"What is Worship?" Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Steve Elzinga I want to welcome you to the how to be an effective worship leader class. You may be wondering why I might be doing this class. I'm a pastor. I've been a song person. Most of my life. My father played the guitar, although he only played three chords. And, I think he only knew one song, you are my sunshine. But my mother played the piano. She was an excellent piano player. And I remember at age 10, I asked her how to play the piano.

And she couldn't explain really the difference between a quarter note or an eighth note. And I think she taught me "Jesus loves me." And that's about it for parts. So I didn't learn much there. I really started playing music when I was in grade 4. The whole class, we had to learn these things - I think they were called recorders. They were little flutes. And I remember being fascinated. I looked at music, I love music, but it was a mystery to me. And I remember learning the first few notes on the recorder. And you learn this note and then you'll learn that note and then you learn this other note, but I wondered how individual notes could be music, because music to me was something that started and then it didn't get interrupted. It was continuous sound for the whole song. And I remember looking at this flute and the notes and wondering "well how can individual notes become this unending, uninterrupted sound called music?" And, I didn't understand that notes could last long and that they could sort of come right after one another. 

And I was just fascinated with the whole thing of music. And then in fifth grade, there was the band and I took up the trumpet and I had a natural lip for the trumpet. And so, I think by sixth grade I was playing Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, all those songs. And so I continued with the trumpet, but I really wanted to, to sing and I wanted to learn the guitar, and I just didn't know how to do it. I just didn't know where to begin. And then I met my wife and you'll meet her too. And she was a music major in college and she just knows music. She can tell what harmonies are. She knows when someone's playing the wrong note. She knows the keys, the theories, she can read music, she can play it by ear and she was just, she was just a miracle to me in terms of music, and so we started doing things together.

Then I met a seminarian friend of mine who played the guitar and he got married to a girl that was a great singer. And so when we were in seminary, we formed a band. That was 1980-81. And we toured for, I think, we toured for 90 days. We had 100 shows in 90 days. Down to Texas to California, up to Canada, across the whole country. And during that, that 90 days, I really learned a lot about music. I've been a pastor and a church planter, but I've been beside my wife who's been, I think, you know, and maybe I'm biased, I think one of the best worship leaders I've ever seen. Everywhere we've gone, every church that we started or went to, she's always been able to pull together an incredible worship team and she'll be in on some of these classes as well.

The class is about being a worship leader and maybe you're a worship leader already, or maybe you'd like to be a worship leader. Or maybe you're a pastor and you just want to know more about music and have more of a vision for music for your church. Or maybe you're just a music team person, you like music and you want to learn more. This class is going to be good for all of you. If you're a worship leader and you know a lot of things, you're probably going to learn some techniques and things that you can teach others. So, welcome to this class and welcome to this first session. I've entitled this first session, "What is Worship?

We're going to be talking about the worship service quite a bit in this class. But, I wanted to start off with the broader topic of worship, what is worship? According to the dictionary, worship is literally to give something it's worth and we do this all the time. Football players, whether it's American football or European, African football, which is really soccer. When the players come out on the field, people start clapping. They start cheering. My oldest son married a girl from Ecuador and we went to a soccer game there in Quito. And it was crazy. And the people are screaming and there's chanting with the players do something special, they have a chant for every little thing that they do. And when they scored a goal, people were shooting rockets from behind us. Little firecrackers sending them up in the air. But all of that was people saying to these football players, the soccer players, you're worthy. We want to acknowledge your greatness on the field. When you go to a play at the end of the play, the actors come out and they bow and we clap. We give them their worth. 

If you go to a concert and then the singers sing, we clap and we cheer. And we, were basically saying, we like this, you're doing a good job, keep doing it. Your son or daughter graduates from school and you go to this ceremony and someone speaks and they get all dressed up. And each one steps onto the stage and receives his or her diploma and we clap and we give them their worth. We're trying to say that they're something. Sometimes I say to my wife, you know, I worship the ground that you walk on. And I don't literally worship her, I worship God. But, we're trying to convey that this person is worthy, that they're special, and they're worthy of some of our acknowledgement and praise. And certainly God. Probably we use the word that word specifically "worship". We use that specifically of God, we praise other people, we acknowledge people, we clap for people, we applaud people. But that word worship, which means just to give something it's worth is probably reserved for a more religious sense. We worship God, we acknowledge His Greatness, we acknowledge the attributes, His power, His wonder, His grace, His omniscience, His control of the universe, His care, His providence, and we acknowledge that.

