How does something hardly mentioned in the accounts of the New Testament church become a driving force that dominates roughly half of the average church gathering, and determines, for many, whether or not a church feels good or right for them?

Let’s talk about “worship.”

Our chapel praise & worship team had an after-practice discussion on worship and scripture – the first of many, hopefully. We minister in a military chapel, so there is a lot of overturn and change of leadership. The worship leader and I have only been serving for a year now, and while Bible studies were on our “to do” list, unfortunately, life and distractions got in the way.

Our worship leader asked me if I’d be willing to share to get a conversation started. I was happy to do so, and thought, “Since this is our very first one as a team, what’s the most fundamental thing to me about worship and what we do?”

Despite my opening question, there are lots of scriptures that we use to define the importance of music ministry and praise — great stories from the Old Testament such as the musicians leading the army and the enemies destroying one another in confusion; teachings on the Tabernacle of David and how that might apply to us today; all the excellent verses in Psalms; New Testament moments like when Paul and Silas are praising in prison and an earthquake throws the cell doors wide; even instructions suggesting everyone should come to church with a psalm, hymn, or spiritual song so that the body might be edified.

What to choose?

What came to mind wasn’t what I expected.

“What worship is not.”

I felt compelled to look at verses about worship… how the Bible defines it, and how we often use the term today. I’m convinced that the two are very different, or at least that we should be more careful about what we mean when we say “worship.”

There’s the oft-quoted reminder that worship comes from Old English weorthscipe, which is basically “worth-ship,” the quality of being valuable or precious. It’s an expression of how much someone or something is worth to us.  

In other words, true worship costs something.

When I look at scripture and consider the life we’re called to lead, how much of what God instructs us is singing and playing music? In epistle after epistle, Paul writes a letter to churches or leaders where he lays out some theology – some truth about what God has done and what that means – followed by practical instructions for living a life of worship. So little of those instructions are about the “worship” we cherish and esteem so highly.

Paul tells us that offering ourselves as living sacrifices is our “spiritual service of worship” (Rom 12:1). Jesus tells us that “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me” (John 14:21). John later reminds us that the expression of love for God is our obedience (1 John 5:3).

Singing is conspicuously absent.

Imagine if your spouse said, “Honey, I need your help. Can you please do the dishes so I can use them to cook?” Would you express love and the worth of your spouse by singing to them?

I would always do the dishes out of love for you…
I would even take the trash out to the dumpster, too…
I would pick up all the laundry ’round our home… 
This is my love for you, my love for you alone.

Or maybe just do the thing that’s been asked of you. 

If there was a pie chart for what we’re called to do to live the Christian life, singing and playing music is going to be a pretty small slice among the many more practical responsibilities of ministering to the needs of others. If we took all of the commands of Christ and Paul and others in the Bible and tried to map out what’s covered, our current idea of worship as deeply emotional singing to God isn’t going to be big on that list.

If you cooked a worship pie using the Bible’s recipe, it wouldn’t taste like music.

When handling God’s Word, there are two important terms for how we approach and interpret the text:

Exegesis is the process of getting the intended meaning from the text – reading comprehension, informed by context, scholarship, other scripture, lexical aids, and the like. “What does this mean? What did it mean to its audience?”

Eisegesis is reading intended meaning into the text – reading with a bias or preconceived notion. “I want a verse that backs up what I’m saying, something that confirms what I already think is true. Oh, here’s one.”

Sometimes this leads to well-meaning people sharing as fact or Gospel truth what they’ve heard from well-intentioned teachers, who themselves passed on what they were told by other folks who saw something in a verse or heard something profound and adopted it as a certainty. Then no one fact-checks the familiar teaching, because why would you? 

I’m not chucking spears at any of my fellow believers. We all get things wrong sometimes, and I’ve come up with some amazingly bad interpretations of Scripture. I am trying to chuck spears at some of the phrases and beliefs we accept in the church that aren’t readily apparent in the Bible which defines our faith. 

If we’re not careful, every verse that says anything about someone singing or praising will become a new “teaching on worship,” a new “revelation about the power of praise.” Very quickly, we end up with books and videos full of exposition on verses taken out of context, all feeding our understanding of the importance of new, fresh, anointed, powerful, expressive praise and worship music, much of which pushes us toward purchasing that new song or this new album from an industry of which there seems to be no end in sight.

Cynical, I know. Sorry.

However, the plain reading of scripture to me doesn’t give singing and music the central role in the Body that we do in the church today.

