Worship Everywhere
Oftentimes, we unknowingly and unintentionally put a box around what we believe to be worship. We get so caught up in the logistics and legality of what constitutes worship that we forget the heart behind it. When planning out church services, we label every step of the order of service: the welcome, “time of worship” (i.e. the music), communion, prayer, the message, the benediction. Because of this, we can subconsciously label the “act” of worship as being strictly about the music. While the music has always been my favorite part of a service, and my favorite way to worship our Lord, over the last few years, I have realized that it is only one way we are called to worship.
In college, I heard a teammate on my soccer team pray that the way we play soccer be seen as an act of worship. That prayer completely changed my mindset. Soccer as worship? It hit me that worship wasn’t just the act of making a joyful noise for the Lord; it was anything I did to the glory of the Lord. Worship, in its purest form, is anything we do that brings honor and glory to God. Music is just the beginning.
This summer, the concept of worship was a recurring topic. When our summer staff arrived in May, we gave them a tour of camp. When it came time to show them our chapel building, I explained that this location was a key place where worship would happen, but that it couldn’t be the only place of worship; we couldn’t keep our acts of worship confined to this one building. Later in the summer, during our Passage Theology Camp, the theme for the week was worship and what it looks like throughout the Bible and throughout our daily lives. At the end of the summer, on our last Sunday with our summer staff, we had a worship night, and that evening feltlike a culmination of what we had talked about all summer.
The service began with a short message recapping the fact that every aspect of church, and our lives in general, can and should be worship. That evening we worshipped the Lord through recognition of some of the amazing things we had seen Him do over the last week of camp and over the summer as a whole. We worshipped Him through prayer, expressing our thankfulness for who He is and how He had worked in and through us. We worshipped by taking communion and remembering how God sent His son to die on a cross so that we can spend forever with Him, and we worshipped through song.
Echo Ranch is a great place to be reminded that worship can happen everywhere and in every moment, and in some ways being here makes it easier to remember that and put it into practice. But the same is true for you, in whatever circumstances you find yourself in today. Don’t let your singing in church be the only time you worship. Whether in a church or an office building, on a sports field or a job site, doing homework or chores, everything we do can and should be done as worship, bringing praise and honor to our Lord.