...except after "C"

I came across a church's bulletin the other day that had this line of text after the Benediction in the "list of stuff we do in church on Sunday morning":

       Worship Ends               Service Begins

Now, I think I know what they were trying to communicate, but I think the resulting message underscores so much about how we have failed to understand about the true nature of worship. Here's what I believe may have gone through the head of the well-meaning person who inserted that line: "Just because the 'worship service' – i .e. the time when we gather on Sunday mornings to corporately exalt the Lord, edify the body, equip the saints, and evangelize the lost – is over, doesn't mean that our responsibilities as Christians have ceased." With that sentiment I can whisper an "amen".

However...

Worship is not a Sunday morning event. Sunday morning ought to serve as both a culmination of a week's worth of worship and a commencement of the next week of worship.

What is worship?

Well, first there is no Scriptural word that means what our English word does. If you break down the original Old English (weordhscipe), you get two different components, one meaning worth or value and the other meaning shape or quality. So the word roughly carries the meaning of ascribing worth or value to something. Wikipedia says that "Worship usually refers to specific acts of religious praise, honour, or devotion, typically directed to a supernatural being..."

But what does it mean in the Bible? In both Hebrew and Greek, there are two categories of words for worship. The first is about body language that demonstrates respect and submission; to bow down, to kneel, to prostrate oneself. The second is about doing something for God that demonstrates sacrifice and obedience; to offer, to serve.

Here are some definitions by some men more godly and learned than I:

"Worship is the believer's response of all that they are – mind, emotions, will, body – to what God is and says and does" (W. Wiersbe, Real Worship, p. 26).

"Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable" (J. Stott, Christ the Controversialist: A Study in Some Essentials of Evangelical Religion, p. 160).

"Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible" (D. Peterson, Engaging with God, p. 20).

"Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin" (W. Temple, Readings in St. John's Gospel).

"Worship is the activity of the new life of a believer in which, recognizing the fullness of the Godhead as it is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ and His mighty redemptive acts, he seeks by the power of the Holy Spirit to render to the living God the glory, honor, and submission which are His due" (R. Rayburn, O Come Let Us Worship, p. 20).

"Worship is the human response to the self-revelation of the triune God, which involves: (1) divine initiation in which God graciously reveals himself, his purposes, and will; (2) a spiritual and personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ enabled by the ministry of the Holy Spirit; and (3) a response by the worshiper of joyful adoration, reverence, humility, submission and obedience" (D. Nelson, Authentic Worship, p. 149).

"Christian worship is the response of God's redeemed people to His self-revelation that exalts God's glory in Christ in our minds, affections, and wills, in the power of the Holy Spirit" (B. Kauflin, Defining Worship, pt 3).

I would like to submit my own working definition of biblical worship:

My active response to the character, words and actions of God, initiated by His revelation and enabled by His redemption, whereby my mind is transformed (e.g. belief, repentance), my heart is renewed (e.g. love, trust), and my actions are surrendered (e.g. obedience, service), all in accordance with His will and in order to declare His infinite worthiness.

That takes longer than an hour and a half on Sunday mornings.

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