I’ve been on the ‘hosting’ rota at Gateway for around a year now. The hosts are the two people who stand at the front during a Sunday meeting to introduce things, explain what’s happening and lead the meeting through. I enjoy it, although it is more tiring than it looks. But it’s got me thinking lately, what makes a good Sunday morning service?
The things an anchor or host person might often place value in might be - how engaged people look during the worship time, whether they generally seem to be listening and making responsive noises, and how many people bring what we tend to call ‘contributions’. This is a bit of a Christian jargon word, meaning they come to the front to share something, thank or praise God, sing a song or explain what they feel God is saying to them.
In the past, I think I’ve focussed on lots of other measures when I’ve said a Sunday morning was a ‘good’ service. One of the most common ones is- did I feel something, did I meet with God, did I learn something? Or I might be thinking about numbers - were there a lot of people in church, or some new people? Was it a service where my kids were engaged well, did my family stay interested? Did something new and innovative happen, or was the preach really insightful?
Last Sunday I was wondering - what is God looking for when we meet together? What makes Him think ‘great service guys’, as we pack away our music stands and dash for the coffee? What makes His heart feel joyful, refreshed and satisfied? How can we bring a corporate act of worship that is pleasing to God?
I was reminded of some verses from 1 Samuel 15. This is one of those difficult passages from the Old Testament where God commands Israel, in this case under the leadership of King Saul, to totally destroy and wipe out a town or people group. I find these passages personally hard to read and meditate on sometimes, and we don’t have time to go into a big theological digression about how a good God can order wholesale slaughter of non combatants. I would just briefly say two things- firstly that I believe this type of command only happened prior to Jesus coming to us. Under the Old Covenant before Jesus, no one had a chance of full salvation and forgiveness from God in their lifetime, and now everyone has that chance, so I believe God would never order people to kill others now. Secondly, when we see this in the Bible, it represents God’s hatred of sin and idolatry, and His desire that His people should destroy wicked practices and follow Him wholeheartedly, not making any compromises with practices like infant sacrifice or temple prostitution.
To get back to the passage- God commandes Saul to kill every person and animal from the Amelekite group, who had previously attacked God’s people on their way to the promised land, and killed the vulnerable people and stragglers. Instead of fully obeying God’s instructions on this mission, Saul’s men keep some of the best animals - out of greed, rather than mercy - and Saul keeps the king alive - probably for political reasons. Tellingly, we are told “Saul then set up a monument in his own honour”. Saul tries to lie and cover up his actions when Samuel, God’s prophet, arrives to see how things have gone. When his lies don’t work, Saul tries to deflect criticism and make excuses. Samuel sees straight through all of this, because God has already spoken to him, and he replies with these words: ‘Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.’ 1 Samuel 15:22 Samuel then tells Saul that God is going to take the throne of Israel away from him and give it to someone else - this has been an episode with serious consequences.
To obey is better than sacrifice? Animal sacrifice in the days of the Old Covenant was the only way that God had designed for the people of Israel to be able to approach Him. He had set up a whole tabernacle and set of instructions on exactly how to make sacrifices that would please him. It was a physical picture of the seriousness of sin, the holiness of God, and the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus would make for us. In its corporate and public nature, maybe the temple worship via animal sacrifice represents a parallel action to the worship services we have today.
But on its own, the ritual itself was not enough. There are a few places in the Bible, other than this passage about Saul, where God lambasts Israel for bringing sacrifices that don’t mean anything to Him. If they are also worshipping other gods, if they are sinning by mistreating the poor, or if they haven’t obeyed His instructions, like King Saul, God declares to them that the outward show and ritual of worship is just not enough. In Hosea 6:6, God says “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.” When the people’s hearts were not truly turned to God in a way that changed the rest of their actions, God rejected their outward worship. In other words, obedience to God’s ways, and acknowledgement of Him as our Lord is the most important thing to Him. Notice the words “ I desire mercy”, “does the Lord delight in burnt offerings” - we not talking here about the requirements of some impersonal force, we are talking finding out how to make our personal God happy, how to show Him love, how to touch His heart.
I think we can extrapolate from these verses that God is not distracted or satisfied only with the outward show of our worship services -by how moving the music, how tuneful the singing or how dramatic the slideshow is. Even our tears, our falling down on the ground, our dancing before Him, only matter to Him as a representation of our heart of worship. He longs for our obedience, for the full devotion of our souls.
I find an encouragement and a challenge in knowing what God wants most from us. The encouragement is - we can worship God whatever we are feeling. I’m sure we’ve all had days, or months or even years where we can’t really “feel God”. We might be grieving or depressed, we might just be spiritually dry, or we might not really know why we can’t reach Him. We don’t have to worry if we can’t sing with feeling, or we can’t feel God speaking to us. We can remember that it’s our choices and our obedient hearts that please Him. If we choose to still sing words of truth, encourage others, or let His word change our lives, despite our feelings of distance or lack of faith, then we can know we are worshipping. I know I’ve seen others worship God in the most difficult and desperate of circumstances, and I believe God is often more delighted with one raised hand in faith when that’s all the person can manage to do, than He is with the rest of the congregation singing joyfully when they feel fine. God loves it when we choose Him above ourselves, and we can do that on any day - no matter what mess has been going on in our hearts.
The sobering thing is to notice how quickly our worship services can be about anything else but Jesus. The sound we’re making, the feeling I’m having, how I appear when I’m having the feeling that I’m having: the slide from devotion to distraction and self obsession can be terrifyingly quick - in my heart at least. But the good news is, the Holy Spirit is here to help us keep coming back and choosing obedience.
It might help to choose to gaze on Jesus’ goodness and mercy instead of thinking about what’s in the fridge for lunch. God might ask you to allow yourself to become undignified and ridiculous in worship rather than fitting in with our normal behaviours and rituals. He might be giving you the faith to speak one quiet word of trust to Him through a really difficult time. Or it might be an action or a change that God is asking you to take away from the service, something to pick up or lay down in our daily lives. Because if worship doesn’t change us, is it really worship at all?