The Worship and Culture of the Church

　

1. The Nature of Worship

(i) The church is primarily the worshipping community, for she loses her identity and purpose without the worship of God. As Wolfhart Pannenberg pointed out, "only at worship does the fellowship of believers come to realization". Therefore, "worship is the true reality of the church in this world" in the practical sense. In the church life, worship is "the point of concentration" and the locus of vision shared by the congregation (Geoffrey Wainwright). Accordingly, the health and power of a congregation and individual Christian is reflected in her worship.

(ii) In the New Testament, two words are used to mean worship, i.e., proskunew and latreuw. proskunew denotes "bow down" to express respect and thanksgiving. True worship defined in Jn 4.20-24 is the spiritual and true bow "in spirit and truth". On the other hand, latreuw is derived from latrij, meaning "servant". In this sense, worship is the service to God to please and glorify Him. God is served in various ways, such as sacrifice and prayer, "holiness and righteousness"(Lk 1.75), "reverence and awe"(Heb 12.28), "with clear conscience" (2Tim 1.3), and "by the Spirit of God"(Phil 3.3). Worship is done not only in the Sunday service but also in everyday life. Therefore, the spiritual worship (logikh latrei,a) in Rom 12.1 is the final and comprehensive form of worship: "offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship", as H. Strathmann explains: "The biblical history of the cultic term reaches its climax in this interiorisation, which is also the most comprehensive exteriorisation, and which takes up again the initial prophetic statement in Dt 10.12ff. The saying of Paul in R 12.1ff is the crown of this whole development."(TDNT, IV:65) The biblical usages of worship may be summarized as follows: (1) The object of worship is exclusively limited to the triune God, (2) The momentum of worship is the fear of perfection and power incomparable to oneself in encounter with the dignity and glory, holiness and power of God, as well as the wonder and thanks to the overflowing grace and love of God, (3) The attitude of worship is the physical and/or spiritual submission to bow down as the expression of absolute obedience in joyful willingness out of love and respect, (4) The method of worship is sacrifice and offering, praise and prayer, Word and sacraments, and the obedience of the divine commandments in the everyday life, and (5) The purpose of worship is to please and glorify God.

(iii) The definition of worship is crucial in the practice of worship: "Defining what is distinct about Christian worship is a vital practical ool for anyone who is responsible for planning, preparing for, or leading Christian worship."(James White) The gracious love of God in Christ evokes the Christian worship, which in turn is devoted for the glory of God. Jesus Christ and his redemption is the center of worship. Therefore, the worship is the re-capitulation (Allmen) and re-vision (Wainwright) of the Christ event for us. But, it is not only remembrance of the past event but also eschatological hope of its consummation (Moltmann). It begins from the human service to God, but it is not complete without the response and blessing of God. So, the worship is the encounter and koinonia between God and humans, who are the children of God, i.e., the feast of family gathering and joyful celebration. As the Mediator, Christ is the center of worship, and the authentic paradigm of worship. And, the Holy Spirit leads the congregation for the effective and genuine worship. Further, the worship is the renewal of identity and purpose for the Kingdom of God, as well as the reawakening and rekindling of love and passion to the triune God as well as the ‘brothers and sisters’. Therefore, some contemporary worship with the "congregational self-preoccupation" and "the loss of the sacred" has a fundamental defect to be a true worship.

(iv) The object of Christian worship is exclusively and equally the triune God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as the Nicene and Athanasian Creed confessed. Even the apostles strongly rejected to be worshipped: "But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: ‘Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human

like you…"(Ac 14.14-15) Also, angels rejected to be worshipped: "Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers… Worship God!"(Rev 22.9)

(v) The English word "worship" came from a combination of two medieval words, "weorth" and "scipe", meaning ‘worth to venerate’. The German word "Gottesdienst" or English word "service" is derived from the biblical term latreia. On the other hand, the comprehensive term "liturgy" came from leitourgia, meaning work of the people, which was performed for the benefit of the city or state in Greek. Religious worship was the center of culture or culture formation, and in that sense it is also called "cult" or "ritual", which is the socially accepted repeated action in the religious nature.

