Attached is an article that I think is worth reading. It was originally in the May/June 2007 issue of REV Magazine, but I found it through one of the blogs I read–blog.worship.com.

Worship Evangelsim by Sally Morgenthaler

It continues to amaze me that we (the church generally) have turned worship–which should, by definition, be focused solely or perhaps wholly (and holy) on God into some primarily about me and how I feel.

So how do we balance the need to truly worship God corporately and our need to be culturally relevant?

Maybe that is the wrong question. Maybe the real question that we must be asking is, how do we engage in and foster authentic, meaningful, God-centered, God-honoring worship as church?

The question will have to lead in two directions. First, what we do to foster this kind of worship individually and second, how do we participate in real worship as body?

It may be that in trying to make our corporate worship experience a personal or private worship experience we have caused this focus on–“how I feel about worship” or “I liked the worship today.”

We need to understand the personal, life-style of worship–which is about much more than music–is about a life that is live for the glory of God. This will include the words we say, the acts do, the interactions we participate in and yes, the personal time we spend in worship of God.

This should naturally lead to a life lived to fulfill God’s glory among the nations–because Scripture show that this is what brings God glory. We will then live conscious of the needs of our neighbors and we will BE the church and the church will be relevant in our neighborhoods. Because we seek God’s glory, we will seek to obey His command to love others, which will require spending time with them–especially with the hurting, lonely, questioning, the lost.

It would be my opinion, that if we were doing this, when we gathered together to worship–because we have worship (bowing and serving) throughout the week–our corporate worship would be authentic and dynamic. That those who were invited to join us as guests, would see that our relationship with God was real both to us and in how we treat them. Would they then question whether the church was culturally relevant? Would they question the choice of songs, types of instruments, manor of dress?

Your thoughts?