Is God pleased with my worship? This is a question that frustrates many believers, especially ministers of music. Over the next week we'll be looking at W. Robert Godfrey's little tract from the Crossway Books Today's Issues series, Pleasing God in our Worship. Godfrey is the President of Westminster Seminary right here in Southern California. I spent some time with him, his family, and his church community a few years back and he is a dear man, albeit a very strict Calvinist with very strict ideas concerning the application of the philosophy of worship in his little book. But with that said, I find his philosophy of worship to be God-cenetered and Bible-driven.

In the introduction, Godfrey gives some examples of past "worship wars" that are often over superficial matters such as: pews vs. chairs, instrumentation, songbook vs. powerpoint, style, etc. Godfrey states that his intention with this book is to "help Christians begin to think about worship from a biblical point of view." By doing so, he states, "our own worship will become a more meaninful experience."

Foundational to the ideas expressed in Pleasing God in our Worship stands the Alliance of Confessing Evangelical's (ACE) Cambridge Declaration. Godfrey is a member of ACE and had a hand in informing / forming the declaration. Let me quote that relates directly to worship:

"The loss of God's centrality in the life of today's church is common and lamentable. It is this loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment, gospel, preaching into marketing, believing into technique, being good into feeling good about ourselves, and faithfulness into being successful...We must focus on God in our worship, rather than the satisfaction of our personal needs. God is sovereign in worship; we are not. Our concern must be for God's Kingdom, not our own empires, popularity or success."

Though this declaration was written a decade ago against the modernist seeker-entertainment oriented service, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, for the postmodern emerging forms of worship are just as susceptible to entertainment, market-driven popularity-fests as the the seeker parents that birthed them. One is just a reaction against the other and when the pedulem swings it rarely ever finds a biblical middle ground. More to follow. If you'd like to follow along, I've added Pleasing God in our Worship on my recommended book list. Just click and it will take you direct to Amazon. - SDG