Being Enactors of Significance

Being Enactors of Significance
Unity Hill Christian Ministry Centre
Worship Workshop
16th May 2009

For some it seems Worship means creative arts and Word means sermon: we have a time of worship and then we listen to the word. But worship does not of itself mean creative arts, worship means to ascribe worth and to bring honour. Worship, if it is to bring God all that He deserves, (regardless of what He desires), must be holistic. My Utmost for His Highest cannot be my utmost if it is not my everything and my all. For our acts of devotion to be worship, they must take place in every facet of our being:
• Spiritual
• Emotional
• Physical
But also:
• Social
• Cognitive (Educational/Intellectual)
• Economic
With everything, with everything...whoa!...oa!....oao!

Boredom is not a lack of activity, it is a lack of significance. Acts of worship are about enacting significant things, either in ascribing worth to God or in receiving grace and blessing from Him.

Worship is knowing: I remember Brian Houston introducing his wife Bobbie at a conference, and saying as she entered the platform “you will enjoy this woman’s preaching and the word she brings from God. I am confident in this woman’s ministry because I know this woman. In fact I have known this woman in the Biblical sense.” To know something in the Biblical sense is shocking: knowing from the Bible involves experience of and intimacy with God in all that God is. If I know the Truth then the Truth shall make me free: as Tim Hansel says “when theology has become my biography”. Whilst not at the same level of intimacy it is important for worship leaders to know their people, the people whom they are leading into worship. This is where the praise of God can be lost in the people’s sense of not belonging: to worship is to be welcome in the presence of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, but people who do not feel welcome in his church will struggle to feel welcome in his presence. What does it mean to belong? Maybe “we want more hymns” or “we want modern music” means “I don’t know these songs, this culture, and I feel left out in my own congregation”.

God added daily to the early Church: and He is adding daily to the megachurches. He does so because He is able to and because it is the desire of His heart that He can connect His lost to His found, His hurting children to his hurting-but-knowing children. Is He able to add to our church? How readily or frequently is He able to add? Are we ready for those who will be brought into The Church through revival to be brought into our congregation? What if I was successful as Chaplain at the High School, and teenage “new converts” starting coming in on a Sunday? (Indeed if I were successful they’d not be new converts when they came here, they’d be seekers: still unsaved, and unchurched, trying out the community of faith to see if they fit.) What do we need to do to be ready? Who do we need to be?

It was the jargon phrase of our faith when I was entering my teenage years that Christianity is not a religion, it is a lifestyle. I think that’s not entirely true, Christianity is not a lifestyle: Christianity is a relationship, the lifestyle is worship. Christianity is our becoming like Christ, returning to the image of God in which we were created as men and women in God’s image. Christianity is our being, worship is the expression of our being, it is our doing: worship is a verb.

Worship is what the Celts described as the psalm on the five stringed harp: a making use of all of the senses to express deep things. One of the critiques I have heard of Celtic modes of daily prayer is “bless me as I brush my teeth and bless my little toe”. The Celts had prayers for every activity and every event. In the same way Thomas a Kempis started out as the cook in The Congregation of The Common Life a monastic house in what is now The Netherlands where he lived during the greater portion of the fifteenth century. In his well known devotional book The Imitation of Christ he puts forward the idea of Man’s complete dependence on God’s love and the futility of life without Him. Brother Thomas spent his days growing herbs, cutting vegetables, baking bread and brewing ale: later he entered the scriptorium where he wrote his devotional book and copied and translated the work of others, (it is thought that he copied out the entire Bible four times in the course of his life). In everything he gave glory to God and made each activity an act of simple devotion. Bless me as I plant these seeds and as I knead this dough.

This is the air I breathe.

Your worship is an expression of your Christianity: worship is our connection with God in ways that are uniquely significant. Many people may connect through the same uniquely significant events, (which is why you can have 2000 people all in a “moment”), but it is only worship for you if it is significant to you.

Praise has been defined as telling the truth about God. Praise is telling your truth about God, while worship is your story of God’s activity in your life; past, future, and present tense. And of course as such they are not distinct.

This is my prayer in the Desert,
When all that’s within me feels dry.
This is my prayer in my hunger and need.
My God is the God Who Provides....

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my saviour am happy and blest...
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my saviour all the day long...

I will bring praise, I will bring praise
No weapon formed against me shall remain,
I rejoice, I will declare,
God is my victory and He is here.

What matters to you is significant to you. Worship is the expression of your “things that matter”, in the minutes of performing The Arts, in the snatched seconds of personal moments of devotion, and in the hours and years of everyday life. When you know that what matters to you matters to God you can worship Him with abandon. When you know that what matters to God matters to you, then you can serve Him in the same way.


This was the first of two sessions I delivered at the worship workshop held by Unity Hill (my home church) in May 2009. The second session was a practical workshop in using drama in church.

And you will be my witnesses...

In many of the more traditional congregations and denominations of the Church the Thursday just gone was celebrated as the Feast of The Ascension. This is the day which Christians have historically set aside to remember Jesus returning to Heaven forty days after his resurrection. There are three accounts of this event in the New Testament, in each of the gospels of Luke and Mark, and in Acts (which Luke also wrote). In each of those places Jesus gives a final set of instructions to his gathered disciples; directing them to go out and to make disciples from all of those who will come to have faith in him through their message.

In Luke’s version Jesus is very clear in separating the parts of the world and in outlining how the planet is to be reached: first Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, and then the Ends of the Earth. Jesus also tells the gathered disciples to remain in Jerusalem until the Spirit comes on them with the Power from on High, so we know that Jerusalem is where they were at the time even though they had all started out in Galilee. But what do these four geographical locations mean for us? Is Jesus’ command to Unity Hill to go to Port Lincoln, the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, and beyond? Is such a request reasonable of us as individuals, or could it mean something else in this day and age? I want to suggest to you that we can each, as individuals, operate in each of these four areas:

Jerusalem: The people we live with, work with, and spend time with. The people we have direct contact with.

Judea: The people we might have occasional contact with, or “friends of friends”. How we interact within our circles has an effect on how those in our circles interact with the other people in theirs.

Samaria: The people beyond our indirect contact, but with who we share similarities.

The Ends of the Earth: People we will never meet this side of Heaven and with whom we share nothing more than air and the love of our gracious and beautiful God. (Quite possibly they are aware only of the first one.)

In each of these groups God has plans for us as individuals, and as a local church. In twenty-first century Unity Hill where Mwandi may be Judea for some, and Mallee Park the Ends of the Earth for others, we can rely on Him to lead us in being influential and active in all four spheres.

After all, it was Jesus’ idea in the first place.

This was the newsletter message I wrote for my church for Sunday 24th May 2009. I also preached the sermon that week, but have not included the text of that message here.