Worship: A Practical Guide (Second Edition)

By Jeffrey Truscott

Worship: A Practical Guide is an ecumenical resource for worship leaders, written by a scholar with more than twenty years of teaching and worship leadership experience in Asia. It offers a biblical understanding of worship in accessible terms and draws out practical implications for Sunday worship. The meaning and structure of the Sunday service is at the center of the discussion. The chapters on ritual, culture, music, space, and time will especially enhance the reader's appreciation for the richness of Christian worship. Asian Christians of diverse traditions will find this work enlightening and helpful for ministry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Armour Publishing
• Release date: Sep 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9789814863902

Book preview

Introduction

Over the course of time and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the church’s perspective continues to grow and develop. The gospels suggest that the disciples did not immediately understand Jesus’ teaching (Mark 4:10-13) or the significance of his life and death (Luke 24:25), but were eventually led to the truth about him. The inclusion of Gentiles in the new community involved some discussion and discernment before a definitive decision was made (Acts 15, cf. Galatians 2). More recent times have seen an evolution in the church’s thinking about Sunday worship; it is now appreciated as a communal act of Christians who together proclaim God’s mighty works in Jesus Christ and offer themselves to his service. Consequently, the church today needs worship leaders—persons with a profound understanding of worship and a deep commitment to fostering the full participation of the assembled people of God.

Such leaders are not born but formed. God-given skills and abilities need to be developed through instruction and practice. A prospective worship leader, for example, must learn the meaning, structure, and proper use of different prayer forms, practice praying in public, and then receive critical feedback. Theoretical instruction is needed to acquire sound concepts, and practice is necessary for gaining confidence in performance. Hence, worship leaders need a two-pronged formation process.

This book is for persons engaged in such formation, whether seminary students taking an initial course on worship, or church professionals continuing their development. It seeks to equip readers with both the historical/theological background and the practical guidance needed for competent worship leadership. In sum, this book seeks to be a holistic handbook for those who plan Christian worship and lead it.

But why is there a need for another book on worship, especially given the abundance of such books today? While there are many worship resources available to Asian churches, few of these are really for Asian churches—especially commentaries concerning movements, gestures and postures, that is, worship handbooks or manuals. This book, with its emphasis on practical guidance, seeks to fill this gap. While I am not Asian, I have taught in Asia for twenty years, first at a Lutheran seminary in Japan and then at an ecumenical union seminary in Singapore, and have worshiped in Asian churches of various traditions. I have reflected on and tried to answer the questions asked by pastors, seminary students, and laypeople here about worship.

Appropriately, this book is meant for an ecumenical audience. This is possible because of the current consensus on worship, especially with regard to the four-fold shape of the Sunday service. Yet, there is an awareness of the unique aspects of Protestant worship traditions and of the diversity even within particular denominations. Accordingly, variations and alternatives are acknowledged, and prescription is avoided.

This book has a tripartite structure. Part 1 explores the nature, theology, and structure of the Sunday worship service. A transition from the theoretical to the practical, part 2 discusses the elements or building blocks of worship—ritual, culture, music, space, and time. Part 3 focuses on the practice of Sunday worship, following (more or less) the structure of the four-fold pattern of worship. In recognition of its historical role in worship and as encouragement for churches to recover its importance for church life today, the Lord’s Supper is assumed to be an integral part of Sunday worship.

This is both a textbook and a reference work; I envision the reader working straight through it once (during coursework) and then periodically consulting appropriate chapters as specific questions arise. For consistency and clarity, some repetition was necessary—which I trust will prove helpful.

Some notes about language. Rather than congregation, the word assembly is used to refer to Christians gathered for worship. Most likely, the entire congregation or membership of a church will not be present at a particular service. When the texts of prayers and other worship acts are reproduced in this book, words spoken by the assembly will be in bold type. Finally, word (lower case) refers to that part of the service involving Bible readings and preaching. Word as in Word of God is always capitalized.

