What is Sunday morning worship, and why do we do it?

There are many ideas of just what Sunday morning worship is, and why God’s people gather each week. Here at Northwest, you may have noticed we include certain specific structured elements in our services (responsive readings, confessions, etc). You might have also noticed that we partake of the Lord’s Supper each week. We do these things very purposefully, because we believe there is a distinct what to Sunday worship, and a distinct why.

Let’s first give the short and sweet what and why of our Sunday services: What is Sunday worship? The unique gathering of the body of Christ to worship God corporately. Why do we gather each week? The church gathers to worship God, but even more so, to be nourished by God through his Word. Said another way: Sunday worship is the unique and corporate gathering of the body of Christ to worship God and to be nourished by God through his Word

What Sunday worship is: The gathering of Christ’s body to corporately worship God

Big idea #1: The corporate and communal nature of the weekly gathering. The Sunday worship service is the unique and special gathering of the corporate body of Christ.

To understand the what of Sunday worship, what first needs to be understood is the corporate and unified nature of Christ’s church.

According to the scriptures, the church of Jesus Christ is not a collection simply of redeemed individuals, but instead an entire redeemed body, a singular organism made up of people united to Jesus and to one another. The church is what the scriptures call the “body of Christ” (Eph 1:22; 1 Cor 12:13, 27, Rom 12:5), the “one new man” (Eph 2:15), the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (Eph 2:21), the “branches” joined to the Vine (John 15) etc. The church, in other words, shares a deep, spiritual and organic unity (1 John 1:3; 1 Cor 12:15-26) by virtue of her union with Christ and sharing of the same Holy Spirit, and should be seen as a singular spiritual organism, a single body.

When we begin to see the church as the singular body joined to Christ and filled with the Spirit, what becomes increasingly clear is that while individual worship of God is incredibly important, so also is corporate worship, as it gives expression and shape to the corporate and communal nature of the church. And in fact, the Sunday worship service is nothing less than that singular body of Christ in union with one another and with Christ, filled up with the one Spirit of God, worshipping the Father.

What all of this means is that the corporate gathering of the body of Christ should have a corporate emphasis to it.

If in fact the gathering of the church is the gathering of a singular body—the body of Christ—this means the service should be oriented toward corporate participation. While individual expression should never be discouraged, what should be palpable in each service is the corporate and collective nature of the gathering.

“Liturgy” has been used to describe this kind of corporate participation. And while that word can sound antiquated or archaic, at its base it is an ancient Greek word used by early church theologians to describe the worship of the church’s corporate gathering. In the Greek it means literally “the work of the people”, and is meant to describe what happens on Sunday morning: all of God’s people participate in the spiritual work of the church service: gathering, praying, reading, singing, offering up praise, receiving God’s word, partaking in the Lord’s Supper, etc. Liturgy means collective participation.

And while New Testament doesn’t necessarily detail specific “liturgical” elements that should be included in church services (it may in some places; for instance Phil 2:5-11; Col 1:15-20), what it does over and again is encourage that kind of corporate participation in the Sunday service (see Paul’s pastoral exhortations in 1 Corinthians 11-14 for example). In fact, Paul rebukes the Corinthians for their splintering and individualization of the corporate gathering (1 Cor 11:17-22) and encourages the participation of all of God’s people in the service.

One way to think of this is: just as individual spiritual disciplines are vital for the single believer, so corporate spiritual disciplines are vital for the one body. When the church gathers to offer up worship, and it prays or sings or reads together, it is participating in a kind of collective spiritual discipline. It is the entire body of Christ offering up to God the worship due his name.

Why we gather for Sunday worship: to be nourished by God through his Word

Big idea #2: We gather not simply to worship God, but to be fed by God. While the Sunday worship service is indeed for the purpose of Christ’s body to corporately offer up worship to him (big idea #1), another purpose that is often neglected is what we might call the downward nature of the Sunday worship service (big idea #2).

As much as God’s people are present and active in the worship service (liturgy) offering up worship, so also God himself is present and active, handing down nourishment to his people. The scriptures repeatedly tell us that God is present in the midst of the corporate gathering (Ps 95, 96, 100, 105; Heb 12:18-29; Mt 18:20). And he is present so that he can feed and nourish his people.

