Theses on Worship--Part 2

It's easy to wax nostalgic about "the good old days." I found this photo of a church at a website about Hobgood, North Carolina. It made me wonder what kind of worship took place here. What stories could this church tell? It also reminds me how I yearn for the "good old days" of my old church. Despite its shortcomings, it had a worship service that I miss terribly.

In my continuing study of worship, I turn again to Jim Jordan's book, Theses on Worship. Here are Jordan's first four thoughts on the matter of Biblical and proper practices for the Sunday morning worship service.

#1 God's House is a House of Prayer
The central feature of Sunday morning should be worship. Evangelism, entertainment, concert performance, and intensive instruction are all good for the church; they just need to be focused on at other times. "Worship is prayer focused on the person(s) of God."

#2 The Faithful Worship of the True God Does Not Come Naturally to Fallen Man
True covenant-renewal worship must be learned. "Anything that is good and wonderful takes effort, and our worship is not something we do sloppily..."

#3 Worship is a Command Performance
It is done at His command, for Him.

#4 Worship is Family Time
By this, Jordan means that it should be geared for Christians, and he even goes so far as to say that you don't need a "word to the lost." He recommends inviting unbelievers to other occasions in the life of the church. Although it may sound a bit harsh, I can see his point. We visited a church this fall that was obviously "seeker friendly." They used sound liturgy, but they kept apologizing for it and going overboard to explain why they used it. I wanted to yell out, "If it's important enough for you to use it, then just use it!" If someone is truly "seeking" and they come upon a meaty church service that's "hard to understand," perhaps they will be motivated to ask questions, pray, and search out what everything means. Isn't this far better than watering down the worship of God? I would never exclude an unbeliever from the Sunday morning worship, but when I go to church, I want to be fed meat, not pablum.

Jordan also considers all the Christian books on the market dealing with marriage and family. He says, "The first family is the Church. Join a Church that gives you bread and wine each week, that sings the Psalter, that teaches the whole Bible seriously, and has a decent community life. That is the most important thing you can do to build up our marriage and family."

What do you think?