Gathered by God to Worship: Why We Meet

The Goal Of The Worship Gathering

It is such a joy to be with you this morning. Warm greetings to everyone who’s here this morning.

Ministers in the gospel, and those people who have gone before us in terms of leading churches, whether it’s leading music in churches — because I know there’s a sense of, we have pastors, but we also have those who lead music in churches. It’s a joy for me to be here, and it’s a privilege even to be speaking about this.

I’m not a worship leader, so I won’t be talking much about music. I’m not going to be talking much about what it looks like to lead worship, but we’re going to be talking about the whole service. What does it mean for us to gather together? What’s the goal of gathering together when we come to worship God?

I think it’s actually a very interesting topic. Is there something, or how do we think about a biblical or sound worship service, worship gathering? What is the worship gathering for, and how do we know if we are doing it right? I think that’s sort of where we’re going to be looking into this morning.

But before that, let me pray for us. And then, if you do have a Bible with you, I just want to read Psalm 95 as we open up. If you can open up to Psalm 95. But let me pray for us as we get there.

Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you for your kindness to us. We thank you for your grace. We pray that now, as you open up your word, we pray Holy Spirit, you may be our teacher this morning. And we pray that our hearts may be opened to hear from you.
Lord, we long to hear you even this morning. Speak to us, Lord, we pray. Lord, we pray that what we do not know, may you teach us. Lord, we humbly pray that what we have not, may you give us. That what we are not, may you make us.
We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Amen.

I want to read quickly Psalm 95. Psalm 95 is a text that calls us to worship. It is one of the psalms that calls us to worship. We normally read this psalm at the beginning of our services at our church. It’s just a psalm that sort of gets us to be aware that God is the one who has gathered us together.

Let me just read it for us. It says:

“Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.

For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.

The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.

For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.

Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof,
though they had seen my work.

For forty years I loathed that generation and said,
‘They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.’
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’”

“Oh come, let us sing to the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” (Psalm 95)

So, we’re going to be talking about worship gathering. When I’m using the word “worship,” I’m not talking necessarily about singing. I’m talking about the whole gathering. What does it look like for us to gather for worship together?

Our Identity In Gathering

Now, I’m actually going to change the way I had thought about this, because how I want us to look at it, before we get into what we do when we gather together, or what we’re supposed to do — what does gathered worship look like? — we have to sort of go back and look at who it is that is gathering.

So there’s a sense that we need to come to the understanding of the church, the people that are gathering together. They are the church of Christ, the body of Christ. And why do we gather together?

So we almost have to go back to who we are, and then we can talk about what we do as we gather together.

It’s going to be more of a teaching, so I want to go more on teaching this to us this morning. I know I’m sort of used to preaching on a Sunday morning, but I want us to sort of go and teach this, because what I want us to get at is: before we do something, we need to understand who we are. Before we understand what we do, we need to understand where we are.

Being is always before doing.

You won’t be able to do something well without understanding who you are. Being is always before doing.
So even as we think about corporate worship, even as we think about gathered worship, we need to think about who we are as a people of God.
I don’t know if anybody here grew up in a family that eats dinner together — you know, when we sit around the table and eat dinner together. I didn’t grow up like that. I grew up where you sort of get your food, you can sit anywhere, and you can eat at any time. You can just grab your food, sit down, and eat.

But as I’ve started my own family, my wife has really changed my ways, and now we sort of sit together as a family, and we have to eat together, which is something I’m growing into. Amen, somebody. I’m growing into that — to say, as a family, we need to gather together.

One of the things, as I was learning about that, is that we are a family, and therefore dinner, when we gather together, is one of the ways that demonstrates our togetherness as a family. A family meal is something that’s important for us, and therefore when we gather together as a family, it’s something that demonstrates who we are as a family.

It’s a special meal. It’s a meal where we gather together, we pray with the kids, we catch up with one another. It’s a very special time together, but it shows who we are as a family.

