What is the outcome of this, brothers and sisters? When you meet together, each one has a psalm, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. All these things must be done to build up the church.
1 Corinthians 14:26
I know that the title of this blog sounds scandalous. "Stop all worship services? Isn't having worship services your job?" Well, part of my ordination is to help lead God's people in worship; however, I am refering to 'worship services' in the context of Dan Kimball's book on "Emerging Worship." I will let him explain:
We usually call the weekend time when a church family gets together a “worship service.” Ironically, this term used to mean a time when the saints of God all meet to offer their service to God through worship and their service to others in the church. Over time, however, the title has slowly reversed. The weekend worship “service” has become the time of the week when we go to a church building much like a car goes to an automobile service station.
Most people view the weekend worship service as a place where we go to get service done to us by “getting our tanks filled up” at the service station. It’s a place where someone will give a sermon and serve us with our weekly sustenance. In automobile terms, you could say it is our weekly fill-up. We come to our service station to have a song leader serve us by leading us in singing songs. All so we can feel good when we emotionally connect through mass singing and feel secure that we did “worship.” We go to the weekend worship service and drop off our kids—that way they too can get served by having their weekly fill-ups. We are especially glad that our weekend service station now serves coffee in the church lobby—it’s as convenient as our automobile service station’s little mini-mart. - Kimball, Dan. Emerging Worship. Zondervan,2004. page 2.
It's time to stop all worship services in this sense: worship is not about getting our needs serviced. Instead of filling our tanks when we gather together, we are all called to actively participate. It is why the word liturgy has it's roots in the Latin meaning "work of the people" not "work of the pastor" or "work of the band/choir." Even Paul made it quite clear that during worship "each one" was to bring something to share with the community to help lead in worship.
See someone struggling to use a hymnal? Stand beside them and help. Another person can't find the tune? Gently guide them with your voice. Can't carry a tune in a bucket? Carry the elements of communion to those unable to walk. Cannot walk? Lift up the person sitting beside you in prayer, talk with them about how God touched or spoke to you during the service, and offer to pray for (and with) them after.
We all have gifts given by the Spirit and are all directed to use them. Let us stop seeing Sunday as a time to see what we can "get out of worship" and instead come ready for God to guide us that we might see what we can give in worship to God.
Grace and Peace,
