19 January 2023

Do Christians meet for worship?

A Review Essay: William Taylor, Revolutionary Worship: All of Life for God’s Glory

Abstract

This review article considers recent evangelical reflections on the nature of worship. Many evangelicals are positing that as all of life is worship it is inappropriate to speak of Christians going to church to worship. Indeed, for many evangelicals, this is now the ruling paradigm: we meet for worship only in the sense that the whole of the believer’s life is worship. If we think that we meet for worship, our language and our thinking about such meetings needs to undergo a radical transformation. This position has been argued in a recent and influential book on the subject, Revolutionary Worship: All of Life for God’s Glory, by William Taylor, rector of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate. In contrast to this view, this article argues for the historic understanding of the meeting of the local church as a meeting for the worship of God, at which the Lord’s people may expect to know Christ’s presence with them by his Spirit in a special manner.

I. Introduction

Do Christians meet for worship? Historically, the church has believed that the purpose of her gatherings was for the worship of God. In recent years, this belief has been forcefully critiqued by some sections of reformed evangelicalism. It has been suggested that to say that we go to church for worship is like saying that we go to bed to breathe.^[1] All of life is to be lived to the glory of God and when we think of ‘worship’ we should be thinking of every aspect of all that we do at any time, not merely what we do when we gather with other Christians to sing, pray and hear from the Bible. For many evangelicals, this is now the ruling paradigm: we meet for worship only in the sense that the whole of the believer’s life is worship. If we think that we meet for worship, our language and our thinking about such meetings needs to undergo a radical transformation. This is the thesis of a recent book on the subject, Revolutionary Worship: All of Life for God’s Glory,^[2] written for a popular audience by William Taylor, rector of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate.

II. Revolutionary Worship

William Taylor has written a series of ‘Revolutionary’ books, of which Revolutionary Worship is the most recent; the previous titles are Revolutionary Sex: How the Good News of Jesus Changes Everything (10Publishing, 2015) and Revolutionary Work: What’s the Point of the 9 to 5? (10Publishing, 2016). The books are short and the writing is clear and simple, assisted by suitable illustrations and examples. In Revolutionary Worship, Taylor examines what the New Testament teaches on worship. He argues that what many Christians, including evangelicals, understand as worship does not represent the New Testament teaching on the subject: ‘the biblical understanding of worship is … revolutionary because often it contrasts markedly with what passes as a Christian practice even in our so-called “evangelical” or “reformed” circles. The gospel of the Lord Jesus radically challenges what is regarded as “worship”.’^[3] Taylor’s thesis is that a radical change occurred in the nature of worship with the coming of Christ into the world. As a result of Jesus’s death and resurrection, worship now encompasses all aspects of life. It is no longer something that is done by God’s people only at particular times and places: “the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus has revolutionised our worship such that it involves the whole of our life.”^[4] Now that Christ has come, all of life is worship. What then are Christians doing when they meet for what many would still call ‘worship’? The answer given in Revolutionary Worship is that we meet “to hear the truth of the gospel, to encourage one another in this truth, to thank God for it, and to ask for his help as we go out into the world to worship”.^[5]

The argument is substantiated from four passages of the New Testament: John 4:1-26; Romans 12:1-3; Hebrews 12:1-13:8 and 1 Peter 1:22-2:10. In John 4, Jesus showed the woman at the well that temple worship was coming to an end, to be replaced by worshippers who themselves have the presence of God all the time, by the Spirit. God’s people now worship him wherever they are, by living for him and serving him all day long. They praise him in their daily lives by testifying to others of who he is – not merely by singing his praises in a meeting, but by speaking the truth about him in praise of him to others. Now, for the believer, “it’s worship time all the time, and every place is worship space”.^[6] In his letter to the Romans, Paul teaches that believers are right with God solely through the finished work of Christ on the cross. Chapter 12 of that letter shows that worship is our response to what God has done for us. This involves every aspect of our lives, not only what we do when we meet with other believers on a Sunday. We gather on Sunday – or at other times – in order to learn from God’s Word how to live for him all week long. We should therefore not refer to or think of our meetings as a time particularly of worship. We are to be engaged in worship every hour of every day of the week.

