WORSHIP AND EDIFICATION IN THE GATHERED CHURCH (Santamara)

 

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There are words so familiar that we eventually stop examining them. We repeat them because our parents repeated them, because our churches placed them upon signs and bulletins, and because generations before us assumed that everyone understood what they meant.

One of those words is worship.

Christians speak of “going to worship.” Churches announce a “worship service.” Music is called “worship,” musicians are called a “worship team,” and the person directing congregational singing is called a “worship leader.” The opening portion of the Sunday meeting is described as worship, after which the congregation settles down to hear the sermon.

These expressions have become so deeply woven into modern Christian speech that questioning them can sound almost irreverent.

But reverence for tradition must never become a substitute for submission to Scripture.

This book asks a question that many Christians have never been encouraged to ask:

Where does the New Testament actually say that the primary purpose of the church gathering is to conduct a worship service?

The question is not asked because worship is unimportant. It is asked because worship is too important to be reduced to a scheduled performance, a musical atmosphere, an ecclesiastical ceremony, or a platform activity carried out before a mostly silent congregation.

The New Testament presents the entire Christian life as worship. Believers belong to God, approach him through Christ, pray, praise, serve, sacrifice, obey, give, suffer, love, and offer their bodies to him as living sacrifices. Yet when the apostles regulate what happens as the church comes together, the clearest governing command is not, “Let everything be performed as worship,” but, “Let all things be done unto edifying.” The book therefore does not deny the Godward character of the assembly; it challenges the use of worship as a justification for congregational passivity.

That distinction is not small.

It reaches into the heart of what the church believes itself to be.

Is the church an audience gathered around a platform?

Is it a crowd watching trained religious professionals perform sacred duties?

Is it a room filled with listeners whose principal responsibility is to sit quietly while one person prays, one person interprets Scripture, one person speaks, and a selected group supplies the music?

Or is the church the living body of Jesus Christ, in which every member has received grace and every part has been joined to the others for the good of the whole?

The New Testament does not describe the church as one mouth surrounded by hundreds of ears.

It describes a body.

A body lives because its members are connected. It grows because every part supplies what Christ has given it to supply. It suffers when one member suffers. It rejoices when one member is honored. It cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of thee,” nor to the foot, “Your contribution is unnecessary because the eye and the mouth will perform everything for you.”

Yet this is precisely what many churches have done without realizing it.

They have not openly denied the priesthood of believers. They have confessed it in their doctrines and then quietly contradicted it in their arrangements. They have declared that every Christian possesses the Holy Spirit while constructing gatherings in which almost no one except the appointed leaders may be heard. They have preached that every believer has a gift while allowing most gifts no meaningful expression in the corporate life of the church.

The people attend.

They listen.

They sing the words chosen for them.

They repeat prepared responses.

They receive a benediction.

Then they return home carrying burdens that no one heard, questions that no one permitted them to ask, griefs that no one addressed, insights that no one received, and gifts that no one expected them to use.

This book does not condemn preaching. It honors the preaching of the Word.

It does not reject pastors and teachers. It recognizes them as gifts of the risen Christ.

It does not despise order. It insists upon order.

It does not romanticize Corinthian confusion, untested prophecy, emotional exhibition, or the reckless opening of the floor to every self-appointed teacher.

The alternative to clerical domination is not congregational chaos.

The alternative to silence is not disorder.

The alternative to one person doing everything is not everyone doing whatever seems right in his own eyes.

Scripture provides a better way: participation governed by truth, gifts governed by love, speech governed by intelligibility, ministry governed by discernment, and the entire gathering governed by the command that everything be done for the building up of the church.

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 14 should shake every comfortable assumption about public worship.

A man may speak to God.

He may give thanks.

He may give thanks well.

His experience may be sincere. His intention may be spiritual. His words may rise directly toward heaven.

Yet Paul says:

“The other is not edified.”

And because the other is not edified, the Godward speaker is commanded to remain silent in the church.

That single apostolic judgment destroys the claim that Godward intention alone is sufficient to justify a congregational practice.

The question is not merely, “Was God addressed?”

The question is also, “Was Christ’s body built up?”

Could the people understand?

Could they say “Amen”?

Were they instructed?

Were they comforted?

Were they exhorted?

Were they equipped?

Were they drawn toward holiness, love, unity, maturity, and service?

Did grace pass from one member to another?

The church does not glorify God by ignoring the people whom God purchased with the blood of his Son.

It does not honor Christ by rendering his body voiceless.

It does not submit to the Spirit by preventing the gifts distributed by the Spirit from serving the common good.

It does not defend order by confusing order with inactivity.

