From my observation, most
contemporary church-goers has considered the church “sanctuary” or the place
where the corporate worship is carried out to be some kind of “holy place” or a
“temple” where they come into God’s presence to worship. Although not
explicitly said, but I think many in the local church subconsciously treated
the church service or prayer meeting as something more spiritual or sacred in
comparison to other kinds of Christian meetings such as home meeting/cell group
or Bible study meeting. No doubt that since a church service is obviously more
formal and organized compared to the other meetings, then I guess naturally it
will be more esteemed. However, have we as new covenant believers unconsciously
(or ignorantly?) transferred the Old Testament paradigm of temple worship into
our religious practices? Have we also unknowingly regarded pastor as the NT
equivalent to the OT priest or the worship leader/team as Levites?
Therefore, I strongly feel that
the contemporary church needs to be biblical educated in the Theology of
Christian worship since there are many elements/forms of worship found in the
bible (that is in OT) that are not directly “transferable” into NT perspective.
Since Christ has fulfilled the OT laws, under the terms of the new covenant, it
is either only Jesus is our high priest (Heb) or we have the priesthood of all
believers (1 Pet). Jesus himself becomes the temple (Jn 2:13-22) or the church
as a whole or as individual Christian is the temple (1 Cor 3:16-17; 1 Cor 6:19).
Even the language of worship which in OT is so bound up with the temple/holy
place and sacrificial system has been radically transformed by what Christ has
done (cf. Jn 4:19-26, Rom 12:1-2).
So what are we to make of the
contemporary church service? How do we understand what it means to come
together for corporate worship? Is the praise & worship part of the service
becomes our “offerings of worship” unto the Lord? In what way (if any) individual
Christian’s acts of worship different from the corporate worship of the church?