In chapter 12 of Hebrews, the writer argues that the disciple of Christ now has access directly into the heavenly presence of God himself, at all times and in all places. Special places and special times for access to God are redundant. The final verses of that chapter, which speak of God as a consuming fire to be worshipped in reverence and awe, leads into the practical instruction of chapter 13. It is obedience to that practical instruction that constitutes the reverential worship of this awesome God; it is not that “Christians meeting together must create an awesome experience of God”.^[7] In his first letter, Peter uses Old Testament temple worship language to speak, in the light of Christ’s coming, of all that God’s people do wherever they are. It is Christian believers who are now the family, temple and nation of God. We do not need to do anything to become right with God, for we are right with him in Christ. So “Christians should never seek to create an experience in our so-called ‘worship meetings’ that suggests we somehow enter God’s presence through our worship”.^[8] We are to offer up spiritual sacrifices, which Peter explains by way of the practical instruction for daily life that he gives in the sections of his letter that follow. We are to proclaim God’s praises publicly, which we do in our evangelism.

What then are Christians to do when they meet? Revolutionary Worship addresses this question from Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 5:18-20 and Colossians 3:16-17. These verses form part of Paul’s instruction about what it means to live lives filled by the Spirit of God. They concern, again, practical Christian living. A Spirit-filled life is one that is lived out day by day in the service and to the glory of God. The verses themselves speak of horizontal instruction and encouragement – of addressing one another with the great truths of God’s Word. There is, at the same time, a vertical aspect to our meetings, as we address our praise and prayers to God and listen to God speaking to us in his Word. This can be done at any time, but these particular verses relate primarily to what believers do when we meet. The Word of God must be central to all that is done in our meetings and must drive every aspect of it. Our singing is to be congregational, rather than the performance of a few. We are to emphasise fellowship and mutual teaching and encouragement.

Taylor summarises the main points made in his book in his concluding chapter:

Above everything else, true Christian worship rightly understood, is a response to what Jesus has already done. God is never ‘approached’ in worship. Christians do not come any closer to God in worship than they already are. Believers do not need a worship leader other than Jesus. He presents his people to God and brings his people to God. God is not worshipped primarily in a church building; he dwells within his people by his Holy Spirit. Thus, wherever his people find themselves, they are the dwelling place of God. Perhaps if we are still using the language of worship to describe what we do in our meetings and buildings, we need to ask ourselves whether we have quite as big a view of what Jesus has accomplished as the New Testament authors do?^[9]

III. Assessment

Revolutionary Worship follows a line of thinking about worship that was made popular with the publication in 1992 of David Peterson’s book, Engaging with God. In that volume, Peterson, principal of Oak Hill College in London from 1996 to 2007, gave concentrated attention to the way in which the New Testament uses worship language.^[10] Some of the detail of his exegetical work is contained in his chapter in a book edited by D. A. Carson which came out in the following year, Worship: Adoration and Action,^[11] but his interest in the subject can be traced back to two articles published in the previous decade: “Towards a New Testament Theology of Worship” and “Further Reflections on Worship in the New Testament”.^[12] Previous work in this area includes that of Ernst Käsemann, who argued that the apostle Paul does away with all cultic spaces, times and activities, as well as all ideas of priesthood (other than the universal priesthood of believers), these being superseded by the everyday bodily obedience of the community of believers.^[13] Similarly, I. Howard Marshall analysed worship language in the New Testament and concluded, “Although the whole activity of Christians can be described as the service of God and they are engaged throughout their lives in worshipping him, yet this vocabulary is not applied in any specific way to Christian meetings … Christian meetings are not said to take place specifically in order to worship God and the language of worship is not used as a means of referring to them or describing them.”^[14]

Peterson’s analysis showed that key worship terms used in the New Testament – προσκυνειν (proskynein), λατρευειν (latreuein), λειτουργειν (leitourgein) – have primarily to do with the concept of service. Peterson concluded that New Testament worship is essentially the offering of the whole of a believer’s life to God in his service, on the basis of the atoning work accomplished in the self-sacrifice of Christ. This is why worship language is used in the New Testament for Paul’s preaching ministry to Gentiles (Romans 15:16), financial offerings (Romans 15:27), material gifts (Philippians 2:25; 4:18) and Christian service more generally (Philippians 2:17; 3:3) and in our ongoing reconciled relationship with God based on faith (Hebrews 4:14-16; 10:19-25), in grateful obedience (Hebrews 9:14; 12:28; 13:15-16), on the basis of the kingdom that we have by grace already received (Hebrews 12:28-29).