But how are Gods people fed? According to the scriptures, the nourishment or “food” of God’s people is his Word (Mt 4:4; 1 Pet 2:2; John 6:63; 1 Cor 3:2). In each worship service, through his word, God hands down grace to his people to sustain and grow them each week. This is the downward and receptive side of each worship service. God’s people receive from God as much they also give praise to him.

But now, how does God feed his people by his word? Biblically, there are two ways that God “administers” his nourishing word (Mt 28:18-20): (1) the spoken Word of God, and (2) the visible word of God.

God’s spoken word: 

When we think of the spoken word of God, what most comes to mind is the preached word. But actually, the spoken word is much more expansive and comprehensive than simply the sermon. Really, the entire worship service is an administration of the word of God.

For instance, liturgical elements—the corporate prayers, scripture readings, etc—are means by which the congregation both recites and hears God’s word. The songs too, when theologically faithful to the scriptures, are applications of the word of God. Even the shape of the service is itself an application of the word of God—this is why the service itself has a “gospel shape” to it (call to worship, confession of sin and assurance, sermon and sacraments, benediction). The ordering itself applies the good news of the gospel. And lastly, the preached word is the most obvious ministry of the word. As the preacher expounds God’s word, and as God’s people grasp hold of that word in faith, God ministers to their hearts.

When we see the entire worship service and the elements within it as a means by which God hands down his nourishing word, each movement of the service becomes all the more meaningful. When a lyric ministers to the heart, or when a scripture reading shows God’s glory, or when a prayer encourages, all of those things are part and parcel of the ministry of God’s word.

God’s visible word: 

However, it is not simply the spoken word that feeds God’s people. The visible word feeds God’s people as well. But what is God’s visible word? When we say God’s visible word, what we mean is the sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper). We call them the “visible word” because they are visible representations of the gospel, that when received by believers in faith, are said by the scriptures to nourish and sustain God’s people. By this, we do not mean to say that the sacraments “work” apart from faith, as if magically, or because a priest administers them; instead, only insofar as the sacraments show forth the gospel in a visible and tangible sense, and only to the extent that they are received by faith, do the sacraments “work”

How God’s visible words “work”:

To bring more clarity to this, the sacraments (or visible word of God) function much the same as the sermon. A sermon is only effective insofar as the Holy Spirit awakens faith in the hearer so that the hearer can trust the word of God. When the sermon is believed, it becomes “effective”. It is the same with the sacraments: we must believe and trust the reality that they portray before our eyes, and when we believe that reality, the sacraments are “effective means of grace”, or said another way, they are means by which God grows his people.

Baptism, for instance, is a visible-word of the believer’s union with Christ (see Rom 6)—we are buried and raised with him. And when that visible-word is applied to believers, and only insofar as they trust in that visible word, baptism can be said to grow up the believer in grace. The Lord Supper is also a visible-word of Christ’s broken body and spilled blood (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:26) When a believer takes that word, and ingests it, insofar as they trust in the reality portrayed, those elements really and truly grow up that person in grace. They become “spiritual food” (see John 6). Again, don’t think of this as “baptismal regeneration” or “transubstantiation”, but the word of God applied to the believer through visible elements that are effective only by Spirit-wrought faith

Signs and Seals of God’s promises

Historically, Protestant churches have called the sacraments “signs and seals” of God’s covenant promises. By this, we mean that the sacraments (1) signify (or symbolize) spiritual realities, but also the sacraments (2) seal God’s word onto the believer. We might think of sign and seal in terms of (1) what the believer does (signifies) and (2) what God does (seals) in the sacraments. On the one hand, (1) when a believer is baptized, they are showing the world what God has done for them. However, on the other hand, (2) when a believer receives baptism, God himself is applying his gospel word visibly and tangibly onto the believer. God himself is promising to the new believer that just as the waters cleanse, so Jesus cleanses. In this way, baptism is something that God also “does”. It is a seal of his gospel promises. The Lord’s Supper likewise is something God “feeds” us, namely spiritual food. For a Protestant Confessional example of this, see the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, chapter 28.

Bringing it all together: The upward and downward worship of the church

When we begin to see the entire worship service as on the one hand, the work of the corporate, collective body of Christ, and also as God’s work to and for his people, what begins to emerge is a beautiful reality: God’s people, together as one organic whole, begin to offer worship UPWARD. At the same time, God ministers his nourishing Word through various means DOWNWARD