A regular talking point in both Progressive and Evangelical circles is criticism of performed, emotionally rich worship. Apparently a full band and a heartfelt expression of reverence are distracting, manipulative, and a mere whipping-up of emotions. Its leaders are judged by many other Christians as self-serving celebrities, rather than sincere and devoted worshippers. You’ve seen the articles, decrying Hillsong-style, big tent worship, and every time a leader makes poor moral decisions it is waved around as incontrovertible proof that modern worship is carnal.
For me, these critics of emotional worship fail to understand the core dynamic of worship, which is connection with the divine. The arguments I see, including here on Patheos, set up straw men and then knock them to the ground, thinking a telling blow has been landed, but they are merely swinging at the air. These anti-worship campaigners have utterly failed to grasp the heart of the matter. Rather than dismantle every straw man argument, however, I’d prefer to write about the moment I first came to understand true adoration in worship.
I was brought up in a strict, Evangelical setting. To my eyes, at least, God was primarily concerned with monitoring my behaviour, rather than loving me. If I did hear of his love, in church, it was in the context of how awful human beings are, and that our only value lies in his inexplicable devotion. There was nothing innately lovely about us, or so I believed. That’s not a great message for a child in their formative years, and I grew up believing myself to be hopelessly ugly on the inside.
In my mid-teens, I attended Spring Harvest – a UK-based, spirit-filled event hosted in Butlins sites around the country – where I was exposed to a completely different and much more vital expression of Christianity. I heard John Wimber speak on the gift of healing, which was a complete departure from anything I had heard. The excitement, the energy, the positivity!
One day, I decided to forego the heady pleasures of the snooker room and attend a seminar on worship. To that point, I had little or no notion of the presence of God. I’d sat through thousands of services, singing along with everyone else, but had never known anything that could be described as the divine presence. Nor did I expect to – the Holy Spirit was not welcome in the Christian community of my upbringing. The band began to play, singing an intimate number from the 80s – Jesus, Holy and Anointed One, by Vineyard Worship. The chorus will be familiar to many readers:
‘Your name is like honey on my lips
Your spirit like water to my soul
Your word is a lamp unto my feet
Jesus, Jesus.’
As we sang, something strange began to happen – in contrast to my experience of worship to that point, including many occasions when this same song had been sung, I actually meant what I was singing. I could sense the loveliness of Jesus in every word, and my heart responded with joy. In those moments, God was more real to me than my surroundings. His presence was tangible, and astonishingly loving. I gave myself to the experience completely, and though we sang that song for nearly thirty minutes, I was disappointed when the band stopped playing. I felt close to God – something I’d only understood as rhetoric, previously – and that meant everything to me. I was smiling from ear to ear. That was the moment I knew that God is good, and loves us completely.
The presence of God is the crucible of theology. In his company, our poor ideas of the divine nature are burned up and our hearts know his goodness. There’s only one way to truly know God, and that is to spend time in the refining fire of his presence. Better is one day in his courts than a thousand elsewhere.
Jesus spoke of the essence of true worship, in John 4, 23-24:
‘But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.’
We don’t connect with God through the intellect or a shelf full of study Bibles. We connect with God, who is Spirit, because we too are spirits. 1 Cor 2, 4:
‘For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.’
Humans are spirit beings, and when we give our lives to Christ that spirit is made new. Not only that, but within our spirits we carry wisdom to know all that God has given us in Christ. 1 Cor 2, 5:
‘Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.’
That spirit is fully resourced with all we need for victory in this life. 2 Peter 1, 2-4:
‘Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.’
Peter writes of the divine power within us, which has been deposited in our renewed spirits. That power gives us everything pertaining to life and godliness, has the potential to bring to fruition God’s great and precious promises to us, and allows us to partake of the divine nature.
If this is the case, why do we still struggle with bad habits and negative behaviours? Why hasn’t all this power in our renewed spirits transformed us yet? Because we learn to access the gifts and power of God throughout our lives, one step at a time. The essence of discipleship, then, is yielding to God and releasing the flow of all he has given us. When we grow or experience a breakthrough, we’re not getting something new from God; we’re releasing something from within.
Worship is a fantastic place to access the gifts and power of God, because we are connecting straight to God through our renewed spirits, and that connection flows out into our minds and our bodies. When we are lost in worship, we are in our most privileged, supernatural state as believers, and in those moments of clear sight, where human and divine eyes meet, we can know the truth. These are the worshippers the father seeks – those who worship in spirit and in truth.
And so it was, that when worshipping in the Spirit for the first time in my life, I knew the truth. I wasn’t fundamentally dreadful, unlovely, or ugly. God didn’t love me with a grimace, or through narrowed eyes, wary of getting too close because of the stench. Human beings are lovely because God made us that way. He poured his essence into us, shaping us in his own image, and he crowned us with free will. We are fallen (broken), yes. We are not yet who he created us to be, but we are fundamentally of the highest value to God. By sending Jesus to die, he made a way for us to reconnect with him, spirit to Spirit.
God is not a rheumy-eyed, sentimental fool, a collector of useless bric-a-brac that only has value because of the place it occupies in his heart. We are innately valuable because God made us that way. Every human being is a masterpiece, in need of restoration.
And so I return to the topic of worship. All these articles I’ve seen posted serve to turn Christian hearts from seeking deeper intimacy with God, to hinder us from accessing the supernatural side of our being, push the Holy Spirit to a comfortable distance, and return to carnality – perceiving only what our senses can detect, and feeling only what our natural selves can conjure. In other words, we seem to be turning our back on the Spirit of God, and this is happening in both the Progressive and Evangelical movements.
I accepted long ago that the conservative wing of the Evangelical movement is in rebellion against God in this, but the shift in Progressive thinking is deeply disheartening – what a wasted opportunity for growth! One of my great frustrations is that while Progressive Christianity is absolutely necessary, so many of its most well-known advocates are happy to redefine anything even remotely supernatural, from the miracles of Jesus, the virgin birth, his resurrection, and so on, reframing them in modern, post-enlightenment terms that many atheists would agree with.
I fear we’re shifting in the wrong direction, denying or staying away from much of what the Holy Spirit would do in our lives. All around me I see watering down and loss of spiritual vitality. I see people who’ve been so damaged by extremes that many years later they can’t be in the same room as expressions of sincere faith without it hitting the hottest, reddest trigger. But here’s the bottom line – you can’t live a life of faith that is not saturated by the presence of God. Work on your relationship with the Spirit above all else, and the rest will flow.
The challenge I offer today is also a call – return to worship! Return to prayer, return to spiritual disciplines, recommit to seeking God, devote yourself to discipleship. The Kingdom of God will not be built by Progressives if they choose to keep the Holy Spirit at arm’s length!
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