Because this book would not have been possible without the assistance of others, I would like to thank the following: Trinity Theological College, Singapore, and the Global Mission unit of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Chicago, Illinois, USA, for granting me a six-month study leave; Rev. Dr Y. Franklin Ishida, East Asia Director, ELCA/GM, for working out the technicalities of this study leave; Rev. Dr Mark Chan, Earnest Lau Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Theological College, Singapore, for suggesting this book; Dr Lim Swee Hong, Deer Park Associate Professor of Sacred Music, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, for reading drafts of the chapters on culture and music and for providing an original hymn setting for the model service in chapter 14; Rev. Dr Gordon W. Lathrop, Charles A. Schieren Professor of Liturgy, Emeritus, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, for reading the entire manuscript and making many fine suggestions; Mrs. Jennie Smith, Singapore, for offering suggestions about chapter organization, especially for chapters 4 and 14; Mrs. Yasuko Nakayama of Tokyo, Japan, for researching the gestures used for the peace and for welcoming the newly-baptized in Japanese churches; Mr. Png Eng Keat for preparing the glossary for this second edition; my students at Japan Lutheran Theological Seminary, Tokyo, and Trinity Theological College, Singapore, for asking questions that made me think much harder about worship; my mother Anna Truscott for allowing me to transform part of her house into an office and library during the writing process; and Armour Press, especially Chua Hong Koon for agreeing to take up the project and Marven Harkness, Chua Ching Fern, and Mr. Gerard Wong for their editorial work. All of these people have my deepest gratitude.

Soli Deo Gloria

Jeffrey A. Truscott

Singapore

Worsip

1

The Nature of Worship

Key Idea: Worship is our response to God.

All Christian churches hold services of public worship on a regular basis, whether on Sundays or other days of the week. They budget significant amounts of money for bulletins, candles, choir music, instruments, computers, projectors, etc., and worship leaders put enormous effort into writing sermons, rehearsing music, and preparing for special rites (e.g., baptism, Holy Communion). Perhaps what all of us in our busyness neglect is reflection on the meaning of Christian worship from biblical, historical, and theological perspectives. We do worship but we might not ask " What are we doing?" This chapter seeks to answer this question so that readers can be informed worship leaders.

Defining Worship

Presently it seems that there is much confusion about worship, its purpose, meaning, and role in the life of the Christian church. The so-called worship wars between advocates of traditional versus contemporary worship have certainly exacerbated the problem. The purpose of this book, however, is not to take sides in this controversy, but rather to clarify the meaning of worship.

Much of the confusion, arguably, has to do with what (or who) we think is central in worship. A casual polling of friends, acquaintances and church members would likely find people defining worship mostly in terms of what we do. Worship is our thanking and praising God. Sometimes Christians speak of singing as if it, and nothing else, constituted worship: We worshiped for 30 minutes (i.e., sang) then the pastor preached the sermon—language that also tends to make worship a human-centered activity.

We must be careful not to exclude God from worship! We could not worship unless we were aware of God, or more precisely, unless God was revealed to us. One thinks of how God’s self-disclosures to Abram (Gen. 12:8) and Jacob (28:18-22) led to their responding with acts of worship (building an altar, making a vow). Thus the Anglican scholar, Evelyn Underhill, defines worship as the response of man [sic] to the Eternal.¹ Moreover, much thinking about worship does not consider what God does in worship through the preaching of the Word and the sacramental actions (baptism, the Lord’s Supper). Indeed, the Scripture readings and preaching are God’s Word to us (2 Tim. 3:16); the Lord’s Supper offers an encounter with the Risen Lord Jesus (Luke 24:35).

Accordingly, we might define worship precisely in terms of God’s activity for and within the Christian worship assembly: Worship is our listening to and experiencing God in Word and sacrament and responding with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. This is not to suggest that God is only encountered in worship, or that we are responding to God’s presence as experienced only in our worship. God is active in the world, beyond the four walls of the church and we worship in response to all of God’s activities. The aim here is to stress the work and presence of God in our worship, lest we reduce worship to a purely human activity and then highjack it for our own purposes. We will develop this notion of God’s activity in worship more fully in chapter 2. For now our task is to consider the nature of worship.

