For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Red Online Worship History Course with Dan Wilt
We’ve developed this church perspective that worship = music. While music and singing are a huge part of worship expression, worship is far more than music. It’s something that I am discovering both in the Bible and in looking at the history of worship expression in churches across time. Two of those expressions that we should revisit are those of prayer and scripture.
The worship languages of prayer and Scripture have always been important to me, and I have been privileged to be a part of churches that have valued those things, even if maybe not to the point of the Church of the past. These languages played a huge role in the life of the early church, both corporately and individually. For them, life drove prayer.
I was greatly challenged as I read this past week about how the languages of prayer and scripture were taken out of the hands of the people with the development of the “prayer professional” in the middle ages. This person did the praying on behalf of the people instead of leading and equipping the people to pray. During that same time, the Scriptures were inaccessible to the common man. We know that these were some of the factors that contributed to the Reformation as people sought to reclaim their role as public worshippers ((Dan Wilt, “Essentials In Worship History: The Language of Prayer” (www.essentialscourse.com), 16.)).
Could there be some similar patterns developing in some contemporary worship expressions? At my church, we’ve tried to open things up by having times (although not every week) where those needing prayer have people gather around them and pray during the service. We try and encourage times for gathering of prayer outside of the corporate gathering. We’ll have other leaders or worship team members lead out in prayer. But still the bulk of auditory prayer expression happens from a smaller group of people/leaders.
I’ve often tried to point people to the fact that many of the songs we sing can be expressed as prayers to God. Some songs obviously lend themselves more to an application of corporate prayer expression than others. That’s why I really resonated with the statement “Prayer is a form of singing without words.” ((Dan Wilt, “Essentials In Worship History: The Language of Prayer” (www.essentialscourse.com), 15.)) The other side of the coin is a quote from Charlie Hall, “Our worship songs are prayers wrapped in melody.” However, it seems that many people have developed perspectives that segregate the different elements of our corporate gatherings, so it’s hard for them to see the connection of singing and prayer and the Word.
The incorporation of Scripture has always been important. The Bible clearly lifts up the value of exposing ourselves to all the truths and stories of Scripture. While we usually have a particular focus of Scripture for a day, supplementing that with complimentary Scriptures from other sections of the Bible helps people have a broader perspective of the topic. I’ll often put Scriptures up on the screen during instrumental sections of songs to help people connect what we are singing with the Bible. We’ll use Scriptures for pre-service reflection, calls to worship, as transition points, in times of confession, in times of response, and as benedictions. We teach from both the Old and New Testament, and encourage people to follow along in their Bibles. At times we will do corporate readings, but largely Scripture is read aloud by the leaders of the service.
It’s challenging to think on these things. I don’t want to pat myself on the back because we are doing some things. There is definitely room to grow and explore the better weaving of these languages in to the fabric of the church corporately and individually.
I wonder, though, about the application of these things in a changing church culture. Is there a difference in the church of the past that seemed to be largely composed of people that were already committed to Christ and aware of the necessity of these things for successful daily living and our churches today which often contain a large number of people who haven’t committed, are checking it out, or just don’t know?
