Worship as a dangerous & risky practice
While worship is often thought of as warm & safe, perhaps we need to recover an awareness of how dangerous & risky it actually is!
Many people have described the space of worship as warm and safe. After all, it’s hard to deny that when we experience God’s presence and love that we don’t correspondingly experience healing and acceptance. In this sense, worship is most certainly a safe, warm, and comforting space to enter into.
Now it must be stated that worship is much more than singing and that our entire lives are supposed to be offered as worship (Rom. 12:1-2). Charismatics would be wise to clarify that worship is not simply singing and music. Yet it would be hard to deny that there’s something unique and both sacramental and charismatic that occurs in the space that we often simply describe as “worship” in our modern church gatherings. Perhaps it would be helpful to define and clarify a definition for the focus on “worship” that I seeks to address here. Don Williams carefully defines “charismatic worship” by writing:
“Charismatic worship may be defined theologically as worship where the leadership and gifts of the Spirit (charismata) are evidenced or welcomed in personal and corporate praise, responding to a mighty act of God.” (Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views, 139)
By and large, Charismatics have largely determined that one of the best, though not the only, spaces for the work of the Spirit is connected to music. This likely flows out of our observation that when King Saul was troubled by an evil spirit, David played music to comfort him (1 Sam. 16:14-23), the Apostle Paul connected music to being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18-20) as well as the mutual building up of the church in the context of music (Col. 3:16). Not to mention the fact that the Church has the Psalter as a worship resource that stimulates this charismatic imagination.
But maybe we need to better understand how worship isn’t just warm and safe; rather, worship is a dangerous and risky enterprise!
Worship is Dangerous & Risky
In one of the absolutely best books on worship that I have ever read, Paul J. Wadell makes a startling suggestion about worship. He writes,
“… true Christian worship is dangerous, far more a risk than a consolation, because true Christian worship initiates us into the stories and practices of a God whose ways are so maddeningly different from our own and, therefore, full of hope. True Christian worship allows God to go to work on us, sanctifying us, gracing us, purifying, renewing, and reforming us; indeed, doing all that is necessary to make us new creatures in Christ.” (Paul J. Wadell, Becoming Friends: Worship, Justice, and the Practice of Christian Friendship)
In the sense that worship offers a space to find comfort, acceptance, and connection with God, worship is certainly safe. But in the sense that worship also places us into the space of being transformed and sanctified, worship is most certainly dangerous and risky. What is dangerous and risky about worship, you ask? Worship is dangerous and risky to our broken, sinful, and messy lives! For in the space of engaging with our Creator, God begins to show us just how broken we are and correspondingly how he wants to put our lives back together and make us into the “new creation” that he’s promised we will become (2 Cor. 5:17). As many a theologian has noted, we are “not yet what we will become,” but the becoming is initiated in the here and now by the power of the Spirit. And this often occurs in the space of “worship.”
If we’re truly engaging with God in the context of worship, we should most certainly be being shaped and formed. In this sense, worship is transformative. It is formational. We are being shaped and molded by the work of the Spirit as we engage with the divine. As Wadell states,
“Nobody should enter into worship and remain unchanged, because the graced power of worship is to make us vulnerable to the God who has ceaselessly been vulnerable to us in covenant, in grace, in Christ and the Spirit, and in sacrament.” (Paul J. Wadell, Becoming Friends: Worship, Justice, and the Practice of Christian Friendship)
The reason why I believe we need to recover this transformative emphasis on worship is because we need to understand the value that worship has in our local gatherings. With church attendance struggling in many churches across the world, perhaps if followers of Jesus understood both the goal and the fruit of worship, they might place a higher value on the habit, rhythm, and value of worship. It’s absolutely tragic that many who claim to follow Jesus have such a low value for and commitment to corporate worship.
Thickening Worship Practices
And while I’m specifically addressing the context of what Williams described as “charismatic worship,” one must note a common weakness within the Charismatic Tradition… namely the lack of sacramentality. Alongside Williams’ contribution in Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views, another theologian offered an important response to Williams’ article on “Charismatic Worship.” The notable Robert Webber provacatively asks the following question:
“But I do have one major question to ask Don Williams: Why, after touching on nearly every aspect of worship, is there not one single word or reference to the Eucharist? Consider the attention given to the Eucharist in the New Testament and throughout history… Charismatics want to be known as those who rediscover the fullness of biblical worship. So I ask, why do you neglect the Eucharist?”
Ouch. But self-reflective Charismatics will soul-search and recognize that this critique is very fitting. Though many Charismatics have embraced a more sacramental and liturgical faith, there are still many that undervalue this biblical and historic aspect of worship. But make no mistake, the Eucharist was central to weekly worship in the New Testament and for the vast majority of church history. Yet given how pragmatic many Charismatics are, maybe more Charismatics would embrace the regular celebration of Communion if they understood that in the same way that the space of singing is risky and dangerous, the Eucharist is also dangerous and risky! After all, when we receive the Bread and Cup, we are inviting the Holy Spirit to renew our faith, express gratitude for the death of Jesus, and anticipate future eschatological consummation of the Kingdom (amongst many other themes).
This is, after all, why Charismatics need to understand that the Eucharist is much more than a symbol. Communion is an experiential and pneumatological practice that “make us vulnerable to the God” and “initiates us into the stories and practices of a God whose ways are so maddeningly different from our own and, therefore, full of hope” (to borrow from Wadell).
And make no mistake… the Eucharist and singing are not the only risky worship practices. Radical obedience, prayer, and many other practices have the same dangerous and risky transformative fruit. So maybe it’s time to embrace them and develop a robust theology of worship that views worship as dangerous and risky?
What do you think?
About the Author
Luke Geraty is a pastor-theologian in northern California. With a few theology degrees and nearly twenty-eight years of church leadership experience, Luke loves the Bible, theology, fly fishing, coffee, and books. All opinions are his own and not the views of any other organizations he’s affiliated with. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe to his YouTube.