How Then Shall We Worship? by R. C. Sproul

Author:R. C. Sproul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Theology, worship, baptism, communion, music, traditions
Publisher: David C Cook
Published: 2013-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE WHOLE PERSON

When pollsters ask people why they go to or stay away from church, the polls usually reveal the same thing. The number one motivation people give for going to church is the desire for human fellowship. They want to be with other people in a particular activity. Conversely, the biggest complaints from people who have dropped out of church—the main reasons for not attending—are that worship is boring and irrelevant and that the people at the services are not friendly.

We all know the number one reason we ought to go to church, and that is for the purpose of worshipping God. However, there are few of us, if any, who go to church exclusively for that reason. We go to enjoy the fellowship of our friends, to experience the expression of the symbols of our faith, and for other reasons. In fact, churches often try to appeal to these motivations. For instance, it is not uncommon for a church to design its building to communicate that this is a warm, comfortable, functionally convenient place to assemble together with one’s friends.

Let us go back to the main reasons people cite for leaving church. They say that what goes on at church is boring and irrelevant. I have trouble understanding that. When we open the Bible and read the record of people who had encounters with the living God, we see the whole gamut of human emotions. Some people weep, some people cry out in fear and terror, and some quake and tremble. Abram fell on his face (Gen. 17:3), the Israelites “trembled and stood afar off ” (Exod. 20:18b), and Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me, for I am undone” (Isa. 6:5a). There is a variety of responses to the presence of God, but we never read in the Bible of an occasion when God appears to the people and they are bored. Neither do we read of anyone walking away from an encounter with God, saying, “That was irrelevant.”

A Christian service of worship is a gathering of God’s people in His presence; it is an encounter with God. So, how can we account for the results of the polls that tell us that people come away from church feeling that it is boring and irrelevant?

I believe it is because they have no sense of the presence of God when they attend worship. The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it is too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?

The problem, of course, is in the use of the word sense. People have no sense of God because they cannot sense Him when the church gathers to worship. But if I said to you, “Next week at eleven o’clock in the morning,

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