Therefore, when you miss that — I mean, obviously that’s not going to happen in a perfect way. Sometimes someone is going to be sick, something is happening, so we won’t be able to gather together. But we are gathering together as a family to eat together because we’re a family.

Now, when it comes to corporate worship, or gathering together, we won’t be able to get what corporate gathering is all about if we don’t know who we are, if we don’t know the importance of this, if we don’t know what we need to do when we get there.

All of these things mean we need to go back and look at: what’s the meaning of being a church? What’s the meaning of being a people of God?
But I want to fast-forward to talk about how people think about gathered worship right now — different churches, different traditions. How do people think about corporate worship?\

Three Different Lens

And I want to think about it in three ways, and then we’ll go back to what we think the Scriptures are teaching on this.
Now, we could have people here from different traditions, and who do worship, gathered worship, in different ways. Even in urban spaces, there’s a sense that all of these things are coming together now in terms of how our worship spaces look. But there are sort of three ways that churches have thought about gathering, or worship, from what I have seen.

The first one is what I would call mission.

So, you would have traditions or churches that think about worship gathering as evangelistic worship. We’ve come together, but the most important thing about us coming together is that we are reaching the lost. So everything we are doing is geared towards reaching the lost.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve been in churches like that. Everything is shaped around: how do we reach the lost? It’s all about the harvest. Have you been in a place like that, where it’s all about, “We need to reach people”?

So everything we’re doing in a gathering has to make sense to the outsider, has to make sense to those that we are reaching. Everything is shaped by mission.

The songs we sing have to be as simple as possible because those who are coming in should be able to understand them. So we have to make things easier for those who are coming in. The content, whether it’s preaching or different things, we have to make sure, again, that we are reaching those who are coming in.

Don’t talk about things that are inside, inside language of the church. Think about those who are coming in. Everything is geared towards the lost.

The manner of preaching, the holistic experience of the gathering — make it look easy, make it look simple for those who are coming in. Even the way we put things together. Make sure that, you know, these days you’ve got good coffee, you’ve got everything looking good, so that those who are coming in are able to find a home here.

Everything is done with a lens of mission. How will this reach people? How will this reach people?

Now, that’s not a bad lens of looking at a gathering. It’s actually a very good lens. You are being evangelistic. You are thinking about the lost. You are thinking about those who are coming in. There’s a hospitality that’s there in the church. Everything is geared towards: how do we make sure that people who are coming in find a home here?

That’s a very good lens. But it’s not the only lens that we should look at corporate gathering through. It’s not the only lens, but it’s also a good lens.

I mean, myself, I’m a very evangelistic person, and therefore this lens speaks to me on what it looks like for us to reach people who are coming in. Therefore, we think about that more.

Then there’s a second lens. So that’s the first one: mission.

There’s a second lens, which is formation. Formation.

Now, this lens would be: how does a corporate gathering build us up to be more and more like Christ? So everything is geared towards how do we grow as people of God when we are inside here at the church. Everything is about forming us — formation.

So everything needs to be Bible-centered. Everything needs to be doctrinally sound, because really we want to make sure that we form people. Everything needs to be biblically rich for churches that are geared towards formation.
Everything needs to be training us and forming us to be more and more like Christ. So even the songs we sing — we’re not thinking about whether they need to be simple or anything — they need to teach us.

So, in that formation space, it’s like the songs we sing — we are very clear about the doctrine that’s there. All of those things, we are very clear, because everything needs to be forming us in a right way.

In those spaces, the Bible is used a lot, whether it’s in singing, whether it’s in preaching, or different things. The songs that are sung, the type of preaching — it’s more geared towards strong Bible teaching. Everything is done through the lens of formation.
How will what we are doing form us? How will these things form us?

It’s not just about the outsider, but how do these things form those who are here on that morning?
Now again, that’s another good lens. Do we need people formed inside the church? Amen.

Do we need just to be gathering so that we can attract outsiders? Yes. But at the same time, we need to make sure that those who are inside are equipped.

