Why Do We Worship?

Before all else, worship is about glorifying God. That is the purpose of worship and the reason we exist as human beings. For those who lead worship musically and liturgically our first task is to lead the congregations praise and verbalize our glorification of God.  Worship is also a response to God and an expression of our love for God and gratitude for all God has done. So, the worship leader also leads the congregations song, which is an expression of their response to God. 

The first task of the worship leader is to glorify God. The word “worship” comes from the word ‘worth-ship’ and means literally to give someone or something worth or value.  The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship of God 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.”(p. 17) Because of this our question in worship changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ Did this service express the worthiness of God and find its center in the sufficiency of Christ? ’ 

1. To Glorify God

And as we change our question we realize that we as worship leaders have a different task. Our task is not to make people feel good, to impact them, or to deliver them an encounter with God. That is God’s task through the Holy Spirit. Our task is to glorify God and share the story of God’s redemptive work in the world through Jesus Christ. It is not enough just to talk about and honor ‘God’. Very religion honors some version of ‘God’. Similarly, it is not our task to solely focus on ‘being good people’, because all religions focus on morality.  Our Christian worship gains its form and uniqueness in God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  As J.J Von Allen writes: “Christian worship is not just about honoring God but what God has done through Jesus Christ. Our worship begins and ends with Christ and recapitulates salvation history.” 

As worship leaders we ‘recapitulate salvation history’ every week by making sure that the gospel is sung through our worship songs. Ask yourselves this: If a non-Christian who had never stepped into a church before came to our service, how much of the gospel would they understand through the worship time…not just the sermon, but the songs we sing, the ways we act, and all the other elements of worship? So we need to ask the question regularly of how we are doing at helping people orient their lives on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and view their lives through the lens of Christ

2. To Lead the Congregations Song

The second task of worship leaders has to do with leading the congregation’s song. As worship leaders we are not just giving the congregation a religious performance but we are leading them into an expression of their own praise and worship through song, prayer, and liturgy.  As worship leaders, we are called to be the ‘pied pipers’ who lead in such a way that it allows others to sing and engage with God in worship. 

All worship leaders have looked out at the congregation at times and noticed that nobody seems to be singing with you or following you, and more than that, some seem to be scowling. This is not just a problem in our church but in all churches. John Bell, a hymn writer and leader of the Iona Community in Scotland writes: “one in four people in many Western Countries don’t sing because they believe they can’t. That belief is inevitably grounded in some comment made to them when they were young. And the same thing happens with many church congregations.” (The Singing Thing Too, p.13)

Because so few people feel empowered to sing or responsively express their praise, our task as worship leaders is to help our congregation and to alleviate any possible barriers to people offering their praises to God. We do this by planning well, practicing well with the band, and leading the congregation well in worship.  John Bell writes, “In worship God expects every voice to play a part,” which means that God wants our congregations to be more than spectators in worship and us as leaders to be more than performers. It is our job as worship leaders to allow people to find their voice in worship and give them space to express their whole lives to God. And as our congregations begin to do that, they will find that “though worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, 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.” (Graham Kendrick)