The goal of worship

What does it mean to worship as a community, not just a collection of individuals? How can worship help people truly meet God? And how can we achieve some sense of understanding about music’s role in worship?

These are some of the issues on the minds of three people at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), Winnipeg, who think about worship a lot.

Assistant professor of practical theology Irma Dueck, who just completed a doctoral thesis on Mennonite worship, believes that worship today often caters too much to individual needs.

“Worship is supposed to be a time when we pray, praise, and sing together,” she says. “Of course, worship is intensely personal, but even though it speaks to me, it isn’t about me – it’s about something bigger. It’s about God and the Christian faith.”

Another issue that needs more attention, she says, is “the whole concept of sacred space and holiness.”

Of course Christians are to worship God in all they do. But the problem with saying “worship and work are one,” she says, is if everything is worship, “we are in danger of nothing being worship anymore. We need to give more careful attention to that particular practice called corporate worship, realizing it is different from all the other spaces we live in.”

Worship should also focus on the things that bind us together. But, its goal “is not to unify us,” she says. “Through Christ, we are already one body. . . . Worship helps us recognize it.”

One of the primary issues for Christine Longhurst, who came to CMU as chapel coordinator after 10 years of pastoral ministry at River East MB Church, is finding ways to help people encounter God in worship. “People today are hungry for the presence of God in their lives,” she says. “They long to know and experience God.”

Many churches fail to meet this hunger, she says, because they “mistakenly view worship as learning about God, instead of meeting God. While learning what it means to live as Christians is important, it is not an adequate substitute for the incredible experience of encountering God.”

“Sometimes it seems as if everything focuses on my needs and my issues,” Longhurst says. “Little is said about who God is, what God has done, and what God is continuing to do. Worship should focus on the nature and activity of God.”

As a musician, associate professor of music Dietrich Bartel sees “developing a musical style that speaks to everyone in the church” as an important issue. He says it’s a big challenge, because the church is “ever-changing and ever-renewing itself. How do you keep tradition alive, yet find ways to incorporate the new?”

Bartel, also music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Winnipeg, respects tradition but is open to using contemporary music. At his church, one can find a steel drum band along with hymns or 16th century chants. “We have to keep the door to the new open while keeping alive the old,” he says. “We need imaginative musicians to help us,” he adds. “There’s no worse place to find stuck-in-the-mud musicians than the church.”

—CMU release