Worship Preparation Guide for Sunday, July 6

In our worship this week we will consider the matter of unity.  Unity is a term we often hear and often take for granted.  This should not be the case.  We must take the time to consider the importance of unity and the effort and maintenance ‘unity’ requires.  Unity is not easy.  If it was we could do it ourselves.  Unity is not easy, even among brothers and sisters in Christ.  If it were easy we would not be so used to seeing the casualties of conflict, strained relationships, divided churches and broken fellowship.

In Ephesians 4:3 Paul says we should be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.’  I don’t think “eager to maintain” is the best way to translate the Greek words in this verse.  The idea behind the effort required to maintain unity is “to exert one's self, endeavor, give diligence”.  Maintaining unity is hard work. 

The following thoughts come from an article by Marshall Segall.  Worship Where the Wild Things Are reminds us that working to maintain unity during our times of corporate worship is important, and will require our effort in some unexpected ways.  Here is a summary of his article.  I encourage you to read it in its entirety. 

One of the unavoidable realities of corporate worship in this world is distraction. Our minds are already prone to wander completely apart from anything happening around us in that room.  But anyone who’s been in church for more than a few minutes knows there are always more things going on than we can ignore. 

If you’re like me, those moments can be a real challenge.  After all, I’ve come here to meet God, to hear from him and offer my worship to him. The movement, tensions, and noises are keeping me from him, right?  They’re stealing my attention in some of the most precious minutes of the week. Distractions in church can quickly give rise to impatience, irritation, exasperation, and even anger.

Five Ways to Worship in the Wild

But I wonder if we’ve missed the point of the wildness in corporate worship.  Yes, God mainly wants to speak to us through his word, but what if he has other things to say in less grammatical, less authoritative ways?  What if God wants these unwanted distractions to show us more of himself and more about what it means to love his children than we could see alone at home with our Bibles?

1. Screaming Babies or Unruly Infants

Any church with young families knows well the cries of new life. The little ones that are so adorable and beautiful before and after a service can temporarily become annoying or inconvenient when they speak up during the announcements or a sermon.  But this is new life. If we realize what’s happening — a new human being added to our church family, a future man or woman, potentially a husband and father or a wife and mother — we would have every reason to be blown away by our creating God, rejoice in the gift of this baby girl or boy, and bear patiently with this screaming image-in-process.

2. Bad Singing

Some of you are this person, and you know it.  Some of you are married to this person.  Some of you sit a couple pews away from this person week after week. Some people simply can’t sing very well. Despite the beautifully good heart, the ensuing sound would make more sense in the local zoo than the church’s choir.    We’ve all been commanded to sing (Psalm 47:6–7), but we’ve not been equally gifted for it. The miracle, though, is that any of us, who were once dead in our sin, would sing to our God at all.  God is not listening for pitch, but for heart in worship. Anyone singing to any tune, in any octave, with whatever rhythm to God is a stunning, miraculous, wonderful thing. We should be developing an attitude that rejoices in all the voices that are lifted to make much of him.

3. People with Disabilities

For sure, disabilities are not always a distraction in worship. Most of the time they are not.  In some cases, though, a person may shout or groan or act in ways they can’t control, and it will cause a scene.   We believe disabilities are not an accident, punishment, or curse. They are suffering designed by God to unveil his surpassing worth and glory (John 9:3). It is especially important that disabled people — often so rejected in the rest of the world — feel welcome and loved in the family of God.

4. Bad Musicians

Similar to singing, sometimes there are really bad musicians on our worship teams.  Let’s face it, some people “learned” guitar or bass or drums for the sole purpose of serving on Sunday morning.  And they’re bad.  They’re untrained, inexperienced, and unmusical.  But whether a musician is gifted or not, simply by standing up there, they’re communicating a desire to serve and worship.  It should make us ask if we’re willing to go outside our comfort zones — where we might fail or embarrass ourselves — for the sake of the church’s worship.

5. Even Cell Phones

Nobody wants his or her cell phone to ring in church. No one wants to interrupt corporate worship to introduce a couple hundred people to their latest ringtone. It’s happened to many of us and is almost always unintentional and embarrassing. So if the phone ringing threatens our attentiveness and engagement in worship, think about how it affects the poor offender. Between the surprise, guilt, and glares, they may not recover that morning.   Take that brief inconvenient moment to pray for them — and the rest of those around you — that their mind’s attention and heart’s affection would be preserved for and stirred toward worship despite the distraction.

Love Limits and Embraces Distractions

It needs to be said that our moments together on Sunday morning are sacred and precious.  We ought to do everything we can to make the most of those minutes and help others do the same. This will mean striving for excellence when we serve, not talking during the sermon, monitoring our children’s behavior and noise level, silencing our phones, and a hundred other loving courtesies.  But distractions will come, and far from being undone by them, God might mean for us to see them as unexpected opportunities to go deeper in worship. He may mean for us to worship him in ways that weren’t written into the worship order, ways that lovingly honor others and so give him greater glory.  (The full article is available at http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/worship-where-the-wild-things-are )