Jonathan DiStaulo

Thoughts On Worship

Creating a worship culture in church is a challenge for every pastoral staff. From Modern Church culture to Emerging Church cultures the values shift and morph. What I have come to realize is that leading a congregation to worship in a direction that offers options such as: video and film, visuals and photography, musical experiences, and so forth allows expression of worship to God that goes beyond preaching and singing alone. However in this new creative more encompassing approach to worship, everything must derive inspiration from prayer and scripture. Psalms 119:9-16 shows us a picture of worship that is properly rooted in prayer and the Word of God.

Many of the challenges churches face center around musical worship styles. The term "Worship Wars" from the mid 80's and 90's illustrates this point precisely. Despite the very limiting viewpoint of the Worship Wars mentality, a rather large ripple effect in the community of faith has been felt. Music is such a powerful force of human expression that ripples continue to be felt today.

When worship is seen as flowing directly from the "heart" of a person, evaluating worship based upon musical style alone falls rather flat. As worship, in whatever form, ascends vertically to God it should impact our horizontal relationship. Simply put legitimate worship is God honoring and neighbor caring. If we truly love God we will love our neighbor, and if we truly love our neighbor we must create opportunities for people to experience God.

Further thoughts of mine related to worship can be found in my monthly newsletter MusiConnexion (list shown above).