So the formation lens is good. How are people formed? How are people formed in a way that will change them?

Again, this tradition, or this lens, is looking at the culture out there as forming people in different ways. The culture out there is forming people to be consumeristic, to be materialistic, and therefore, what does it look like for when people come inside the church to be formed in a different way?

The culture out there says you need to be consumeristic. Everything has to be about you, and about what you like, what you want. Therefore, how does the church form us in a different way?

So this is a very good lens. The first lens, mission, is a very good lens. The second lens, formation, is a very good lens. How does this form us inside?

But those are not the only lenses.

And then the third one — the third one is what I will call encounter lens. Someone say, “Encounter.”

Encounter.

Encounter lens.

Now again, depending on your church tradition — coming from a Pentecostal tradition, coming from a charismatic tradition — that’s the tradition I know, or that’s the tradition I grew up under. That’s a tradition maybe some of us are familiar with.

The encounter tradition says, this paradigm says, the emphasis there is: we are here to meet with God. We are here to have an encounter with God.

We are here, when we gather together, because something special happens when we meet with God. We are here to have an encounter with God in a powerful way.

That’s a very good lens. It’s a lens that we’ve seen in church history. It’s a lens that we see throughout the Scriptures. In fact, when God meets with his people, something special is happening.

I mean, there’s a way right now of thinking about church that is very flat when you talk about church and worship. Now again, when you talk about worship, there’s a sense of worship being all of life. But also, sometimes we take that, even within our gatherings, to say there’s nothing really special that happens in our gatherings.

You can meet with God when we are hiking, when you are reading the Bible at your home — it’s the same as when you come to the church — and therefore there’s nothing special really.

But the encounter tradition says, “No, no, no, no, no. When we gather together, there’s a special presence that God has for us when we meet with him together.” It’s this encounter that we have with God. There’s a particular presence of God in our gathered worship.
That presence is special. It’s different than any other spaces. When we are gathering with fellow Christians, just having a braai at home, it’s different than when we gather as God’s people to worship God. There’s a special presence there.

We can take the words of Paul when he says, “When you are together, you are the temple of God.” You’re a temple of God just by yourself — a temple of the Holy Spirit — but at the same time, when we gather together, he uses this metaphor of a temple because a temple is where the glory of God dwelt.

And therefore, when we gather together, there’s an encounter with God. There’s an encounter with God.

Is that a good lens? Amen.

The lens of an encounter. Something beautiful, something special, happens when we are gathering together.

Now, there could be other ways we could think about this. I just picked out these three:

Mission — therefore everything we are doing is evangelistic. We are thinking of the outsider. This is where we get seeker-sensitive language. We are thinking more of an outsider than the people here.
And then you get formation, which is thinking more of the people here, but it’s thinking more on teaching, for forming them.

And then the encounter: when we gather here, there’s an expectation that we’re going to meet with God, and God can do whatever he pleases with us.

Those three lenses.

When One Lens Takes Over

Now, all of those three lenses are good. But normally, as churches and as people who do gatherings and worship, we normally take one over the other. We normally emphasize the one and don’t emphasize the other.
And what happens is we get something that is not necessarily biblical, because we tend to go in a different way. And that’s what I really want us to — I want us to really bring us back to — say: how do we do these things together?

I don’t know if you’ve ever had those… You know, as a church planter and a pastor, you end up doing everything in the church. How many church planters are here where, even when you’re starting a church, you are doing the sound, you’re doing this, you’re doing that?
I found myself even doing videos and photo editing, all of those things. When you’re doing photo editing, you could want to — you know, you put something on Canva, or you put something on a photo editor, a photo, and you want to expand it.

And sometimes, when you want to expand it, you pull it this way, and the photo sort of goes the other way. The whole photo doesn’t expand. It expands on one side, and then the photo gets messed up.

