What is worship?
1/27/2014
What is worship?
Worship form the Heart
▫ Heart : the seat and center of the whole person, the core of personal character (thought, emotion, will, intuition, imagination); motives, desires, intentions
▫ Respond to God's glory and love with our entire being : feeling, intellect, body
▫ Joins inner reality with outward expression
The nee to Gather
- Individualism
- Rooted in community(cradle)
- Support personal disciplines
- Prayers of others
- The body of Christ
- Remember who and whose we are
- The Lord's table: a family of believers
- Rites and sacraments; the most fundamental of all christian practices
- The seasons of J 's life and the life of the early church
- A united front to overcome the corporate power of darkness, deception ,and destruction in this world
- Challenge: the physically disabled, homebound parishioners.
Keeping Sabbath
- Keep it holy: 'set apart' time to respond
- Sunday: "little Easter", the Lord's day
- Commanded to rest from ordinary labor and activity
- Relevant to contemporary life: need rest
- To free us inwardly for full-hearted worship
- Mini-Sabbaths, extended Sabbaths
Worship as Problem
- A source of frustration
- Passive recipients of the limited worship forms of particular churches and leaders
- People: bored, preoccupied, uninterested in visitors, eager to escape from fellowship -> feel unaccepted
- The preached word: meaningless, dull, exaggerated, a heavy does of ideology, preacher's personal view, endless
- anecdotes; speaks down, harangues, fails to connect to daily experiences -> feel weary
- No space for our prayers
- Non-sacramental tradition; Holy Communion
- Other sources of dissatisfaction
Practice for deepening worship
- Preparation: daily meditational, daily prayer; self-examination; weekly bible study with the same passage for sermon
- During worship : come 10' early; pray for worship; be prepared to hear God speak; listen to the words of hymns and Psalm; "Amen" in prayers; pray silently; bring individual concerns; freedom to respond; simple gestures; reflect symbols of faith.
- Beyond worship: talk your experiences and suggestions; feedback
For worship leaders
The overall integrity of the service is your responsibility
Scripture reading
The place of our physical senses
How your people participate physically
Sung Psalm responses, simple chants
Experience worship when leading it: ask S.O. …
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