There is a quote I heard on the radio one day attributed to the Roman Catholic Pope. The essence of that quote was that the church was no longer able to say to the lame, “rise and walk” because of the fact that the church can no longer say, “silver and gold have I none.” In his book, “Whatever Happened to Worship?”, A.W. Tozer links churches and Christians today with the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:17, We are rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.[1] Because man is comfortable and self-sufficient in his own eyes, he has lost the sense of his need for God. I am going to reflect on how Tozer’s book addresses several issues significant to me.

            I have been the member of 4 different churches in my life; my home church, another church my wife and I attended for about two years, and the two churches I have pastored. The worship routine in each was similar; three or four hymns, a brief scripture reading, a brief prayer, and a sermon. Occasionally, someone might say amen during a particularly rousing sermon, but even then it would be one old-timer deacon who remembered the good old days. The rest of us just sat silent. Sometimes I wanted to say amen and even raise my hand during a particularly beautiful song – I might do this at home in my private study while alone – but never during corporate worship. When I asked myself why not, the answer was, “What will people think?”

            Why do we, why do I, worry about what people might think when we are worshipping God? Perhaps it is an over-reaction to the Pentecostal movement; after all, they can get loud and wild at times. Is noise and pandemonium a requirement for worship? One of the truths from Tozer’s book is that salvation does not result in silence, not in our personal worship and not in our corporate worship. The question I have been asking myself for some time now is, “Have we become so conditioned so that any sound other than a subdued, ‘amen,’ or polite applause after a song is seen as excessive?” I agree with Tozer’s assessment on page 15 that a lot of racket does not automatically mean we are worshipping God. However, I also agree with Tozer that it is okay to have a little bit of noise in our worship.[2]

What would happen if someone were to say, Amen, during a sermon, or raise a hand toward God during a song?  Why do people spend more time worrying about what other people are doing in church rather than what they are supposed to be doing? Apparently people today are the same as people were forty and fifty years ago when Tozer wrote his book.

Tozer also mentions men who are not worshippers making decisions for the church. [3] How do we know they are not worshippers? Watch them during worship, not only do they not sing, they don’t even pick up a hymn book during the time of singing. It’s been said that the wife “is the religious one in the family.” I agree with Tozer’s assessment of this situation and believe that non-worshippers making decisions in the church can lead to two possible results. One, the church becomes a lifeless body going through the motions with no real effort to do anything other than maintain the property. Anything spiritual is the preacher’s job or something the women can do as long as it’s not too disruptive. The other possible result is that the church is that the Word of God being relegated to insignificance and Biblical doctrine falls by the wayside. This seems to be the status quo in American today.

What do we need to do? We need to learn to worship.[4] In chapter two, Tozer really hammers this home. The problem is that although God makes worshippers out of rebels, there are still far too many rebels within the church walls on Sunday. Instead of heart-felt worship of God, man has filled his hours with busyness. When men become filled with busyness instead of worship, the work of the church becomes a burden and men become Pharisees.[5] Pharisees, not in the sense of trying to keep every aspect of the law to obtain righteousness in God’s sight, but trying to do everything asked of them because that’s what a good church member does.

The solution to keeping church work from becoming a burden is a sense of the “Presence of God in our midst.”[6] Even though we may have various duties within the church, God’s presence should cause His people to want to worship Him.

Tozer’s treatment of the presence of God in chapter six really caught my attention. It bothers me to hear people speak of God as if He is a doddering old man that people lovingly tolerate or, a friend that you get drunk with on a regular basis. God is not an old man or a drinking buddy, He is the Holy One of whom Isaiah said when he saw God in a vision, Woe is me, for I am ruined (Isaiah 6:5). I believe that this is the main reason for the lack of proper worship in our churches today. We have lost track of just how sinful we are and just how holy God is. One illustration demonstrates our sinfulness and our lack of understanding of God’s holiness.

