The Expression and Formation of Our Love

"Worship is not only something coming out of us through expression, 
it is also something being formed into us.  
There is an expectation in the Bible that we need to be formed 
into a people who can worship."

This quote comes from the worship curriculum which we used in my Sunday School class on music and worship. It was  created by Issac Wardell , the Director of Worship Arts at Trinity Presbyterian in Charlottesville, VA and director of Bifrost Arts. The quote gets to the heart of some of our misconceptions about corporate worship. It is easy to think that everything before the sermon (often mis-labelled itself as "the worship") is only about our expression to God, our offering of praise and adoration. It is easy to reduce our categories to the singing time and the teaching time, but corporate worship should be so much more. 

We teach our children to say thank you, often with great difficulty. Yet, our hope is that with each repetition their inclination toward gratitude and an awareness of others is growing. Through the work of the Holy Spirit they grow more appreciative and may say "thank you" without prompting. They may even eventually mean it! 

Similarly, our sense of our gospel identity is informed by our corporate practices. God calls us to worship and we are reminded that we would not be seeking him apart from his initiating love. We confess our sins and are reassured of forgiveness through Jesus, reminding us that the life of the believer is one of perpetual gospel repentance. We are quick to forget and quick to turn away, but the Lord pursues us relentlessly. 

The act of reading, singing, praying, and hearing together is a transforming practice. Will our prayers, confessions, readings, and singing always be heartfelt? Absolutely not. But we do know  "that he who began a good work in [us] will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6).

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“Over time, cultivating the formative aspect of worship will cultivate in us patience and trust in the Holy Spirit’s work. It will free us from frustration and despair when we find that worship is not a rapturous emotional experience every single week. Instead, we can declare together, “God was present, I heard his word, and I know that he is at work in me.” This is not an affective experience on one given Sunday; it is a lifetime of Sundays.”