Let Us Worship God
I have an early Sunday morning routine. It’s a liturgy, of sorts. I won’t give you all the quotidian details (though yes, it starts with getting coffee). I usually arrive at my church about 5:40am. I love getting there in the dark, lighting a candle for devotions and hearing the quiet. One of the first things I do is put an old sandwich board sign out near the driveway from the local neighborhood street. I’m not sure about the age of the sign. I found it in a storage closet, and it’s old enough to be retro. At least. It simply says “Church Here,” with a large arrow, and then “10AM.” True confession, it used to say 10:30AM, but we used a piece of tape to turn the 3 into a 0 when we changed service times. Every Sunday before dawn, I grab the sign, walk across the dark parking lot and place it so folks can see it once it’s light.
Sometimes I imagine that I am a country parson in a black robe, pulling the rope to ring the bell up in the tower and calling the neighborhood to worship. That does take imagination, because …we’re not in the country. I haven’t worn a robe for 20 years. And our one-story building certainly has no tower, let alone a bell. And yet, by simply placing a sign that says “Church Here,” it might represent something of immense significance. Like a tolling bell.
These days, church leaders are called to be culturally astute, psychologically trained, theologically relevant, biblically knowledgeable, socially entertaining, and politically correct. I work hard at some of those, though the last two mean very little to me at this point. Yet, it strikes me that none of that really holds a candle to simply calling our community to worship God, week after week, month after month, year after year. That in itself is a counter-cultural activity. Planning worship, supervising staff, watching a budget, training leaders, encouraging discipleship, counseling, praying, and vision casting are all very important components of leadership in a faith community, of course. I don’t mean to undersell them. But I’ve never quite gotten over what Eugene Peterson said in an interview many years ago:
”The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, “Let us worship God.” If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor. I pick up some other identity. I cannot fail to call the congregation to worship God, to listen to his Word, to offer themselves to God. Worship becomes a place where we have our lives redefined for us. If we’re no longer operating out of that redefinition, the job is hopeless. Or if not hopeless, it becomes a defection. We join the enemy. We’ve quit our basic work.”
Yikes. That’s a strong word…but we ought to consider it. Partially by doing all sorts of things poorly, pastors apparently now have the trust of only 27% of the American population, if you believe the latest Gallup poll. While that is part of a much larger trend that shows Americans increasingly distrusting nearly everyone, it’s especially damning for pastors. And we shouldn’t take much solace in the fact that members of congress and telemarketers are rated still lower.
Certainly, the current polarized environment which is quick to criticize and reject anyone who disagrees about anything means there is little trust to begin with. Throw in moral scandals amongst church leaders and trust deteriorates further. Damaging and destructive sin, often publicly denied until the facts are too glaring to ignore, rightfully cause even Christians to doubt their leaders, let alone other people. When our leaders’ lives fall morally apart, it hurts the entire witness of the Church.
Still, I don’t think that declining trust is totally tied to scandal. I’ve been wondering about far less obvious causes. What about when we as leaders simply lose our focus? What about when we, trying to stay relevant, become psychologists or entertainers or politicians and lose our connection to the gospel? Calling people to worship is certainly not the only responsibility pastors carry, but it is the one which is foundational for everything else. Our concern for people to oppose racism, speak up for the poor, feed the hungry, stand with immigrants, or advocate for treating people as valued human beings is all grounded in the gospel–the gospel that we receive and affirm when we come before God in worship. In worship we are shaped and transformed into the kind of people who can carry the gospel into our culture in meaningful ways. If we try to do without, our efforts become mere activism and prove to be unstainable.
Peterson’s pastoral job description from the interview above is simplistic, I know: “Call the congregation to worship God, to listen to his Word, to offer themselves to God.” It may be simple but it’s in no way simplistic. And it’s quite possible that we would be more faithful to God’s calling if we simply rang the bell each Sunday, stood up and one way or another said, “Let us worship God.”
Peace of Christ,
Dan Baumgartner
Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and currently serves on The Fellowship Community Board.
These are the expressed views of Dan Baumgartner and not necessarily broader views of The Fellowship Community.