You need to press something so that, when you expand the photo, everything expands at the same time.
Now, when we’re talking about these three lenses, you don’t want to pull it one way — pull it on evangelistic — and then the other things don’t happen, because you mess up the whole thing. You mess up the whole thing.

Now let me use an example and show us what happens. What happens when we emphasize mission in our corporate gathering? What happens when we say everything is about the lost when we gather? What happened when we do that?

Here’s what normally happens: Sundays become a showroom.

Let’s make everything squeaky clean. Let’s make sure that everything is sparkling, everything is on point.
Now again, some of those things are good. I’m not saying those things are not necessarily good, but everything has to be on point. Everything has to be shiny. Everything has to be rehearsed to a tee.

I mean, I know churches who rehearse services twice before the service starts so that everything goes accordingly, because mostly it’s, “Man, we want to make sure that when people come in here, everything is on point.”

Now again, there’s a sense of excellence that’s there that we need, but sometimes we can be slaves of that because, at the end of the day, it’s about making sure that the service becomes a showroom.

This is where we get worship leaders who get fatigued, who get tired, because they need to keep the show going.
You can’t get another person who’s still coming up in music. Everything has to be — we have to get perfect musicians because everything is geared towards those who are coming in.

The worship team becomes performers. They get burnt out. There’s no room for mediocrity. Everything has to be perfect.
Congregants become your sales and marketing teams because you have to sell the brand.

“This is how we do things here.”

Now again, the picture of mission — there’s nothing wrong with it. We need to be excellent. We need to be thinking of those who are coming in. But we can’t be slaves of that, where everything is geared towards that.

What happens when we push more on formation, when everything is about teaching? When everything is about those who are within being taught?

Sundays become a classroom, because everything has to be learning, memorizing, knowing this and that, knowing the Bible — and people know everything, but nothing has changed in their lives. But they know a lot of truth because everything about that church is about the truth.
But there’s no change. There’s nothing happening. They know more about just the Bible.

The worship team and the people there just become teachers and facilitators of knowledge. It’s about transferring knowledge. Congregants become students. It’s all about the insiders. It’s all about those who are inside.
The church is more for Pharisees than for tax collectors and sinners. It’s all about the insider language. It’s all about the people who are within because everything is geared towards them.

And then lastly, what happens when we focus more on encounter? What happens when we focus more on encounter?
Sundays are more of an immersive experience.

When everything is about encountering God, Sundays become more of an immersive experience. Everything is about making sure that people experience this presence because we’ve come here to be in this presence.

Now again, that’s a good thing, but the temptation is we end up producing the presence, because we have to have it – if that’s what we are all about. We have to have it, and now we have to produce the presence.
The worship team becomes producers.

“Produce this atmosphere, this presence, in whatever way you need to. Dim the lights here. Put the pad sound here.”

Amen, somebody. I think some of us know that.

Now again, none of those things are evil in themselves. I’m not against padding. I’m not against the lights. If you come to our church, we’ve got padding. We’ve got the lights.

There’s nothing wrong with aesthetics and all of these things to move people. In fact, when you even talk about aesthetics within the history of the church, even cathedrals — the way churches have been designed throughout history — cathedrals and the aesthetics of the church have been there to move people.

Cathedrals, the way they are designed, are so that people can sort of experience the transcendence when they come in, just by aesthetic.
There’s nothing wrong with those things as they are. Those things are meant to awaken us into worship. But those things are not the end in themselves. Those things are not the end in themselves.

We can get addicted to immersive experiences and have no regard for Christian growth, no regard for change.
Again, this is encounter, and we are not emphasizing formation. We are not emphasizing mission. It’s all about encounter. So everything is about experience.

If people have come in and have had a sense of experience, we think, for us, that’s a win.

I think it was Kirk Franklin who had a song about that. Yeah, I think he had a song — something about what happens after I’ve fallen. You know, when the Spirit has come, and you have sung, and you’ve cried, and you’ve fallen down — what happens after that when you go home?
And sometimes, when your focus is on encounter, it’s all about that. We are not thinking about formation. We are not thinking about reaching the lost. It’s just about this experience that we come into. And therefore, we can become producers of that experience.
And we even get a distorted view of sanctification.

