Worship is as important as breathing, Gaddy says_110303

Posted: 10/31/03

Worship is as important as breathing, Gaddy says

By Marv Knox

Editor

ABILENE–God demands worship because it is good for people, not because God needs to be worshipped, Welton Gaddy told a Hardin-Simmons University audience.

“Worship is as essential to life as breathing and as life-giving as breath,” Gaddy told participants in HSU's conference on music and worship.

Gaddy is pastor for preaching and worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La., and executive director of the Interfaith Alliance in Washington. The conference was sponsored by Hardin-Simmons' Logsdon School of Theology and School of Music.

When people learn God commands worship, they appropriately ask why, he acknowledged. For example, a Texas newspaper reporter once asked if God is so egotistical that God has to receive praise and adoration all the time.

“This is a good question,” Gaddy conceded, stressing worship benefits the worshipper, not God.

“God calls on us to worship because through worship, we attain our best nature. Through worship, we do what we were created to do,” he said. “So, God is not insisting on praise for God's sake, … but for us to be the individuals we were created to be.”

Consequently, people cannot fulfill their human mandate without worshipping God, he said.

Gaddy defined worship as “a personal response to the call of God.”

“True worship is a voluntary act of willful praise given to God by persons created in the image of God and devoted to doing the will of God,” he said.

Emphasizing the voluntary nature of worship, Gaddy added: “Worship is laced with freedom. … Worship is not about divine puppetry.”

For worship to be authentic, God leaves humans free to obey or disobey the command to worship.

“It is out of freedom that worship takes on moral and ethical significance,” he added. “God summons into worship stammering, stuttering pilgrims; frustrated, frightened believers; awkward, inexperienced disciples; ashamed, burdened sinners.”

From those worshippers, “God is not looking for a good show, but for freely and sincerely offered praise …, praise that delights God and nurtures maturity among those offering it,” he said.

Worship is the church's most important activity, and it's biblically and historically linked inseparably to church fellowship, Gaddy noted.

“Practically, you cannot build a church on worship alone, but you cannot have a church apart from regular experiences of meaningful, God-directed worship.”

And worship is oriented toward God, not toward the worshippers, he insisted, citing the understanding of worship described by Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard.

If worship is compared to a drama, most people think of the ministers as the actors, God as the off-stage prompter of the action and the congregation as the audience, Kierkegaard explained. In reality, however, the ministers are the prompters, members of the congregation are the actors and God is the audience.

“Worship has only one purpose, just as worship has only one audience,” Gaddy said. “God alone is worthy of worship. …

“The church is to exist as a homeland of the soul into which people come to worship to give glory to God, pleasing God and thus allowing them to be the people whom God has called them and created them to be.”