A Vision for Worship for Christians and Non-Christians
For far too long, I lived under the strong impression that worship was an exclusive, two-way relationship between Christians and God. My idea of worship was eyes closed, arms raised, heart in bliss, unaware of all that was around me—just me and him.
As much as I enjoyed this idea of worship for many years, I started feeling uneasy about it about a decade ago. I began to wonder if I had reduced public worship to something less than God intended it to be.
The reason for my discomfort was, of course, the non-Christian. I was oblivious to him in public worship—and more often than not, the culture and vocabulary of the church were quite inaccessible to him, too.
I live in South Asia, where Christians are a tiny minority—less than 3% of over a billion people. But that’s still at least 28 million, large enough for us to form a unique subculture of public worship that, unfortunately, can exclude outsiders.
While the gospel tells us that God came looking for the lost, many worship services I participated in seemed to think it was the job of the “lost” to decipher the cryptic code of our services in order to find God.
Once I recognized this tension, I couldn’t ignore it. One passage from the Old Testament, Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the temple, gave me insight and helped me finally begin to understand the true, biblical nature of public worship.
As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.
—2 Chronicles 6:32–33
In the middle of his thoughtful prayer for chosen Israel, Solomon unexpectedly flings the doors of God’s grace wide open to all other nations. Solomon expects and plans for foreigners seeking God to come to Israel’s public worship at the temple he built. Not if they come. When they come.
That’s a sound theological basis for contextualized and missional public worship.
After my eyes were opened to this passage, I began to see public worship as a triangle: Christians worshiping God, and in the process, also inviting non-Christians to worship him.
Thankfully, God led me to this revelation before I started planting a church. Solomon’s prayer formed the theological foundation of why we contextualised our worship services to reach professionals in a population of about 23 million people. Three years into the church plant, we are still learning how.
It isn’t easy. We’ve made several mistakes and encountered various challenges. I’ll be the first to admit that we still have a long way to go. But here are a couple of worship principles we’re beginning to piece together.
Deep Need and Shallow Needs
All of us are needy. Ultimately, our deepest need is the need for a Savior. We are sinners saved by grace. Let’s call this the real need.
But we are needy in other areas, too. Ours is a performance-driven city. In it, you are only as good as the last deal you made, the last quarter of sales you logged, or the last pitch you gave. You have to prove yourself over and over and over again every day. And we feel other needs, like the need for a new romantic relationship or better finances. This culture creates a neediness in us.
These are all shallow needs. Living in busy, bustling, competitive cities like ours make us more aware of our shallow needs and less aware of our real need. At our church, we’re learning that these shallow needs can make us self-focused in our worship. When we seek God only to meet our shallow needs, we treat worship as an exclusive, two-way relationship with God, desperately (and selfishly) seeking him to get what we want. God himself is not the ultimate goal of this kind of worship.
On the other hand, when we disciple the congregation to see our real need — the need for a Savior — authentic and heartfelt repentance begins to sweep through our worship services. This makes public worship contextual and attractive to non-Christians more than anything else. Let me explain.
In big cities, it’s amazing how similar the repentance of Christians and non-Christians is. For example, both of us wrestle with the idolatry of work and the pride and fear associated with our careers. It’s therefore quite easy for non-Christians to identify with Christians’ repentance.
As we publicly and genuinely repent of the same things non-Christians struggle with, we open up a pathway to the gospel for them to follow. When our worship services and congregations are characterized by repenting of our culture’s idolatries, contextualizing the gospel (and our worship) becomes natural and spontaneous.
Contextualization and the Holy Spirit
One of the biggest mistakes we made was overestimating our role in stirring a non-Christian to faith and underestimating God’s role in it. Somewhere down the line, I functionally began to believe that contextualization was a substitute for the Holy Spirit.
Granted, we must simplify, explain, and contextualize the gospel. It is our joy, privilege, and duty to do so. But ultimately, it is still the Holy Spirit who brings people to faith in Jesus (just as it is the Holy Spirit who gives us skill and wisdom to contextualize the gospel).
When we recognize that this is true, all we can do is pray. Prayer is proof of our dependence on God. Humble and audacious, patient and persevering, prayer must go hand-in-hand with skillfully crafting contextual worship services.
With the help of faithful prayer and a well-contextualized worship service, those who are initially skeptical or foreign to Christianity can begin a journey of discovering the remarkable story of Jesus. And when we open up our worship to them, we help them take their first steps.
About the Author
Anand Mahadevan is a business journalist, church planter, and author. His first book, Grace of God and Flaws of Men, explores the gospel through the many failures of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.