Worship Thoughts from Mark Dalbey

We dare not confuse biblical principle with the application of a biblical principle. For instance, let us suppose that I decide the best way for the congregation to pray
the Lord’s Prayer is to sing the Lord’s Prayer. There is a biblical principle that relates to either praying the Lord’s Prayer with words only or praying with music in a worship service. It is to use the Lord’s Prayer when you pray. The element is prayer. Under this heading of prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is a legitimate actual prayer to pray and a model of ways in which we should pray. My application of praying this biblical prayer is that I decide to sing it. Suppose I think this is so wonderful, so impacting, and so faithful to the Bible that I am going to say that you are not praying the Lord’s Prayer properly in your church unless you sing it. If I do that I have turned an application of a biblical principle of prayer and a particular kind of it into the biblical principle itself.

We confuse principle with application in worship, too. People find a worship expression that is exciting, has a sense of being faithful to God, and rings true with the worshipers gathered in this time, place, and local church. People’s lives are being impacted and changed by the Gospel in this worship service. They long to have other people experience the same blessings that they are. Some of these people may have come out of other kinds of worship experiences where that was not happening. Therefore they are suspicious of anything other than how they do it as being legitimate before God and impacting to the people. You can see how people get to that point. We could turn a lot of good, biblical applications of things in worship into new laws for people to have to abide by. That is what I am most passionately against. When I am around people who, when it comes to style of worship, are strict traditionalists, I tend to nudge them. I affirm where they are and the principles behind it. But I say, “This is not the only legitimate way that the principles that you hold dear and are applying in this way have to be done by everybody else. Are you paying attention to the demographic realities, generational dynamics, socioeconomic, and ethnic aspects? There are people whose voice in song and worship is potentially being pushed down or off to the side. You are so convinced that your one right way of doing it must be true of every time, place, people, and class.” When I go to churches where they are committed to only contemporary worship, with no hymnals or organs, I try to affirm what is right about what they are doing. I also nudge them toward realizing that the world is bigger than where they live. I challenge the attitude that is a whole lot like the attitude on the other side.

From this lecture from this class at covenantworldwide.org