What is Worship?

True worship

Traditionally, the church has called the whole time of its gathering a “worship service” and not just the singing portion? Why?


True worship is always a response to God’s revelation of Himself. For example, preaching the Word (and the “Amens” that go with it) is as much a part of worship as singing. Partaking in the Lord’s supper is a response to Christ’s “Do this in remembrance of me,” and therefore worship.


Worship is aimed at shaping us… changing our desires, so that are hearts are oriented toward God. Worship is an essential practice for disciple-making for it forms us into the image of Christ.


The truth is, we are all worshipers. Some of us just worship different things. Worship is that part of our discipleship intended to train our hearts to love God.

Gathering for worship

Our gathered worship rewrites the story by which we imagine our lives. On Sundays, when we all gather, it is a unique and special time to worship. Worship can also take place as we meet with one another and when we serve our neighbors across the city. Worship is a community experience. We encourage one another in the faith while we worship.


Even when we pray or read scripture by ourselves, we are to do these practices as a part of the church. Jesus teaches us how to pray to “our” Father about “our” bread and “our sins.”. The “word of Christ” is to “dwell in us richly” so that we might speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.


The Church is not a building or an event, or an individual. We are to be a worshipping community that follows Jesus together and becomes more like Him.


Our gathered worship rewrites the story by which we imagine our lives. Our Sunday service is designed to tell a story.


We are constantly examining our church service with questions like, “How does this practice form us?” “Is it shaping us differently than our culture?” “Is it producing lives which bear witness to the in-breaking reign of Christ?”

  • The Call to Worship

    Reminds us that it is God who calls us out of the world to worship Him. Therefore, we use Scripture itself from places that bid us come and worship. He gathers us from the fields of harvest where we labor all week, where we experience fellowship with one another, and worship God.

  • Singing together

    We proclaim the praises of God, and the truths of what God has done for us, both to Him and to one another. It builds our faith as we hear one another singing.

  • Congregational Prayer

    We lift our voices in unison to pray, we are learning how to pray biblically centered prayers in unison and even teaching one another how to pray.

  • Call and Response

    When we do these, we are largely using the Psalms, the prayer book of Scripture, as it was intended to be used. We hear and we respond… which trains us when we hear God’s word to want to respond! Even the opening declarations of worship in Revelation 1, as we saw, are written as call and response… The first call ending with, “Yes,” and the second with, “Yes, Amen!”

  • Giving

    We give in order to renounce the story that money is the supplier of what we need. We worship God and not mammon, and we renounce the story that says our net worth is defined by our bank accounts and worldly assets.

  • Preaching

    When God’s word is being declared, we actively engage and respond with affirmation (Amen) as a way of reminding ourselves that God’s word is the food we ultimately need. In our affirmations, we encourage others to give heed to it. The very practice itself is a visual representation of the fact that our own reason is insufficient, and we need God’s word from our brother or sister, from outside ourselves, in order to know and be reminded of the true story of the world.

  • The Lord’s Supper.

    We partake of the elements reminding ourselves of the food that truly satisfies the longing of our souls, and remembering the kind of King we have, one who gave Himself for us. This, of course, tells us a lot about what the nature of His kingdom is (and is not).

  • Benediction.

    We end with a blessing from God as he sends us back into the harvest fields to live as His image-bearers (representatives of His kingdom) in the world, acting as a holy priesthood, mediating God’s word and blessing to the world, and interceding on their behalf. When God commissioned Adam and Eve to subdue the earth as his image-bearers, he began by blessing them. He sends us each week to the mission blessing us.