Getting from where we’re ‘at’ to where we’re ‘to.’

One of my favorite expressions from our time in the Maritimes is when someone would say, “Stay where you’re at until I come where you’re to.” This was rather strange language for my prairie ears, but it was a colorful way of expressing the reality of distance between two points. Last post we looked at the vision for congregational worship at CCC. This time, I’d like to explore how this foundation can help us move into the future in our worshipping lives together. The issue isn’t one of “what have we been doing wrong?” but one of “how can we take what we have been doing and make it even better?”

We are a diverse congregation, coming from many different Christian traditions – denominational and non-denominational. One unifying factor is that the majority of us come from churches in the free-church evangelical tradition. That is a pretty wide stream but it does have identifying characteristics that hold us together as far as what we expect in congregational worship (even though some of us come from more reserved backgrounds and some from more expressive ones). Most of us have practiced congregational worship in a style that dates back to 19th century revivalism. These were worship services that were expressly focused on proclaiming the gospel so that the unsaved would respond to the call to salvation. They were unapologetically evangelistic services. This was the era of the travelling evangelist and the evangelistic crusades or revival meetings. Churches gradually adopted this form of worship in their congregations and it has retained its preeminence all these years later. The revivalistic or evangelistic service was focused upon finding the lost which is definitely part of the church’s commission by Christ. There is more to worship, however, than evangelism and this is where the confusion is found. We have debated for years whether our worship services should be focused upon winning the lost or equipping the found. These two are mutually exclusive, but congregational worship needs to be more than an evangelistic revival service. If we depend upon getting the lost into earshot of the church in order for them to be saved, we’ve turned the Great Commission in its head and have not learned from the example of the earliest church.

I’m suggesting there is a basic difference between an evangelistic service and a regular congregational worship service. In the former we aim for people to respond to the gospel. In the latter, we aim for God’s people to be formed by the gospel. So worship must take the shape of the biblical story of redemption, simply expressed as: creation, fall, redemption and consummation. Congregational worship then begins by recognizing God as our Creator in his holiness and then recognizes our sinfulness in his presence before rejoicing in the gift of God’s salvation in Christ and then responding to the call on our lives as we await the return of Jesus. There is a rhythm and logic to this flow of worship that basically “re-presents” or “reenacts” the gospel. True worship shouldn’t only call us to salvation but also to respond to the many ways in which we may obediently respond to what God reveals of himself and his purposes. God not only saves us, but he satisfies us and sends us. Our worship needs to be big enough to engage all of that.

What remains for us to do is to find ways in which our worship services do greater justice to this full-bodied and glorious gospel. And this, with God’s help, we will do.