Science & Worship

Science and Worship

      The smell of weathered wood, dying Asian beetles, and musty carpet is still fresh in my mind. The setting was an old one-room church tucked in the hills of rural Wisconsin. Every Sunday I sat in the second oak pew with my family careful not to move the wrong way in case I would get a sliver. I was 5 years old. My dad was the pastor. Our congregation consisted of one other family, a widow, a widower, and occasional vacationers that dropped by.

What I remember just as powerfully as the smell of the Asian beetles, was the joy of worship. It was in this tiny church that the awe of Jesus became real to me. We sang hymns like Jesus is All the World to Me and What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Our contemporary songs were choruses like As the Deer and Shine, Jesus, Shine. Worship was more than song, it was the sermon, the responsive readings, the Scripture, and the Christian fellowship. It was a majestic encounter with my holy and gracious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Worship—we all long for it. Even the unbeliever finds some place or arena to experience transcendence. It could be a sci-fi movie, a book, or a cultic practice, but we all long to imagine a place outside our physical world. But something has changed. 21st Century Americans are constantly told that we must not believe anything that cannot be explained through science. We have elevated science and lost the wonder of worship. Consider these words from author, song writer, and worship leader, Zac Hicks who I recently had the privilege of studying under:

…Our once enchanted world—a context in which the average person understood life to be a wondrous, fearful interaction between the natural and supernatural realms—has been ravaged by modernity’s attempt to explain everything in scientific, naturalistic terms. Our frantic pursuit of understanding everything from the cellular to the cosmic has dulled our awe and muted our imagination by offering us a false sense of control over the created order… The constant barrage of the “explainability” of everything leaves us left with very little wonderment to bring into worship, resulting in several generations of Christians who have lost the expectation that God is really present in our worship. (Hicks, 2016, p. 30)

When the 5-year-old me sat in a pew in rural Wisconsin, there was no doubt in my mind that I was experiencing God through worship. I had not yet been trained in skeptical the land of academia. Worship for me was not a dissection, but an experience with my Creator through His Word. Consider the wonder of the Psalmist, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God… For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” O that our hearts would “long” and “faint” just to be in the presence of our Savior—just to “be a doorkeeper” in the place where God is worshipped! 

23 years ago, a successful church in the UK did a courageous thing. They were a church known for their music (after all, their musician was Matt Redman), but the pastor got rid of the band and sound system for a season of time. The pastor felt that the congregation was focusing on the wrong thing in worship. Through a cappella songs (no instruments) and corporate prayers, they came to realize that the heart of worship is nothing more than a love for Jesus. As the congregation began to reincorporate the sound system and praise band, Matt Redman penned the words of the well-known praise song. May this be the cry of our heart:

When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come
Longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless your heart
I'll bring You more than a song for a song in itself is not what You have required
You search much deeper within through the way things appear
You're looking into my heart
I’m coming back to the heart of worship,
And it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus
I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it
When it's all about You all about You, Jesus
Matt Redman © 1999 Thankyou Music (Admin. by Capitol CMG Publishing)

Seeking God’s heart, Pastor Matthew