　

2. The Various Forms of Worship

(i) In the Old Testament, the temple worship that was the center of religious life for the Jewish people included two integral aspects, i.e., sacrifice system and mass celebration of praise and prayer. The latter was fully and separately developed in the synagogue worship in the post-Babylonian era. Because Jesus and His apostles participated in the synagogue worship, it was quite natural to the early Christians and became the model of Christian worship. It consisted of three parts: praise, prayer, and the Word. The early church simply added the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist to it.

(ii) However, the Roman Catholic Church lost the balance, for its hierarchical clericalism naturally developed sacramentalism. The Reformation attempted to restore its balance, but in reaction to the Roman Catholic emphasis the Protestant in general shifted to de-emphasize sacraments and over-emphasize the Word in proportion. Pietism and Wesleyan movement contributed to regain the due place to praise and prayer in worship. Today, the influence of mass culture is reshaping and reviving the culture of worship, together with the Pentecostal dynamics.

(iii) Christ or his apostles did not command or require to participate in the synagogue worship or create the Christian worship as we have today. Rather, some activities of worship were separately commanded to the communio sanctorum. First of all, the sacraments of the New Covenant were ordered to do continuously until the Parousia. The Lords’ Supper was instituted by Christ Himself and commanded to His church: "Do this in remembrance of me"(Lk 22.19); "whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."(1Cor 11.26) Also, baptism was commissioned to the church: "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."(Mt 28.19) Second, the praise of God was a long tradition of Yahweh community, and it reaches its climax in the coming of the Messiah (Lk 24.53, Ac 3.1). It was spontaneously expressed in singing, playing instruments, glad shouts, or dancing "to rejoice before the Lord", and it was commended to the church: "…sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."(Col 3.16); "Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise--the fruit of lips that confess his name."(Heb 13.15) Third, the corporate prayer was commanded as well as the individual prayer: "I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."(Mt 18.18-19) Intercession and benediction are richly found in the early church. Fourth, the reading, teaching, and preaching the Word of God was essential and integral in the Christian worship, for the human service to God is responded by the Word illuminated by the Holy Spirit: "Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction."(2Tim 4.2); "Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching."(1Tim 4.13); "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom."(Col 3.16) Therefore, these four forms are essential in worship separately or collectively in the Christian gathering of worship to God: "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching."(Heb 10.25)

(iv) Paul recommended a weekly offering: "Now about the collection for God's people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made."(1Cor 16.1-2) It was exclusively for the poor, not offering to God like the practice of the OT, but it was regarded as a form of worship because "God loves a cheerful giver"(2Cor 9.7) and "men will glorify God" because of this act of love(13), following the Macedonian model that "they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God's will."(2Cor 8.5)

(v) On the Pentecost, the church gathered "everyday" for worship(Ac 2.46), but later the Sabbath was set aside for the day of worship for they participated in the synagogue worship. As the Christian churches are formed as separate community, the Lord’s Day became the day of worship(Didache 14), especially after the condemning separation from the Jewish community(Ignatius, The Epistle to the Magnesians 9). The Puritan sabbatarianism strengthened the Sunday worship, but in the expense of introducing legalism.

(vi) The Christian worship is rightly done "in the paradoxical unity of logos and pneuma"(Bloesch) or in the dynamic harmony of order and spontaneity, as seen in 1Cor 14. However, the structural development of prayer time and Church calendar resulted in one-sidedness of uniformity. Now, the Pentecostal and evangelical spontaneity is restoring the lost balance and harmony.