If we get so focused on the experience, we think that growth is about the experience. We think that, “You know what, I’m struggling with this. I don’t need to go through ordinary means of sanctification — be in God’s word, prayer, do all of these things. I just need a good immersion in an experience, and I’ll be fine.”

I just think, “You know what…” And this is where you get people — I mean, I don’t know about you — I’ve been in spaces where you come to the altar every month. You know those people who come out in front every month because they’re thinking, “You know what, today this is it. The presence was there. Everything is going to… I’m going to be delivered of everything.”

And then you go back home, and nothing has happened because you’re thinking you have to short-circuit your sanctification.
Congregants become consumers, individualists, in that space when it’s all about encounter.
The congregants can’t help but become consumeristic. They will go to the next church that has that experience. Everything is catered towards them and what they want.

And there’ll always be a church next door with a better experience than yours. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. But if it’s about experience, it’s about, “Man, did I get this?” It’s about them.

Also, gathered worship becomes about individuals. When we gather together, it’s about what’s happening with you.

Now again, there’s a sense that when we gather together, God wants to do business with us individually. But at the same time, when we’ve gathered together, we’ve come together as God’s people to worship together. And therefore, there’s a sense of communing and edifying one another.

It’s not just about your individual experience.

If it’s about an individual experience, you could have been at home, put on worship music, and had that experience there. But once you’ve gathered with God’s people, it’s all about all of us together.

Which is why some people who teach on worship will say, in fact, for congregational worship, we should use more songs about “we” rather than songs about “I,” because it’s about the corporate experience. It’s about us getting together as God’s people.

So these are all things that are good, but if you focus on them — if you emphasize them more than the others — we get a very bad understanding of congregational worship.

Mission is good. Formation is good. Encounter is good.

In fact, I would think other traditions should learn from one another. Again, the tradition that I’m from, we do more formation than encounter, where we need to understand that when we gather together, there’s a special encounter with God. But for some, they need formation more than encounter; others need encounter more than formation.

Now, what would be something that brings all of those things together?

The Work Of The Spirit To Glorify Jesus

That will seem obvious for most of us, but I’ll say it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit.
All of these things are empowered by the work of the Holy Spirit. All of these things are empowered by the work of the Holy Spirit. Mission is empowered by the Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is not at work, you can have all the fancy stuff you like. It has to be the work of the Holy Spirit.

Same with formation. The Spirit forms us. Same with encounter. It’s the Holy Spirit who meets us when we encounter God.
So the Holy Spirit has to be at work.

So here’s three things that actually point us to the center when we think about these three things — mission, formation, and encounter.
The first one is: we need to be dependent on the Holy Spirit in a way that our gatherings are Christ-centered, whether we are doing that with regards to encounter, formation, or mission. They need to be Christ-centered. They need to be Christ-centered.

Now again, when we talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in a gathering, we think about — you know, if you could talk to an average person and ask, “How do you know the Holy Spirit was at work in a gathering?” — we could talk about different things, specifically the miraculous, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which, again, are evidence of the working of the Spirit.

But one of the ways that we see the Holy Spirit is at work — remember what Jesus says: “When the Holy Spirit comes, he will point to me.”
When the Holy Spirit comes, he will point to me.

One of the special works of the person of the Holy Spirit is that he points to Christ. When the gathering is exalting, revealing the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s so much of the work of the Spirit happening — pointing people to the Lord Jesus, pointing to Christ.
Jesus being the center.

In the songs, in the preaching, Jesus is revealed, Jesus is exalted, Jesus is glorified. We see that the Spirit is at work.
Christ-centeredness in our gatherings, but also our gatherings having a shape of the gospel. Gospel shaped, gospel-shaped.

