Mark 2: Active in the Worship and Fellowship of the Church

The following is the second installment in a 10-part series on the 10 Marks of a Mature Anglican Christian.

The Second Mark: A Mature Anglican Christian is active in the worship and fellowship of the Church.

In order to have a solid, robust understanding of what this mark means, it is very important to have an adequate, Biblical understanding of what worship really means.  In our current culture, I believe many churches in general have become nothing more than entertainment complexes.  Let’s take a look at this more close.

The word worship is merely a contraction of the word “worthship.”  In our worship, it is simply a display of how much God is worth to us.  Soren Kierkegaard has a great analogy that I believe still rings true today.  In most churches on a Sunday morning, the pastor and the praise team are the performers, and the people are the audience.  They are there to be entertained, and when the “worship” loses its entertainment value, the people leave.  For Kierkegaard, worship was something very different.  The clergy and the musicians are directors, the people in the pews are the actors, and God is the audience.  We as Christian disciples should ask the very important question that places this in context: are we seeking worship that is pleasing to us, or are we seeking worship that is pleasing to God?

One of my favorite Scripture verses comes from the Psalm 96:6-9 (BCP 726).

6              Oh, the majesty and magnificence of his presence! *

Oh, the power and the splendor of his sanctuary!

7              Ascribe to the Lord, you families of the peoples; *

ascribe to the Lord honor and power.

8              Ascribe to the Lord the honor due his Name; *

bring offerings and come into his courts.

9              Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; *

let the whole earth tremble before him.

I want to focus in for a moment specifically on verse 9.  The Psalmist gives us two attributes that must be present in our worship, beauty and holiness.  Worshipping in beauty means that there should be an aesthetic quality to our worship that draws our attention upward toward God, instead of downward toward earth.  We accomplish this, only by God’s Grace, by treating our worship with seriousness, reverence, and a sense of the importance that should be placed on worship.  Worship should have a transcendent quality that makes us feel like we just experienced a foretaste of heaven.

Worshipping in holiness means that our worship should achieve something different than what the world is offering.  The theological definition of “holy” is “set apart.”  Anything that is holy should be different in that it should point people away from a sinful, suffering world and toward a holy God who is a retreat, a sanctuary, from the world.  In short, our worship should be different from what the world is offering.

This Scripture from Psalm 96, as well as the idea that our worship should be beautiful and holy, will be at the center of our discernment and our future plans as we follow the course God has in store for us at Christ the King Anglican Church.  May God always help us to keep our focus on Him, not only in our worship, but in everything that we do.