When I asked the question “What is worship” to my team I received a lot of general answers:  Dancing, Singing, A Lifestyle, Prayer.  Beyond that they couldn’t specify nor give examples of how they “worshiped” God apart from singing.  If you asked anyone straight out “is worship just music” they would immediately say “no” but couldn’t elaborate.  Our time together as a team was mostly seen as “practice” and was only seen as important when we had new songs to learn.

SOLUTION
The people in your team have lost sight of the ultimate goal which is to invite people into engaging with God who is ever-present in our lives.  Worship is much more than singing during church or praying in your quiet times.  If we look at John 4 when the Samaritan woman asks Jesus as to where we should worship he answers:

Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.  You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.  Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.  – John 4:21-24
   
By this Christ implies that nothing (place / venue / context) is more important than worshiping God in what he calls “Spirit & Truth”. 

Worshiping in truth simply means worshiping the true God, YahWeh, (ie. not just God’s name but every aspect of him).  The Samaritans had a confused concept of the true God – they blended traits of God with concepts they carried over from other religions.  One example of not worshiping in truth (ie. living according to a false perception of who God is) would be the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 where the young man’s fear of the master’s wrath paralyzes him from action.  The truth in that parable is that the master would have been much happier if the servant even took a small risk of putting the talent in the bank vs. hiding it and keeping it safe.  Instead the young man acts out of his perceived fear and is distanced from the master even more. 

A more modern example might be if your team is more concerned about pursuing musical excellence than worshiping God under the presumption that God would be happier with them if they are able to better communicate his Love, Mercy etc… through their music to others and win more people for the kingdom.  The truth to this trap is found in Romans 4:5 that says, “However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.”  God ultimately does this work and is more concerned about how we trust him (ie. how well we know him) than what we do for him.

To understand worship in the Spirit we should check out Romans 12 that says:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Our spiritual act of worship according to Paul is for us to lay down our lives to God.  Paul elaborates that this means no longer conforming to any of the world’s patterns, ie. not living like people who don’t know God.  In other words, we are to live for God and not live for anything else. 

Putting the two together:  We shouldn’t be living to try to earn God’s love or approval because that goes against his character and against the truth of who he is (God chose Abraham to bless for no apparent reason other than God wanted to do that).  Our biggest priority shouldn’t be to get married, get a good job that pays a lot, to make our parents proud of us or to ‘fill in the blank’ (although those are all good things in it of themselves).  Neither should we worry about fixing any of those things if we do them.  Our primary concern should be getting to know God more and digging deeper into our relationship with him and letting that relationship transform us from the inside out.  Communal times of worship present opportunites for you, the worship leader, to invite people into that relationship. 

Because this concept of worship as active participation in a relationship with God is a little hard to grasp at times it must be constantly reinforced and demonstrated to not only the congregation but also to your team.  Here are some common ways to do that:

• scripture study  - pointing them to truth
• open dialogue - getting past the “Sunday School” answers
• modeling - make sure it is obvious in how you go about leading worship that your ultimate objective is to help people enter into worship

Answer provided by Jon Wang
--Need a more specific answer to a problem?  Please feel free to contact us.