This work and the ideas that it supported were taken up by Vaughan Roberts, rector of St Ebbe’s in Oxford, in a book published twenty years ago, True Worship.^[15] Roberts argued strongly against the idea that worship was something that Christians primarily do in a church building at certain specified times: “the New Testament does not teach that we meet together to worship God”. Rather, he argued, we meet primarily for mutual encouragement and edification – our meetings are primarily directed at each other, not God-ward. It is true that ‘elements’ of our meetings are to be directed to God, essentially praise and prayer, but “this is not the primary reason why we meet together.”^[16] Although he has not adopted all Roberts’s arguments, it is this line of thinking that William Taylor took up in a sermon series preached in 2018 at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate^[17] and, most recently, in Revolutionary Worship.

There is much to appreciate in Taylor’s book. It is too easy to forget that every aspect of our lives is to be lived for God’s glory and that we are to worship the Lord in all that we do every day, not only when we gather for Christian meetings. The book brings home that message very clearly and forcefully. It is similarly clear on the essential matter of the finished nature of the saving work of Christ in his death and resurrection. The Christian believer is already right with God and no experience in a meeting of Christians is needed or is able to make him or her more justified in God’s sight. In our meetings, the Word of God is to be central and all that we do when we meet is to be focused on and driven by that Word. We do not meet in order simply to experience special feelings – a ‘God hit’ – but to hear God speak through his Word and respond to him in praise and prayer. On all these vital matters, Taylor is clear and helpful.

Taylor – and Roberts before him – appear to have two main groups in their sights as they write. They are concerned, firstly, for Christians – perhaps nominal believers – who think that ‘worship’ extends only to what is done in church for an hour or so on a Sunday and who may regard the rest of their lives as theirs to live precisely as they please. This group has little concept that all of life is to be lived in the service of God, dedicated to Christ in every way. As ministers in the established church in England, Taylor and Roberts naturally believe that they need to address this question head on. What they have to say to on this issue is helpful and necessary.

The second group whom they seek to address are those evangelicals who believe that worship primarily relates to the musical element of Christian meetings. They engage in that part of their meetings with the hope of a great experience; various techniques – sound, lighting and other effects – may be used to seek to create this. Taylor, like Roberts before hm, also addresses this group well, seeking to help them to see that worship is far greater and more extensive a concept than this. Not only is it to apply to the whole of our lives, but even within the Christian meeting the focus is to be not so much on the music as on the Word of God. Taylor’s section on how, in the church that he leads, they seek to ensure that God’s Word directs and dominates every aspect of their meetings is a most useful guide from which all who have responsibility for planning and leading meetings would benefit.^[18]

There are, however, three themes that run through Taylor’s book which call for closer examination. Firstly, Taylor argues that, because all of life is to be lived in the worship of God, there is no special sense in which Christian meetings may be called ‘worship’. If believers use worship language to refer to what they do when they meet, they need to be very clear that such language is legitimate only because all that the believer does anywhere and at any time is worship. We do not meet with other believers ‘to worship’, because we are to be doing that all the time. Connected with this, secondly, is the question of the nature of what we do when we meet: is it primarily vertical, as the historic understanding of Christian meetings would hold, or is it horizontal? Roberts in True Worship had argued that it is primarily horizontal, though there are vertical elements to our meetings. The view that Taylor puts forward is that it is both – horizontal and vertical – without, it seems, prioritising one over the other. Then thirdly, Christians are not to think that, when they meet with other Christians, they are in any sense approaching God or coming nearer to him. God is present with the believer, by his Spirit, at all times and in all places, and the believer is already right with God through faith in Christ, so it is not possible to come closer to God. There is no special presence of God in the meetings of his people, over and above that which every believer enjoys everywhere all the time.

