Worship begins and ends with God. When we worship we are participating in the activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christian worship is a response to who God is and what God has done.
This means that the order of operations is a key aspect of what makes worship Christian. We worship because of what God has revealed in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Our worship services are essentially gatherings of responsive participation, in which we acknowledge that our individual stories begin and end in God’s own story. This God-moves-first orientation is evident in the way Christians celebrate the sacraments. For instance, Holy Communion is also called "eucharist," which comes from the Greek for "thanksgiving." At its core, this reflects an attitude of grateful response. By coming to the Table after the Word is read and preached, Christians give thanks for what they received -- that is, heard -- from God. Baptism is also a response to what Jesus already did; it is an invitation to join in the
Son’s Spirit-enabled relationship with the Father. All "practical" aspects of worship services -- which songs to sing, who leads the prayers, what time of day to gather -- are a part of our responsive participation in the life that God has invited us to join.
Christian worship not only follows God's initiative -- it is only possible because of God's power. We do not offer our worship from our own human capacity or willingness. The scriptures say that the ascended Christ actually intercedes for us like a priest, making our worship possible, allowing us to participate in the Father-Son relationship (
Hebrews 4:14-16). Likewise, the Holy Spirit actually helps us to pray, giving us the very power to worship in the first place (
Romans 8:26-27). This means that Christian worship builds on itself as it moves in more than one direction: God’s presence and love is showered on us, which we experience most keenly by hearing the Word and participating in the sacraments. These very experiences tune our hearts, helping us to see even more clearly the work of God in the world that is the very basis of our gratitude. As John Wesley put it, worship is a means of grace -- both a means and an end. By responding in faithful and meaningful ways, worshipers grow ever more aware of who God is and what God is doing in their midst. That makes the response even more powerful, which in turn helps us understand God's story even more. And on it goes, world without end.
Since the church has been worshipping for a very long time, with certain responses agreed upon through extensive collaboration (such as the
Apostles Creed), the church's worship needs to be rooted in its own historical traditions. Yet even within that rootedness, the church is called to worship using forms that are meaningful and sensible to believers and non-believers (
1 Corinthians 14:22-26). This requires Christian worship to balance constancy with diversity -- tradition must be enfleshed within various cultural expressions that make sense in a given place. With each church called to proclaim the Word, pray, and sing with understanding, this means that the church of every people, tribe, nation, and race must necessarily be diverse in its expressions. Christian worship, therefore, acknowledges that Christ is Lord of all nations and cultures, that the kingdom of God includes those from all earthly kingdoms (
Col 1:17;
Rev 7:9).
