I'm undecided. Is worship (in that formal sense of singing) supposed to be a. the congregation praising God, or b. the congregation being led to an experience--an encounter--with God.
Are both options mutually exclusive; in other words, can worship be both about praising God and about encountering God. One may counter: how could they possibly be exclusive? I'll explain. If your primary focus is to praise God, then the act of praise does not necessarily mean one in any way actually encounters God. Praising in no way guarantees, nor presupposes, an encouter with the Holy (yay, go Otto). Whereas, if your primary focus is to encounter God (as Otto would put it, to encounter the numinous), then that also does not require one to be praising.
But, having said this, does that mean that if your focus is to praise God then having an encouter with God is not an issue. And vice versa, if your focus is to encouter God then praising God is not an issue.
The logic is a bit fuddled, I admit, but I think the problem remains.
What is worship ultimately about: me or God?
Thesis...antithesis...now time for a creative synthesis.
By the way, I have see-sawed between both sides of the fence over the years.
-Kev
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Our contemporary view of worship for the longest time has been viewed with drums, guitars, and to some points lyres and tamberines. But my belief that the act of worship should be taken from how the people of the day looked at it.
The mention of worship usually invovled people who had after great encouter with God. We hear of hear kings, nations coming to their knees to worship God after God delievered them from the hands of their enemies.
Worship in the text is praise, but praise, not just any praise, but praise for God doing something unimaginable, something out of the natural order of things.
Of course, today we rarely hear of God striking down our numerious enemies. But the question is, hasn't God already done us something that struck down our one true enemy?
Worship is more of the acknowledgement of God's act thru Jesus. Is it really the job of worship leader to lead someone into the heart of worship? I believe only partially. You can't call someone to worship if one doesn't recognize the act of the one who saved. Therefore, one must first recgonize his/her encouter with God, before being lead to prasing God.
Worship is about God, because is an acknowledgement of his works, his deeds. It can help someone to remember that God's faithfulness and works in their lives, but one shouldn't expect worship to be "THE ENCOUNTER", because the encounter has already occured, and that enconter is almost 2000 years ago.
Post a Comment