It is Sunday and a local church is gathered together for worship. The call to worship has been read or sung. Various hymns have been sung and scriptures read and the sermon is now being preached. In various parts of the room there are people following along in their Bibles as the sermon progresses. However, in one pew sits a lady filing her fingernails throughout the sermon. A man in another pew sits looking out the window while glancing at his watch ever few minutes. In yet another pew, a couple seems determined to carry on a conversation about the upcoming afternoon’s activities while making out a grocery list. Is this situation contrived? Yes, but I have seen situations very similar to this, and have participated in some of these activities myself.

I have come under conviction of my sin for this and believe Tozer captures the essence of my problem as well as all of our problems when it comes to worship. We are unclean with regard to our sin. But, the problem is that we are unaware of our uncleanness.[7] The solution is a fresh realization of God’s grace toward us.[8] I think back to the time when I realized that God had saved me. I lived every day in amazement of what God had done for me and almost every minute was occupied by thoughts of God’s grace and holiness. Each one of us must return to that awareness of God’s grace and holiness. Unfortunately, I, as well as many others, let the busyness of church replace the wonder of God’s presence.

In recent months I have come under conviction that worship, even with my many responsibilities as pastor, must first and foremost be a time of worship for me. I have been finding that as I focus on worshipping God, I am becoming less and less worried about what the rest of the people are doing in church. So much so, that one Sunday I was so wrapped up in proclaiming God’s word that I never heard the 4-wheeler outside in our parking lot racing around and distracting everyone but me. As I become more aware of my uncleanness, I become more aware of God’s grace. This is the beginning of the solution to rediscovering worship.

The last issue that I am going to cover is the basic purpose for the existence of the church. I’ve seen churches whose primary function seemed to be a social welfare agency. Still others seemed to be primarily a social club[9] where quilting parties are held to raise money for yet another benevolent cause. Tozer distills the role of the church down into its essence; to worship God.[10] If, as Tozer says, each Christian is to be worshipping God, when Christians gather together they should be worshipping God together. Part of that worship is designed to help the Christian grow in his or her spiritual maturity which will be evidenced in sharing Christ with others. What struck me as particularly pertinent in the American church today is Tozer’s assessment of the failure of the church and the individual.

God’s purpose for the individual Christian is to reflect His glory. If we fail to do this, we are like the barren fig tree, good for nothing but to be cut down (Luke 13:9).[11] This could lead to the church failing to carry out God’s purpose of corporate worship and witness. “When a church weakens in any generation, failing to carry out the purposes of God, it will depart from the faith altogether in the next generation.”[12] This is where the church in America is today. Churches who turned from God in the previous generation are today calling unrepentant homosexuals as their pastors. Pastors in the previous generation should have said what pastors today should be saying to sinners, God is not going to give you any approval or comfort until you turn from your known sin and seek His forgiveness and cleansing.[13]

On page 23, Tozer takes me back to my attitude toward God that I have had in the past and am working on now. He says, If you cannot worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is not very likely that you were worshipping on Sunday! My worship cannot be confined to Sundays. My total life and entire attitude “must be toward the worship of God.”[14] I cannot get ready to go to church on Sunday morning. My entire week must be spent getting ready for an experience of corporate worship of God. A habit that my family has acquired over the past eighteen years has been to reserve Saturday evening as a special time for getting ready for church. No late night parties and everyone home early. This hasn’t been perfect, but it has been helpful. Even other children who want to spend the night, or want our daughters to stay with them, were told that they must be prepared to go to bed early and get up early for church or, that we will be picking up our daughters early for church the next day. It is just too easy to start having one excuse after another to miss church and corporate worship.

This book has brought home to me the necessity and responsibility the Christian has in the worship of God. To me, the answer to the question, “Whatever happened to worship?”, is that worship is lost when sinful man loses the awareness of his sin and the holiness of God. My goal is to be like Isaiah in Chapter six of his book, or John on the aisle of Patmos when they saw God. I want to be overwhelmed by the holiness of God.