A Liturgical Resurgence

Over the past weeks, our mid-week bible studies have focused on one topic: Liturgy. The primary goal of this study is to bring the members of Vida Abundante Cicero to a Biblical understanding of worship.

Although there is no prescribed liturgy in the New Testament, it shows us some practices of the early church. While doing research on the topic, one of my professors, Dr. Daniel Block, helped me view worship through a biblical-theological lens. Which means properly connecting worship through the entire Bible, not just focusing on the New Testament.

When pastors or teachers make the connections incorrectly through faulty hermeneutics, they are often heavy-handed on Old Testament (“First Testament,” as Dr. Block calls it) practices contextualized for the modern church. Examples are legion, but some common ones are the use of the Schofar in the musical portions, a misunderstanding and misapplication of David’s dance, and a Jericho-style war-themed song. One can also commit the error of discarding the Old Testament and only applying New Testament practices divorced from their predecessors.

When a failure to consider the Old Testament, levity and flippancy characterize our worship and creativity takes precedence in our approach to God. When both extremes are presented, the church suffers because they will assume worship practices void of God’s original design.

In his book, Dr. Block asks two critical questions that are often neglected in our modern worship: * “Whom does God invite into his presence? Whose worship will God accept?” Every pastor and church member should consider and know how to respond to these questions. By having the members rooted in a deep knowledge of several liturgical components, members can reevaluate their worship paradigm and align it to a biblical pattern.

Dr. Block sparked a deeper theological conviction in my pursuit of understanding liturgy, but on the practical level, Pastor John MacArthur has inspired in me a desire to see what real, God-honoring worship looks like within the context of the church.

Dr. MacArthur’s words echo my desire for Vida Abundante as he describes the outcome of his preaching series on worship when he says, * "Those sermons on worship signaled the beginning of a new era for our church. The worship in our Sunday gatherings took on a whole new depth and significance. People began to be conscious that every aspect of the order of service—the music, the praying, the preaching, and even the offering—is worship rendered to God. They began to look at every kind of superficiality as an affront to a holy God. They saw worship as a participant’s activity, not a spectator sport. Many realized for the first time that worship is the church’s ultimate priority—not public relations, not recreation and social activities, not boosting attendance figures—but worshiping God"

There are more goals I have for our church, and I hope it can have a ripple effect on others who are seeking to honor God in their worship as a church.

• The second goal seeks to grow the congregation’s reverence for God. The goal here is to have people understand how the nomenclature of “going to church” has minimized our notion of worship by emphasizing the experience instead of the object of our worship, God.

• The third goal aims to teach the church about the liturgical components and their place in a worship service. As they learn why each liturgical component is essential, they can understand their value and necessity for worship.

• The fourth goal will address the effects of liturgy on the worshiper. Liturgy is not boring. Liturgy addresses our flippant approach to worship. Liturgy is not a recited approach to the God we worship; therefore, our participation is not rehearsed but heartfelt. As the church transforms its mind about what a worship service is, it will strive to worship in spirit and truth. Worship aims at the worshiper’s heart and how their sanctification is affected when preparing for worship.   

• The fifth goal is to enrich the church’s historical connection to the early first-century church and its liturgical practices. I will also remind the church of how the Protestant Reformation had a primary goal of the reformation of worship. The reformers breaking away from the Roman mass is instrumental to our worship understanding because it shows the reasoning and biblical foundations of their approach.

As a pastor, my heart behind this sermon series is to honor God. Throughout Scripture, we see how God’s people worshiped God because of who He was for them. Nothing has changed, people have not changed as well. We recognize that worship is a sign of submission before a superior authority. As we honor God in our worship, we are reminded that we have no business being before a great, holy God. However, He blesses us with his lovingkindness and mercy.


 * Daniel I. Block, For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2014), 55. Both of these questions come from Block’s chapter titled, The Subject of Worship. These questions help frame my goal to begin reorienting our congregation’s focus of the subject of our worship, mainly, driving it away from ourselves and putting the attention on God.

 * John MacArthur, Worship, The Ultimate Priority (Chicago: Moody, 2012), 29.