Reflections on General Assembly Worship

Worship is about the heart, but that includes the head, too. Christians worship in Spirit and truth - both - not one or the other. But, generally speaking, some of us lean more toward the Spirit - more feeling oriented, more intuitive and more artistic while others of us lean more toward the truth - Word oriented, results-oriented, bottom line and concrete. I believe that good worship planning takes both sides into account. For example, as we worshiped earlier today at the EPC General Assembly, during one of the instrumental interludes, the video guy put up a Scripture, allowing us to meditate on that while the instruments played. But this evening, there were several interludes during which they did not use Scripture on the screen, but rather focused the cameras on the soloist.

I suggest that the afternoon session engaged more of the congregation in worship during the interludes than the evening session. The combination of interlude and Scripture text appealed more to both groups. Those who are more intuitive and artistic would have joined in the "Spiritual moment" watching the soloist play to the glory of God, while those who are more Word-oriented would have found watching the soloist distracting from worship, but because they had a Scripture passage on which to meditate they could enter in to God's presence at the same time but with a different focus! This is a priniciple we can utilize in our own worship at MG - making worship engaging for both groups at the same time.