Worship is about God.  The Hebrews believed that all of life was worship, and I agree.  This would mesh with Paul’s thoughts in Romans 12:1.  For the purpose of our little paper, however, we are narrowing our discussion of worship to refer to “gathered” worship.  We are talking about the corporate worship event when the church comes together to worship God in an event, through the collective offering of our hearts to him through different things such as singing, taking the Lord’s supper, celebrating new life in baptism, giving our monetary offerings, prayer, and preaching.   We will talk about these things, with a large portion of time given to worship through singing.

The word “worship”, comes from a word in the original languages which means “to ascribe worth to”.  The form of worship that we use to ascribe worth to God is not insignificant, and yet, it is not the most important thing.  There are many complexities when thinking about worship, and short of several hundred pages, I don’t have time to think through them all with you here.  So I ask for some grace in my short treatment.

The form of gathered worship has gone through much change over the past 2000 years.  I am always interested at how some people think that the worship of the mid-20th century was the “right” way, and that God is somehow less pleased with new songs, or different styles of music.  The problem with that kind of thinking is that forms of worship have always been in some state of flux over 2 millenia, with some thinkers leading in musical innovation in every age and in every generation.  To be sure, some songs, and musical compositions seem to have survived better than others, but remember, worship is about God, not the song itself or the form of the music it is accompanied by.  I want to set up a string of collected thoughts that might help you understand the choice of songs, the style employed, but more holistically, what we are trying to accomplish.

We intend the gathered worship experience to be indicative of the regular rhythm of the Christian life.  Martin Luther, one of the protestant reformers who helped to reform the practice of gathered worship, said that “all of the Christian life is repentance”.

We would agree with him, and knowing other statements of his, we could add to this thought, “and belief in the gospel”.  So, our whole hope for the worship service is that it might lead you to repent and believe the gospel.  This puts the focus of the worship service on Jesus and his gospel.  No matter what the form of worship, we are led to repentance (changing one’s mind/heart), and then to look to Jesus again which leads us again to belief. 

This impacts everything we do in worship. Because we do not want to present an obstacle to this rhythm to anyone through song choice, style, instruments employed, volume, etc…  And yet, people are different, right?  See our dilemma.  Ultimately, a church has to make a decision that because of the nature of that decision will mean some won’t like their worship much, while others will.

Biblically faithful forms:

One thing that shapes us in our decisions regarding worship is the knowledge that while  innovation in worship can be a good and wonderful gift to the church, it can also be sin if not governed by God’s Spirit and revealed truth in his word.  While we are not adherents of the “regulative principle” (if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it, really), we do believe that some principles should guide us in choosing form, songs, styles, etc.   We are not free to worship any way we choose.  God demonstrates with severity that self-styled worship is not acceptable to him (Lev 10, Num 3).  Therefore, our innovation has parameters.

Instrumental Accompaniment:

However, we find nothing in the Bible that would prescribe which instruments should be played, or that one or another instruments is more pleasing to God.  We do not seek to glorify the instrument or the instrumentalists and so ego-driven performance is not tolerated.  We are not opposed to any instrument that is culturally appropriate.

Volume:

Worship in the Old Testament was loud (clearly attested to in multiple places), but given that most of the volume would have been supplied by near voices rather than instruments amplified by technology, we believe music should not be so loud so as to be distracting. Yet, that is very subjective, loud to one is not to another.  We do not aim for quiet and subdued with our worship style because we do not see that in scripture.  When reading the book of Psalms and Revelation, we read of loud shouting, clapping, and exuberant singing to God. 

Expressiveness:

Worship in the Bible is usually accompanied by human expression of some kind.  Singing, kneeling, raising hands, crying out, shouting, etc.  We encourage biblical worship and believe that God created humanity with a trinity of parts: mind, will, and emotions.  While we encourage expressive worship according to Biblical parameters, we also ask people to worship in a way that draws attention to God, not themselves.

Song Choice:

Because we are reformed in our theology, we appreciate solid theology in the songs we choose.  We do a lot of songs that focus on Jesus and his work for us.  Many of these songs are very old.  Some were written from the 16th-19th centuries.  We set them to culturally relevant styles of music because people are involved and biblically we are afforded the freedom, and maybe even prescribed to do this (1 Cor 9:20-23).

 Beyond older hymns, we recognize the lyrical contributions of many in our present age to the ever-growing group of songs that glorify God and point us to Jesus.  We are not so narrow to think that only old songs are appropriate for worshipping God.  We sing many modern worship songs that we see to be faithful to scripture and appropriate for our culture.  We are selective however, always maintaining biblical faithfulness and God-centeredness as critical principles.