Are Mission and Worship the same?
I really enjoyed reading Julie Clawson’s reflections on the Missional Church and Worship, posted on her blog last week.
I think she’s spot on that there has to be something deeper to our worship than just the “cultural habits” of whatever style of worship music happens to be cool or whatever methods of prayer or devotion are currently in fashion.
I love it in Romans 12:1, when Paul urges us to make our live worshipful by giving ourselves as “living sacrifices”. The Greek (“latreia“) for the word Paul uses for worship was the same word used in Greek to decide the temple worship or priestly service. So Paul perhaps means something like this: “Get beyond worship services and private moments of devotion – and make your life into an incredible, never-ending worship service!”
Here’s some of what Julie writes about worship:
Worship cannot be confined to a box – be that the box of evangelical devotions or praise music or reformed liturgy or Catholic Mass. And following the biblical mandate to worship God through seeking justice isn’t in opposition to, but is instead part of personal piety and devotion to God. We are loving God, celebrating God’s greatness, and reflecting God’s glory by participating in the acts of service we are instructed to do. It isn’t that I seek justice some days and worship on others – it is all worship. How I meditate on God’s word and how I seek justice for the oppressed will of course look different than how others do it – but we are all still worshiping.
Worship is much bigger than ourselves, and I think to truly be a missional church we need to get over ourselves and our allegiances to cultural habits and start integrating what God said he wants from our worship into what we do.
Check out her reflections here.
