In the seminar titled Essentials of Worship, Gary Parrett outlines 11 principles of worship. The lectures are relatively short and total 3-4 hours, but well worth your time. Worship has little to do with singing, so his explanations may reorient your thinking to the Biblical view of worship. To get you thinking about the topic, Parrett’s principles are as follows:
- Worship always involves revelation and response
- Worship is something that we do both individually and in community
- Habitual lifestyle worship is more important than our intentional actions of worship in religious settings
- Individual worship and congregational worship inform and strengthen one another
- Worship requires participation; it is not a “spectator sport.”
- Worship involves participation of our entire being
- The substance of our worship is always more important than the style or form of our worship
- When we worship as a community, we are participating in something larger than ourselves
- We worship as a community, our concerns for individual freedom and self-expression must be balanced with the need to “prefer one another in love” and “consider others more important than yourself.”
- Worship is first and foremost for God and about God; its benefits in forming believers and in reaching unbelievers are secondary
- God is both the Subject and the Object of our worship
If you don’t have time for the seminar sessions, Parrett’s Christianity Today article covers most of his principles. He also has an extended version of the Worship class, which more exhaustively cover the topic
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