We have been interviewing John van de Laar who is the founder of Sacredise.com, an international worship training and resourcing ministry. John is one of the leading thinkers in the area of Christian worship, and has recently completed a book called “The Hour that Changes Everything: How worship forms us into the people God wants us to be,” (see our book review section for more).
This is the second part of our interview with John.
SW: John, what would you like to say to people, who for example, might hate singing? What would you say to them about worship?
John: I would ask them to put the singing and music to one side, and explore what it would mean for them to recognise that worship and music are different things. Music is simply one possible way to express worship, but it's certainly not the only way. For those who find music unhelpful, I would encourage worship through silence, meditation, liturgy, Scripture reading, prayer, posture, writing, poetry, art, flower arranging or any other of a number of expressions. I would encourage them to explore the ways in which they most easily open to God, and most powerfully encounter God, and then I would invite them to develop a discipline in which they engage in that activity as often as possible, preferably in the context of a faith community of some kind - since worship is never only an individual activity.
SW: What would you like to say to people who are threatened by the worship styles of others?
John: We have turned worship into a place of disputes and arguments because we focus on the outward forms of our worship - do we use organ or guitar or choir? Is our worship structured and liturgical, or spontaneous and "free"? And then we try to squeeze others into our preferred "style" of worship. The truth is that we all seek the same thing when we worship - intimacy and encounter with God. We all use the same practices to facilitate and express this encounter - praise, confession, intercession, sacraments, Scripture reading etc. Where we differ is on the smallest and least significant part of our worship - what I call the "packaging" or "style" of worship. Once we recognise that style is just that - packaging - we are able to hold it much more lightly and acknowledge that what we like others may not like and vice versa. Then we are able to open ourselves to the styles of others, and learn that, even if we aren't comfortable in that style, God is nevertheless at work there. The natural consequence of this, then, is that we begin to make space for the styles of others, because we long for them to have the same encounter with God that we have had, and if a different style helps that to happen for them, we are happy to embrace that style.
SW: Finally, John if there is one thing you would like people to remember about this book, what would it be?
John: It's that worship is not about what happens in Church so much as it is about what we do when we leave the Church. If there is injustice in our world, we have failed to worship rightly. If there is poverty and war in our world, we have failed to worship rightly. This is because worship should change us into true followers of Christ who live out his sacrificial calling in our world. To put it into one sentence - how you worship defines how you live.
(You can visit www.sacredise.com to order a copy of his book or for more articles by John, as well as resources for personal and public worship – music, prayers, liturgies, images and drama scripts).