
Can you imagine the Israelites, freshly delivered from slavery, before a mountain that trembles violently with the presence of God (Exod. 19), muttering: “We’re leaving because we’re not singing the songs we like. Like that tambourine song, how come they don’t do that tambourine song anymore?”“I don’t like it when Moses leads worship; Aaron’s better.”“This is too formal—all that smoke and mystery. I like casual worship.”“It was okay, except for Miriam’s dance—too wild, not enough reverence. And I don’t like the tambourine.”[2]
This scene seems absurd, given that these ex-slaves had been liberated by God himself. God’s people were not evaluating worship; instead they were filled with awe, fear and hope. However, many of us today come with our list of preferences and a self-centered attitude toward worship. We want certain songs, experiences or even leaders to give us what we like. That might be why we follow worship artists around—to relive an experience.
Even the songs we sing are more focused on us than on Christ himself. A quick survey of the most popular songs used in worship services shows that our focus is usually less about God himself and more about how we are responding to God. Do a quick search of your own iTunes worship songs and see how much the pronoun I shows up.
Pastor Mark Labberton calls this type of unbiblical, self-seeking worship “illegitimate worship.” In his book The Dangerous Act of Worship, he talks at length about how worship reorders our reality. Skye Jethani summarizes what Labberton said at a pastors conference:
“Worship reorders reality to help us see what is true,” he said. It should reorder our priorities and help us see the world differently. But quite often worship is simply a baptized version of our culture. In our worship we simply mirror what is all around us—worship of self. . . . “Fear of God is what matters most,” says Labberton. “The failure of our people to live this way is a failure of our worship.” The solution is not making our worship louder, faster, or more spectacular as many are in the habit of doing. Rather, we need to reevaluate what our worship is forming within our people.[3]
As worshipers, we are comfortable with the expressions, themes and forms of worship fami...