Re-discovering the "Bigness" of Corporate Worship

Being part of this online community immediately assumes that we are all interested and perhaps a little knowledgeable about corporate worship, even if we don't use that particular terminology very often. If somebody asked us a question about corporate worship, we could probably answer with some amount of articulate idea and certainly no small amount of passion. I wonder what about this particular part of our identity gets you the most excited? brings you the most alive?

I'm confident that I would learn a great deal from sitting around with you over some good wine or strong coffee and talking about your personal story that informs your understanding of "corporate worship." But what would happen if I asked the question "what is the difference between worshiping together and worshiping at the same time?"

There's something inside this question that is waiting to infuse our gatherings with something vibrant and regenerating; something self-perpetuating and earthy. If we moved into an experiential understanding of these differences, I think it would radically change the consumer-church concept most of us have to wrangle with as well as starting to give a creative resuscitation to our life in the "in-between" as kingdom people.

No doubt, the term "corporate worship" is something that we've taken for granted. We may have even substituted the language for something less formal sounding: community worship, worship gathering, worship service, etc. As far as defining it goes, of course it means the act of worshiping with other believers, right?

What if that's the definition that's limiting us? What if we've taken for granted a framework that is actually incomplete? Some of the accusations leveled at the contemporary worship culture seem to reflect this faulty framework: individualism, sentiment, narcissistic song-writing, sub-culture artistic reflections, sensationalism, presentation-driven idea, etc. Then on the polarity, we encounter worship reflections that feel more like team-building exercises with odd art projects and awkward pronoun replacements in our hymns and praise songs.

There are some basic assumptions in the framework of "worshiping at the same time" that are eating away at our gatherings. Some of these assumptions are contributing to the declining numbers of worshiping believers and some of them are the driving force behind the media power-house of contemporary Christendom. It's entirely possible to have a thousand people in a room all together singing a song about a personal and individual encounter with Jesus. Or a personal and individual liturgy about how God is going to improve the situations of my life. If all thousand people are engaged in singing this song or praying this prayer about their personal and individual experience, does that make it corporate? Does it make it worship?

First off, we need a very basic ecclesiology. We all would agree that we are the Church, that the Church is a living, breathing organism constantly giving birth to new life. We are the Bride of Christ, the Body, a temple. We all would agree that church is not a place but an identity. I think we also would all agree that the Church needs to gather to remember and reaffirm our truest identity and to give thanks for richness, mourn our darkness, lament and grieve over devastations within and without, celebrate life, and bless and praise God for the work that is constantly happening around us as a result of his willing co-creation with humankind - an affirmation of his goodness, power, beauty, and unknowableness. This we can all stand in agreement on.

But who is "the Church?" There are different levels of seeing this beautiful, living being: first is the local community, the church we gather with for worship, living life, and serving our neighborhoods. Honestly, even getting our worship brains around expressions of the local community concept takes a bit of work and collaboration. The second level is the universal church - the body of believers that live right now from all around the world. The brother in the Turkish house church, the sister in the Anglican gathering in northern England, the wise mother in the Quaker community. All of us who claim to be disciples of the Nazarene Rabbi, regardless of race, creed, or sex, make up the universal Church. The third level - the mind blowing and exciting level - is that we are part of the mystical Church, the Church comprised of all of the Christ-followers who have ever lived and who are building the Church now. This is comprised of all of heaven and all of earth. This is Hebrews 11 and 12...you have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. The entirety of the mystical Church worships together whenever we celebrate the resurrection and the powerful implications of this Missio Dei - the Mission of God.

The first aspect of corporate worship means taking our place in this mystical Church, losing our urgency to fulfill our own felt needs in worship so we can, in reality, have our soul-holes filled. It's definitely the "something bigger" that so many people are aching for! If we gather and take our place in the mystical Church, it changes the context and the tools a great deal, but ultimately it forces us to ask the question what story are we telling? If we enter that mysterious paradigm and try to bring our own stories, the "me and Jesus" story, it will feel painfully and almost ridiculously small. With this small shift, our concept of corporate worship has already changed too much to allow for a self-focused story line.

So what is the narrative of God? What is God's story?

God's story begins with the Triune God, the essence of community, breathing life into humankind; creating paradise-beauty, pleasures of mind, body, soul and heart, and a love that means we were profoundly and truly seen. Then came the Fall, the great division that broke humans from their God and also tore the foundations beneath man and wife, brother and sister, parent and child. It is here that God begins his passionate pursuit of the Beloved, all of his creation. With subplots and dramas that rival anything written, God is in motion to win the hearts and minds of humankind and ultimately, to restore the entirety of creation. We looked for God and found him in strong leaders, in soulful art, in mysterious rites, in magnificent temples, in family bonds. Yet it was still incomplete. So God came as one of us. He turned our concept of holiness, greatness, and justice upside down. He died a criminals death and came back to physical life on a dew-soaked morning three days later. On that day, all of creation changed it's trajectory from degenerating and effort-driven to restorative and grace-infused. We became not just recipients of God's grace, but agents of his ongoing redemption, this process of renewal for the planet, for relationships, for souls, for lives, for minds and bodies. We suffer with those who suffer, we speak for those who cannot, we create beautiful windows into heaven with our art and music for those who are struggling to see. We live as the Body of Christ and look for God at work out there. This is God's story.

Redefining corporate worship means reclaiming our history - not as denominationalists or as nationalists, God forbid - but as people of God, as children of Adam and Eve, as friends of the disciples on the hill, as sisters and brothers of those who are still looking for the God-Among-Us. It means realizing that "Jesus loves me" is only one of the zillions of subplots that run through this story. It means losing ourselves in the vast greatness of this living and eternal mystical Church so that we can truly and unshakably find ourselves. It means having a strong sense of where Christ is in the here and now - and my guess is that he's not really listening to Christian music or hanging out at the local Christian bookstore. My guess is that he's holding a sign on the street corner, standing in the shadows of the porn shop door, gathered at the immigration rally, sitting in with the hot jazz trio, inked on the pages of a Tolstoy novel, captured in the provocative black and white images of the international photo-journalist.

This has great implications on our worship gathering. It changes how we define participation, how we define intercession, confession, celebration, good art. It changes how we approach missional communities, life with friends, our own personal prayers. It might even change us.

Corporate worship has the tremendous power to reshape and transform us. It was an important part of the life of Christ, a life-giving and compelling part of his human journey. As we begin our Christian year together with saints from all around the world, maybe we can reconsider our place in this flow of the Church.

O God, for whom all times and places are your habitation, be our God for we would be your people. We praise you for life's intangibles. We praise you for our collective dreams and the ability to bring them to pass. We unite our hearts to pray for your Church. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.


Jodi Adams is a teacher, author, and visionary for community worship. She serves as a teaching pastor and worship pastor at an urban church.

Passionate about empowering artists and leaders to take their congregations beyond the culture box, Jodi is a contributor to CTI's FaithVisuals.com and GiftedforLeadership.com and speaks regularly on the convergence of cultural issues and worship.

Jodi is currently completing her M.Div. at Denver Seminary and finishing her first book, which is due out next year. She and her jazzy husband, Justin, live in Denver with their three children: Sara, Anna-Michelle, and Leo, along with Karma the Wonder Dog.