Worship: Presentation Or Participation?
Pentecostal churches can seem to be more lively
, and yet, the seeming participation is often a repetition of what the worship leader is telling the congregation to do. There can still be a large percentage of time where the congregation is watching what's happening on the "stage."
It's been like this for many years--from evangelistic crusades with choir and preacher on the platform to praise and worship bands that resemble more of a concert than worship. Active worship is seldom experienced; passive worship is the norm.
So how do we change from passive to participate?
First, what does participation mean? It means to take part in, to share in, to partner with. The opposite of participation is passive. Passive means to be influenced or affected by some external force, being the object of action instead of the one causing action.
When we look at the words used for worship in the Bible, they are always active words, never passive. One of those words in the OT is shachah. It's an action word that means to prostrate oneself before a master, to bow down low. This word is used in Nehemiah when the law was read to the people. When Ezra opened the Scriptures, all the people stood up and proclaimed "Amen! Amen!" They lifted their hands in praise, bowed their heads, and worshiped (shachah) the Lord with their faces to the ground (Neh 8:5-6).
The word used for worship most in the NT is proskuneo It also means to bow down. It is used in Mt 2, when the wise men enter Jesus' house and "saw the child with Mary...they knelt down (worshiped) and paid him honor."
There's a big difference between going to church and going to worship. It seems that the majority of Christians, when they think of going to church, think of what others are going to do for them as they watch. But real worship is something we all DO together. It is an ACT in which we participate, it's not LISTENING or sitting and watching.
In fact, our participation in worship is absolutely necessary to assist the worship of others! I can't be active when everyone around me is being passive! The more we actively worship, the greater the chance is for others to participate.
We must move from "program worship" to "participation worship" or we are not really worshiping at all. Once again, WATCHING is not WORSHIPING. A program is a series of events presented by performers designed to instruct or entertain for a public gathering. Worship has become for many, if not most Christians, more like a religious program. There is a topic (God) and we sing ABOUT God or tell about God or discuss God. We put in order a sequence of events designed to instruct or entertain the public concerning God. We arrange for the performers, hoping that they will add an effective dimension to the program. Now it's good to have classes, or opportunities for teaching and learning, but that is not worship.
There are three main problems with program worship. First, it is ABOUT SOMETHING rather than TO SOMEONE. God becomes the topic of worship rather than the source and receiver of worship. Second, programs are typically passive. Those who attend are not involved except to observe. THIRD, program worship invites judgment. All programs are judged according to the effectiveness of the speaker or the performers. We naturally respond to a program by judging it by how well we liked or didn't like it, by what we learned or didn't learn, what was done with excellence and what was done poorly.
To move away from program to participation in worship, we must first plan for God to be the source and receiver rather than he topic of worship. This will mean choosing congregational songs that are addressed to God by name, using language that reminds us of Christ's real presence in the gathered Body, and making us realize that He is the audience of worship, not us.
Second, we must plan for our people to be involved in many ways besides singing. Use all the five senses if possible. Use the worship arts.
Third, we must turn the emphasis from whether I am pleased to whether God is pleased. We do this by stopping all judgment talk; we don't talk anymore about what we liked and didn't like in worship. We learn what God's expectations are for worshp in Spirit and in Truth. We encourage one another to share how God was present to us in the service.
by: mike
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