Worship Manifesto

Dec 27, 2011 by admin    No Comments    Posted under: Blog Archive

 John 4:24:  ”It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”(MSG)

Worship is something we were designed to do, and we should be serious about it. There are a few core principals and ideas that will be integral to the worship experience at Hope Church North Park. At Hope Church we have committed ourselves to creating active worship. There are two words in that last sentence that are vital to what our understanding of worship will become.

The first word is ‘creating.’ Too often in church we find ourselves trying to recreate or relive a moment from a previous worship service or experience in which everything seemed to come together at just the right time. While the original experience may (or may not) have been a genuine moment, it does the church a great disservice trying to replicate that. Rather than recreating something old, we should be creating something entirely new and fresh each time we worship. The Bible, and in particular David’s Psalms are littered with references to bringing forth “a new song.” While it may not be entirely possible to create brand new songs each week, it is completely acceptable to expect a fresh creation of worship from week to week.

The second part that bears explanation is the word ‘active.’ Active worship is something that is engaging to all, not just those standing on stage singing or playing an instrument. If all we do is create worship in the form of music that other people enjoy sitting and watching unfold, then we have failed. Rather, we should be participating in something as a body, where everyone is actively a participant in something that transcends the relationships between those in attendance. Worship is communication, an expression of love and adoration (and often times many other things) to God. We can’t do this properly by just sitting down observing.

We also desire to explain worship in better ways than maybe some people have seen or heard before. Worship at Hope Church is more about singing songs to God about Him. It is our desire that everything we do be an act of worship. It involves music, yes, but it also involves so much more- from the offerings we give to the meditation of Scripture passages to engaging in the sermon to participating in communion to various artistic expressions to God…literally everything we do is a part of the worship services we strive to create.

Lastly, our worship should be: Honest. True. Sincere. The best way to measure this is to make sure that what we do in worship is Scripturally rooted and not some idea that we just came up with. And it needs to be our very best. We can’t expect to lead others into something (worship) that may be brand new to them if what we are leading them to is fake, a show. We can’t get away with slacking off in our worship, because then we are just conning someone into a staged experience- and that isn’t creative or active.

Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!