What the Church Needs Now

5. We must see the entire ministry of the church as ultimately directed towards worship.

John Piper, in his book Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, explains how worship is the ultimate and eternal purpose of the Church while missions is but a "temporary necessity." He also shows how missions must flow out of worship ("You can't commend what you don't cherish.") and must ultimately lead to worship being offered up by those from "every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9); as he puts it, "Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions."

What Piper says about missions could indeed be applied to all ministry, and to all ministries of the Church. "Worship is the only Christian activity which is an end in itself," Piper has also written. In other words, worship is unique in its purely vertical focus. All other ministries and Christian endeavors necessarily include a horizontal aspect which is focused on people, be it evangelism, discipleship, children's or youth ministry; but indeed the ultimate purpose of all these activities is to direct people's gaze heavenward, to bring them to that place of vertical focus; to "make worshipers out of rebels" and to draw believers into a closer walk of God-glorifying worship. In short, the goal of all Christian ministry is to make more and better worshipers of God (and, of course, ultimately He is the One who must make this happen).

So let us take a more unified, holistic view of the church's ministry, and see its singular goal in all of its diverse functionings—not just the worship service—as the deepening and enhancing of people's worship, to the glory of God. "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11:36)

Conclusion

How easily we lose sight of the forest for the trees! To be sure, decisions must be made concerning musical selections, form, instrumentation, etc. But these are decidedly secondary concerns which pale in importance next to far more weighty biblical considerations: the primacy of God's glory; worship being for Him; the need to practice humility and mutual submission in our practice of worship; the pervasiveness and centrality of worship in the life of the church and of the individual believer

These things must be pursued or our worship will not be pleasing to God—no matter how the quality or how big the crowd. We must worship in unity, or we worship in vain. Let us be reminded, as James Torrance has put it, that "there is only one way to come to the Father, namely through Christ in the communion of the Spirit, in the communion of saints, whatever outward form our worship may take."

"To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen!" (Ephesians 3:21)