Deep Thought: I can picture in my mind a world without war and a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

One thing that you would never expect is for me to post a blog. So I thought I would catch you totally off guard and try to do a series of posts. I want to do this because as we have gotten bigger, there has been an on going debate about worship in our church. A lot of ideas about how our worship should be are flying around out there. I will be the first to agree that it is a difficult endeavor to try to do worship that reaches the churched and the unchurched, but it can be done. As we get bigger, we have to fiercely fight to keep the vision in tact. So, I will attempt to give you a few convictions that I have about worship and the vision of Shoreline.

1. Only true followers can truly worship God. Worship can only come from true followers. When we worship God, we do it by expressing our love and commitment to Him. People who are not followers of Christ simply cannot do this. The main point is that it is God, not man, who is the focus and center of our worship
2. You don’t need a church building to worship God. In the book of Acts, the apostle Paul said that God does not live in temples made with men’s hands. Therefore, we will worship wherever God has us meeting, whether it is a movie theater, the community center, a bar, a coffee shop or a club house. For where ever we worship, there is the church.
3. There is no correct “style” of worship. Jesus only gave 2 requirements for legitimate worship; in spirit and in truth (John 4). God isn’t offended by different styles. In fact, He probably enjoys the variety. It was his idea to make us different anyway. Shoreline’s style speaks more about the culture we are engaged with than our theology. Our worship will always be targeted to engage the culture we are trying to reach. So, even if we do a 400 year old hymn, it will be tweaked to fit the culture. It will be done, though in spirit and in truth.

Tomorrow, I will deal with worship and how it speaks to the unchurched. Until then, try to imagine a worship service without hate and war.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Pastor Eric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.