10-22 Theology of Worship

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Theology of Worship

Goal of Worship: Engaging God

Rom 11:36 “For from him, and through him and to him are all things.”

1. Engaging with God:
1. God is center and focus of worship
2. See God
1. Why? Ps. 119:18, Eph 1:18, we will be changed.
2. our response is to declare his worth and his character.
3. Recount his mighty works
4. Praise his faithfulness.
1. Do so in songs, creeds, scripture declaration
3. Pray to God
4. Hear from God
1. Reading God’s Word
2. Expository preaching from God’s Word
3. Response to His Word
1. Prayer and reflection
2. Engaging with God as the Body of Christ
1. Worship service is corporate
2. Corporate Worship only happens if people are truly involved in the service.
3. Key passage is Heb 10. “let us draw near to God”
4. Let us... Let us...
5. Emergent Church Paradigm: coming into a corporate gathering in a very private way? Lights dimmed and such... is that helpful and consistent with Heb. 10?
1. come and listen to a passage and don’t come back to a unified view, then lacks some amount of worship.
2. movie theater... have some amount of connection...
3. where is togetherness in a big service context...
4. Should we force it into the corporate service?
5. Do meet and greet times really do it for us?
6. They don’t but they do hold value for general greeting and helpful for forming fellowship.
7. once done, people ask for prayer and were prayed for by people in the service.
3. Engaging with God as the Body of Christ Through Culture
1. transcultural, countercultural, cross-cultural, and contextual...
2. Answering questions like... is this culturally appropriate?
3. Transcultural:
1. The same substance for all Christians everywhere beyond culture.
1. The Word is central, not man’s wisdom.
1. under authority, at the invitation of the Word, with guidance from the Word.
2. The Holy Spirit: gives understanding and works in our hearts.
1. makes our worship sincere 1 John 4
2. worship in truth
3. the Congregation: participation of congregation makes it corporate.
1. must be truly involved, body gathers, commanded to minister to one another Eph 5:19
4. Christ centered: Heb 4:14, 5:6, 6:20, 7:17, 10:21
1. we draw near through him, he is the God mediator.
2. heb 2:12
4. Countercultural
1. Gospel comes to transform every culture.
2. This is inherent in the gospel itself, it changes things, it cuts off sin and this brings great change on a basic level.
3. culture must be valued and judged on the Word.
4. culture is not above the gospel.
1. we try to appear all is well all the time, no embrace depravity
5. Cross-cultural
1. Christ transcends time and space, express praise to God with texts with Christians from all over and throughout history.
2. Singing same songs, declare them as our own.
3. sharing between cultures.
6. Contextual
1. reflects local parts of culture.
2. be intergenerational by necessity.
3. Develop a particular heart language that will allow a worship service to worship well.
4. We act like some heart languages are really lesser than our own, the Gospel is able to make all sorts of people to come together.