Thinking Theologically 3: Who Is The Audience?
READ: Psalm 96:4-10
DISCUSS:
1. Think about the last concert you went to. What make it great? What made it terrible? Think about the last worship service you attended and ask the same questions.
2. What is the danger in evaluating worship services based on our personal preferences?
3. How do you view ‘performance’ in worship? Does it feel different to play music in church and to play in a bar or club? What is that difference?
4. Have you been in churches where you have felt that worship is primarily about performance? Describe your experience. Did it detract from worship? How?
5. According to our passage, who is the audience of our worship? Who, then, are the performers? How does this change our understanding of performance in worship?
REFLECT:
Think back on a favorite concert/opera/performance that you have seen in the past year. What made it amazing for you? Was it the singers beautiful voice, the orchestra or the bands musical versatility and excellence, the well crafted songs or stage presentation? Now think back on one of the worst performances you have ever heard. What made it terrible? What did you talk about with your friends/family afterwards?
Just as with a concert or performance we find ourselves making the same types of observations about our worship services. Observations like: ‘the choir sounded amazing!’, ‘the sermon was boring’, ‘I didn’t like that song the praise band played’, ‘the service was too long/too short’, etc… These often become the main topics of conversation after church, and while this is not necessarily wrong or bad, it could lead us into danger if we are not careful.
The danger is this: to miss who the audience of worship is. If we go to a concert or a performance then we are the audience: we have paid our money and we want to be entertained. The experience is based on us, the consumer. But when we come to church the audience is actually not us at all, but GOD. We have come to praise God and give our lives to the creator of all things, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 96:6-8: “O nations of the world recognize the Lord; recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong. Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in all His holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him. Tell all the nations, “The Lord reigns!” The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly.”
The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship throughout the week is to give God the glory He deserves. As Ralph Martin writes in his great book on worship, “The Worship of God”: “Worshippers embark on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy their needs or to make them feel better or to minister to their aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself.”
So our question changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ This changes everything: our worship planning and practicing, the ways we play our instruments, sing, and act in worship, and ways we approach worship in general.
And as we focus on God we find something wonderful happening….we experience God’s Grace and goodness. Worship leader Graham Kendrick writes: “Worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, though it is marvelous to discover that in giving God pleasure, we ourselves enter into what can become our richest and most wholesome experience in life.” May we all experience the wonder of God’s Grace as we focus on Him in worship!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Chron 16:28-30, Psalm 29:1-4, Philippians 2:9-11, Revelation 5:11-14, 7:9
REFERENCES (for further reading)
"The Worship of God", by Ralph Martin
"A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman
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