PhotoCredit: believer9 on Flickr.com
When I was studying biblical interpretation in college, our professor enjoyed the exercise of forcing us to examine our presuppositions in light of what the Bible actually says… We described it as “Sacred Cow Tipping” and as a group of ministry students in a conservative, denominational college, we had lots of Sacred Cows… The truly interesting thing about Sacred Cow Tipping is that you rarely realize which of your beliefs are Sacred Cows until someone else points them out…
This is the first post in a series in which I want to create a discussion about our Sacred Cows in worship… Ideas that are deeply ingrained into our practice, but have little or no biblical basis…
Sacred Cow: Worship Style Matters…
I’ve have the opportunity to serve in a variety of churches with a variety of styles. Each one has had it’s own “scriptural” justification and each one has had it’s detractors… I do quite a lot of reading on the subject, surfing various blogs and trawling for fodder to feed my own and I have noticed a trend:
Everybody thinks their way is the right way and they can use the Bible to back it up…
This is easy to see when comparing Catholic liturgy to the worship of Pentecostals, for example. But even the ecumenicists have a firm belief that “nonsectarian” is the best way to go… with the emphasis on “God” instead of the polarizing practice of worshiping “Jesus.”
The bottom line is that every tradition believes that the forms or styles in worship really matter… a lot… to God. It is a core element of our denominational distinctiveness and it separates us in the same way that the first century Jews were separated from the Samaritans…
Our fathers worshiped God on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place we must worship is in Jerusalem… – Samaritan Woman to Jesus (John 4:19, The Bible)
You see, up to this point, Jewish Law had been the only way to approach God… God set it up that way. There are specific rules set out in Leviticus to define the forms for worship. The Jewish “claim” that Jerusalem was the only location for true worship was based on these rules…
BTW, these rules had already been called into question by the time Jesus came on the scene because the Jews had lost the Ark of the Covenant (the official seat of God’s presence)…
A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and truth… -Jesus’ response to the Samaritan Woman (John 4: 21. 23-24, The Bible)
The modern application is simple:
Whether you are in a mega-church or meeting in a house, whether you follow strict liturgical traditions or have a free-form service, whether you are focused on God’s presence or on the needs of seekers… the true worshipers are authentically inclined to God with their whole being…
Which is probably simpler than it sounds…
Ok… so let it begin…