I love doing it, I love being a part of it, I love leading it, I love being in the congregation during it, I love everything about it… but I have to be honest that I just don’t see it at the forefront of what God’s Word calls us to do and be in our churches and our daily lives.

There are more important matters.

For me, getting on stage and playing the piano or singing a song is either an emotional stimulant or an emotional release. I can pour out my frustrations in “worship” and I benefit greatly from it. It’s definitely not some grand sacrifice I’m making, some selfless act worthy of commendation.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that God gives us a means of expressing our adoration and praise which is so fun and so powerfully moving. It’s just not the sacrificial, selfless lifestyle I see the Bible calling Christians to live out in the day-to-day.

I shared this with the team and my wife, and I got some very important feedback. For some people, getting on stage in front of people is really hard. Being in the spotlight when you want to shrink into the shadows is a challenge. Having to perform or speak through your fears is difficult. I respect that, and don’t want to make light of the effort those people make to serve God in music and song.

Similarly, some worship teams have far more obligation and responsibility. If you’re running the music ministry for a big church with multiple services and you’re wrangling all the moving parts and conflicting schedules, that’s work, no doubt about it. Giving that your best might be a selfless sacrifice, for sure. I don’t want to ignore that either.

My concern is more for this concept that worship – specifically singing and playing music – is the main thing, or one of the main things.

Who was a worship leader in the early church?

Ephesians 4:11 doesn’t read, “And He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and worship leaders…” yet that’s a prominent role in our churches, with a whole branch of biblical teaching developed around trying to glean every insight from scripture about the power of music and praise.

Are we receiving the intended meaning from the text, or are we reading meaning into passages, hoping to find what confirms our existing assumptions?

Why don’t we read about more worship leaders in the Bible? Should I have to go all the way back to Chenaniah of the Levites in 1 Chr 15 to find someone “in charge of the singing” in corporate worship?

Arguably, Satan is another “biblical worship leader” based on some interpretations of Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, but I’m not so sure scripture is clear on that. (Links to some interesting articles looking at what Scripture says, what it doesn’t, and what we might infer. Remember, exegesis is good; eisegesis is bad.)

What is the list of qualifications for a worship leader, if the office is so important? We have lists for overseers, deacons, pastors, teachers, and the like – practical instructions and standards for servant leaders who meet the practical needs of the Body.

Why doesn’t Paul give us a glimpse of what the worship leader’s role looks like? Did 100% of churches have that 100% correct, and so it wasn’t necessary in any of his letters? That would be a pretty amazing coincidence.

Again, I am not opposed to what we call worship music, and I’m sure I will continue using that term to describe it, whether out of habit, laziness, or convenience. I just got done playing some songs and singing with my wife, followed by looking into rapid paintings as expressions of worship as part of planning for an upcoming special Night of Worship gathering where all we plan to do is express our hearts to God, mostly through music and song. 

I also think there are fine “lead worshipers” in the Christian community who put some thoughtful and careful teaching out there for all the rest of us wanting to be the next Matt Redman or Kim Walker-Smith. (They’d probably respond with a teaching about “Don’t try to be us. God doesn’t need another Kim Walker-Smith. He wants you.”)

It’s just that I know my heart well enough to catch how easily I choose to “serve” in a way that I enjoy, to “minister” in a way that comes easy, to “worship” in a way that costs me nothing and actually only benefits me. 

So what IS worship?

For me, a convicting display of worship was when I chatted with my friend, a talented singer and passionate lover of Jesus who can easily hold their own belting out a beautiful melody in front of any crowd, who can expertly follow the leading of the Spirit to know what’s the right thing to say or sing at the right time, who has every reason to be up front in the spotlight leading the congregation in praise… 

And instead, they said, “There’s no one running the children’s ministry. This is a need in the Body. This is important. I don’t feel gifted in this, I don’t feel a desire to do this–but I do feel like I need to step up and serve to meet this need.”

That looks to me like biblical worship. That’s a sacrifice.

I get up to play and sing, and I feel like the rich people tossing wads of cash into the collection in front of Jesus, acting like their loose change is something special.

I’m not saying I won’t keep playing or singing songs. I just want to make sure that I’m being honest about what I’m doing, and what I’m not. 

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What do you think?

Are we too focused on music when we talk about worship? Have we let new songs and emotional moments overtake practical obedience in what it means to do church and live the Christian life?

Or am I missing something crucial in the way I’m looking at this? Is there some key aspect or benefit of the songs we sing and the way we express our hearts to God which I have neglected? 

Let me know in a comment, or share your thoughts on the matter. I certainly don’t have a lock on spiritual wisdom, and I’d love to hear what God has shown you.