The heart of worship

As churches are beginning to reopen after the Corona virus lockdown, one of the things which makes lots of us very sad is that we're not allowed to sing together as part of our communal worship.  It's a sensible precaution to help prevent potential infections within our congregations, but many might be wondering, 'How can we worship without music?'  For many Christians, 'a time of worship' means a period in a service which is given over to singing praises to God.

I love singing, and I find that the words of many of the songs and hymns we sing express my praises and prayers so much more eloquently than I ever could.  Words set to music tend to stick in our heads much more than words without music, so what we sing is important because that's the way our congregations learn theology.  It will be difficult to gather for our Church services over the coming weeks without expressing our worship through singing together.

BUT ask yourself, as Mike Pilavachi asked his congregation in Watford more than 20 years ago, "When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?"  We don't come to church primarily for our own satisfaction, for our own comfort, for our own enjoyment, for entertainment (although we might well find all those things in church).  Primarily, we come to join our Christian family in worshipping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; in the words of Common Worship (copyright © The Archbishop's Council, 2000) 'Morning Prayer on Sunday':

to offer our praise and thanksgiving,
to hear and receive God's holy word,
to pray for the needs of the world,
and to seek the forgiveness of our sins,
that by the power of the Holy Spirit
we may give ourselves to the service of God.

I spent some time with my church a few years ago, thinking about our own worship services.  We started out thinking about what worship is, and we learned the following:

• We can't worship God if we don't know him personally, because our worship is our response for all he's done for us - he's made himself known to us and rescued us from our own rebellion against him.
• Our response is made both in the rituals in which we participate (congregational worship), and in our behaviour (our obedience to the Lord's commands about how we should live our lives).  
• In Hebrew, the same word means both 'service' (behaviour) and 'worship' (ritual).  So worship is what we do with our whole lives in thanksgiving to God for his love and concern for us.
• In the New Testament, worship means to believe the good news about Jesus Christ; to respond by serving him with all that we are and all that we have; and to do all this in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Just as the OT people of God in Malachi's day were robbing God by not bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse (Malachi 3:8-10), so we rob God if we worship only with our mouths, and not with our hearts and minds and lives; if we treat what happens in church as a performance; or if we think that somehow our rituals can earn his favour. 

Coming back to Mike Pilavachi's congregation in Watford in the late 1990s . . . At the time, the musicians there were on a creative high, writing songs which were sung in many other churches.  They had a great band, fantastic equipment, and church services sounded amazing.  But something was missing, and Pilavachi decided that for a season, they would gather without a band, sound system, worship songs . . . .

The 'worship leader' (ie the person who led the music) at Pilavachi's church was Matt Redman.  As he struggled with his own loss of role, he says,

That made me ask some questions.  What are my motives when I'm up there on the stage?  Am I doing this as a service, or am I trying to build my own little thing?  It was a great moment for me, as a musician and as a worshipper, to refocus . . . 

As part of his response to all this, Redman wrote the song, The heart of worship.  According to this article from Crosswalk, he remembers writing the song quickly in his bedroom, simply as his personal, subjective response to what he was learning about worship.  (Echoes of Vikki Cook writing the tune Before the throne for her own personal use - see previous post).  But when Redman shared the song with Mike Pilavachi, he suggested making a few adjustments to the lyrics so that any member of the church could relate to it.  Not long afterwards, it was recorded as the title track of Redman's album, The Heart of Worship, released in 1999.  It has since become very well known, sung in churches around the world.  Covers have been recorded by a number of other artists.   In the Crosswalk article, Redman says, "It nearly didn't go any further than my bedroom.  But I love that . . ."

You can watch a lyric video here.

As well as the article from Crosswalk linked above, I read the following in preparing this post: Heart of Worship: The Story Behind The Song; The Heart of Worship story behind the song and reflections on listening to 20 years of modern worship; The story behind the song 'Heart of Worship'