Towards A Meaningful Liturgy

Michael Spencer, the internet monk has been writing a very thoughtful series on evangelical liturgy. He's coming from a U.S. Southern Baptist tradition and is trying to engage his denomination with the need to develop depth of Biblical understanding and practice.

Since their experience is very similar to the practice in many Australian contemporary churches, including New Life, I thought it appropriate to share it here.

The Evangelical Liturgy 6: The Call to Worship

August 25, 2009 by iMonk

“Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name; bring an offering, and come into His courts. Worship the Lord in holy attire; Tremble before Him, all the earth. Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns; indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; Let the sea roar, and all it contains; let the field exult, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord, for He is coming; for He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in His faithfulness.”

No element of the evangelical liturgy is as clearly Biblical as the call to worship. It is deeply rooted in Biblical language, Biblical history and Biblical theology.

God’s call is fundamental to the general announcement of salvation and the specific work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. God’s call creates, gathers and identifies. It invests an ordinary gathering with the significance of the people of God entering into the presence and purpose of God in worship.

The call to worship is a re-enacting of fundamental and highly significant aspects of the life of the individual and corporate people of God. We are called to God, called to worship, called to mission and called to present attentiveness to the Word and its work among us. We are called to think of God and to hear his commands and invitations.

In my own experience, there is a sense of betrayal that happens when a worship service fails to include a formal call to worship. The informality of many evangelical services is spiritually discouraging, leaving the worshiper with no corporate experience of God calling him/her to attention and the glad work of worship. It is as if we have simply been put together with no purpose any more significant than to do the next thing we are asked to do on someone’s list. Our identity, our “calling” into the experiences of praise, prayer and worship has been forgotten or completely overlooked. There’s something profoundly wrong with the relatively meaningless beginnings to many evangelical worship services.

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