by Pastor Jim Kang

The fundamental reason  we exist is to glorify God. Perhaps the best biblical summation is found in 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” In fact, at the onset the Westminster Catechism teaches that man’s chief end is to glorify God. This is not only true individually as a Christian, but also corporately as a church. But the million dollar question is how? How can the local church glorify God?

I don’t know of any church whose mission statement says that they exist to defame the glory of God. That would be ridiculous. Even the churches that are theologically liberal, unhealthy, unbiblical, or even unorthodox would not dare to say they exist to defame the glory of God. However, the truth of the matter is there are churches that do not glorify God by their practice. It is one thing to say you want to glorify God, yet fail to do so by malpractice. Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16,20).

The fundamental difference between glorifying and unglorifying churches is whether God-centeredness is both the goal and the means. That is, if the goal is to glorify God, then the means or the methods has to be consistently God-honoring too. You cannot just say you want to honor God and choose methods or means that would deny such goal. Hence, the heart of true Christianity and true Christian churches is the desire to glorify God and to do so by God-honoring ways. In other words, both theology and practice have to be utterly God-centered, God-ward, and God-honoring.

That is the heart of Christianity. Everything is about God, for God, and to God. It breathes the glory, the majesty, and the sovereignty of God, and puts not so glorious, not so majestic, and certainly not so sovereign man into its proper place. Here’s one example of such theocentric aspect of worship in prayer:

“Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the dominion, O LORD, and You exalt Yourself as head over all.” (1 Chronicles 29:11)

Churches that joyfully embrace and practice the Bible believe that one of the ways in which the local church can glorify God is through corporate worship. Historically, churches believe that the public gathering as a church on the Lord’s Day is the most meaningful and visible way of honoring God. There is no other place, day, and time that is more important for Christians than worshiping God together on the Lord’s Day.

However, how should the church be worshiping when we come together? What is it that we should be doing during worship? Even more fundamentally, what is worship? What is corporate worship? And what drives our corporate worship?

These are important questions that we cannot ignore. Hence, I want to bring some clarity in the next several posts by raising simple journalistic questions, namely who, why, when, where, what, and how in regards to worship.

Stay tuned for Part 2: Who Should Worship?