Taylor’s book, like Roberts’s, is written at the popular level and, though both books are rooted in biblical exposition, they understandably do not engage in depth with all the exegetical issues that their arguments raise. Yet they are seeking to persuade Christians to make a radical change in the language that they use about their regular meetings. This change is by no means merely semantic. It is to reflect an altered understanding about the very nature of those meetings. We are not to think that those meetings are in any sense worship, other than in the sense that all of life is worship. Our meetings are not primarily vertical, though they have that element to them. And we are not to imagine that we in any sense experience the presence of God in those meetings in any way different from the manner in which, as Christian believers, God is always present with us by his Holy Spirit. These are indeed radical claims. They represent a very marked change in the understanding that Christians have had about their meetings over the centuries and, if taken up, have a significant effect on how those meetings are viewed and experienced by Christians today. It is therefore vital that they are shown to have a solid biblical and exegetical foundation, if they are seriously to be taken on by God’s people in their understanding of what they do when they meet.

IV. Do We Meet for Worship?

Taylor argues in Revolutionary Worship that Christians must reform their use of worship language, as “all the worship words of the New Testament” are “really used of everyday life”.^[19] We need to bring our language into line, says Taylor, with that usage.^[20] If we speak of Christian meetings as worship, we should also impress on ourselves and one another that we continue to worship when we leave our meetings and go out to live the rest of our lives: ‘as we walk out of the church’s door, we are going out to worship God’.^[21] This is a powerful argument, but the radical demand that it makes upon our use of language and our understanding of what is happening at Christian meetings requires that it be subjected to careful examination.

Taylor examines in his book some New Testament passages that might appear to use worship language to refer primarily to what is done in Christian meetings. In John chapter 4, Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman makes use several times of the verb προσκυνειν (proskynein), to bow down, which English translations generally render as ‘worship’. Taylor argues that the word, in the context of Jesus’s discourse there, must be understood to refer to what we do in all of life. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul describes what could happen when an outsider comes in to a Christian meeting – he is convicted by what is going on and “falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (v. 25). In a long end note, Taylor argues that Paul is referring here to the man’s conversion, “as he recognises the rule of Christ and submits his life to Jesus as King”.^[22] The “worship word”, argues Taylor, “has nothing to do with the meeting itself”. In Hebrews chapter 12, the writer describes the heavenly gathering of perfected saints and the awesome presence of the God whom we serve (v. 28), using the worship word λατρευω (latreuo). Taylor explains that the kind of worship that is meant is expounded in the verses that follow in chapter 13, which describes the everyday practical work in which Christians are to be engaged. The “awesome worship” of chapter 12 consists in the kind of activity described in chapter 13.

In his exposition of each of these three passages, Taylor closely follows the exegesis of David Peterson in Engaging with God.^[23] It is notable, however, that Peterson has concluded in his work that it is nevertheless still legitimate to use worship language to refer to what Christians do when they meet. His preferred phrase is “congregational worship”. Congregational worship, says Peterson, is “a particular expression of the total life-response that is the worship of the new covenant”.^[24] Commenting on the use of the worship word λειτουργω (leitourgo) in Acts 13:2-3, Peterson affirms, “If the service of God involved a certain lifestyle and ministry in everyday contexts, it also had a definite expression when Christians gathered together.”^[25] Our worship “finds particular expression when Christians gather to minister to one another in word or deed, to pray, and to sound forth God’s praises in teaching or singing,” though “it is not to be restricted to these activities”.^[26] Using the words of C. E. B. Cranfield, he writes that the “church meeting” is “the focus-point of that whole wider worship which is the continually repeated self-surrender of the Christian in obedience of life”.^[27] In a later book, Encountering God Together, written for a more popular audience, Peterson goes so far as to say, “Authentic worship embraces the whole of life, but this does not alter the fact that there is a special realization or expression of worship when we gather together as Christ’s people.”^[28] Peterson is at pains to point out that, when Christians meet, they do also worship and that there is a particular sense in which such meetings are truly and importantly worship – it is not merely that Christian meetings are worship because all of life is worship: there is an especial sense in which those meetings may rightly be referred to as ‘worship’.