Well, if giving someone is worth and giving God, his worth is what worship is, well, how does one do that? Well, we communicate it in some manner. We try to tell God that He is worthy of our praise. And we do it with words. Sometimes in our service, we pray and we pray prayers. adoration sometimes we put those words to music we give our praise  to God in our music sometimes I for myself I can just sit at the piano and play a little bit and I can sit here for a half an hour I just play a simple little here's a little two finger thing I'll make it bigger that will be my worship I'm just I'm just giving God my praise as I'm as I'm making music Music and I'm learning that music. Fill me sometimes just a simple little, just three chords. The key of C, I'm playing a G not playing an F. 

Now I'm back to a G sustain. That's just a simple little thing and I'll just do that for a while. And there's an old song Spirit of the Living God, they will try those words. You just make up your own words. Just a beautiful day. I'm here at CLI singing my praise to You. that you know, you don't have a crowd of people listening. You're just alone. You're just singing or playing at the piano. You don't even need a piano. You can be sitting in your car, you just make up whatever words that you want. As you go down the road and it's just offering your praise. Arts, maybe you're into arts and painting things and, and putting things together. That's what art is art is just taking stuff that doesn't usually go together and putting it together or our work. Maybe, maybe you're a builder and you you build houses and, and, and, you know, but instead of building a house, why don't you build a sanctuary? 

I mean, it probably looks exactly like a house, you're building this person, their house, but in your mind, you're building a sanctuary. And every single room that you're working on is is a place for God's Spirit to indwell. And you can imagine the family that's moving in. If they don't know God, then then you're praying that God's Spirit would be in this place because you're building not just a house, you're building a sanctuary. And because everything that you're doing is connected to God, it is your worship to God, or play. You know, you remember a guy I would go ice fishing with and he would dig the hole. And before we would put The fishing lines in he would say Let's pray. And he follows him and say, Lord, what a what a what a blessing it is to be here on the ice with friends. And we're just going to enjoy your creation together. Amen.

he would he would bless his play. Eric little of the 1924 Olympics was a runner for Britain. They made a movie called Chariots of Fire he refused to run on Sunday is one of those heats was scheduled for Sunday. He refused to run on Sunday. So he had to train for another race that wasn't his specialty. And God bless him for that. And he won the gold medal. But when he was speaking to an interviewer, or I think maybe it was his sister, he wrote these words. God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. Eric Liddell in a way is playing is just running, but he's saying God takes pleasure in the offering of the running that I do.

So worship is done through these different ways of communicating. It's it's communication with your voice. You speak, you sing, it's communication with your hands. When you sing, why not use your hands, let your hands do some talking when we when we talk, we naturally use it. Hey, come on over here. Go over there. Here let me give you a hug. I mean, we speak with our hands. And we we can worship Gods with our hands with our hands, not only in the service, but with the things that we do with our hands. God, I am doing all that I do and everything I do with my hands. I'm dedicating to you, because I'm your son. I'm your daughter, your eyes, you can close your eyes, you can lift your eyes to God. Your feet now I know sometimes some of us will sing, you know, sometimes it might Church, that the people that are sitting there with their, with their arms folded, and they don't move a little bit, but but your feet are missing out on worship of God. 

