The Centrality of Worship

Of all the comments that visiting speakers or guests from other churches make about our church, New Community, the one that I hear most frequently is “I love the worship in your church”.

A community of worship

The root of this comment is not to do with the quality of our bands or the creative use of dustbins as instruments by our worship leaders (though the bands and worship leaders are excellent), it is to do with the very heart of the matter; this church is made up first and foremost of worshippers. And that is the way it should be.

We must be worshippers. Worship isn’t something added on to our lives, it isn’t a luxury, it isn’t something we occasionally get round to. It is actually something that is very central to all that we are and all that we do. This is true of us corporately but it is also true of us individually.

When you think of King David you would think of him as a great leader but we also think of him as a worshipper. It could even be argued that David was a great leader because he was a great worshipper, that worship was really a great key to his leadership ability. There were times in his life when everything was going wrong in his life but there is this little verse in the Bible that says “but David strengthened himself in the Lord”. Its difficult for me not to imagine that probably involved worship; dancing, singing, playing tambourines (not something I am advocating today!) and writing some Psalms because at that moment the way he strengthened himself was by worshipping his Lord.

Psalm 34 records the words of David as he is going through a particularly difficult moment in his life; “I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify (or magnify) the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.”