The more nuanced approach of David Peterson, whose detailed exegetical work lies at the root of Taylor’s more popular work, seems preferable to the more black-and-white approach of Revolutionary Worship (and of Roberts’s True Worship). Peterson’s way of understanding Christian worship is shared by other scholars. D. A. Carson has questioned whether the view that Christians do not really gather for worship is not a ‘new reductionism’.^[29] Herman Ridderbos, in his account of Paul’s theology, considered that, while all of life is worship for the Christian, the gathering of believers has a distinctive quality, in setting forth sharply the difference between the believer and the world: ‘in these meetings the peculiar character of the church in the world is disclosed in an exemplary way, just as the indwelling of Christ in his church becomes manifest through the proclamation of the gospel, the observance of the Lord’s Supper, the promise given, and the benediction pronounced in his name’.^[30] Carson, again, wants to preserve the distinctiveness of the Christian meeting by using the term ‘corporate worship’ to describe it.^[31] These important qualifications and nuances in the New Testament use of worship language are notable by their absence in Revolutionary Worship.

V. Horizontal Or Vertical?

This debate is not purely semantic. The language of worship concerns how we engage with God and he with us. In his chapter on corporate worship, Taylor argues that our meetings have both a horizontal and a vertical aspect. He does not prioritise one over the other, though he says rather more about the horizontal than about the vertical aspects (probably because of his desire to correct a perceived imbalance in how Christians understand what they are doing when they meet). There is a difficulty here, however. Worship language, by definition, involves the idea of submission to a greater one. It comprises the paying of homage or adoration to the one to whom the worship is offered – in this case, God himself. David Peterson addresses this point in Encountering God Together. Worship language, he says, indicates homage, respect, service – whole-hearted, directed to God and particularly, under the new covenant, to Jesus Christ.^[32]

It is certainly true, as Taylor strongly maintains, that we meet for mutual edification. This edification must be seen, however, as an integral part of an event of much larger significance: that we are meeting with the living God, with Christ the head of the Church, in a manner that does not occur in other contexts. When the church meets, she is gathering together to Christ and, above and beyond any other purpose or benefit of its meeting, she is seeking to come corporately, as the body of Christ, to God. Thus it is by together coming to God in Christ by his Spirit and submitting to him and expressing to him our allegiance, homage and adoration that we are able to edify one another and the purpose of that mutual edification is that we might better, individually and together, serve and worship our King.

If then there is a particular sense in which Christians gather for the worship of God and that worship involves rendering homage and devotion to him, it is clear that the primary focus of our gatherings is vertical – we come together, first of all, to meet with God. So Peterson affirms, “Every Christ-centred gathering is an expression of our union with him and with each other before God’s heavenly throne. The vertical dimension (God’s engaging with us) is primary … So we meet with God in the presence of one another and meet with one another in the presence of God.”^[33] It is not, as all agree, that we bring anything to God that he does not already have. Rather, we are expressing our submission to and dependence upon him. We are saying that, truly, “He is Lord”. And so we come to offer to him, together, our combined praise, to seek him together, as his people, in our confession of sin, thanksgiving and prayers and, centrally though not exclusively, we come to hear together what he has to say to us as our Lord and King and Great Shepherd, in his Word, as he rules and governs us his people. It is this emphasis on the primacy of the vertical nature of Christian meetings that is missing in Revolutionary Worship.

VI. Do We Come into God’s Presence When We Meet?

Taylor rightly argues that, after Christ’s death and resurrection, the Spirit of God indwells every believer. The temple is no longer the place where God particularly makes himself known to and present with his people. Every believer is now that place. Here is another reason why every part of our lives, at every moment, must be lived to God’s glory. The corollary of this, according to Taylor, is that we are not to suppose that, when we meet, God is present with us in any way different from the manner in which he is present with us at other times. We should not give the impression in our meetings that we “somehow enter into God’s presence through worship”.^[34] “Christians do not come any closer to God in worship than they already are.”^[35] The question, “Am I equally close to God when I meet with one other person in Starbucks to look at the word of God as I am when we gather together as a church on Sunday” clearly expects the answer “Yes”.^[36]

The distaste for the idea that Christians approach, or come closer in some sense, to God when the local church meets for worship is based on the vital truth that the believer is fully justified at all times in God’s sight by faith in Christ and so nothing can be done, in Christian meetings or otherwise, to improve his or her standing before God. This, coupled with the fact that the believer is always indwelt by the Holy Spirit and in that sense enjoys the presence of God continually, means, in Taylor’s view, that we should not think or speak of any special presence of God in Christian meetings.