Biblical Concepts of Worship

To do this, we need to broaden and deepen our definition beyond the simple one offered above by considering the biblical terminology for worship.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word usually translated as worship (shachah), literally means bowing down or prostrating one’s self, as in reverence for another person or for God. The people of Israel bowed their heads and worshiped when Aaron informed them of God’s plan to rescue them from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 4:31). A repentant Saul speaks of bowing down before the God of Samuel (1 Sam. 15:25). The people of Israel made prostration before God in the Temple during the presentation of the daily burnt offering and the performance of the Lord’s songs by the Levitical choir (2 Chron. 29:27-28). We find a similar understanding in the New Testament with the use of the Greek word proskunesis. Gentiles and Jews alike prostrated themselves before Jesus when acknowledging him as the Messiah (Matt. 2:11), the Son of God (Matt. 14:33) and Lord (John 9:38), and when coming to him for help (Matt. 8:2). The culminating act of prostration was made by the disciples to acknowledge the risen Jesus as Lord and King (Matt. 28:9, 17; Luke 24:52).² Using a different Greek word, kampto, the hymn in Philippians 2 similarly speaks of knees bowing down before the exalted Christ (v. 10). Although the concept of bowing down can also be used metaphorically for the adoration expressed through ritual action (cf. John 4:23ff) we are nevertheless struck by the physicality of worship in the Bible. It seems that for the ancient Jews and Christians alike, worship was synonymous with the action of bowing down. Even today this bodily, physical character of worship is seen in the raising of hands among charismatic/Pentecostal worshipers and the frequent bows and genuflections of Orthodox Christians.

In both testaments, words literally meaning service express the idea of worship. The Hebrew abad refers to the worship of the Israelites in the wilderness (Ex. 7:16, 8:1). The same word is also used in connection with specific ceremonies such as the Passover (Ex. 12:27) or for the sacrificial rituals performed at the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Chron. 29:35). The equivalent Greek word, latreia, is the main New Testament word for worship. We might note Luke 1:74, that we being rescued from the hands of our enemies might serve (worship) him without fear in holiness and righteousness, as well as Acts 24:14: I serve the God of our ancestors.³ Service implies a duty or obligation—something that is done because it is expected, not necessarily something one likes or wants to do. We note the common reference to national or military service or serving in the military.

The Greek term for worship with connotations of service is leitourgia, which literally means the work of the people, or more precisely, a work done on behalf of others. In the ancient Greek context, a leitourgia was performed by a person or group on behalf of or for the benefit of the whole community, e.g., serving in a law-making body. In the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, leitourgia was used when the Hebrew described the performances of the sacrifices by priests and Levites on behalf of the congregation of Israel (cf. Ex. 28:35, 43). In the New Testament and in other early-Christian literature, it was used for the work of divine service by Jesus (Heb. 8:2, 6) together with the angels (1:4) and the congregation (Acts 13:2) for the benefit of the whole world. In 2 Corinthians 9:12-13, the act of Christians setting aside money as an offering for others is called a leitourgia (service). Yet Paul understands his whole ministry of proclaiming the gospel as a leitourgos or priestly duty carried out for the sake of bringing the Gentiles to God (Rom. 15:15-16). Thus, as an act done on behalf of/for others, service (or liturgy) implies that worship is about more than an individual’s needs, desires, or experience. Just as a footballer in the World Cup tournament plays as a representative of his country—playing for its glory and not just his own—so we come to worship on behalf of the world. But, as Paul would remind us, we perform our liturgy in order to be formed by the gospel that we might take it to the world.

These biblical terms point to the objective nature of worship. The notion of bowing down before God in response to God’s self-disclosure (see especially Ex. 4:31 and Matt. 14:33) certainly puts worship in the realm of the concrete. That worship is a physical act counters any attempt to denigrate bodily existence as unspiritual or to suggest that worship is purely an intellectual matter with no effect on the whole person. Service suggests that worship arises from more than just our desires or decisions, but is something that we are bound to do because of realities outside of ourselves.⁴ We serve the God who is revealed to us and saves us! Liturgy reminds us that worship involves relationships with other people, both Christians and fellow human beings. We are challenged, then, to avoid reducing worship to the purely subjective e.g., a mere form of self-expression, and/or a way of manipulating people emotionally. For certain, worship does have an impact on the believer’s inner being (mind, emotions, personal faith). But this subjective element depends on God’s objective self-revelation to us and the church’s proclamation of that revelation. Our inner experience as Christians is nourished and sustained through the objective reality of life in a Christian community, and as the Letter of James reminds us, personal faith is to be demonstrated through concrete acts of mercy (Jam. 2:14-17). Worship that is true and authentic, then, will maintain a focus on God’s objective being and deeds, and challenge us to an objective response.

