Imagine two different churches . . .

The first one church has high vaulted ceilings, a pipe organ and robed choir; the second one church meets in a renovated warehouse and where the musical worship is led by a guy playing the guitar. 

The first church follows a prescribed program involving readings of prayers, hymns that have been sung for hundreds of years, and a homily; the other is much more spontaneous. The people sing songs that have been written in the past 5 or 10 years, and most of what is said is being made up on the spot.

Assuming that both churches take the Bible seriously, both churches understand and preach the gospel, and both churches are pursuing holiness, how would you evaluate those two churches? Is one good, the other bad? Or is it pretty much a matter of preference?

It’s important to understand that we’re not talking about a difference in doctrine as much as we’re talking about a difference in liturgy, how a church organizes its gathered worship.

1. What Is Liturgy?

Simply stated, liturgy means everything that goes into a gathered worship service. And from time to time people ask me about the liturgy of our church—a Baptist church—wondering whether it’s too “liturgical” or not “liturgical” enough.

It’s important to understand that, when it comes to any worship service, the question is not: will we have a liturgy or not? Some people distinguish between churches that are liturgical or non-liturgical, but strictly speaking there’s no such thing as a non-liturgical church. Often what people mean is whether the liturgy is highly scripted and traditional (think of a Catholic or Orthodox worship service) or highly spontaneous (think of a Quaker worship service where they will wait until the Holy Spirit moves in one of them to speak). Both the Orthodox and Catholic service and Quaker service have a liturgy; one is highly structured; the other is spontaneous. But even that highly spontaneous form of worship is itself a kind of liturgy.

So the question is not: Will we have liturgy? It is: What kind of liturgy will we have?

You might think of it like this: in some ways, liturgy is to gathered worship as food preparation is to a meal. Everyone needs a regular meal—just like all Christians must have regular gathered worship. And every meal must be prepared—just as all gathered worship must be ordered in a certain way—even if that “order” is no order at all.

2. How much does liturgy matter?

Why does this matter so much? Think back to the analogy of liturgy being like food preparation. You can have a great piece of meat, but if the preparation isn’t done carefully, or if it’s served in a dirty dish, it can ruin the benefit of the meal. So liturgy can be done in a way that detracts from worship—or enhances worship. It can mix in elements that aren’t helpful with elements that are necessary. A sloppiness or lack of care in liturgy can, over time, erode our view of God, dull our understanding of the gospel, or confuse our identity as God’s people.

Liturgy matters because it’s a way of telling the gospel story, not just in a sermon, but in the shape of the service.

And as the gospel gets told in our order of service, it shapes us over time. You can think about liturgy as forming a kind of spiritual “muscle memory” that gets built over time. As I was typing these words, I didn’t have to labor over each key, searching for the letters one by one, because finding the right keys on the keyboard has been programmed into me, by what we call “muscle memory.” The neural pathways have been rerouted in a good, helpful way. Likewise, the practice of worship week after week—when that worship is done in way that reflects the greatness of God and the reality of the gospel—reroutes our spiritual neural pathways, training us to serve God instead of serving sin, or to confess our sins instead of lying about them, or to forgive someone instead of seeking revenge. Patterns of adoration and confession and assurance which we experience week after week in church get habituated into the way we think and act. That’s the benefit of a well-planned, intentional liturgy: It retells the gospel in a way that reshapes us.

But liturgy is about more than just benefitting you: it’s ultimately about bringing honor to Christ, and bearing corporate witness to his love, power and beauty.

That naturally leads us to the question: Then where do we find an order of worship in the Bible?

3. What Priorities Shape Our Liturgy?

Obviously, we want to go to the Bible for the answer to this question, but we must recognize that the Bible nowhere gives us an order of service. Does that mean that we have a blank canvas to draw whatever liturgy we want? Not at all. When it comes to something as important as worship, we don’t want to be inventive, but faithful to the principles found in Scripture.

