The Church and worship

For the next week I want to take a look at the upward ministry of the church or the ministry to God. The place to start is a taking a look at worship.

Worship

Everything that the church is about starts and ends with worship (Eph. 1:12) As the shorter Westminster catechism states, “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This simple statement lets us know that man was created to worship God the Creator and that too, is also why the Church was created by Jesus (John 4:19-24). The first and most important part of a church and its ministry is focused on God who is the creator, sustainer and redeemer of all life. The ministry of the church is planned for and governed by God. The church serves God and worships Him with the talents and gifts He has given it. Worship is important because God deserves the glory and because He is the sustainer of the life, ministry, and mission of the Church. The sole purpose of the ministry of the Church is to honor what God has given it, through grace, to use in its ministry (Col. 3:16). So whether it is through the ordinances, offerings, Sabbaths, Governments, growth, discipline, prayer, fellowship, evangelism, and missions; the church needs to keep the worship aspect in front view at all times. Every other ministry and service that the church does, whether it is towards, God, at the other members of the faith community, or towards the lost world, worship is the base ministry.

The Sunday morning worship service, or as I like to call them a “family celebration of joy (Acts 2:46) and reverence (Acts 2:43) for Jesus”, is a great place for the worship of God to start. The Sunday worship service consists of Bible teaching (Acts 2:42), which is worship of God with our minds, singing songs of praise and adoration (Acts 2:47), which is worship of God through our hearts and emotions, and giving of our tithes and offerings, which is worship of God through our wills and desires. The Sunday morning worship service is a community and faith family gathering where we can corporately praise God and study His Word which is all aspects of worship. I believe the songs that are sung in the worship time must not only be theological in content but glorifying to God in verbiage, which sometimes does not happen when the song is too much of the I perspective and less on the God or Jesus perspective (Heb. 13:15). I also do not believe that “Jesus as my boyfriend” type songs glorify God because Jesus is our Savior (Rev. 5:12). So whether it is through singing hymns and or contemporary worship songs, exposing God’s word through sound Biblical teaching, or corporately partaking of the church ordinances and giving back to God, worship of God can take place greatly in the Sunday morning setting as a faith family.