A Reflection On My Philosophy Of Worship

Worship, for such a simple word it can have a vast number of meanings from person to person. People with secular mindsets may say it as a euphemism for liking something or even loving it on an obsessive level. However, for Christians it has more impact, not only mentally but in all of the aspects of our lives. It is in this change I have found my philosophy of worship, although it has changed slightly since taking Survey of Worship Arts. Due to differing philosophies there are certain aspects of the church that are good and bad, and there is a multitude of historical happenings that caused them. In the end though it all boils down to the philosophy of worship. “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come

Yet as the class went on I came to realize how hollow my philosophy was, having one aspect and one aspect alone, I completely neglected the role that the Bible, God’s Word, affects our worship. In all actuality, as worship leaders we need to be just as familiar with the bible as a churches pastor. How can we lead other people to worship and hear the word of the Lord if we are not spending everyday growing closer to God through the Bible and prayer? In the book Return to Worship it stresses that worship is not a simple act but a lifestyle and this is the main factor that changed my philosophy. Even though, my philosophy prior to the class revolved around worshipping anywhere at anything with anything, my view of worship was one-sided enough that I believed it simply consisted of a short prayer said here or there. I had never even really thought about reading scripture as a huge necessity, although I knew it was important it had never clicked that it is vitally important to worship the God of the universe. In addition to that, while I knew the world seemed to dislike Christianity I never knew that they hated us because they cannot understand or accept what is holy when they are unholy. This is shown in John 15:19, “The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.” The world is inherently evil, and part of our job is to show the love of God to the hearts of the people here so that they can see the evil in the world and begin to worship the Lord beside us as our brothers and sisters in