How We Worship

It is equally a fundamental truth of Scripture that we are how we worship. The kind of worship the church engages in shapes the kind of community she becomes and forms the character of individuals who make up the community. This was one of the great insights of the Reformation, for the Reformers were not contesting outright idolatry but wrong worship of the true God. They were struggling not about who was worshipped, for all agreed on that question; they gave their lives to a struggle about how Christians are to worship. Worship, the Reformers insisted, had to be pure in order to be pleasing to God, and by “pure” worship they meant, first, worship that conformed to Scripture and, second, worship that arose from a genuine devotion to the Lord. [i.e., “worship in spirit and truth,” John 4:23-24] —Peter Leithart, “Transforming Worship,” Foundations 38 (Spring ’97):27