It does not protect the pulpit by allowing the pulpit to replace the body.

There is a sobering danger on both sides of this discussion.

The highly structured church may become so controlled that the body can scarcely move.

The highly informal church may become so uncontrolled that the body cannot mature.

One may suppress the gifts of the saints.

The other may glorify untested opinion.

One may place nearly everything in the hands of the clergy.

The other may treat spiritual authority as though it were unnecessary.

One may mistake silence for reverence.

The other may mistake noise for life.

The apostolic church is neither a religious theater nor an undisciplined gathering of competing voices. It is an ordered body under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

This book therefore refuses the easy choice between lifeless formalism and reckless spontaneity.

It calls for something deeper.

It calls for gatherings in which Scripture is read with authority, Christ is preached faithfully, prayers are understood, songs teach the Word, the Lord’s Supper displays the unity of the body, the poor are not humiliated, discipline is exercised redemptively, leaders equip rather than replace the saints, and every member is encouraged to serve according to the grace received.

It also forces us to confront what has happened to the word worship.

In many churches, worship has become nearly synonymous with music. The lights dim. The instruments begin. The emotional intensity rises. People are told that they are entering the presence of God—as though God had been absent during the reading of Scripture, the prayers of the saints, the sharing of burdens, the breaking of bread, or the quiet service of one believer to another.

Music may be glorious.

Singing may be worship.

But according to the apostle, congregational singing is also a form of teaching and admonishing one another. A song does not cease to be directed toward the Lord because it serves the church. It becomes a fuller expression of Christian worship precisely because it carries the word of Christ into the hearts of the saints.

The vertical and horizontal dimensions cannot be torn apart.

Love for God cannot be separated from love for the brother.

The offering cannot be separated from reconciliation.

The Lord’s Supper cannot be separated from regard for the poor.

Spiritual gifts cannot be separated from the common good.

Praise cannot be separated from doing good and sharing.

Preaching cannot be separated from equipping the saints for ministry.

The glory of God cannot be separated from the growth of Christ’s body.

This is not a secondary matter of preference, personality, or style.

It concerns obedience.

Churches frequently divide over whether worship should be contemporary or traditional, formal or informal, accompanied or unaccompanied, liturgical or spontaneous. Those questions may have their place, but they can distract from the more searching apostolic question:

Did everything that occurred build up the church in truth and love?

A service may be ancient and fail that test.

A service may be modern and fail that test.

A sermon may be eloquent and fail that test.

A song may be beautiful and fail that test.

A prayer may sound reverent and fail that test.

A participatory meeting may appear liberating and fail that test.

No tradition is exempt.

No minister is exempt.

No congregation is exempt.

No practice becomes sacred merely because it is familiar.

Every form must stand before the Word of God.

The chapters that follow do not attempt to destroy worship but to rescue it from reduction. They do not seek to lower our view of God but to raise our view of what God is doing when his church gathers. The assembly is not merely a weekly religious event. It is a manifestation of the risen Christ's body. It is a people standing before God, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit, receiving grace and ministering that grace to one another.

The book’s final vision holds together what should never have been separated: God’s glory, Christ’s authority, the Spirit’s gifts, the ministry of the Word, ordained leadership, congregational discernment, mutual service, reverence, order, and edification.

May these pages disturb traditions that have gone unexamined.

May they humble leaders who have carried responsibilities Christ intended the whole body to share.

May they awaken saints who have been trained to believe that attendance is ministry and silence is faithfulness.

May they challenge churches that call people members while expecting them to function as spectators.

May they also restrain those who confuse participation with authority, spontaneity with spirituality, and disorder with freedom.

Above all, may they turn our eyes again to Jesus Christ, the Head of the church.

The church belongs to him.

Its ministers belong to him.

Its gifts belong to him.

Its gatherings belong to him.

Its songs, prayers, sermons, ordinances, offerings, and acts of service belong to him.

And the people sitting silently in the pews belong to him too.

They are not an audience to be managed.

They are not customers to be pleased.

They are not a crowd to be impressed.

They are the flock for which Christ shed his blood, the temple in which his Spirit dwells, and the body through which his life is to be made visible.

The pulpit is biblical.

Pastoral leadership is biblical.

Attentive hearing is biblical.

Reverence is biblical.

Order is biblical.

But so are the gifts of the saints, the discernment of the congregation, the ministry of one member to another, the breaking of bread, the bearing of burdens, the comforting of the sorrowful, the admonishing of the wandering, and the active working of every part.

The church must never choose between worshiping God and edifying his people.

God has joined them together.

What God has joined, the traditions of men must not put asunder.

Guillermo Santamaria