And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.” – William Temple, Archbishop of Cantebury

One would hope that the gathered believers in a local church would manifest a love of God and one another that would “rattle” an outsider or unbeliever in the sense that looking in from the outside one would see a whole group who praise and worship a God they do not see, do not know, cannot hear and do not understand. One could hope that even if they did not believe they would at least leave believing the believers do and that would cause them to realize they are “outside” the fold.

Hopefully, the human heart of those who gather is so open and abandoned in worship of God that the outsider would be disturbed at some level in their own conscience that they are missing something in life. It is all a matter of the heart. After our gahterings we should be ready to share our love of God and the others with whosoever will listen and come as well. There just is no way to disconnect “personal evangelism” from worship for they both have their roots in Christ and if one is walking with Him, loving in Him and worshipping Him, then evangelism is a lot like breathing……not something your train for and think about but something that comes from being alive unto God. The thought of specialized training would not occur since our purpose is to walk with and obey God. The activity of evangelism is God already at work and you joining in on it somewhere along the path.

I don’t think I rightly understand the question but to me the realtionship of worship and evangelism is not a thing, an activity we do or purpose we have but it is a person, the person of Jesus Christ. The relationship of worship and evangelism is a person.

Imagine having a 100 people whose sole activity in life was to become like Jesus, act like Jesus, think like Jesus, love like Jesus and obeyed like Jesus. All the world would come to see “how they loved one another” and worshipped the Lord as if He were really there. I guess this is far to idealistic on my part but if we lived, loved and worshipped as we know we “ought” to do, evangelism would be so innertwined that no one could answer the question and would not care to try. Some of the most effective evangelistic work I have ever witnessed in my lifetime was ordinary people living out there faith and not even aware they were “doing personal evagelism”. They were just enjoying God and serving others when history changed the circumstances for another human being who met God in the life of an ordinary man.

“Missions exist because worship doesn’t.”

However, that in turn can quickly become an indication, like has been said here already, of the shallowness of what is sometimes considered to be “worship.”

I was at a Baptist (non-liturgical) service last week and heard an 45 minute harangue about how we need to do more to evangelize and if you aren’t evangelizing, it’s because you aren’t spending enough time in your devotion. No Gospel preached anywhere. I am very glad to see that some Baptists understand that the motivation to evangelize cannot come from the law, but can only truly come from faith and love of the Gospel.

I think that as we look at some of the African-American slave spirituals, one can catch some of that same tone of take me from here and take me elsewhere.

It is easy for us to speak of the mistakes of those who had a “sweet by and by” theology. But, when all hope here on earth is gone, when there is no place to be safe and danger everywhere, to say, “in the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore,” is a sweet expression of hope, hope that better shall come, trust that our God is truly in control, somehow.

I don’t see a distinction here. Our hope as the baptized children of God is resurrection to life and the new creation which comes down “from above,” our baptismal birthplace. What we commonly call “heaven” as our ultimate destiny in Christ is not a renovated old creation but a resurrected new creation in which we are fully conformed to the image of Christ and fully experience our sharing in His glory as citizens of the heavenly City. Our worship in the here and now, no matter how humble it might be humanly speaking, participates in this eternal heavenly worship. This is why we confess that we sing the Sanctus (“Holy, holy, holy”) together with the “angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.”

Another aspect of worship we haven’t fully explored is the intersection of kairos and chronos, or as I put it the intersection of eternity and time, where the One who is the I AM reveals HImself in our time and place through Word and Sacrament.

Two thoughts:

1. I agree. We have made it very, very boring and inaccessible. I think your post is right on and this is the great challenge many of us face.

2. This is a quibble, really, but “we are charged with using worship to make gospel beautiful” makes me uneasy. I suspect you’d agree with this, but, technically speaking, we’re not charged with using worship for any means at all. Worship is an offering to God. I’m trying to argue that were worship to become a sincere cry to God, He will be magnified and His glory will be seen, and evangelism will happen. But I wouldn’t want to say that we are to “use” worship for this or that purpose. (But, again, I suspect you’d agree and I do get what you’re trying to say…and I agree.)

Thanks for the responses!

Wyman

Thanks to all of you for your reply to Michael’s question. (He asks good questions!)