Step #7 - Make Worship a
Spiritually Nurturing Experience
6/14/04

1. What is worship?
"To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God - William Temple" (Foster. 158).

"The root meaning for the Hebrew word we translate worship is "to prostrate . . ." Scripture shows a variety of physical postures in connection with worship: lying prostrate, standing, kneeling, lifting or clapping the hands, lifting or bowing the head, dancing, and wearing sackcloth and ashes . . . worship is appropriately physical (Foster. 169).

When we worship, we are busy serving God. We refer to the Sunday gathering as a service of worship. Worship is the work of Christians . . .. The word "liturgy" means, "the work of the people." When the people of God do work that is dedicated to God and respond to the glory of God, that is their liturgy - their worship . . . The service of worship . . . [is] not an optional action among other worthy actions. [Worship] helps to remind us who we are, who we are not, and who, by God's grace, we are becoming. Worship reminds us why we serve and Whom we serve (Willimon and Wilson. 49-51).

Worship is the center of any congregation's life. It is the most important moment a church experiences weekly because it is that time when the community gathers to praise God collectively, to hear the Word proclaimed collectively, and to break bread, to witness baptisms, to celebrate ministries, all done in community. Worship is so important because it is the most important thing a church does as a community to build itself spiritually. That is what worship must do - spiritually build the church. The only worship that is worthy of God is that which strengthens people's connectedness to Jesus (Linn. 80).

What is spiritual nourishment?
The spiritual are those things which affect the soul and nourishment has to do with feeding and sustaining life. The components of the service, (anthems, hymns, sermons, prayers, etc.) affect, but are not the same as, nourishment. Worship which is spiritually nourishing is that in which God is praised, the presence of Jesus is celebrated, and the deep desires and dreads, hopes and hurts of the worshipers are met in the gospel of Jesus.

Believers are nourished in the practice of the traditional disciplines: prayer, study, fasting, almsgiving, and reading of scripture. When we do those things as worshipful community then the Spirit has wiggle room in our souls and we are fed.
What has The Jesus Connection process to do with the two?

While The Jesus Connection is a process for congregational transformation, congregations are never transformed apart from the individual persons who make up the faithful community. In a congregation in process of being transformed worship planners assume major responsibility for thinking beyond how much time is allocated to each movement in worship, which hymns will be selected, what scriptures will be used, and to reflect deeply on what is likely to be nourishing to those persons who gather to be quickened in conscience by the holiness of God. The planners must be about their prayers, their studies, and their individual meditations and fasting on behalf of the community.

On the other hand, each worshiper bears some responsibility for taking in nourishment. Just as one can sit down at the dinner table in the presence of sumptuous fare and not eat, so one can be in a service but not of it. "What personally constitutes a God-directed life, either inner or outer, is not necessarily self-evident. Each of us must make an individual discernment, allowing the words of scripture, the witness of our faith communities, and our own diligent consciences to tease us into risky self-disclosure. (Wright. 40).

All worship is not for the sake of the congregation, or even for the sake of the individuals who gather. Worship is to glorify God, to be "prostrated" before the Holy One who calls forth from the depths within us the highest and best and meets our adoration with gracious love.
 
David Digby - 1st Christian Church, Ames, IA
 
Works Cited
Foster, Richard. The Celebration of Discipline. New York: Harper-Collins, 1998.
Linn, Jan G. Reclaiming Evangelism: A Practical Guide for Mainline Churches. St. Louis:
Chalice Press, 1998.
Willimon, William L. and Robert L. Wilson. Preaching and Worship in the Small Church.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Wright, Wendy M. The Vigil. Nashville: Upper Room Press, 1992.