It may prove helpful, in examining this issue, to look more closely at how the New Testament speaks of God’s presence with his people and, particularly, at its use of temple language. As Taylor shows from Peter’s first letter, it is in the New Testament the church that is referred to as God’s temple, since the death and resurrection of Christ. Christian believers are “living stones”, a “spiritual house”, a “holy priesthood” who “offer spiritual sacrifices”, with Christ as the cornerstone (1 Peter. 2:5-6). In the same way, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians uses temple vocabulary in his discussion of the church: words such as “built”, “foundation”, “cornerstone”, “holy temple” and “dwelling place” (Ephesians. 2:20-22). Temple language can be used of the individual believer (Romans. 8:9, 11; 1 Corinthians. 6:19), but its use in both Paul’s and Peter’s writings in this regard is primarily corporate (see also 1 Corinthians. 3:9-17), as the New Testament language of the church as the “body of Christ” would lead one to expect (1 Corinthians. 12:27). Whereas during his earthly ministry Christ in his own body was the temple of God, now it is the church corporately which, as the body of Christ on earth, constitutes the place of God’s dwelling. So Peter’s reference to believers as “like living stones” is not to them individually but as those who are “being built up as a spiritual house”: it is particularly the stones together which make the temple of God, the church gathered (1 Peter. 2:5).

So now, the temple, God’s dwelling-place, is his people, those who are in Christ, understood primarily in a corporate sense. The body of Christ continues, in other words, to be the temple of the living God on earth, but that body consists and is expressed and seen by the world in those who are in Christ, the church, of which each local church is an expression. How then is that presence expressed and experienced by God’s people in this present age? The obvious answer is: when they meet together, when they express in their gathering something of their corporate being as the body of Christ and the temple of the living God.

Thus it would seem to make complete biblical sense to speak of a particular presence of God when his people meet, especially as the local church. David Peterson in Engaging with God writes, “several texts suggest that God presences himself in a distinctive way in the Christian meeting through his word and the operation of his Spirit”.^[37] Again:

The people of God continue to be the Spirit-filled community when they disperse and go about their daily affairs, but their identity as “the temple of the Lord” finds particular expression when they gather together in Jesus’ name, to experience his presence and power in their midst.^[38]

This presence is made known especially by the ministry of the Holy Spirit: “The ascended Lord … inhabits our congregations by his Spirit (1 Corinthians. 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians. 6:16-18)”.^[39] So, for Peterson, there is a particular sense in which God is present by his Spirit in the meetings of the church. This is the third area in which Revolutionary Worship, by contrast, lacks significant nuance.

VII. Conclusions

Revolutionary Worship effectively counters two views of worship that are prevalent among different groups today – firstly, that worship is confined to what Christians do when they meet on Sundays, while the rest of life is one’s own to live as one pleases, and secondly, that worship is principally the musical part of the meeting in which those who participate hope to have an exciting experience of God. In response, Taylor has provided a clear, well-argued and well-illustrated explanation of the biblical teaching that the whole of life is to be lived for Christ’s glory – often referred to in the New Testament using worship language – and that the focus of Christian meetings and that which is to drive and underpin every aspect of them is not so much the music as the Word of God. These aspects of Revolutionary Worship are well executed and valuable.

We have seen, however, that in three respects William Taylor’s book lack important nuance. He – like Roberts in True Worship – wants to push the idea that all of life is worship to an extreme, such that we should not really be using worship language at all in relation to Christian meetings. Nor should we view those meetings as primarily a time when we engage vertically with God, nor should we expect in some sense to experience a particular presence of God at such times. In these respects, Taylor goes further than the more academic and detailed exegetical work of David Peterson on the subject, on which Revolutionary Worship otherwise relies heavily. As a result, Taylor’s book denies and rejects the unique sense in which the local church meets with her head, the Lord Jesus Christ, to worship God in his presence by his Spirit.