Contemporary Terminology for Worship

Contemporary English speakers normally use the word worship, a combination of the Old English words weorth (worth) and scipe (ship), meaning that which has worth. Thus to worship is to ascribe worth or value to something. While we accord value to many things, e.g., education, it would not be appropriate to say that we worship them. What, then, does it mean to worship God? Here the comments of Dr Martin Luther (1483-1546) on the First Commandment (You shall have no other gods before me) are instructive. He reminds us that one’s god is that to which one looks for all good and to whom one turns for help in time of trouble, so that to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart.⁵ Obviously, then, in the context of religion, worship implies that we are ascribing the highest or ultimate worth to God. Worship is an expression of our belief that the greatest good comes only from God, and that only God deserves the acts of reverence and devotion that we endeavor to give to God.

Worship, unfortunately, has proven somewhat problematic. First, it can give the impression that what happens in the Sunday assembly is purely our activity. Thus understood, worship then becomes a means of self-justification or a cause of undue anxiety about whether we are doing it correctly or with sufficient sincerity. Affirming God’s activity in worship is therefore essential. Second, worship is sometimes reduced to sung praise directed to God, as we noted earlier. Technically, of course, all the actions of the assembly ascribe worth and honor to God, including the reading of Scriptures and preaching. For sure, we honor God when we listen to the Word and pattern our lives after it. Finally, we also need to remember that worship can be meant in a very broad sense as the whole life of devotion and activity directed toward God, as in I worship the God of our fathers (Acts 24:14). Thus Christian worship involves more than the Sunday assembly of Word and sacrament.

For many Christians, especially Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans, the word liturgy (from the Greek leitourgia) is used synonymously with worship service. They speak of the Sunday liturgy or going to the liturgy. The liturgical worship of these churches is marked by the use of officially-approved worship books and hymnals, lectionaries (appointed biblical readings for Sundays and other holy days), liturgical calendars, written rather than spontaneous prayers, and special clothing (vestments) for worship ministers. While many Christians find the predictability of liturgical worship with its set formulas and prayers beautiful, inspiring and reassuring, others find it dull, lifeless and uninspiring. For that reason, liturgy carries negative connotations for many Christians.

Yet all Christians can find positive meaning in this word. As noted previously, Christian worship, as liturgy, is done on behalf of the world. In the Sunday worship assembly, we gather as the world’s representatives, doing what the whole world should be doing and indeed will do when the kingdom of God revealed in Jesus Christ is fully and finally realized (cf. Rev. 5:11-14). Thus in worship, we fulfil our duty as God’s priestly people (1 Peter 2:5, 9). In many churches, this on behalf of the world aspect is realized when intentional prayers (the prayers of intercession/pastoral prayer/prayers of the people) are offered for persons and situations outside of the worshiping community, e.g., earthquake victims in Haiti, refugees in Somalia, environments and economies destroyed by the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. To say that our worship is liturgy is to imply that we are servants of both God and the world, and that we live in the ultimate hope of the whole world joining us in our worship. Liturgy therefore has the positive value of pointing to our mission of making disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19).

Liturgy also has another positive aspect. When ancient Greeks performed their liturgy by serving in a legislature, each person was able to voice their concerns and otherwise contribute to the work of the body. Likewise, the liturgy of the New Testament involved the whole assembly of Christians (cf. Acts 13:2; 2 Cor. 9:12-13). Liturgy thus implies that authentic worship is highly participatory. Indeed, in many liturgical churches worship leadership centers not on one person but is shared among a number of leaders: presiding minister, lectors (readers of Bible lessons), cantor (song leader), acolytes (servers), communion assistants, and ushers. In such churches, even the assembly has an important role to play through its sung and spoken responses.