Now again, when we are gathering together, we are people who’ve been changed by the gospel. We are people who have the story of the gospel in our lives. That’s our story. That’s our testimony — what God has done through the gospel.
So the service itself should have a sense of the rehearsing of the gospel, so that the gospel is something that is in our hearts, in our minds, all the time.

What is the narrative of the gospel? What is the story of the gospel?
The greatness and the holiness of God. The greatness and the holiness of God. The sinfulness of man. The beauty of the gospel. The hope of the gospel — that we are going towards something in history, that God will come and renew all things to himself.

The greatness and holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the beauty and transformation that comes through the gospel, and the gospel hope — that’s the story of the gospel. And there’s a sense that, in our gatherings, that story should be evident.

In our songs, in our prayers, in everything, there should be a sense of here, we are exalting God and making it clear that God is holy. But at the same time, in our gathering, there should be a space of transparency and confession:
“God, we are not where we should be. May you reveal yourself again into our lives through the gospel, that we may be transformed.”
But also, we should show clearly the beauty of the gospel and also hope for people — the gospel hope.

Our services should be leading people and helping people to live with hope. Things are not going to be the way they are forever. Because of what Christ has done, because Jesus is alive, things are never going to be the same forever.
The best is yet to come. And I’m saying that theologically — the best is yet to come. Even in the new heavens and the new earth, we’re still going to experience the best.

We should always leave our people with gospel hope.

But also, we should always be dependent on the Spirit. We should always be dependent on the Spirit so that it is not just production, so that it is not just our programs and being rigid with our programs.

How do we make sure that we are dependent on the Holy Spirit? The Spirit will be the one who leads us in all those things.

The Gathered Church That Worships

Now, let me just go back in terms of being the gathered church that worships — being the gathered church that worships.
Remember in Exodus 9:1 it says:

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh and say to him, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”’”
“Let my people go so that they may worship me.”

This is the story of the Exodus. Now, the Exodus is the picture of the new Exodus in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are shadows and pictures. What we see in the Old Testament, in the Exodus, is what we see in full substance in the person of Jesus.

Jesus is the greater Moses who takes his people out of the greater slavery of sin and death. Those things are shadows and substance.

So here is the picture of salvation: “Let my people go. Let me save my people so that they may worship me.” That is always the standard in terms of understanding salvation and worship. We were saved, redeemed, so that we may be worshippers. Amen.
This is the core identity of people who are redeemed by God. We are saved so that we may worship.

“Let my people…” Understand: we are God’s people who are called for gathered worship.

Now again, this speaks to the identity of God’s people. The word “church” by itself is this word we all know, ekklesia, which is the word that means “called-out ones.” They are people who are gathered, people who are called out — this congregation.
So the church, in its core identity, is a people who are called out to be gathered together.

The nature of our salvation has always been corporate. The nature of our salvation — God saves you, you are born again, and immediately you are planted into a family. God has always been saving a people for himself, not just individuals. Of course we are individuals, but God is saving a people for himself.

Our core identity is corporate.

Our core identity is corporate. Therefore, our gatherings are at the core of who we are as God’s people, at the core of who we are as God’s people. It’s not something that we do when we feel like it or whatnot.

I mean, I’ve been reading stats — and some of the stats are in America, and they don’t transfer to South Africa in the same way — but, to be honest, we have our church in the urban space, and there’s a sense that I see the similarity here. We are at a place where normal attendance of gatherings is now twice a month.

Someone who’s attending regularly is coming to church twice a month. You get people who are coming once in two months. I mean, pastors will know what I’m talking about. And those are regulars. Regulars.
And to be honest, there are so many factors with this — to say our gatherings are… people are coming less and less. People are still there, but the frequency is less.

And part of it is we don’t understand what the church is, that our identity at the core is corporate.

