I recently started rereading Daniel Block’s excellent To the Glory of God: Recovering A Biblical Theology of Worship with a few members of our church. He makes a striking comment about Israel’s meeting with God at Mt. Sinai in Exodus by saying, “Exodus 19-20 presents the most impressive corporate earthly worship event in all of Scripture.” So, what say you to Dr. Block’s superlative statement? Is it exaggeration or truth?
Walking in The Old Ways
If he’s right, and I’m in total agreement with him, one thing we must learn from the meeting at Mt. Sinai is the necessity of preparing to meet God in worship. Simply read through Exodus 19-20 and notice how exhaustive Israel’s preparation was to meet their God. Block goes on to ask the question,
How can we translate this into our own regular experience? Does this mean that we need to practice the purification rituals found in the First Testament and performed with such scrupulosity in early Judaism? . . . For many, Sunday morning is just as hectic as any other day. By the time we arrive at the church, we are out of breath, our tempers are short, and we have scarcely had worship on our minds. But, blissfully, we imagine that all we need to do to is show up in church and God will be impressed.
The question then I have for this post is, “How can we—as pastors—encourage and equip our congregation to show up with worship on their minds?” The question is thus one of how to prepare for gathered worship.
They’ve Thought About it Before
This isn’t a new concern. The saints of old spoke often of preparing to meet with God in worship—especially the Puritans, those blessed divines. The Westminster Catechisms say, “It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer.” The Westminster Directory for Public worship states, “There [should] be private preparations of every person and family, by prayer for themselves, and for God’s assistance of the minister, and for a blessing upon his ministry; and by such other holy exercises, as may further dispose them to a more comfortable communion with God in his public ordinances.” Thomas Watson has a whole section on the subject in his book The Ten Commandments. (Can you guess which commandment his discussion falls under?)
J.I. Packer, in commenting on this Puritan practice, says, “Here, perhaps, is our own chief weakness. The Puritans inculcated specific preparation for worship–not merely for the Lord’s Supper, but for all services– as a regular part of the Christian’s inner discipline of prayer and communion with God. … What we need at the present time to deepen our worship is not new liturgical forms or formulae, nor new hymns and tunes, but more preparatory ‘heart-work’ before we use the old ones.”
My question still remains: how do we today exhort our people to this kind of earnest preparation?
Ways to Shepherd Your Church to Prepare for Worship
What I long to be true about my particular church is the tangible cultivation of anticipation in meeting with God. Even though they say it’s dangerous to do so, I assuming here that pastors are teaching and modeling the importance of preparing for worship. With that in mind, here are some simple ways to promote preparation for gathered worship:
Pray, pray, and pray some more. I don’t mean merely praying for a culture of preparation to permeate your church. You do that, but you can do much more on this subject of prayer. When you meet with individual church members throughout the week you can close each meeting with prayer and include a petition for the upcoming gathered worship service. Start a pre-service prayer meeting for the sole purpose of pleading with God to let the Spirit descend in power upon each element of worship. This matter of prayer dovetails nicely into the next suggestion . . .
Distribute resources to aid in preparation. Include in your weekly bulletin an “Upcoming Sermons Card” that tells who will be preaching and what text will be preached over the next few weeks. Encourage your members to put the card in their Bible and then, during devotional time, read through the sermon passage and pray. Pray for the man to preach and for their heart to hear.
Every Tuesday I update a page on our website called “Songs We Sing” with the songs to be sung at the upcoming service. It never ceases to amaze me how many people utilize this simple resource. We’ve also put together a Spotify playlist of the songs we regularly sing so that the pertinent music can always be on hand.
You might also consider, on this point, freely giving away copies of Christopher Ash’s Listen Up: A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons to your members. WTS Books will let you get a case of 200 copies for only $558.
Use social media. Here is any easy way to sanctify an often salacious medium. Tweet about the upcoming sermon, post about the song you will sing for the first time this weekend, and anything else your social media platforms will let you do to perpetuate awareness of the coming gathered worship service. At least every other day I put things up on Twitter or Facebook to exhort our church to get ready for the service. And yes, sometimes it’s as blunt as, “Get ready to worship with us tomorrow by listening to the songs we hope to sing–[insert link to our “Songs We Sing” page].”
Aim to create congregational chatterboxes. We want people who love to talk about spiritual things. Encourage you people to send an email or text to the preacher saying something simple like, “I prayed for your sermon preparation today.” Exhort small groups to walk through discussion questions on the previous week’s sermon and then pray for the upcoming week’s sermon. Exhort the parents in your congregation to read through the week’s text with their children and discuss what questions they have that the preacher might answer.
It’s a Solemn Thing
There are a myriad of different things we can do to prepare to worship, but most would probably fall under the categories above. I leave you then with a trumpet blast from George Swinnock. Back in 2013 I read through his collected works, and my goodness, does that brother pack a punch! Here’s just one example, pertinent to this post:
Prepare to meet thy God, O Christian! betake thyself to thy chamber on this Saturday night, confess and bewail thine unfaithfulness under the ordinances of God; shame and condemn thyself for thy sins, entreat God to prepare thy heart for, and assist it in, thy religious performances; spend some time in consideration of the infinite majesty, holiness, jealousy, and goodness, of that God, with whom thou art to have to do in sacred duties; ponder the weight and importance of his holy ordinances . . .; meditate on the shortness of the time thous hast to enjoy Sabbaths in; and continue musing … till the fire burns; thou canst not think the good thou may gain by such forethoughts, how pleasant and profitable a Lord’s day would be to thee after such preparation. The oven of thine heart thus baked in, as it were, overnight, would be easily heated the next morning; the fire so well raked up when thou went to bed, would be the sooner kindled when thou should rise. If thou wouldst thus leave thy heart with God on the Saturday night, thou should find it with him in the Lord’s Day morning.
And all God’s people said, “Booyah.”