Preserving Corporate Worship

When an individual at their height of faith reaches an acknowledgment, celebration, and gratitude of all they know God to be, he or she worships.  When individuals bring not only this deeply personal expression but also the same recognition pertaining to God's activity and character among others and the community as a whole, it is corporate worship.  When corporate worship takes place there is not only a cumulative affect, but an exponential one.  The truth of God grows drastically beyond ourselves and into the realm of God's love and action in the world around us.  Just as a body at work depends on the natural harmony of its parts in concert to function, the church needs worship in community to accesses the subconscious salvation story in its diverse members, coming together in manifold witness.  Worship, when done in Spirit and Truth is effortless.  It happens in response to an awareness of God (which usually does require some effort to achieve).  It is like the rain that falls when the conditions are right - it cannot remain in the clouds as it was, it must transform and become something new.  So corporate worship is a building block of the body of Christ.  It allows persons to become new creations, and to do so together provides mutual encouragement (watching God minister to others), unity and mutual love (through shared experience of the living God), and creates an alternative community based on the truth that the LORD alone is God (that salvation does not exist apart from God).  Of course, none of these life altering and Kingdom ushering consequences of worship occur if worship becomes what it so often is in the institutional church: something painfully less than a vulnerable realization of God's own divine presence.  Most commonly the expressions of God's presence themselves get in the way.  The music, the sermon, the space, the clothing, the style, the order, the personalities in leadership.  All represent the intention to acknowledge and honor God's presence.  All run the risk of stealing our attention from the One Thing altogether.  For this reason, the primary aim for both leaders and participants in corporate worship at every turn must remain a tireless pursuit of encountering the Spirit himself.  Only then will these noble expressions fulfill their purpose, keep in their designated place, and provide a meaningful path to the goal itself - the Godhead.