If you haven’t read my post on Private Worship you need to read that first, then come back to read this.

Part 1: In The Secret (Private Worship)

Part 2: Symphony (Congregational Worship)

Part 3: Heart Test

Congregational worship is the uniting of believers, each individually in tune to the working of the Holy Spirit through their own private, vertical worship, which results in a symphony of worship.

Worshiping God, the Almighty Creator and our Savior, is the most important action that any Christian can do.  Unfortunately, most of us don’t view it as such.  We’ve seen that worshiping God in private is passionate, vibrant, and heart-felt.  This should carry into congregational worship, but in most cases doesn’t.  I think that there are 2 reasons why: 1) A person’s private worship is D.E.A.D.  2) A person may not understand what congregational worship should be, and has only experienced “church.”

George Barna’s research shows the majority of proclaimed “born-again” Christians admit that their bi-weekly attendance at worship services is the only time they worship God.  Even worse, 8 of 10 do not believe that they have entered into the presence of God or experienced a connection with Him during the worship service.  Half of all believers claim not to have had a genuine connection with God in the past year¹.

The primary reason that I focused on private worship first is that it’s essential and necessary for corporate worship (see my thesis above).  But how does this uniting take place?  Aren’t most people in different stages of their worship journeys?  The unity comes from the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, which is severely crippled by sin, and pride.  The beauty is that even though we are ALL in different stages of our worship journey, we have a common bond – the blood of Jesus Christ, and a love for God our Father.

The last thing I want to leave you with today is a new term – worship language.  I’m sure that you’ve probably heard of love languages.  Worship languages are very similar, and unique to both individuals and churches made up of individuals.  We’ll dive into to worship languages on Thursday.  Tomorrow, we’ll have a little fun, and take a quiz to find out if you are a private worshiper or congregational worshiper or both.

1. George Barna, Revolution; pp. 31-32.
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