Thursday evening at the Worship God 09 Conference was yet another great service with God-honoring music and a Christ-exalting message. Jeff Purswell (editor of Wayne Grudem’s Bible Doctrine) spoke on The Leaders of Worship. Basing his message on Hebrews 10:19-25, he gave three answers to the question, “Why do we gather as a Christian body?”
1. We gather to encounter God – even though we as individual Christians have the indwelling Holy Spirit in each of us, there is an especial privilege in gathering together for corporate worship.
2. We gather to respond to God. Understanding that worship is a response to God protects us from formalism, emotionalism (as D.A. Carson says, “worshiping worship rather than worshiping God”) and legalism
3. We gather to strengthen each other for the glory of God. He made an encouraging observation that at such a conference like WG09 where we have hundreds of people worshiping together, it’s easy to not want to leave this and return our smaller (less enthusiastic?) congregation, a smaller (less knowledgeable?) worship team. But even in those smaller congregations, worship is still just as true and just as God-honoring as it is with what has been experienced this week at WG09. That was especially encouraging to be reminded that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst.”
Filed under: Christianity, WG09, Worship God 09
