Life out Loud

It’s time for word association: if I say the word “worship”, what is the first word you think of? If you are one who attends church, I’ll bet the word you just thought of was “singing” or some word related to it.

My friends in the band Shine like Stars have a song called “Not Only in a Song”. I was listening to it this afternoon, and I like the line “Help us Lord, to worship you, not only in a song, but how we live our lives…”

I like this line because it brings to light the tendency we have (as ones who follow Christ) to think of singing and music as “worship” – which it is – but we stop there. We can forget that the rest of how we live out our lives is actually worship to God. I like this lyric because it is truth. If you thought of “singing” a few moments ago, feel no shame. I’m not saying you are wrong – I’m just saying there is more, and I’m challenging our thinking patterns (yes, I include myself in this challenge).

How we live our lives does matter to God, and I think that we know this, but when we aren’t “in church”, we forget. This is our first mistake. When I was in University, one professor asked us to draw a picture of “the church”. What did we draw? Buildings. There were lots and lots of one-room-schoolhouse-looking buildings with a cross on the top. “Church”.

Wrong answer. The church, he said, is people. His drawing was vastly different than all of ours. Loads of stick figures all standing together. This was the church.

I learned an important lesson that day. When we think church is a building, rather than our identity as believers, our faith gets fragmented. Church is not a place that we go to – it is who we are when we profess to be followers of Jesus. WE are the church. Dallas Willard has a chapter about this in his book, The Divine Conspiricy (think of this entry as the condensed version of that chapter, plus some).

Our worship to God is how we live our lives. It isn't relegated to what we do on Sundays or in weekly bible studies. It’s taking care of ourselves and others; loving those we’d rather not because it isn’t easy, fun or convenient; serving those around us; being obedient to God and the governing laws of the land we live in. Is singing songs to God worship? Yes, but it is only a small part of a bigger thing.

I once attended a church service at Veritas (a weekly IPC service), where, as part of the service, we made lunches for a homeless shelter. Each person made a sandwich, then added other lunch bits into a paper sack as they joined the singing that was going on simultaneously.
This was a tangible way to show others God’s love and provision.

I loved that we did this, and that this was part of a church service. This was a tangible way to worship God as we served others, and God. It was bringing our faith into action - living our lives as the church out loud.