I have finally sat down and kind of thought out what the next few points in my Where is Worship? series are going to be. Now I need to apologize for the lack of order or structure with this series. I believe the 2 points after this should have probably came sooner in this series but I have been going more for what was on my heart at the time that I wrote it. This part of this series is based on worship attempting to be an outreach for non-believers. Part 4 will be about Hebrews 4:12-13 which talks about the word of God. So that part will be about the Holy Word in Worship. Part 5 will be about Prayer and how it must be used in worship for worship to even happen. Now I have to admit that these next few parts may be a little more straight forward then I have been because I feel like I do not need to hold back as much as I have been. I want to drive these points home and make sure you get it.
So as I said this part is about an Outreach Worship service. I have had recently been thinking about the question, If you want Worship to be Outreach Minded and want to make it appeal to the masses by playing loud rock music and music that is not worship is it still truly Worship? I made a statement similar to this my facebook status recently and had some very interesting comments. My status was more about whether or not we should just call worship like this a concert. I am thankful for some great responses and I think one person hit the core of this point. He asked with all these "seeker" services being offered, is that biblical? Can a seeker really worship the way the Father demands "in Spirit and in truth" (John 4) or is worship something that only a child of God can do? This person then went back and answered their own questions and this was their response: For me the answer to my questions is "No." There is no sense in planning a "seeker" service because they cannot worship. Do we make them "seeker friendly" where they can follow along, etc... sure. But to plan a "worship" service around people who are lost makes absolutely no sense to me.
This comes to the heart of this piece. Worship is not happening because we are too worried about making worship for the lost. Those that are not followers of Christ cannot Worship God because they cannot worship in spirit and truth. This is because they do not have the spirit which is the Holy Spirit which comes from receiving Christ. And they do not have truth which is every word that Christ spoke because they do not follow Christ which means they cannot follow truth. So thus they cannot experience the worship that come from God.
This comes to me as a big problem because everywhere is cutting worship for this idea of an Outreach minded worship service. This could be on the dumbest things I have heard and this is the reason why worship is not happening anywhere. We decide to change worship everywhere. The church, campus ministries, and this is a huge problem. Have we ever thought that if true worship happened that non-believers would be more likely to respond to Christ? Imagine if Christ showed up in a way that just by entering a building you were hit by it and it brought you to your knees. I believe this is the kind of Worship that will make the blind to see, the dead to be raised, and the deaf to hear.
I find it hard to sit back anymore and watch this happen, to watch Worship be replaced with what probably to God looks like filthy rags. I pray for myself and for everyone reading this that their heart will be broken for true worship. That God will break through and reminds us that when the Holy Spirit arrived at Pentecost that Three Thousand were saved in one day and that is the type of Worship and holy spirit presence I believe God wants.
This is an interesting piece and the one that will probably get me plenty of talks to but I honestly want you to think about it. Can true honest worship of God by his believers make non-believers fall for Christ? I am not saying at all that we need to not seek out the lost but I think we need to reevaluate the way we plan worship because of them. I hope you continue to read my next parts in this series.