　

3. The Culture of the Church

(i) In the process of Gentile mission, the early church experienced a serious cultural conflict, and it occasioned the call of the Jerusalem Council, the first ecumenical council of the church. By the Holy Spirit-led decision, the church finally distinguished the Gospel from culture and the cultural pluralism or relativism was established as the cultural principle of Christianity. This freedom of culture is best expressed in Paul:

1Cor 9.19-23

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men (toi/j pa/si ge,gona ta. pa,nta) so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

(ii) However, the Roman Catholic Church exalted the Roman culture, and the mono-culturalism had dominated until the Reformation, which restored the cultural pluralism of the Scripture. Martin Luther declared that the culture of worship and church belongs to the area of adiaphora. As confessed in the Methodist Articles of Religion, "it is not necessary that rites and ceremonies should in all places be the same, or exactly alike, for they have been always different, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners."(22) However, even the Protestant churches are fixed in their own tradition and lost the cultural freedom and flexibility. Against this inability to adapt and contextualize to the new culture and the imperialistic superiority complex of their own culture, WCC declared that "No culture is closer to Jesus than any other culture."

(iii) In the crisis of worship today, several forms of worship renewal movement arose. First, the free worship movement from the fixed traditional forms of worship is attempted by the Pentecostal and charismatic movements based on the biblical model in 1Cor 12-14. Second, the seeker’s service movement transforms the form of worship totally open for the purpose of evangelizing the seekers with the maximum adaptation to the popular culture. Third, the worship restoration movement arose as a by-product of ecumenical movement, and it attempts to revive the rich traditions of church worship in the Christian history, especially the form of the early church. It honors the tradition, but also adapts to the contemporary culture in depth, as seen in the BEM document of WCC. Fourth, the worship language reform movement coordinates with the contemporary social change by reforming worship languages sensitive to the handicapped, women, and the weak. Furthermore, new forms of worship such as multi-media worship, indigenized worship, tele/cyber worship, or experimental worship is attempted to contextualize it to the changing culture.

(iv) The cultural form of worship itself is not the purpose of worship, but it is an instrument to achieve the purpose of worship, i.e., successful encounter of God and church. Therefore, if it fails to realize the purpose, worship becomes meaningless and formal. The pre-modern form of worship in the post-modern culture simply loses its cultural relevance and fails in effective expression and communication. As Paul Tillich pointed out, "Religion as ultimate concern is the meaning-giving substance of culture, and culture is the totality of forms in which the basic concern of religion expresses itself."(Theology of Culture, 42) For culture as a general grace of God performs the cultural function to promote and sublime the dignity of men and the glory of God, the human creativity in the image of God is capable to develop and create various forms of artistic culture. Though the Reformers made a cultural mistake of iconoclastic vacuum, the church has the cultural responsibility and privilege to fill the time and space of worship with a joyful and meaningful forms of culture. Also, the cultural ministry is in demand in the contemporary context of mass culture for the cultural sanctification of the world.

　

4. The Constitution of the Worshipping Community

(i) The church as the community of reconciliation may not exclude anybody from the worshipping community. To pursue a comfortable homogeneous community is not the will of the Lord. The only valid reason to separate the worshipping community is geographical and communicational impossibility. The Babel Tower event shows that the division of people by languages was the divine will and wisdom for the protection of the world community. Also, the early church formed a separate congregation only by the standard of locality.

(ii) The OT church excluded women and children from the worshipping community, but it is not justified in the NT church. The cultural ownership or subordinationism endangers the dynamic wholeness of the worshipping community and sacrifices the church for the sake of cultural comfort of the power group or generation. Because the church generally fails in the successful cultural adaptation and incorporation, more than half of the church children are lost after their independence. In this critical situation, the mixed or blend model of the multi- or inter-generational worship is gaining popularity. Cf. Gary L. McIntosh, One Church, Four Generations: Understanding and Reaching All Ages in Your Church (Baker, 2002); Jackson W. Carroll and Wade Roof, Bridging Divided Worlds: Generational Cultures in Congregation (Jossey-Bass, 2002); Bob Whitesel and Kent R. Hunter, A House Divided: bridging the generational gaps in your church (Abingdon, 2000); Anthony B. Robinson, Transforming Congregation Culture (Eerdmans, 2003)