Let me warn you ahead of time: say the word “worship” in a lot of evangelical churches these days and you might find yourself stumbling unaware into the crossfire of a topical theological debate. Here's our take on the situation.

On the one hand we have mega-churches where you could be excused for thinking that “worship” simply means “church music”. The implication sometimes seems to be that by singing songs in E major we simultaneously bring ourselves closer to God, crown Jesus King (apparently God forgot to do that already) and even propitiate God’s wrath against Sin (if only there had been an acoustic guitar handy in Gethsemane).

In response to this confusion, some faithful and intelligent people have been pushing to remove “worship” from our vocabulary almost entirely - let’s call a spade a spade, they say: “singing” is what we do at church, and “service” is what we do with our lives.

Most vocal on this front have been people like Tony Payne (a writer and EMU Music board member). They point out that the New Testament doesn’t really use the word ‘Worship’ when talking about church services – because the temple (a particular place where the Israelites used to go and worship) has been replaced in the new covenant with something much cooler (Jesus Christ). Read the rest of this entry »