What is worship?

Is worship more than the songs we sing and the style in which we sing them? Of course, and yet those visible, observable aspects of worship are often the parts of worship that are most controversial. Worship is discussed and evaluated in terms of personal opinion, taste and value.
What about what God wants?
Our worship reveals what the worship leader thinks about God, and the people whom they attempt to lead in worship.

Experiential worship

The distinction between fantasy literature and 'high' literature is, in part, about the way the reader experiences the narrative. In the work beloved of academics, reading is about decoding the symbols in the text. Many of the recent '-isms (feminism, deconstructionism, post-colonialism) are distinguished by their challenging the perceived assumptions of the author, and positing alternative interpretations of the symbols in the work. The reader is always an outsider, external to the work. There is a kind of objectivity that can be shared and written about. But in works like Tolkein, the reader is invited to enter an alternative world which functions more or less independently of our own. The same themes exist - good versus evil, the notion of friendship, the corruption of power. Each reader encounters the story differently, and while there are always touch points which are shared, each reading experience, even by the same reader but at a different time is a different experience. While the written words never change, the way in which they are experienced always changes. There is a kind of subjectivity here which is none-the-less real and powerful.
Is the claim for Christian worship more like the first or the second? It is certainly possible to stand outside the experience of worship, and to interpret it using any number of world-views or methodologies. It is possible to compare and contrast the rituals of Christian worship which those of other religions and note the similarities. More subtly, liturgists take The Liturgy, and use that as an objective measuring stick for the rightness or accuracy or goodness of worship.
However, I think that worship is first and foremost an experience of the divine. It is profoundly experiential. Each worship event is experienced differently. Worship takes us out of ourselves, and changes what we perceive as reality.

Godzone Worship

What on earth are we doing in worship?

More importantly, what is God (insert your favorite set of assumptions/experiences/images here) doing in worship?

Despite my ongoing conversations with thirty-somethings who describe church as "toxic," I think good things are going on in worship, as worship leaders and minsters and priests all over the place struggle each week to lead their congregations authentically and with integrity.

A couple of weeks ago a deputation from one of my congregations met with the music team to complain about the music in worship. Too many contemporary songs. Not enough hymns. But, I pointed out, there were two hymns in most services, a classic hymn (pre-twentieth century) and a modern hymn. No, we want the hymns we know from our childhood.

So, the question for today is the extent to which we indulge this exercise in nostalgia. There is as much real danger, I think, of manipulating people with classic hymns, as there is in contemporary songs. I could craft a service that would include their favorites, but the cost is high.

Firstly, worship leaders always run the risk of making worship or the music an idol, something that replaces or is given the credit for the presence of God. I have found that many people lack the ability to express what they clearly sense in a particular service in anything but practical or secular terms. The reasons differ. In part, I've worked in mainline Presbyterian congregations, and as a rule, we don't live in the charismatic end of the worship spectrum.

Secondly, our task as worship leaders is not to craft services that people like or make people feel good. Not is it our task to upset them unduly. Our task is to be responsive to what we sense the Spirit of God doing.

Thirdly, the feedback that we take on board has to weighed carefully. Perhaps I have genuinely erred, and this is God's way of telling me I screwed up. There is a dimension of pastoral care that I take seriously. But there are also other voices in that meeting who tell me that the mix is about right, and we need to craft services that are not completely alien for visitors from our highly secularized culture.

I think the mix is about right; I have thrown too much new music at this congregation in part because I am new, and their list of what they thought they knew has turned out to be inaccurate. Like any worship leader, when I'm under pressure I tend to head for where I am comfortable. But we also need to hang in there with the new songs. Many of the songs I currently find most useful I didn't like on first, second or third hearing.