What’s In A Name? Worship Experience Vs. Worship Service

Artwork by Gustav Dore, "Paul Preaches to the Thessalonians" (Scan by Felix Just, S.J.,http://catholic-resources.org/Art/Dore.htm )

By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. (Hebrews 13:15)

Something has rolling around in my head for a few months and I couldn’t quite pin down what it was. It all started when I noted that among some of the brethren a new term had come into use. It pertains to the Sunday morning hour of worship.

Again and again, I kept hearing about brethren calling the Sunday hour of worship “the worship experience.”

The emerging and contemporary churches seem to love the term. Others of us who are outside that movement seem to be largely sticking with the older term “worship service.”  Every time I heard of a worship experience, it snapped my head up because it just sounded totally wrong, but I couldn’t articulate why I was so distressed in my spirit about it.

Today,after a day’s toil in my study, I was putting old leaves from the yard in one of my garden beds and it dawned on me why this semantic struggle has been going on in the Parson’s noggin. When a congregation uses the terminology “worship experience” to describe the Sunday time of gathering, it has betrayed something about what they believe “worship” is all about, and largely, who worship is for. Is the congregation and its leadership all about about providing some kind of “experience” for the attender, or offering to Almighty God, the Lord of Hosts, the King of Glory, the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving?

The terminology begs the question: who is the audience of what takes place? Doesn’t it seem odd to think of a worship experience being for God?

When we describe the Sunday gathering as an “experience” that puts all the emphasis on what it does for us, the worshiper. It seems to me that a serious erosion of our worship theology has occurred when we can’t bring ourselves to describe what we do as a worship service anymore.

The word service suggests doing something for someone else. For example, a lawyer performs legal service for his clients. A lawn service mows the yard for their customers. Somebody is doing something for someone else when a service is performed.

Experience, on the other hand suggests passivity. I go to a church, sit in my seat and then watch and listen, passively, often wowed by the technological display, applauding at particularly moving, sentimental times.And then, I go home. I have had a great experience–I soaked it all up. But I haven’t done much service. Not too much has been offered by me to God.

The name we stick on the Sunday gathering is important. Who is worship for? Us? Or God? Ancient churches called the Sunday gathering the Liturgy, or the Divine Service. There’s a reason. Liturgy means “the work of the people.” Today’s liturgical churches, the conservative ones, anyway, are not all about the “experience”–when you  go to a church like that, you have to pay attention and keep up–there are congregational responses throughout the service–you can’t sit there like a pew potato–you have work to do. And that work is service unto Almighty God in heartfelt, devoted praise and prayer.

For those of us who are not in the liturgical tradition, but who still maintain a traditional order with congregational participation in our worship services, we have our reasons, and this is part of the explanation why we have held on to the older ways.

Have I misconstrued this new terminology’s use, and spoken in haste?  If by some chance those of you who use the term “experience” happen upon this blog, please correct me if I have. If not, then I humbly submit to my peers in ordained ministry that we need to use care in our use of terms.

I welcome your comments and friendly debate.

©Baptist Parson, 2009. All rights reserved.