What is Worship? Reflections For the Livestream Era of American Christianity

 I've been thinking of this question a lot: What is worship? What does it mean to worship? 

I would have answered this question a lot differently a year ago. I recognize now how much many denominations and traditions within the Church looked down upon and devalued online worship. We would never have had serious conversations about livestreaming, nor would a majority of people within my denomination experience what it is like to worship online firsthand without the pandemic. Livestreaming worship has been around for over a decade but mostly found in megachurches and some more evangelical tradition. Worship services have been on TV and radio a lot longer than that, but now the ability to join in worship without leaving home is becoming a universal part of Church in America. 

To be honest, this shift is necessary. There are so many reasons why people have been unable to worship in a particular building at a particular time that has nothing to do with their devotion to God. Many are unable to attend as they grow older.  It's not uncommon for parents of young children to give up trying to make it to in-person worship services. People with disabilities have various struggles, whether with physically accessing some buildings, issues with access to transportation, or the sheer exertion of trying to pack up, get there, go through worship, and go home. Sometimes it's physical limitations that hold them back, other times it's mental stress. In a world with increasing amounts of anxiety, sometimes it's easier to check out a congregation online rather than meet people in person when looking for a community. This is especially true for LGBTQ+ Christians who simply aren't safe in certain congregations. 

I grew up in the worship wars of the 90's, where the big question of how to bring people to God led to the divide between contemporary worship and traditional worship. There was the idea that changing music and the format of worship services might bring people my age and slightly older to Christ. In my experience, I worshiped in both formats, though mostly in traditional services. I generally found that people my parents' age seemed to have an affinity for contemporary worship, but it was the way people connected their children to the Church that made a lasting difference in whether my peers had or kept their faith. It turned out that parenting styles, exploration of faith at home,  and our own personal spiritual explorations made the most difference. I still listen to contemporary Christian music, but I find myself drawn more to formal liturgies for corporate worship. The truth is that I care more about connecting with God than music. Music style, and even whether we use music at all, is important to some, but not to everyone. I think it makes far less difference than peer, familial and intergenerational conversations about God. 

I wonder whether we're about to enter an era of the streamers v. in-person worshippers, where congregations feel divided in similar ways to those who divided between traditional and contemporary services in the 90's. We'll try to connect with one another in various ways, but I hope we don't make the two  central mistakes of the worship wars era: 

1)Pretending that our way of worship is the best and superior way. Whether in-person or at home, I hope we find validity in however we worship God. Maybe having the entire congregation online for a time will help us avoid this. 

2) Pretending that our ways of doing corporate worship will increase membership and drive evangelism. Worship is primarily done by people who are already Christian. Sometimes seekers and explorers come, and having online worship options certainly helps them explore what the Church is, but people will not magically show up because you do corporate worship in a certain way. Evangelism is about building relationship with one another. The overwhelming number of people who eventually join congregations first come there because someone they knew invited them. It was never about bands and worship format. It won't be about how great your livestreams are. Congregations will not live or die by their online presence or worship format. They will live or die by how they connect with others and help them explore Christ together. It's about relationship, not style. 

At its core, worship is about connecting with God. It's about uniting ourselves with others to acknowledge God's holiness. It's about prayer and sacrament. It's about exploring God's Word and finding God changing our hearts and lives. We can worship at home. We can worship in sanctuaries. We can worship with contemporary music or classic hymns. There are many valid ways of building that relationship with God and neighbor. What is vital is that we are connected with our community and we are connected with God. What is worship? Worship ultimately is loving the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds, souls and bodies, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. It's about stripping out the "me" centeredness that is so easy to come by and creating a "we" centered life. It's about dreaming how God's kingdom might actually be made manifest on earth as it is in heaven. It's about taking Christ in through spiritual or physical communion and letting him change us into the people God knows we can be. 

We can do that in our pjs at home and we can worship in buildings. We can use traditional or non-traditional formats. We can create new liturgical ways of being or we can stick to old and well-beloved ways of doing things. There is so much possibility in worship. We are called to worship in different ways depending on the day. Sundays are important, they are the day we especially desire to come together with others. We seek communion on that day, to recognize and receive Christ's bodily presence within ourselves. We seek to engage in other sacraments on that holiest day of the week. But we aren't limited to in-person worship on Sundays. We aren't limited in how we express our adoration of God. We are just asked to adore and acknowledge God's power and presence.

Worship is something we are called to do in different ways every day of our lives. We have to acknowledge God's holiness and ask God to help us live Christ-centered lives every single day, preferably multiple times a day. It's community building and developing relationships with others who are striving to live Christ-centered lives too. It's small and large group gatherings. It's prayer. It's meditation. It's communion. It's sitting alone under the stars whispering, "Lord, have mercy." It's standing in a room with a thousand other people singing Amazing Grace. There is so much that worship is and can be. We need not limit it, as long as it's connecting us to God and others, it is all good.