This Sunday, we looked at the second commandment, which is about the proper worship of God. This blog post is from our music lead, Josh Hawkins, about how and why we do Sunday worship the way we do at Communion Church.
We worship God because He deserves it. In fact, He is the only one in the universe that deserves worship. He also requires it, as is stated throughout all of scripture:
You shall have no other gods before me. | Exodus 20:3
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. | Deuteronomy 6:5
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.| Psalm 96:9
The Father is seeking such people to worship him. | John 4:23
Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water. | Revelation 14:7
We worship Him out of the overflowing joy of heart that comes from our undeserved salvation and His great love for us. Our worship of Him is one way that we are living witnesses, by demonstrating the proper response to His saving grace. We worship as a way to retune our heart when we are struggling. We worship because He created music, and gave us voices and the ability to make instruments, for His glory. We worship as part of His created order and rhythm.
We follow the regulative principle in worship. This means that we do things in worship service that we see modeled in scripture, and we do not do things in worship service that we do not see modeled in scripture. The alternative principle is called the normative principle. The normative principle states that whatever is not specifically forbidden in scripture is permitted. Under the normative framework, churches may adopt artistic expressions or structural elements in worship not seen in the Bible. As an example, we do not plan to have clowns mime a Biblical story, because we do not see evidence of that in the Bible. We aim to be:
filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord. | Ephesians 5:18-19
Working within the regulative principle, we believe that there is great freedom for variability. The exact outworking is not laid out in the Bible. We can sing old hymns. We can write new songs that are based on God’s word, as long as they are God-glorifying. We can have many short times of prayer in service, or one long prayer.
We can take communion as wine or juice. We can sit, or stand, we can raise our hands or keep them in our pockets, we can close our eyes. We can sit silently and contemplate.
At Communion Church, we have different music styles. This reflects the diverse nature of the church body. We allow the music style to arise from the people God has brought to our church. The music we sing should be Biblical, able to be sung corporately (not performative), bringing honor to Him who gives all good things (not to the musicians).
We have chosen to avoid the use of artificial intelligence in the creation of music. We have chosen to embrace traditional hymns, while still requiring the assessment of the content of those hymns. But we have allowed for modern musical arrangement of traditional hymns as appropriate, so long as the content and intent remain unchanged.
At Communion Church, we have had a culture of writing original music. One purpose of this is that it is unifying to our congregation to have music that comes from the giftings of our church. This becomes part of our church identity and unifies us to the one we worship together. But most importantly, we write original music because it is specifically commanded in scripture. We see the phrase “sing to the Lord (or him) a new song” in Psalm 33:3, Psalm 96:1, Psalm 98:1, and Psalm 149:1, Isaiah 42:10. And in Revelation 5:9, “and they sang a new song”.
With some minor variation, our liturgy follows a certain order of song type:
We PREPARE our hearts by singing songs of high praise.
We CONFESS our sins and our need for His forgiveness.
We RESPOND to the preaching of the word by singing to the God who saves us.
We RECEIVE by singing something we can take with us as we leave and reintegrate with the rest of our daily lives.
On a personal level, I vividly remember my response to the original experience of receiving God’s life-changing salvation. In the moments, hours, days, and weeks following, it was reflexive. I could not contain the outpouring of my heart with overflowing joy caused by the Spirit, which manifested in singing. Some days I worship in remembrance, and some days I experience that overflowing joy anew. Either way, He gets the glory.