Worship or The Word: Which is More Important in Church?
Worship or The Word: Which is More Important in Church?
In my three decades-plus being involved in various aspects of church, and having been raised in the more charismatic persuasions of church, from time to time the question comes up about what our focus should really be when God’s people gather for corporate worship. In a perfect church world there would be awesome worship combined with deep, compelling, and challenging teaching. But in today’s church culture it seems like we have to choose one or the other. If you love passionate worship but are also a person of the Word, this might be a difficult choice. The purpose for this post, then, is to shed light on what our spiritual lives should be focused on as it relates to our church experiences.
It truly is a wonderful thing when great worship is combined with compelling teaching. My wife, Donna, and I felt like we had the best of both worlds during our years as worship ministry directors. That church had really solid teaching and our worship services were awesome (we felt like they were, at least). But when we left we searched around for a church in our place of residence in Greenwood that felt like what we had back then, and it just didn’t exist. If the worship was good, the teaching usually was not, and vice versa. The closest we could find was a newer “culturally-relevant” church. The music was top notch there, and the overall worship experience was pretty good too. The teaching, though, was decent but pretty shallow. After two years we had to leave because we felt like we were drying up spiritually. We just had to have more in-depth teaching.
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We visited one church where the music was absolutely amazing but everyone just kind of stood there not engaging in worship at all. After a lot of bouncing around we finally settled on a place where we felt like the teaching was really solid but we had to put up with really clunky music and pretty much zero worship atmosphere. But since we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we were not going to find all the things we were looking for in one church, we decided that if we were going to give up something, it wasn’t going to be good teaching. That was the bedrock of our spiritual lives, and that’s what we focused on.
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I think God honored that choice because our lives have just continued to steadily and gradually increase in so many ways since then. We have always been people of the Word, no matter what. We knew that good worship alone could not sustain us. As great as good worship is, sometimes that won’t take you past the next day. It is the Word that is the very essence of Jesus (John 1:14), and so that’s what we pursued.
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All that church bouncing did teach me something about worship, though. If the atmosphere in a church isn’t conducive to passionate worship, then at least the atmosphere in one’s heart can be. I found that I could eventually worship in pretty much any atmosphere simply because God is worth the effort. There were times when I just decided to engage in my heart in worship even when I was in a pretty stale church service, and I found that I got really touched. I think so many people are looking for some ZAP to happen that comes from the worship leader or the worship team and they don’t realize that true worship comes from one’s own heart.
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I was also struck by the movie, Finger of God 2, when it showed how one of the underground Chinese churches worshipped. They had no worship team; just one guitar. And no charismatic personality preaching up a storm; just someone opening up the Word of God and teaching its Bread of Life. Much of the worship experience in Chinese churches revolves around Communion. Worship to them is everything they do, not just the singing. And, of course, the Chinese church is the fastest growing in the world and probably much more Biblical than the American version of church.
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I think if we adopted that kind of attitude in worship we would find that what people around us are doing or what the worship team is doing is irrelevant. I love good music and a worshipful atmosphere as much as the next guy, but in the grand scheme neither one of those things has much significance unless there is true worship in one’s heart. When we get to heaven some day the primary question under scrutiny at the judgment will be, in essence, what we did with God’s Word: did we obey Him? THAT is the ultimate expression of worship; simply to obey. Jesus didn’t say, “If you love Me, you’ll get really motivated about worship services.” He said, “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
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I’m praying for the people of our church to catch God’s heart in worship, that He simply desires intimate and meaningful communion and fellowship between Himself and His people, and worship is a way we achieve that deeper level of fellowship with the Father. I wish everyone would engage heartily in worship with that goal in mind. But if that never happens, then I will exalt God all by myself if I have to. And, of course, the meat and potatoes is God’s Word, and that is our Bread of Life. So we will never compromise that.
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I have found people can fake worship, but they cannot fake having spent ample time in God’s Word and allowing it to transform them. I have known people in years past who were really energetic in worship. By the looks of their Sunday morning worship you would think they really had a close relationship with God. When some of the details of their private lives were made known, however, it turns out they were a wreck. I have seen this over and over and over and over again — this is 30 years of experience speaking here. What many of those people were focused on was an emotion or an experience or even a ritual with very little emphasis on simply walking out their faith day-to-day in the absence of emotions. In many of those cases you couldn’t even find those same people in church at all after a couple of years.
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This was part of King Saul’s problem. He thought worship was all about a ritual or ceremony but thought light of the obedience part. And that’s why the prophet Samuel said to him, “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22).
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Some of the most solid, reliable, and godly people I have known are those who don’t necessarily focus on worship as much as maybe I think they should, and they certainly don’t live by their emotions. But those are the people who focus on God’s Word and obeying it, and those are the ones who I have seen stick it out through thick and thin and who don’t waver, and who grow in wisdom and blessing over the years. And that’s what God is looking for: faith, obedience, and the ability to persevere. This is what He blesses.
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When we see God’s Word as the Bread of Life, then we can worship just reading it. I have sat on the sofa all by myself reading God’s Word and then finding myself dropping to my knees and worshipping because of a new element of His love I had just been exposed to.
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So then, if we walk into a church hungry for His Word and then we find we get a good dose of it from the teaching, then we can leave feeling like we connected with God regardless of the quality of the music or the responsiveness of the congregation in worship. In times past I have found that the worship services of some of my favorite pastors and Bible teachers were not my cup of tea, but man, THE WORD! Yum! They serve it up in heaping amounts, and it is honey to my lips.
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How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! -Psalm 119:103
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What should our priority be in church, then? Should it be dynamic worship, or solid meaty teaching? By now you know my answer, I hope. We can make the emphasis all about an emotion or a goose bump in worship and continue to struggle in our day-to-day lives. But if we focus on the Word, the result will be worship in one’s daily life, and the outcome of that is growth, blessing, and honor.
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In your own final analysis, the acid-test question should be, “Is the Word of God being presented in my church in a way that is obviously transforming my life and helping me to grow?” If it’s not, then maybe you need to make a change like Donna and I did back in the ’90s when we felt like we were drying up in our “cool” culturally-relevant church. Or perhaps you should simply look in the mirror and evaluate if you are applying what you are hearing. Either way, if you exalt God’s Word, God will exalt you in due season.