This is a serious loss. While the corrective to false views of Christian worship that Taylor provides in his book is welcome, his views risk pushing the church into a different – and dangerous – extreme. Denials that the church gathered is not really meeting for worship, in any meaningful sense different from our everyday service to Christ, is likely to diminish significantly the importance of such meetings in the minds of believers. If Christians are taught that they worship God just as much when going about their daily business as they do when they gather with the Lord’s people, will this not reduce the importance of attending church meetings in their thinking? There is likely also to be a significant change in the ethos of those meetings, if the belief that God is especially present there is rejected. Although there should be no place for an artificial creation of a heightened sense of excitement in our meetings, if it is in fact the case that the Lord Jesus Christ especially makes himself present there to minister to us through his Word and Spirit, there should be a correspondingly heightened sense of the significance of what we are doing when we meet. This will, surely, mean that we meet with a true sense of awe and reverence, as we contemplate the extraordinary nature of what we are doing in meeting corporately with the living God. The historic understanding of the meeting of the local church as a meeting for the worship of God, at which the Lord’s people may expect to know Christ’s presence with them by his Spirit in a special manner, is a vital biblical truth, the loss of which would constitute a severe blow to the spiritual health of Christ’s church.

About the author

Dr Robert Strivens is a Pastor at Bradford on Avon Baptist Church and a former Principal of London Seminary.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Vaughan Roberts, True Worship (Milton Keynes: Authentic Media, 2002), 26.

[2] William Taylor, Revolutionary Worship: All of Life for God’s Glory (Leyland: 10Publishing, 2021).

[3] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 3.

[4] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 3.

[5] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 3.

[6] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 18.

[7] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 56, 124-25.

[8] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 70.

[9] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 100-101.

[10] David Peterson, Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship (Leicester: Apollos, 1992).

[11] David Peterson, ‘Worship in the New Testament’, in D. A. Carson, ed., Worship: Adoration and Action (Baker Book House, 1993), 51-91. See also Peterson, ‘The Worship of the New Community’, in I. Howard Marshall & David Peterson, eds., Witness to the Gospel: The Theology of Acts (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 373-95.

[12] David Peterson, ‘Towards a New Testament Theology of Worship’, The Reformed Theological Review 43 (1984): 65-73; Peterson, ‘, ‘Further Reflections on Worship in the New Testament’, The Reformed Theological Review 44 (1985): 34-41.

[13] Ernst Käsemann, ‘Worship and Everyday Life: A Note on Romans 12’, trans. W. J. Montague, in Käsemann, New Testament Questions of Today (London: SCM, 1969), 188-95.

[14] I. Howard Marshall, ‘How Far Did the Early Christians Worship God?’, Churchman 99 (1985): 216-29, 220.

[15] Vaughan Roberts,True Worship (Milton Keynes: Authentic Media, 2002).

[16] Roberts, True Worship, 42-46, 61-62.

[17] https://www.st-helens.org.uk/resources/article/1819/ [accessed 27 June 2022].

[18] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 90-95.

[19] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 21.

[20] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 22-24.

[21] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 36.

[22] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 124.

[23] Peterson, Engaging with God, 97-100, 195-96, 241-46.

[24] Peterson, ‘Worship in the New Testament’, 83.

[25] Peterson, ‘Worship of the New Community’, 388.

[26] Peterson, ‘Worship of the New Community’, 395.

[27] ‘Worship in the New Testament’, quoting C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans 2:602; Peterson lodges an objection, it should be noted, to Cranfield’s use of the term ‘a Christian cultic worship’.

[28] David G. Peterson, Encountering God Together: Biblical Patterns for Ministry and Worship (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2013), 37.

[29] D. A. Carson, ‘ “Worship the Lord Your God”: The Perennial Challenge’, in Carson, ed., Worship: Adoration and Action, 16.

[30] Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, trans. J. R. de Witt (London: SPCK, 1977), 481.

[31] D. A. Carson, ‘Worship Under the Word’, in Carson, ed., Worship by the Book (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 49.

[32] Peterson, Encountering God Together, 28-34.

[33] Peterson, Encountering God Together, 19.

[34] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 70.

[35] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 100

[36] Taylor, Revolutionary Worship, 51-52.

[37] Peterson, Engaging with God, 287; on pp. 196-98, he cites in this regard 1 Cor. 14:24-25; Col. 3:16; 1 Cor. 12:4-13.

[38] Peterson, Engaging with God, 202.

[39] Peterson, Engaging with God, 37.