Our examination of liturgy in the last issue of The Outlook emphasized that worship communicates. The design of a church’s building, the arrangement of its sanctuary, and the attire of its worshipers are all clues to the content of its faith. But this is not all. At a more basic level, worship is communication. The identity of the New Testament church is the assembly of believers whose purpose is meeting with God in corporate worship. In this article, we will trace this basic theme through several chapters in Abraham Kuyper’s book Our Worship.
Worship Is the Assembly of Believers
Ekklesia, the Greek word we render as “church,” can refer to any public assembly of people gathered for a common purpose. At its root, ekklesia means “the called-out ones”—a group of people who are set apart from the world in order to deliberate and pursue a specific goal.1 The church is called out of the world into membership in a heavenly kingdom, and that membership is nowhere more evident than in corporate worship on the Lord’s Day. The church is a sacred assembly with a heavenly task.
If the church is the assembly of believers, then worship is not a social club or a lecture series (9, 11). It is not the dynamism of the pastor or the individual preferences of the congregants that constitute the assembly, but the holy calling which the Lord lays upon his church.
If the church is the assembly of believers, then worship has a public role (9). Although its holy meeting sets it apart from the world, the church conducts its worship publicly as a means of propagating the faith.
If the church is the assembly of believers, then worship is not contingent upon physical surroundings. The nature of the assembly “is occasioned and determined not by walls or pews, by an organ or a pulpit, but by the presence of the members of the congregation” (10).
The assembly of believers is the central feature of the church’s identity—not the sermon, not the preacher, not even the building (10). From beginning to end, the structure of worship communicates the nature of the church as a holy assembly before the face of God.
Worship Is a Meeting with God
Although the “assembly of believers” is fundamental, we still have not captured the real essence of corporate worship until we recognize that the service is a sacred meeting with God himself. Meeting with the divine is a central theme in both Old and New Testaments.2 “All worship,” says Kuyper, “all genuine religion, is a searching for fellowship with the Lord of lords” (13). Throughout redemptive history the people of God wait longingly for the lost fellowship of Eden to be restored, and Sabbath-day worship offers a foretaste of that still-future restoration.3
On Sunday we converse not only with one another but also with the King of kings and Lord of lords. We approach the Lord through the name and under the blood of Christ, our Mediator and Great High Priest (17). While the Lord is omnipresent, his Spirit is particularly present in the gathering of believers, and corporate worship is the point in a Christian’s life when he or she can be most directly aware of God’s presence (112). In church we speak to God, and— wonder of wonders—he speaks to us.
Worship is not a mere gathering to talk about fellowship with God; it is not a mere practice session for future fellowship with God; it is fellowship with God. It is real, tangible communication with the Lord, surpassing even the ordinary sense of worship which should characterize every moment of a believer’s life (18). Church is not a mere exercise in edification for the believers who gather there; the churchgoers must “feel and taste that they are facing the living God” (119–20). The vital core of Christian worship, according to Kuyper, is the “awareness of having attended an audience with the King of kings” (127), and the duty of those who lead worship is, quite simply, to let the saints taste this divine fellowship.Worship Is a Holy Conversation
If you have a close friend or a relative whom you call on a regular basis, your conversation might follow a predictable pattern. “How are you? How are the kids? When will we see you again?” The character of your relationship guides the contours of your conversation. So it is in the assembly of believers: the relationship between the Lord and his redeemed people governs the elements and the order of the conversation that transpires during the meeting.
The theological name for this is the dialogical principle of worship.4 In tandem with the regulative principle of worship, which states that we may not worship God in any other way than he has commanded in his Word,5 the dialogical principle of worship requires that we examine each aspect of the liturgy to evaluate its place in the holy conversation between God and his people. In considering specific elements of worship, it is helpful to ask: Who is speaking? Who is being addressed? And what comes before and after each element of the conversation? These considerations guide Kuyper’s advice for the parts of the service. The rest of this article will focus particularly on the opening and closing of worship. Worship Is a Pattern of Call and Response The service begins with fellowship. How should we enter the church building in preparation for the service about to take place there? Surprisingly, Kuyper encourages congregants not to be quiet before the service (98– 100). He offers a theological reason: silence before worship encourages congregants to become spectators during worship. A hushed aura might be desirable before a concert or a lecture. But if the church represents an assembly, then the congregation has an active role to play before and during the service. If the congregation really consists of “brothers and sisters who exercise the fellowship of the saints and who know and love each other,” then the assembling individuals ought to acknowledge one another and inquire after one another’s well-being (100). This may happen in a narthex or a fellowship hall, but Kuyper does not mind if it occurs in the sanctuary. This fellowship should be hushed only by the entrance of the council, the tolling of the bell (101–2), and the first words with which the minister begins the service: the votum.6 The congregation invokes the name of the Lord. Speaking on behalf of the congregation, the minister constitutes the assembly with a solemn declaration: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 124:8). This statement, called the votum, has been a characteristic facet of worship since the early days of the Reformation. Kuyper prefers the communal implications of the votum to the individualized act of silent prayer (111–12). Although the choice of text for the votum is somewhat arbitrary, Kuyper views Psalm 124:8 as a concisely appropriate summary of the worship service. He paraphrases it this way: We, lost sinners, who were almost devoured by sin and Satan, have been kept safe by God, and we now gather here as the redeemed multitude that was set free, and the first utterance of our heart is that it was God, and God alone, who saved us from death. And he is the One who now gathers us, saved and redeemed people, under the sounding forth of his Word. (114–15).In the votum we declare the Lord to be our creator, redeemer, and king. This is our call to him. And God responds in the gracious words of the opening blessing.
