What will you worship today?

I'm going to take this week and write a series of posts on church music. A little clarification will be helpful. While it is common to use the term "worship" to refer to the singing portion of a church service, this easily leads to a misunderstanding. The term "worship" means to give worth or reverence to something or someone. It comes from combining the words "worth" and "ship." Worship, according to this definition, is not something limited to singing songs. More importantly, the understanding of worship that we get from the Bible is also much broader than merely singing "praise and worship" songs. When we use the word "worship" to describe the 20-30 minute set of 4 songs that we sing on Sunday, it is easy to start thinking that worship means singing, or that worship happens only on Sundays.

However, as will be clear, worship is something that is meant to be all-life encompassing. But even more than that, worship is something that everyone does by nature, all the time. We are worshiping creatures. We give worth to things. We highly esteem things. We give money, time, and thoughts to certain things or people. We all worship something, all the time.  Food, sex, making money, spending money, comfort, religion, morality, business, respect, family...all around us are voices begging for our worship.

I like to think that life is like a big game of king of the hill. There are many things vying to be the object of our worship, many things trying to become the king of our lives. We worship food one day, but eventually the high wears off (we get bloated or sick) and we turn to our job or family or religion or image to assume the throne. But there is only one true King of the Hill, only one thing that rightfully deserves our utmost time, treasures, and thoughts. And that is God.

Today, we will all worship something. It will either be the true God or a functional god. Worship doesn't wait until Sunday at 9:30 AM. Just the fact that we sing songs to God doesn't mean that we worship God with our lives. For this reason, I am hesitant to use the word "worship" to primarily refer to the singing portion of our church services." Phrases such as "worship through music" or "worship in song" are helpful in avoiding this confusion. For in the true sense of the word, worship is something like an attitude or posture we assume before whatever it is that we cling to most desperately. And we all do this, all day long.