Presence or preference?

At the back end of last year I responded here to this article by Matthew Roberts.  I note that Evangelicals Now also included an editorial comment in support of Roberts’ piece.

Now the editorial offers some suggestions for things to include in your worship services and these are all good suggestions.

However, the editorial has the same problem that the original piece does. It doesn’t actually engage with what God’s word says should or might happen when we gather.  What about the regular observation of the Lord’s Supper?  What about multiple people contributing whether with interpreted tongues, prophecies, speaking or singing Psalms, hymns and songs to each other?  After all, these are the things the Bible actually talks about.

Indeed, would it be cheeky to suggest that it is great that it is great that conservative Evangelicals seem to be wanting more of the very experiential, emotional dimension to public worship that they have so often decried in charismatic worship. But perhaps then they shouldn’t cut off the very aspects of charismatic worship that gives what they say that they want to see.

But what strikes me most of all is that in both pieces we see primarily a description of the things they would like to experience. And you know what, yes I’ve experienced church services that have felt dry.  For me it has been where there has been minimal singing and where congregation have been essentially passive.  Neither article really picks up on both of those points.  Maybe those things are just my preferences, just as I find myself preferring older hymns to modern ones, Sovereign Grace and Stuart Townend to Hillsong and Phil Wickham .

Here is the crucial point.  We should not confuse our personal preferences with God’s presence. God’s presence with us is objectively true because he is omnipresent and because the Gospel means we have that intimate access into his presence. He is with us as gathered and scattered church through the Holy Spirit.  That does not change. 

Let me pick up on two terms in my last paragraph.  “The Gospel” and “intimacy”.  Now have a look back at the two articles I’m engaging with. Do you notice something? There is a big desire to encounter a transcendent God in them and that is a good thing.  However there seems to be less of an emphasis on intimacy. In fact it seems that the criticism is that our meetings are too intimate.

And yet, the very point of corporately gathering in God’s presence is that we know the immanence of the transcendent God. He draws near to us in Christ, through the Cross. That’s why the Lord’s Supper matters. 

I want to suggest that it is that imminent intimacy we need most of all and that sin gets in the way of.  It’s easy to get people to chant “Christ is King” at rallies, less easy to get them to say “Jesus is priest.”

So yes, there is a need for us to help one another to know God and corporate worship is part of that. However, we all have different preferences for style and content of corporate worship.  These will affect our experience of God’s presence and it is good to be aware of and to prefer each other’s needs.