A Working Philosophy of Worship
written by Aaron Schultz
Most of the time when planning worship experiences, I’m easily caught up in the details of the service construction and do not stop to reflect on the meta assumptions in place that work to quietly influence my decisions. It is a helpful exercise to acknowledge what this foundational philosophy looks like from time to time and become aware of how this working philosophy ages over the course of time.
Worship is a very broad term describing where a given person locates their energy, affections, and devotion. As created persons, we have an intense desire to belong, to be loved, and to be found significant; a path which inevitably involves the continual worship of various things. Christian public worship involves a collective faith-filled and Spirit-led response to the revelation of God through the ongoing narrative of God, the Sacraments, the liturgy, and the intersection of the community’s experience of God’s gracious activity. With this working definition in mind, a few clarifying points ought to be made.
First, Christian public worship does not center on a story of our own choosing. We gather to proclaim and celebrate the narrative of God. The primary movement here is God’s initiated grace; God chooses to manifest Godself in worship. Our worship is a participation in God’s self-revealing, redeeming, liberating, and transforming work in the lives of all people. Second, Christian public worship is inherently communal. We are not isolated or autonomous persons. Instead, we are baptized into a community of faith who are committed to God’s Story. We are invited on a journey with the gathered assembly, and the greater universal church, which revolves around the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Third, the Christ-centered story of God becomes the shared narrative of the local church in their sharing of God to the world. The communal worship gathering shapes, instructs, and informs the ways in which we live lives of love, mercy, humility, generosity, peace, and justice as we work to spread the Good News of Christ as guided by the Holy Spirit.
As a liturgist and pastoral liturgical musician, my responsibility is to serve the local assembly through music, art, presence, and liturgy. This means not only identifying what the congregational song is, but also working to encourage and enliven full, active, and conscious participation on behalf of the worshipers. Ultimately, through the formational act of worship in all of its forms, my ministry is directly connected to working with the community pastorally in the process of living into the likeness of God. Liturgical song is not my own song; rather it is the people’s song. It is not performative; rather it is invitational. Music within the church has a functional characteristic in that they serve the local assembly as they participate in the narrative of God through the liturgical celebration. It also has an aesthetic characteristic in that it points beyond itself to reveal depths of knowledge and experience through the act of engagement. This philosophy impacts absolutely everything in how I understand, plan, and implement liturgical song and liturgy itself. As a worship leader I am not defined by the music I make, but by the community I serve, the Gospel we pronounce, the Sacraments we participate in, and the liturgy that works to proclaim all of these things.