Let your whole body let everything that you are worship God, it's okay to move a little bit, your whole body to God Colossians 3:23 whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men. So worship is it's not just singing. It's not just that kind of praise. It's really giving God the glory with all that you are and all that you do. Worship is a lifestyle of daily surrender to God and His will for your life. Romans 12 one and two. Therefore I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy to offer your bodies everything that you are as a living sacrifice.

holy and pleasing to God, this is your true and proper worship. That's what we're talking about worship, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is his good and pleasing and perfect will. All that you are I wrote a vision statement for my church that sort of reiterates that I want to read that for you. As a group of people saved by Jesus, we have a passion for him to follow love and serve, to worship, know and honor Him, to walk and talk with Him to share him with others, to always ask what would Jesus do and then try to do it. This passion for Jesus influences how we work and play, how we create and innovate, how we relate to and care for others, how we do family, how we use our resources, how we interact with our world, allowing Jesus to influence All that we are an all we do is a community is the community walk with God, that Jesus culture The Jesus way that we seek to follow all of our lives, our worship to him?

What What does worship help us do? What What does it in the end? How does it come back to us? 

Number one, we experience God's pleasure. God takes pleasure in us Psalm 100. Shop for joy to the Lord all the earth, worship the Lord with gladness can be it for him with joyful sighs you're a worship leader, your people have come, they've had a hard week, maybe things are going wrong in their family. Maybe you know a disaster happened at work or you know, they just had a fight as husband and wife and now they come to church. What they need to hear from their worship leader is that God is here and there's joy, but you need to communicate that we're going to experience God's pleasure today.

Number two, we experience God's presence. Psalm 22, verse three, but thou art holy, oh thow that and habitus, the praises of Israel. When we start singing, when we start giving God praise and our worship services or even in our own families, God's presence fills the place. Because Holy Spirit comes, angels come from who knows where to join in the praise of God. If Finally, number three, we experience God's people, we're not I mean, sometimes we do prays all by ourselves, but we come together at church, we come to a worship service. We're blending the praises of all the people and all the praise that's been going on all week long and it all comes together in one glorious time together, Hebrews 10:24-25, let us consider how we may stir one another up. toward love and good works, not neglecting meeting together as some are in the habit of doing but encouraging one another. I just had a super in a series on Ephesians this year, this summer with my my own church.

And I just reiterated that, that we need each other that my family needs the people of my church. If people don't come to church, if they come, you know, every other week or they come once a month, it not only hurts them, but it hurts me. It hurts me with my family. We need to do this together. We're a body of Christ when the body of Christ is missing. We can't praise God like he encourages us to. Well, where does one do all this worship? quiet places. Find a quiet place where you can worship God maybe it's just taking a walk somewhere or finding a place in your home that you could just quietly away from all the distractions of life in your home, make your your home a place of worship, make your home, the most important church that you go to. Work why not bring God to work? How do you do that? 

Well pray for people. There's a problem. And, you know, people generally aren't offended if you just say, hey, do you mind if I pray for you? Or, I remember I, we had our office above a recording studio. And the recording studio guy didn't go to church didn't really believe and he had a problem. He's telling me all about it. And I said, You know what, I'm gonna put you in my acts. He didn't ask but that was he just looked at me funny and I didn't tell him. So I wrote down my prayers, acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving supplication, I had these little prayer sheets that I was filling out every single day, and I put his need every single day under supplication every day. then a week later I met him, and I said, Well, how'd it go that thing? 

That the problem you brought me, the swell. It's unbelievable. You know, this is what happened and it all worked out and I said, Well, I'm not surprised because I told you I'd put put you in my acts. And he said, Well, what is this acts? So I took out my journal with all my prayers for the last week, and I show him every single page here. Monday, I paid prayed to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, here's Monday again. And he saw that I actually prayed for him. Then he said to me, when that was all done, he said, Well, where do I get these acts things? 

Because he saw that prayer, actually works, school. Bring, bring your praise, bring your honor of God the school. I'm the king you listen to worship songs sing along with whether you're a good singer or not a good singer doesn't matter. You're the only one in the car. The shower is the best place to worship God. The walls are echo and reverberate and Even if you don't have a great voice You sound great in the shower. I, I've said to my church sometimes I said, Let's all get into the bathroom and Let's all sing there because of the echo. And it just sounds like those old cathedrals. If you're a gardener, worship God in the garden, sports, you know, Eric little, you know, the gifts that God has given you the body that God has given you and you, you're excelling with it. You're using it. Use it for God's glory, friends, praise God with friends that are there over, have a prayer, have a song. on trips before you going on a trip, stop a moment, have the family sing a song, praise God. 

