Be Diligent…

Editor’s note: This post by guest blogger Matthew Lee is a supplement to my June 15 post, Is our worship too casual? It’s our prayer that both of these posts will cause you to think more deeply about and search the Scriptures about, how we worship, why we worship, and most importantly, Who we worship.

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A couple months ago when I read Bob’s post Is our worship too casual? I immediately thought, “No way, it’s too formal!”  I mentioned this to him the following week and he invited me to write down my thoughts on the issue.  Today when I reread the original post (and the post to which it links) I realized that what I was reacting to was the word “casual” rather than the actual contents and point of the posts. Reading comprehension is hard.

In rereading the posts, I understand that their point is that the heart of worship has too often been lost in our striving for entertainment and flash. There was also the notion of the lack of preparedness, organization, and readiness to worship. Is this the definition of casual?  Maybe there’s a hint of it, but to me casual connotes a relaxing of social, cultural and even ritualistic standards. It’s a lack of formality which is not the same as a lack of organization and readiness. As an example of the distinction that I see between the two ideas, I think of a formal banquet or dinner party vs. a casual sit down dinner with friends and family in my home.

Both of the original posts seemed to be referring to the “official” worship assembly of the local group of believers. There are a few passages in the NT that go into a bit of detail about what these assemblies were like in the early church.  Often the things they did were not acceptable or caused problems (communion in Corinth for example). But the instructions we do have can help us gain insight into how we should conduct our worship. But if our worship is confined only to the small window of a Sunday morning then we’re missing out on the bigger purpose of worship (Rom 12:1-2).

Let’s take a look at some of the worship experiences and instructions in the Bible and compare them to our own and my ideas of casual and formal.

• Whenever Jesus taught the people, he used stories to make his points and spoke in the language of the people.
• At the “Last Supper” where Jesus instructed his disciples to remember him through the taking of the bread and the wine, they were seated (or reclining) around a table at a meal.
• When Jesus went to the garden to pray, his disciples fell asleep.Oops.
• In Acts 2 when the church got together, they met in homes, the temple courts, ate together and shared everything.
• In Acts 16 Paul and Silas are in jail, singing all night and ministering to the jailer.
• In Acts 20 everyone is gathered for their worship and Paul is preaching. Eutychus is sitting in a window and falls asleep.  After raising Eutychus from the dead, the go back and eat and continue w/the preaching.
• In Corinth (1 Cor 14:26) when they came together everyone (really? everyone?) had “a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.” And then the instructions are given so that only one person at a time is speaking and everyone can understand what is being said and be encouraged.
• Colossians 3:16 encourages us to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.”

The evolution of our worship practices is a path that winds through history. We start with the examples above, others in the NT, and from early church history. Eventually the church ends up meeting in catacombs as a result of the persecution. As the persecution lessened and the church became the official religion of Rome, churches grew and merged and consolidated power and the Catholic church emerged as the dominant form of Christianity. As the Protestant churches began to develop, they kept a lot of the forms of worship and in my mind our current worship practices seem to have more of a Catholic heritage than the examples in the New Testament (and other early church history). But that’s just my opinion.

So what principles do we have for the conduct of our worship?

• Decently and in order as opposed to chaos or anarchy
• Everyone brings something to share with everyone else
• Speaking to one another
• The 5 acts of worship plus our daily lives
• Dress modestly without gold or braided hair (1 Tim 2:10)
• Gal 5:1 it is for freedom that you have been set free

To wrap up, I don’t really think the questions in the titles of these posts are valid questions and heavily rely on our definitions of the words “formal” and “casual”. The Bible tells us nothing about whether we should be sitting on the floor or in chairs or windows; whether we should sit still or move around; start with a song, scripture, prayer or any of the many other things that we often grumble and argue about. In fact, Gal. 5:1 and many other passages encourage us to throw off any chains that bind us from developing a real relationship with God. And so we get to the heart of worship: it’s about relationship with God and our fellow man. Do we really want a “formal” relationship with either? What kind of relationship does God want with us?

For more of my thoughts on worship read Raw Worship which I wrote a couple years ago on my own blog.  It’s more about personal worship than our assemblies.

Related posts:

1. Is our worship too casual?
2. 30-minute worship
3. iPods, PDAs, and iPhones — Bring them to worship or leave them at home?

Posted on August 15th, 2009 by Matthew Lee
Filed under: Worship