He is Sufficient

HT: ECC Worship Blog

Craig A. Satterlee has written an article on Characteristics of Christian Worship for The Alban Institute, evidently an agent for change in American congregational life.

Christians and congregations bring a host of assumptions about what constitutes Christian worship with them to the service. Rather than allowing these assumptions to catch us in conversation about “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong” worship, we can testify to the belief that “at all times and at all places the Holy Spirit helps us to pray” (Rom. 8:26). Liturgical historian James F. White’s seven “categories” for analyzing Christian worship—people, piety, time, place, prayer, preaching, and music—can help congregations talk about worship without getting caught in conversation about individual preferences. While these seven elements of a worship service certainly do not exhaust all possibilities, they provide a manageable set of reference points with which to organize conversation about worship.

Satterlee cites White’s scheme that “people stand at the center of the seven categories and relate to both the circumstances of worship (piety, time, and place) and the acts of worship (prayer, preaching, music). People are key to understanding worship.”

After summarizing White’s categories, Satterlee goes on to conclude:

These characteristics of Christian worship can help congregations move beyond matters of preference, taste, and correctness to discuss their worship more objectively, in order to ask the more significant questions: What does your congregation’s worship communicate about God, faith, the church, and the world? Is this, in fact, what you intend to proclaim?

Funny, I thought that worship was supposed to be an outpouring to God, not about God… Worship about God makes the mode of worship the focus, not God. If the methods of worship are the focus, then you’ve set up an idol.