When it's raining when it's sunny, the stars at night, I had a good friend of mine. He told me a story of his father when he was 10 years old. His father took him out into the evening. And he said Son, I want you to look at all those stars. They just looked at this stars for a couple of minutes. Just look at all those stars. Then he looked at his son and said, Son, the God of this universe created every one of those stars, so that you and I could stand here tonight and wonder about them all. God is in everything. God is trying to speak through everything. We need to have the spiritual ears to hear it, and respond in praise.

What is one worship? Of course, we worship at church, churches, a special time where all God's people come together and we worship with our songs and with our presence with our bodies, our hands and everything that we are. Well, with whom does one worship? Certainly you can worship god alone. If you're married, worshiping God with your spouse is Yeah, sometimes my wife and I will sit down and we'll sing together and it's a special time for family. I have four boys, when they were teenagers that we grew up, they grew up in a contemporary church, they sang contemporary songs, they didn't know the hymns. So when they were teenagers, my wife and I decided they're going to learn the hymns. So we got the hymnal, we got got one for each one of them. And we said, we're gonna we're gonna practice these every night. I, they were four teenage boys at the time. how excited you think they were about learning the hymns as teenagers? They weren't that excited, but we did it. We just kept doing it every night, we would take one out, we would learn one. And when they learned a bunch of the hymns, we thought, well, let's teach him the tenor part. Let's teach him the bass part. Let's even teach them the alto part. So we taught them the parts. Some nights, they didn't want to do it. 

They weren't girthy they were looking down on the ground, but we just kept doing it every night. And after a couple months, they learned it and they will How many parts and I remember, my son was doing something for his grandfather doing some something with a computer or something, and it was tedious work. And as he was sitting there, I heard him just kind of slowly humming, holy, holy, holy, to him, holy, holy, holy. And when we get to grandma and grandpa's church, and they were seeing one of those old son, I can hear with my ear, I can hear they're singing the tenor part. And they were singing for all that they were worth. Now my kids are older, and they love the hymns. And they love the fact that they know them by heart and that they that they can sing the parts that they can worship God any time with these songs. And they have this memory of us learning those songs together. 

Support Group or friends. I used to be when people got together they would sing around the piano. Now we we get together we play video games or sometimes we Listen to music, but we we don't sing anymore. And we're losing that art at church. Yeah, you meet with all the people and we're all busy doing our own things. And then once in a week, we come together and we lift our voices in song.

The Kingdom, the kingdom is not just your church, but it's all the churches, God's churches everywhere this past Friday, just a couple days ago, our church singing in the park, and we had, we had like five or six different churches brought their bands in, and we had kind of a little mini praise Fest in our little town. So we say not just with our own group, but we say with God's people, you know, wherever they are. And finally the world. The world is the the unconnected the Christ world and how do we get our worship in front of them? at our church, we're planning on having an outdoor service and we're right in the middle of town.

hundred yards away is a grocery store and the parking lot and the post office is in our building. So we're gonna have one outside, we're gonna let the world know, you know, our praise and honor for God. So that's worship. Worship is a broad thing. What we're going to be talking about in this class is a worship service. So just to compare those two, worship is anytime anywhere, specifically giving God is worth praise and adoration of worship service is a specific time at a specific location with a, you know, specific group of people. And it includes many other elements there and that specifically, giving God is worth there's Thanksgiving, there's testimony, there's supplication, there's encouragement. A lot of different elements are in the worship service that you might not technically call worship. It's it's a more precise kind of thing.

So, I just want to conclude this first session with the question well, what is a worship service? Three things of worship service. One is worship service should be the combination of our worship. It should not be the substitute for worship. It should be the support system for worship, you know, when we attend the worship service, then we get excited to go back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and do more worship. And finally, it should be an inspiring example for our worship. So we're inspired to worship God with our whole lives. I, I first experienced this whole view that that the worship service is a combination of our worship, not the surrogate walk for our lack of worship, our weak love. 

