- Have you ever wondered why is it
that we gather together to worship God?
Today in the digital age,
we have our favorite worship music playing on Spotify,
or we can listen to the best sermons
ever preached on Apple Podcasts.
So, why can't we just worship at home,
alone, individually, instead of going and gathering
with a bunch of people on a Sunday morning.
Well, in this video, I wanna unpack for you
the biblical and theological reasons
for why Christians gather for worship, and by the end,
you'll have a much clearer understanding
of why Christians have been gathering for worship
for the past two millennia and why,
even today in the digital age,
corporate worship in a gathered body worshiping God
is integral to the Christian life, coming up.
(upbeat music)
This video is brought to you by Worship Leader School,
where you're gonna find all the essential training,
advice, and support you need to plan and lead worship.
Click the link in the description to learn more.
My name is Jake Gosselin,
I'm the creator of Churchfront.com,
helping you lead gospel-centered and tech-savvy worship.
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As worship leaders, I think it's a good idea
to step back once in a while and think about
the big whys behind what we do.
It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day,
week-to-week planning, prepping, and leading of worship.
And if we're not careful, we lose sight
of the bigger picture or reasons behind what we do,
and then we get burnt out,
and then we just get fed up, and we're like,
why am I even doing this, this is so much work.
We have to take a moment to understand
the greater theological and biblical reasons
for why it is that we do the things we do.
And one of the things that we do as local churches
that is actually pretty inefficient when you think about it,
is gathering together in a location,
a physical location, to worship God.
Because today, worship and preaching
have become commoditized.
We can listen to Bethel, and Elevation,
and Hillsong on Spotify, and we can listen to
Furtick, and Groeschel, and Stanley on their podcasts.
So why is it that we need to show up
to our local churches that often have subpar music
and mediocre preaching?
Well, hopefully at your church you don't have
subpar music because you're the worship leader,
and it's probably amazing, but the pastor who's preaching,
that's probably another story.
So in the rest of this video,
I wanna share with you five reasons why
it's essential to the life of us as individual believers
and the life of the Church that we meet together
as a corporate body to worship God.
Much of what I'm gonna share with you in this video
comes from one of the chapters in this book
called True Worshipers, it's an amazing book
written by Bob Kauflin.
This guy is a legend in the worship-leading space,
he has a great book called Worship Matters.
And then this is a newer book that he has,
I just read it a couple weeks ago.
It is a really refreshing read.
I put the link in the description of this video.
Click the link, buy the book, and then read this book.
It's gonna be so helpful to you as a worship leader,
just understanding the worship theology,
and just how it applies practically
both in your ministry and in your life.
The first reason why we gather together
as a community to worship God
is that God prioritizes community.
And there's a few ways we see this
both theologically and biblically.
Let's talk about the theological concept of the Trinity.
God is one, but he exists in three persons,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And he has existed that way from all eternity,
it's really hard to wrap our mind around,
but God exists as a relationship
between those three persons.
So, even God Himself understands the benefits
and the importance of community,
and that's why he's a relational god.
And part of the beauty of our salvation is that we,
in Christ, get to enter into that relationship with God.
So God prioritizes community because He Himself
is a community, if that makes sense.
And then when we look at scripture
and we look at the Genesis account,
God creates Man, and he's like, hey,
it's not good for Man to be alone,
so he creates a woman to be with Man,
they get married, they're the first couple,
but then they also screw up,
and we have the rest of the story
that you're all very familiar with.
And then as God's plan to redeem the world and reconcile
humanity to Himself, he calls out a nation of people,
the nation of Israel.
He didn't call out just one individual,
but he called out Abraham and his family,
and his descendants to be the ones to really represent
God's kingdom to the world.
And then in the New Testament, we continue to see
God's prioritization of a community of people
that He's calling to Himself, and that's the Church.
Because of Christ's death and resurrection,
now there's this new Israel, there's this new
group of people that, it's not dependent on race,
or ethnicity, or social status, or gender.
Everybody is welcomed into this new body,
this new temple, known as the Church,
which is the collection of believers.
Christ died for the Church.
Sadly, because of a lot of popular theology
that's pretty misleading, there's been way too much
prioritization on the individual's salvation
in a relationship with God.
Of course, we are all individually saved,
but you can't take that out of the context
of being a part of the Church.
If you're a Christian, being an active member
of the Church is not an option.
You can't just, like, have Jesus without the Church.
It's an integral part of the Christian life,
because God prioritizes community.
In the Church, we see God reconciling humanity
to itself, and also to Him.
So that's why we gather together as a community to worship,
because all throughout scripture,
we see God calling a community of people
to gather together to be his people,
and the idea of community is integral
to the person and being of God.
The second reason why we gather together
in worship as a community is that we need to tell
the gospel story over and over and over again
to ourselves on a regular basis.
And this story is most effectively told
when you have other people around you reminding you
of these truths, because maybe you show up to worship
thinking oh, I'm a sinner, I'm so unworthy of God's grace,
like, I don't even know,
like, why am I following Jesus,
like, I shouldn't be, I don't deserve it.
But you need other people in your life to say,
yes, you're a sinner, but God's grace
is greater than your sin, and He forgives you,
and you can have new life because of that,
and we're here to support you in walking with Christ.