The Lord responds by declaring his favor. In the votum, the minister acts as the voice of the congregation, offering up praise and prayer to the throne of God. But in the opening blessing, the minister switches roles (116). Now he speaks as the agent of God, who acknowledges his people and declares his presence among them: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (116). This blessing is the triune God’s assurance to the assembled believers that they may share in his grace and peace through Christ’s finished work (118–19).
The votum and blessing communicate that the most important task at the beginning of the service is not for the minister and the congregation to greet one another but for the Lord himself to greet his people. We see this dialogical principle at work again at the service’s end.
The closing prayer and blessing mirror the votum and opening blessing. At the end of the sermon, believers “stand ready, strengthened, encouraged, and comforted to reenter the world and be a witness to their God, to live for him, and to feel safe in his keeping” (209). The concluding prayer and song represent the congregation’s closing expression of thanks and petitions to God, and the parting blessing conveys God’s promise to bless them individually as they go out into the world.
In the opening and closing of a Reformed service, the speaker, the listener, and the occasion for the words are all clearly identifiable. In contrast to this dialogical clarity, Kuyper includes an important aside in order to address a source of conversational confusion in worship: special music.Special Music: Conversational Confusion?
In Kuyper’s day, as in our own, many churches had soloists and choirs who would perform stand-alone songs and anthems as a form of “musical preaching” (121). Kuyper chooses the word “preaching” intentionally because he attributes the rise of special music in worship to a decline in emotionally powerful preaching; when the sermon fails to move a congregation, adding the emotional power of music can help. This is one explanation for the inclusion of solos and group performances in worship.
But Kuyper cautions us to consider the dialogical implications of special music. Who is speaking to whom? If the soloist is addressing God, the congregants become spectators to somebody else’s worship. If the soloist is addressing the congregation, he or she usurps a leadership role that belongs to the office bearers alone. Even if we rationalize it as an opportunity to inspire the congregants to engage in their own individual praise to God, special music ignores the fundamentally communal nature of singing, interrupts the dialogical flow of the service, and weakens the character of the assembly. Although Kuyper does not ban special music outright, he concludes that this form of art is not God’s intention for bringing his Word to the congregation (123).This is a good place to pause our study of worship. A musical solo, like many other forms of art, can be beautiful, God-glorifying, and personally moving. And these would be wonderful reasons to include it in a service—if corporate worship were essentially a Bible study or a devotional meeting. But if worship is more than that— if it is a holy meeting of the assembly of believers, convened by God himself—then we must include in our worship only what contributes to and accords with that sacred conversation. And if our congregations attend carefully to the call-and-response pattern of the historic Reformed liturgy, the result will be not stoicism or formalism but rather a more ardent love for the Lord of hosts who stoops from his throne, week after week, to enter into conversation with his people.
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
1. What are some ways in which corporate worship sets Christians apart from the world?
2. How do we “feel and taste” God’s presence in worship? How can we hone our sensitivity to his presence?
3. Find a recent bulletin from your church and a pencil. For each line in the order of worship, ask “Who is speaking here?” and write either “GOD” or “PEOPLE” next to it. Does the dialogical flow of the service make sense? Are there any elements whose role in the dialogue seems unclear? Why?
4. What are some ways to encourage musical talent in a congregation without interrupting the dialogic pattern of corporate worship?
1 Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977), 195–96.
2 One of the finest expositions on this topic is L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?: A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015).
3 The Heidelberg Catechism describes the observance of the Lord’s Day as a foretaste of the “eternal Sabbath” (Lord’s Day 38, Q&A 103).
4 Michael R. Kearney, “How to Evade the Worship Wars,” The Outlook 65, no. 3 (May/June 2015): 24; Steve Swets, “What Does It Mean to Be Reformed? Part 1: Worship,” Outlook 69, no. 5 (September/October 2019): 8.
5 Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 35, Q&A 96; Westminster Larger Catechism, Q&A 109.
6 Notably, Kuyper does not include a “call to worship” in this discussion of the opening of the service. This raises a question with regard to the dialogical principle: Who initiates worship? Although the question would require a longer discussion, Kuyper seems to indicate that God begins the dialogue by calling the congregation to worship; this occurs through the authority vested in the consistory, and it is signified by the tolling of the bell (101–2) and/or by an elder or minister reading Scripture to call the congregation to worship (103–6), as happens in many churches today. The role of the consistory or session in calling the congregation to worship is supported in Reformed documents such as the Church Order of the United Reformed Churches in North America (article 37) and the Directory of Public Worship of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (chapters I.D and II.A).Michael R. Kearney is a graduate student and research assistant in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is a member of Covenant Fellowship Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA) in Wilkinsburg, PA.