I discovered that early on. The president of CLI, Henry Reyenga was playing thing a church in Chicago and I was planting a church in Vancouver and we became friends together. And we were planting churches in the sort of build it and they will come model. And that's where you have great worship, you have great sermons and music and and you try to put on a really good show that people will like, and then they'll come back the next week and they'll invite their friends. And you know, it worked. Both of us experienced, you know, growth, the 500 people within three, four years, and we had all kinds of people coming. But when we visited people in their homes, we discovered that they're coming on Sunday, and they're listening to the pastor read the Bible. They're listening to the worship team, sing the songs, they're listening to the prayers, but they're not doing any of that at home. 

They're not praying, they're not reading the Bible. They're not doing any of those things at home. And so what we learned is that people are people are loving the Worship Service do the walk for them? Well, I was I was busy doing that and trying to please everyone on Sunday and, and trying to make this Sunday service better than last week. I was working on that for three, four years, and I was getting tired. Finally, I was so tired. I got on a plane and when I went to Florida, I flew across the country, and I visited my parents who were staying there and I took their car and, and I didn't say a word to them. I just took their car and I drove across the state of Florida, three hour drive. And that whole three hours I was just tears were just coming out of my eyes. And I had no idea why I just couldn't stop the tears. And the only thought that I could think of through this whole thing is that this church is killing me. And when I got to the coast, I just turned south and they kept driving and I got to the the little islands at the south end of Florida and I went to the first island of the Secondly, finally the sun went down. So then I had to find somewhere to stay in the hotels were really expensive down there.

So I just parked, I found the most expensive hotel, and I just parked the car and there a parking lot and I jumped in the backseat. I was gonna sleep there. And that night, really for the first time is when I heard God speak clearly to me. This is what he said. I am here. That's it. And I remember thinking, Okay, I know you're everywhere, God, but how does that help? Next morning, I woke up, I felt a little better, drove back to my parents got on a plane, went back to my church in my home. I still didn't know what that meant I am here. But over the next two, three weeks God sort of let me know what that meant. And this is what I got. God was saying I am here. And what matters is your walk with me.

You think the preaching and all these things you're doing this, no, what matters is your walk with me. And secondly, what matters is your walk with your wife and me. And finally, what matters to me is your walk with your wife and your kids. your walk with me, your devotion, your adoration, your relationship. To me, that's what matters. And if, as an individual and a couple in a family, if you can help someone else, get that same law, and they help someone else and they help someone else, and that builds a church. That's not your problem. That's mine. And I tell you, when when I figured that out, it was like, I don't have to do this. I just have to walk with God in my personal life, my marriage in my family, and then share it with others. So that's what I did. I came to the Sunday service and I said, you know, I'm not going Stand on my head, I'm gonna jump around and try to make this service better than last week. I hope it is good. I don't want to do lousy services. But I'll tell you what I want to do. I'm gonna just walk with God in my personal life, my marriage and my family. And if anyone here wants to figure out what that is, let me know. With 500 people, you know how many people came up to me? Five.

So I started with five. I started with five. And I we try to figure out what is the walk with God look like? What does it look like in your family? What does it look like with your kids? We started with five and then soon it was 20 and soon it was 30. Instead it was 50. And we sort of restarted the church. Worship is the culmination of all the praise going on all week long. It's not the surrogate walk. It's the combination. It's the support is I've had a rough week but I come in Okay, yes. Let's get back to worshiping God.

It's called halftime when I was in Chicago. I started a church called halftime. And that's what that's what a service is. A service isn't the game. And we sometimes think that the service is what the church service is what praise and adoration is all about. No. praise and adoration is about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday at work at play at your home. And then on Sunday, we come together it's like halftime. How did we go? Well, it was brutal. Okay, let's improve for the second half. Well, let's encourage one another so we can go out into this next week. So I hope you enjoyed this session. Next we're going to be looking at what music is why is music such a big part of the worship service experience?