I mean, if you talk to a soccer player — a soccer player who’s finished his years, maybe 15 years… 15 years is long for a soccer career. Let me just say 10 years. Ten years as a soccer player.
Talk about, “How has it been for you to play for this team, or to be this soccer player?” Because a soccer player’s identity is a team.
They will always talk about, “Man, when I look at the highlights of my career, I remember we played this game with this team. I remember I scored a goal here. I remember this is what happened.”

But they will rarely talk about their own development: “I remember when I was training on my own, running…” No. But they were training on their own. They’ll already talk about what they were eating on their own to make sure that their body was well, so their body is healthy on their own.

But them, as a team player, their identity is bound up in a team.

As God’s people, our identity, our salvation, is corporate. It is bound up in the people of God.
And therefore, when you think about your Christian life, it should be hard to separate your Christian life from your family — the family of God’s people.

“Let my people go so that they may worship me.”

Our identity is with worship.

Which is why even Peter says in 1 Peter 2:10:
“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
All of us corporately, we are God’s people.

Elements Of Worship In Our Gatherings

Now, as I close, what are the things that need to be there in a typical worship service?
Now, these are the things — when you talk about a corporate gathering, theologically we will talk about elements, forms, and circumstances.
Elements of worship are things that the Bible says should be there. Forms and circumstances are how those things need to be done, and the circumstances of how those things need to be done.

The forms and circumstances change depending on context, depending on this or that. The Bible doesn’t say that we need to meet at 10 or 11. It doesn’t say that the music should be this loud or that loud. Those are forms and circumstances.

But when it comes to elements, there are things that the Scriptures talk about:
The reading and preaching of Scripture — 1 Timothy 4:14. There needs to be a sense of preaching and reading of Scripture, public reading of Scripture.

Singing hymns, spiritual songs, and psalms to one another — Ephesians 5:18–19, Colossians 3:16:
“Let the word of God dwell richly in you…through singing and singing to one another.”

Those things are elements. They should be there in our gatherings.

Praying — 1 Timothy 2:1–2. Prayer.

“My house shall be called a house of prayer.”

The celebration of sacraments — baptism, the Lord’s Supper — those things need to be there. Matthew 28:19. 1 Corinthians 11.

Now again, how we do those things — elements and forms and circumstances — but those things need to be there.
The stirring up of one another to love and good works. Hebrews 10:24. Meeting regularly — again, Hebrews. Those things are teaching us in terms of what it means for us to gather.

Giving — 1 Corinthians 16:1–2. Giving is part of worship. It’s part of worship.

I know we come from a place where all of those things are abused, but we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Giving is part of a spiritual discipline where we are fighting against mammon. We are fighting against consumerism. We are fighting against greed. Giving is a blessing from God to break all of these things. Otherwise, it’s all about us.

And when we gather together, here are the elements that God has given to the church:
“Let these things form you. Let these things — when you do these things — meet me. Have an encounter with me.”
But here are the things that should be there.

Now again, you could be coming from a different place. For some of us, we need to be thinking more about the lost in our gatherings. Have a sense of excellence. Have a sense of clarity in whatever you do because you are thinking about those people who are coming in.
For some of us, we need to be thinking about formation. How do we make sure that whatever we’re doing is forming people, discipling people, training people to be Christlike?

But for some of us, how do we teach our people that when we gather on Sunday morning, let’s be expectant that God is going to meet us? Let’s be expectant that God is going to meet us in a powerful way.

Mission, formation, encounter — all of those things, empowered by the Holy Spirit — they make our gatherings glorifying to God.

Let me pray for us.
Heavenly Father, we thank you. Thank you for this morning. Thank you that you are the God who forms us, who grows us, who encounters us in powerful ways.

And I pray, as we start this day, Lord, as we continue with really opening up your word to think about worship, to think about gathered worship, help our hearts to be open. Help our minds to truly grasp your word as we think through these things.
Lord, even today, may you meet us even today through the power and the work of the Holy Spirit. May we encounter you in a different way.

May we have a sense of your presence. May we have a sense of you meeting with us even this morning.
We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Amen.