The Regulative Principle

That desire to be faithful to Scripture in our liturgy reflects what the 16th-century Reformers called the regulative principle: that is, the Bible regulates our liturgy. This means that the main things that we do in our church gatherings must have a clear warrant in Scripture. It’s helpful to remember the historical context of the Reformers. They were evaluating the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church and noticing how much wasn’t taught in the Bible, and — besides that — how much actually distracted from what the Bible did teach.

It’s important to realize what the Reformers didn’t do. They didn’t say: “Tradition is bad. Let’s toss it all out and start from scratch.” No, they took the liturgical tradition, and compared it to the Bible and said, “There’s nothing wrong with tradition per se; we just want to make sure that we’re evaluating the tradition according to the Bible.” That meant that they got rid of some things, including: an excessive adoration of the host (holding the bread for the people to adore it); saying prayers in Latin (because we are supposed to engage our minds); and dialing down the emphasis on statues, images, and relics as objects of devotion. And they removed these components, not only because they weren’t taught in the Bible, but also because these practices actually detracted from what the focus of the service should be.

This takes us to the question: which elements do belong in a worship service?

Essential Elements of a Worship Service

When we read the New Testament, especially 1 and 2 Corinthians, and the pastoral epistles, we identify five essential elements of a worship service, all of which focus on the Word of God.

1. Read the Word – That is, there should be a time in our worship gatherings for the reading of Scripture. In 1 Timothy 4:13, Paul tells Timothy: “Give attention to the public reading of Scripture.” There is an important precedent for this in the Old Testament, when Ezra read from the book of the Law, “And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law” (Nehemiah 8:3). The reading of Scripture has been, and always must be, part of what God’s people do when we gather for times of weekly worship. 

I think this is something we should do more of, especially in an increasingly biblically illiterate society. Someone might say, “It might have been important to read the Scriptures in an age where people couldn’t read it anywhere else, but now that anyone can access the Bible on an app or the internet, it’s not as necessary.” Yes, but just because they can doesn’t mean they do. Besides, there is a massive difference between reading the Bible on your own and reading it in a gathered assembly. 

2. Preach the Word – This means that there should be a time in the gathered worship when God’s Word is explained, expounded, and applied. We find this in the pastoral epistles, where Paul tells Timothy to “preach the Word” (2 Timothy 4:2). It is also implied in the description of worship gatherings in 1 Corinthians, and in the Apostles’ practice of going into the synagogues to expound the Scriptures. Preaching the word must have a central place in the gatherings because it is also the primary means by which God’s people are built up, as Paul exhorted the elders of Ephesus: “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God,” and so, in light of that example, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:27-28).

3. Pray the Word – This means that there should be a time in our gathered worship devoted to prayer. “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” (1 Timothy 2:1). We get the impression from the early church that prayer occupied an important part of their gatherings, not just a small portion at the beginning or end. Quoting Isaiah, Jesus said that God’s house “shall be a house of prayer” (Matthew 21:1).

4. Sing the Word – Paul stresses this in Ephesians 5:18-19 where he says that one effect of God’s people being filled with the Spirit is that they will “[address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” This is such an important topic that I plan to make another video devoted specifically to this topic. For now, hear this: every single decision that goes into the musical portion of our worship service— the choice of songs, instruments, accompaniment, pace, etc.—all that—is intended to allow the congregation to sing praise to Christ. We’re trying to raise our affections to the beauty of Christ according to the truth about Christ. Let me try to put it as simply as possible: A good worship service is a worship service in which you worship Christ.

For now, may I simply plead with you—that when you come to church and approach the musical part of our worship, let your focus not be on whether you like a particular song or instrument or style. Rather, let your focus be on how great Jesus is, and how much he deserves your praise, so that you will sing and praise him.

5. See the Word – By seeing the Word, we mean the sacraments or ordinances: the visible representations of the gospel available to us in the Lord’s Supper and baptism. We read about the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11, and baptism pervades the New Testament. 

Think of those five elements as the essential ingredients in the great banquet of worship. Or as the essential building materials for a house: concrete, brick, mortar, two-by-fours, windows, shingles.