When done correctly, liturgical worship reflects the church’s identity as the body of Christ with its diversity of ministries and gifts (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:4), and symbolizes how we should be pooling our gifts for other cooperative ministries, whether Christian education, evangelism, or service to the poor. Because diversity of roles and shared leadership are at the heart of liturgical worship, the opposite of liturgical worship, as James White observes, is not free, spontaneous (unscripted) worship, but worship that has little congregational participation.⁶ Liturgy, therefore, is a good word! Accordingly, all Christian worshiping communities, regardless of the style of worship they employ, would be well advised to appropriate the behaviors and practices implied by this word.

For other Protestants, the word service (following the biblical usage) is the main word used in reference to worship, e.g., the Sunday worship service, attending the service, a funeral service. Implied is the belief that in worship we serve God by rendering the honor and praise that is God’s due. The German for worship service—der Gottesdienst—carries interesting connotations. Literally translated the service of God, it suggests not only that we serve God, but that God serves us. Indeed, as we will see in the following chapter, when the Scriptures are read and expounded in preaching, God speaks to our neediness and brokenness and offers forgiveness, life, and hope. When the assembly gives thanks for bread and cup in the name of Jesus and receives them in faith, God uses these earthly things to draw near to us in love. Mercifully, God makes our service God’s own service. If the idea of God serving us seems impious, we might remember Jesus’ words about the Son of Man coming to serve (Mark 10:45), as well as his servant action of washing his disciples’ feet (John 13:2-5).

Why Do We Worship?

So far we have considered the essence of worship—listening and responding to God. Knowing what worship is, however, does not necessarily explain why we do it. Yet the answer to this question is rather complex. To begin with, God has made us to be worshipers. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) expressed this idea very well in his Confessions:

GREAT art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and of Thy wisdom there is no end. And man [sic], being a part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee, man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that Thou resistest the proud—yet man, this part of Thy creation, desires to praise Thee. Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.⁷

And certainly, God enables us to worship: [God] put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God (Ps. 40:3)—that is to say, the ability to reach out to God in prayer, praise and thanksgiving comes from God. Along these lines, Paul affirms that the Holy Spirit motivates one to confess the Lordship of Jesus (1 Cor. 12:3) and helps to form our prayers (Rom. 8:26). In a sense, we worship by the will of God.

But even more fundamentally than these reasons, we worship because we need to hear the saving gospel. As fallen creatures we are alienated from God (Col. 1:21) and subject to God’s wrath (Rom. 1:18). The anxiety of living under God’s condemnation can be an overwhelming burden. Thus, in worship, we gather around Scriptures and sacrament so that God’s Word might expose our sin and offer God’s reconciling forgiveness. Worship therefore testifies to both our deep spiritual need and to our finding life and transformation through the Word of God that imbues our worship.

Worship: A Communal Activity

One final point in our explanation of the meaning and nature of worship needs clarification. Having considered the what and the why of worship, it is necessary to consider the who of worship. Sometimes when one participates in a worship service, the language used by leaders suggests that worship is essentially something that happens within the hearts and minds of individuals, as when we are urged to feel the presence of God, or when we are asked to individually examine our hearts and minds and make confession to God. One gets the sense that worship is essentially an individual activity that just happens to take place within a group! For sure, God’s presence in worship engages each and every person, and the individual’s response to God in worship will be unique. But in this day of rampant individualism, when person tends to be understood solely in terms of individual wants, desires and aspirations, and less in terms of one’s relationship to others (as child, parent, co-worker, fellow-citizen), we need to remind ourselves that Sunday worship is a communal activity.

The Hebrew Scriptures attest to the communal nature of worship. On the Sabbath, the people of Israel were to gather together in a holy convocation, that is, a worship assembly (Lev. 23:3). The yearly festivals of Passover (Ex. 12:1-13:16), the Feast of Weeks (Lev. 23:15-21), and