These are a few notes I took from Worship by the Book by Mark Ashton, R. Kent Hughes, and Tim Keller. Of course, Calvin wrote so prolifically that this would only be scratching the surface, if that, but it gives you a general idea.
Calvin didn’t have it all right, but there is some ‘good’ material if you are willing to take the plunge into his writings.
Simplicity
A simplicity of form and language in corporate worship should be highly valued over the present-day practices of spectacles and sentimentality in corporate worship. spectacle–on the one hand. To design a spectacle of your corporate worship setting both represents and teaches a fervent lack of trust and confidence in God’s gracious actions. No better reflection of this can be found in the teachings of 1 Ki. 18:20-40 (the prophets of Baal v. the God of Elijah). So, if you are creating a spectacle in your corporate worship times, the following questions need to be considered:
- Does God need a great performance before He will give us His favor…?
Principle. Corporate worship should never be mediocre, but make every effort to lack ostentation in ceremony, music, and architecture. Ostentation works directly on the emotions of individuals, rather than teaching and exposing individuals to trust God’s Spirit to bring His Truth to abide within our beliefs.
Sentimentality
A dignity in representation; that being, in an effort to be non pretentious, many churches produce a service with a deliberate lack of concern for the quality of music, reading, singing, and speaking. As a result of the mediocrity and informality, the sense of awe and being one should experience from being in the presence of a Holy God has been removed.
Principle. Corporate worship should never be mediocre. Sentimental worship leading tells people how they ought to feel about God instead of telling them about God. Sentimentality, therefore, uses emotions to resemble and signify God’s Presence, when the role of a worship leader is to teach His Truth as the very Truth worth trusting about God’s Nature.
Transcendence
The Scriptural goal of gathered worship is to bring people face to face with God. It not merely enough that people were to learn information about God, but that they would truly hear God speak and know His Presence experientially and uniquely while engaged in corporate worship.
- As such, the head and heart of every individual should be coherently bound up in the act of worship, as a good affection toward God is not a thing dead and brutish, but a lively movement proceeding from the Holy Spirit when the heart is rightly touched and the understanding is enlightened.
The sense of transcendence, then, is dependent on the quality of speaking, reading, praying, and singing. Sloppiness drains the vertical dimension out of gathered music immediately.
- Mediocre music and language can only provide a horizontal reference of God. Our hearts may be warmed by the sincerity of the singer or speaker, but excellence has a vertical reference, lifting the heart toward transcendence.
Transcendence is also found with simplicity along with the demeanor and heart attitude of those leading in the gathered worship.
Principle. Transcendence is served best to a congregation when both delight and awe are evident in the leaders’ demeanor and heart. It is then that the congregation may sense they are being ushered into God’s Presence; though, never through sentimentality. Only when there is a profound awareness of the holiness of God and of the costliness of the sacrifice He provided all mankind will there be a joyful awe that is both warm and forceful at once.
Gospel Reenactment
The entire worship service should be seen–not as a performance for God by the celebrants–but, as a rhythm of receiving God’s Word of Grace and then responding in grateful praise.
- We, as His children, do not perform duties, anxiously and wearily hoping that some day we will deserve to enter His Kingdom and family. May it be not so! Rather, we hear the Word of our acceptance now; and, transformed by that understanding, we respond with a life of thankful joy (Rom.5:1-4).
- As such, the order of service should reflect the order of worship found throughout the NT Scriptures:
- a hearing of the gospel in the first half of the service––the Service of the Word, and
- the response of grateful joy in the second half of the service)––the Service of the Table, where we partake of the Eucharist in remembrance of His Sacrifice on our behalf.
Principle. If the service of worship aims primarily at evangelism, it will bore the saints. If it aims primarily at education, it will confuse the unbelievers. But, if it aims at praising the God who saves by Grace, it will both instruct insiders and challenge outsiders (e.g., Doxology Evangelism).
True Worship Breeds Community
1 Pe. 2 not only tells us that we are to worship before the nations, but it also provokes us to declare His praises as a chosen people . . . a holy nation (v. 9). As such, true worship is the key to forging strong identity without the separatism and legalism that marks so many sects. The test of real worship then becomes community building. If the preaching and music simply draw a crowd of people who have nothing to with one another the rest of the week, worship leaders have created spectacle through sentimentality, and not a worshipping community.
Principle. The acid test of a heart with its affections truly raised toward God (i.e., the true meaning of worship) is love toward one’s neighbor, and working for the common good (i.e., God) in society. So, corporate worship is only true and effective when it leads us to the all of life; that is, worship of doing justice and living generously (Heb. 13:16). And, our actions in gathered, corporate worship will strongly influence our actions in scattered, out in the world worship.