Now that we understand those ingredients, we ask: Does it matter what order it goes in? Yes it does. But how do we know what the order should be?

A Gospel-Shaped Tradition

Here is where we get an immense amount of help from tradition. (And let’s just remind ourselves that everyone draws on tradition. But tradition must be a servant of the Word. I appreciate what Bryan Chapell says in his book Christ-Centered Worship: “Always we are to be informed by tradition; never are we to be ruled by it” [p. 16]).

When you look across major traditions, from Lutheran to Reformed and even Catholic, despite their many differences, you can detect a common flow. And it’s not just because they borrowed from each other; there’s something deeper: the best liturgies trace the flow of the gospel through the human heart, when God enters our broken lives with his glory and holiness, convicts us of our sin, offers us freedom and forgiveness, and calls us to live lives of love for him and others.

1. First, there’s the adoration of God. We’re like Isaiah, seeing the Lord high and lifted up, marveling at his greatness and beauty. This view of God rightsizes our often skewed perspective of ourselves and the world. It shows us who’s really in charge and how holy he is. It leaves us in jaw-dropping awe of his power and majesty. 
2. Next, there’s confession. In this view of God, we get a glimpse of ourselves—and our sin. Like Isaiah responded by saying, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips,” so our view of God results in our confession of our sin, weakness, and misery. This is so countercultural, and it runs against the grain of our hearts. The world tells us that we’re enough—or not. Our hearts defend, excuse, and dodge. But in the presence of God, there’s no excuse; only honest, transparent, humble confession.
3. Then there’s assurance of pardon. The point is not to wallow in our misery, but to look to God for hope, and when we do, we find the assurance of pardon. Again, we see this throughout the Bible: in  Isaiah when he saw God’s holiness, in Peter after he denied Jesus, in Paul after his Damascus road experience.
4. And when a person has been forgiven and wrapped in God’s loving arms, what do they want to do? Thanksgiving! This is, as Chappel puts it, “the reflex of the heart that has grasped the gospel.”
5. Next, there’s petition. Because we’re so grateful to God for what he’s done, we are stirred  to want more of it for ourselves—and others. So we pray.
6. One way God responds to our prayers is with instruction from his Word. And so there is a time of teaching and preaching from Scripture to show us how to live lives that are set free to serve and love this glorious God who loves us so much.
7. On Sundays that we observe the Lord’s Supper, there’s communion. When we’re forgiven by Jesus and instructed by Jesus , we enjoy fellowship with Jesus and our brothers and sisters in him, as we eat the bread and drink from the cup. 
8. Finally, there is a benediction: a word of blessing that sends us out to do God’s will in the world. Again, this maps onto what happened to Isaiah after his encounter with God: he said, “Here am I; send me.” It also maps onto Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. God sent him to be light to the Gentiles. This is what happens whenever God humbles us, pardons us, teaches us, and fellowships with us: he sends us out with his blessing and presence.

You see how this is not just tradition. It follows a deep pattern that we see throughout Scripture when God’s people encounter God, when the gospel works its way through our hearts. The more we understand it, the more we will want this gospel pattern to be etched into our lives.

Just as the gospel never gets old, a liturgy that is shaped by the gospel—if it is engaged wholeheartedly, with an openness to the Spirit’s leading—never gets old either.

Encouragement

I want to summarize all this as an encouragement for us to approach Sunday gatherings with unity and focus on Christ. I want the main thing on our minds and hearts to be what a great Savior we have.

Think about how amazing this is: When you walk into the church building on Sunday morning, a glorious thing is happening. Along with saints all over the world, you get to offer praise to the Jesus who loved you so much that he died and rose again for you. And he is so glorious that it’s not just you and your contemporaries, but countless other people throughout history, past, present and future, who will be feeling the same awe and wonder at the glory of their Savior!

I close with the words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 15:5 – May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

Sources:

Does God Care How We Worship? by Ligon Duncan

Christ-Centered Worship by Bryan Chapell.

Photo Credit: https://www.bornagainpews.com/2017/11/07/history-church-pews/