And you guys know, if you've been following me
for any time on the channel here,
that I like to plan worship services
so that they tell the gospel story that we adore God
and give Him praise for who He is,
we confess of our shortcomings, and how we're sinners,
and we're in need of God.
But then we also remember the grace that's found
at the cross, and our assurance of forgiveness.
We give God thanks for that forgiveness,
and then we are sent out as people on a mission.
We need to repeat this gospel liturgy time and time again,
so that it gets ingrained in our hearts,
our minds, and our souls.
And it's just much more powerful
when we do this in community,
when we have other people's voices,
whether it's the people singing around us,
or whether it's our pastors or leaders
preaching the gospel to us,
we need the gospel every single day, every single week.
That's why we gather together to share it with one another.
The third reason why we gather together
in person in worship is because we need to receive
God's word as a community.
We see time and time again in scripture,
whether it's Old Testament and it's Israel
receiving God's word, they always gathered together
as a corporate body to receive His word.
And in the New Testament, you know,
shortly after Jesus ascended into heaven,
and then the Church and the disciples were like, oh,
I guess we gotta kinda work on this on their own.
Eventually the Holy Spirit came to help them out.
But, they gathered together to break bread
and to consume God's word in community.
They weren't like, oh, Jesus, thanks so much
for your Holy Spirit, now I'm just gonna go
pop in some apostle Paul and apostle James
and Peter podcasts and just go off listening to sermons
while I clean my camel, I don't know,
I was just making stuff up.
They knew the importance of community
because they understood,
like what I unpacked a couple minutes ago,
that God prioritizes community,
and He was calling them out of the world
to be a redeemed people, corporately,
not as individuals.
There's just something really powerful about
gathering together as a community in our churches
to hear God's word.
Not only does it edify us individually,
but it edifies us as Christ's body.
The fourth reason for why we need to gather together
as a community of believers in worship
is for sharing the sacraments.
The sacraments are baptism and communion,
maybe if you're Roman Catholic
you have a few more sacraments, but I'm Protestant,
so we primarily view baptism and communion
as our sacraments.
And both of those sacraments, it's so integral
for those to be done in a community of believers,
and to be done publicly.
Baptism is supposed to be a very, very public event,
because that's where, as a new believer,
you make your proclamation that you reject sin,
you reject Satan, and you wanna follow Christ,
and enter into new life, and that's what baptism
is a symbol of, going from death to life.
And it should always be done in the church community
with the fellow believers as witnesses.
And then communion, just the very word, communion,
means community, right?
In communion we're celebrating our relationship
that we have with God, our communion with God,
because of what Christ did,
but we're also celebrating our communion
and fellowship in our community with our fellow believers.
Because again, salvation is multidimensional.
Not only is God redeeming humanity to Himself,
but He's also reconciling humanity to one another.
It's so crucial that both sacraments,
baptism and communion, are done in community.
And finally, the fifth point that I have for you,
is that worshiping in community gives God greater glory.
David writes in Psalm 35 verse 18,
"I will thank you in the great congregation
"in the mighty throng I will praise you."
So we always see this emphasis from the psalmists
and even other places in scripture of how
it just brings God more glory when His people
are gathered together worshiping him publicly.
So those are five reasons why I believe
it's very crucial that we as believers gather together
in our local congregations on a regular basis
to worship God, and I hope this helps you
as a worship leader just wrap your mind around this,
because maybe you've never even paused to think about
why we actually gather together as a body to worship God.
And maybe this will also give you some insight
on how you can better pass through your congregation
and help them understand why they're getting out of bed
on Sunday morning, getting their kids in the car,
getting them there.
My wife and I have a twin boy and girl now,
they're eight months, I know how difficult it is
getting to and from church.
You need to help your congregation understand
the importance of why they're doing that.
Because what's happening today in the church world
is people are like, oh, you know, the kids got soccer,
we gotta go hiking up in the mountains,
oh, we're on vacation, or whatever.
It's actually becoming very common that people
only wanna come to church every other week.
And a lot of church leaders are like,
well, I guess we gotta face it,
that's the reality of just where people are going.
But at the same time, I think, because our faith
is kinda becoming commoditized with sermon podcasts
and prerecorded worship music,
people are losing sight of the importance
of actually meeting together in the flesh
for corporate worship.
I don't want you to go and be a dictator
to your congregation and say, hey,
you guys aren't showing up every Sunday,
you really should because God wants you to
and the Bible says so, 'cause that's not really
gonna help the situation at all.
Instead, read a book like this,
it's gonna give you some great
theological and biblical insight on worship
that you can then go share with your congregation
in sort of these bite-sized nuggets
that you can maybe give them at the beginning of worship,
or in between songs.
So make sure you go ahead and pick up a copy
of this book on Amazon, click that link
in the description of this video.
There's just so much great insight in this book.
It's theological insight,
but it has very clear, practical application
for both you and your congregation,
so you won't regret reading this book.
Finally, I wanna invite you to also check out
WorshipLeaderSchool.com where you're gonna find
all the essential training, advice, and support you need
to plan and lead worship, where we have practical courses
on the technical and administrative aspects of worship,
as well as courses on the more theological side
of worship leading.
Thanks so much for watching,
if you found this video helpful hit that thumbs up button
and share it with your worship leader friends.
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