If there were to be a single paper to really sum up my seminary career, a thesis if you will, it would have probably been an expanded edition of my paper entitled "A Philosophy of Liturgy and Spiritual Formation." This paper sought to answer the question, "What, if any, is the role of liturgy in the spiritual formation of a believer?" In the midst of the paper, I stumbled onto what my professor called an "ethic for corporate worship." In other words, what are the behaviors and characteristics that should shape the maturing Christian worshiper?
Yet does the Great Invitation in Matthew 11, wherein Christ invites us into the yoke of apprenticeship, affect how we think about the role of corporate worship in spiritual formation? For some reason, I think that it might. I will think about it.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
"Worshipful"
That song is so "worshipful." What does that even mean? Can an act of worship be "worshipful" or is "worshipful" an emotional state? I really have no idea.
If we want to be careful in our teaching about worship to say that all of our life can be viewed as worship to God, then can any one bit be more "worshipful" than another? It seems that the degrees of "worshipfulness" would be a matter of the heart of the one doing the worshipping - an attitude. The "worshipfulness" of a song should probably not depend on its tempo, melody, or its ability to whip people into an emotional frenzy.
Perhaps we should judge songs on theological content and the connection between the message of the song and its orchestration. Perhaps when planning for corporate worship we should choose songs that help people better understand who God is and the benefits of knowing Christ rather than trying to get them into a certain emotional state. I do not deny that we are emotional beings and that God has given us emotions to help us express ourselves. However, it seems that we should want for the emotional expressions in corporate worship to be a person's response to the truth about God. I am not sure that we should use emotion to teach truth. Rather, I believe that truth perhaps should be primary.
If we want to be careful in our teaching about worship to say that all of our life can be viewed as worship to God, then can any one bit be more "worshipful" than another? It seems that the degrees of "worshipfulness" would be a matter of the heart of the one doing the worshipping - an attitude. The "worshipfulness" of a song should probably not depend on its tempo, melody, or its ability to whip people into an emotional frenzy.
Perhaps we should judge songs on theological content and the connection between the message of the song and its orchestration. Perhaps when planning for corporate worship we should choose songs that help people better understand who God is and the benefits of knowing Christ rather than trying to get them into a certain emotional state. I do not deny that we are emotional beings and that God has given us emotions to help us express ourselves. However, it seems that we should want for the emotional expressions in corporate worship to be a person's response to the truth about God. I am not sure that we should use emotion to teach truth. Rather, I believe that truth perhaps should be primary.
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