Whatever & Wherever

Posted by Gareth Robinson on 26 July 2011 | 3 Comments

What is your favourite context for worship?

Are you a festival freak?

Do you prefer gathering with your small group?

Cranking up the volume in your headphones on your own?

Or is it the regular time with the rest of your church?

Take a moment to think about your reaction to each of these worship contexts. What words come to mind? How would you score each out of ten?

Sociologists suggest that in order for people to feel a sense of belonging, they need four spaces in which they connect.

The first is the intimate. The one or two people who know you just as you are, with no polish, make-up or front. In terms of worship, this could be time on your own with the Lord, or with your prayer or accountability partner. It doesn’t get more honest or open than this.

The second is the personal. The small group is where we know a lot, but not everything, about the people with whom we gather. They are with us when we need support, they put up with our annoying habits and bad sense of humour(!) and we learn to put up with theirs. In the Bible, worship was often expressed in the family context during the Sabbath meal.

The third is the social. This is where you know most people’s names, but the social connections are weaker. This is more like a normal Sunday church gathering. We are not – we can’t be – deeply connected to everyone in a gathering of over twenty people.

The fourth is the public. Your postie, kids in other years at school, the other parents at the school gate – people you see every day and who are familiar, though you don’t really know them. This is like the festival, the celebration where we become part of the crowd, something bigger than us, or our local community.

We need all four of these spaces to help us feel like we belong.

I used to want all of life to be the festival. In some ways I still do; in my mind it’s the most exciting. To be in a large gathering, with loud music, getting ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ – a place where I can be both present with hundreds or thousands and anonymous all at the same time.

‘Why can’t church be more like this?’ I used to think.

Little did I know, local churches do something different – something I didn’t really like, if I’m honest – they forced me to be the person I actually was, rather than the person I wanted to be.

Which of course is what the Lord always had in mind.

When the local church is at its best, it affirms the hand of God at work in our lives and celebrates our walk towards fulfilling all he has for us.

And in many ways I believe this demonstrates the power of the song in worship. Some songs seem to be suited best to one, or maybe two, of the four social spaces; some transcend them all. As a worship leader I do my best to try to select songs for the correct context.

Songs help us communicate to the Lord, but they also form us, as we learn them and allow them to penetrate to the very depths of our souls. There are times when we get to completely focus on the words we are singing and mean every word with every fibre of our being  – and I still desire for this to be my experience every time I worship.

But if we agree that worship is also about our lifestyle, then maybe the Lord takes a longer view, and looks to see whether we mean what we sing, and sent his Spirit to help us deliver on our promises.

What do you expect when you worship? If you’re like me, that depends on the setting. Understanding the four social spaces has helped my expectations. I haven’t given up constantly pushing for the best in each setting, but the ultimate question is whether we give the Lord our all and mean what we sing, whatever context we prefer and wherever we sing our songs.