Redefining "Worship"

Can you 'worship' without music?

I don't mean when you're at the ocean appreciating God's majesty in His creation. Or having an intense quiet time where God speaks so clearly through His word.

Can you sit in church and "worship" if there's no music?

No organ prelude. No hymns. No choruses. No special offeratory.

I know some people who can't. People who wish the sermon was a 15 minute devotion so we could all get back to singing. Well, if we were honest, they'd really rather have no speaking aside from the narrative between songs.

Recently, our church took a music 'fast.' I have a lot of respect for leaders who are willing to take something as entrenched and 'important' as music and take it completely out of the service in recognition that its importance and place has gotten out of whack.

Pastor gave the congregation homework of coming to the service on Sunday with something to share. If you're part of a standard, conservative-type church, there isn't much opportunity to stand from your seat and speak to the entire fellowship. Yet that's what was going on in the earliest churches.

So where we'd normally have been "led" (or entertained) in song, people throughout the church rose to share a word that was meaningful to them this week by means of encouraging the body through their "Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs." It was different, but it was a huge blessing.

I'm not one to pitch the baby out with the bathwater, so I don't think we need to leave the piano vacant and the mic's turned off for good. But it was refreshing to be reminded that we are all to minister to one another, not just show up to watch the "professionals" do it.

What would you think if you showed up to church on a Sunday morning and there was no music? If the pastor asked you to minister to your fellow church-members by sharing something meaningful God showed you this week, would you have anything to say? What one aspect of church would you be unwilling to give up?


.