How the Gospel Shapes Our Gathering
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of four articles on the design of a corporate worship gathering. 9Marks does not promote one way to go about the design of a worship service. Nevertheless, this is a good example of how one pastor taught his church about corporate worship.
You might have seen a church whose architecture was the shape of a cross. It’s called cruciform architecture. The first church buildings were modeled after the Roman basilica, a long rectangular structure. In time, two wings were added to make the shape of a cross.
I recall my first impression after touring one of these historic structures. I was impressed with the care and planning that went into these spaces. Yet it’s infinitely more important to ensure the gospel-shaped architecture of a church gathering. That is, what we do when we come together on the Lord’s Day.
These four posts will move from the more fixed and foundational things to the more practical and flexible—from theological foundations (Part 1) to liturgical rhythms (Part 2) to preparation of a Sunday gathering (Part 3) to tips for getting organized (Part 4).
On the one hand, this little series is not necessary. We don’t need to apprehend the physics involved in the structure behind a wall to take shelter in our homes. We don’t even need to think about the structure for it to do its work. So it is with the gospel and our gatherings.
Of course, the church’s pastors need to understand these matters. But there’s something to say for church members knowing what goes on behind the walls as well. Consider this: for all the weekly, monthly, and annual patterns prescribed under the old covenant, the Lord’s Day gathering is our one new covenant pattern. Allow me to give you a tour of how that looks at our church.
Our Cornerstone
Where do we begin? Three words: he is risen! We begin with the new beginning that God has brought through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Since the early days of the church, local churches have gathered on a specific day, “the first day of the week” (Acts 20:7). That’s the day Jesus rose from the dead (Luke 24:1). The Apostle John called it, “the Lord’s Day” (Rev. 1:10).
Here’s what this means: the gospel of the risen Lord Jesus is not just the reason we come together, but the very occasion on which we gather. Jesus ascended to heaven to then assemble a people. The church is this people, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Eph. 2:20–21). Everything flows from the central fact of Jesus’s resurrection, from the ordinances to what we say, sing, and hear when we meet.
Having established the reason we meet on the Lord’s Day, what else can we say from the Bible about our purposes for coming together?
Our Biblical and Theological Purposes
If you’ve ever designed a home or been part of a building project, you’ll know there are many factors that go into the shape and flow of a building. What is it for? Who will be in it? What resources do we have to work with?
These reflections on the resurrection above are where our elders began as we shaped a document of theological foundations for our corporate gatherings. That process led to a document called “How the Gospel Shapes Our Gathering: Twelve Aims.” Here they are with abbreviated explanations:
1. We Want Our Lord’s Day Gathering to Fulfill God’s Vertical and Horizontal Purposes.
God’s highest purpose is to magnify his own glory—that is, that he may be worshiped, valued, and treasured above all things (Ps. 34:3). Yet God’s glory is manifest among us when we gather to serve one another with our gifts, to instruct one another with the Word, to stir one another up to love and good works, and to encourage one another until Christ comes (Col. 3:16; 1 Cor. 12:4–6; 14:26; Heb. 10:24–25).
2. We Want Our Gatherings to Be Formed and Filled by the Word of God.
Word-formed worship trusts God’s means for God’s work. We trust God’s Word by devoting ourselves to the ordinary elements of praying, singing, reading, partaking in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and preaching (1 Tim. 2:1, 8; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16; 1 Tim. 4:13; 1 Cor. 11:23–26; 2 Tim. 4:2). Word-filled worship means we fill our service with a certain content—the Scriptures in general, and the gospel in particular.
3. We Want Our Gatherings to Unfold with Movements of Revelation and Response.
In the Scriptures, God reveals himself in his Triune and transcendent glory (2 Cor. 13:14; Isa. 6:1–3; Rev. 4:8). When God speaks, his people respond. When we’re at our best, we respond in a way that reflects back to him his own greatness: “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised” (Ps. 48:1).
4. We Want Our Gatherings to Be Individually Meaningful and Intentionally Congregational.
Every single believer is able to say, “Jesus died for me personally” (Gal. 2:20). But it is also true that Jesus purchased for himself a people, his one bride (Titus 2:14; Rev. 5:9). For that reason, we want our gatherings to be meaningful for every individual, and for every individual to find their meaning within the context of the family of God. This is why every element of our gathering is planned with the congregation’s participation in view.
5. We Want Our Gatherings to Renew Our Minds and Raise Our Affections.
Our gatherings do not aim for only intellectual understanding or emotional experience. We value light and heat, head and heart. In fact, we want to raise our affections for Jesus as high as they can be raised through knowledge of his person.
6. We Want Our Gatherings to Be Pastorally Planned and Spiritually Free.
Our gatherings require a certain kind of planning. Our meeting is a ministry of the Word—its design a theological task and its fruit the church’s essential diet of truth. For this reason, our design of our services is not about personality, production, or performance, but pastoring. Pastorally laid plans serve the Spirit’s free work. For a larger church like ours, this also means encouraging and fostering all kinds of meaningful, Spirit-filled interactions that lead to and flow from the gathering itself.
7. We Want Our Gatherings to Foster a Community That Is Historically Rooted and Hungry for God’s Ongoing Work.
Our services should feel both old and new, rooted and relevant. Our services are historic, in that they are built with and around the ancient Scriptures and our periodic use of creeds and confessions. But our God is not done working in the world, so we gather to pursue and celebrate his present-day work. We want this to be apparent in our preaching, prayers, and songs. Old songs remind us that God worked in the generations before us, and new songs remind us that he’s at work among us today (Ps. 40:3).
8. We Want Our Gatherings to Adorn the Word of God with Undistracting Excellence.
We believe that music is a gift from God. By highlighting truth, music impresses that truth on our hearts (Col. 3:16). By it we also express that truth, making melody in our hearts to God (Eph. 5:19). Adorning the Word requires excellence that avoids distraction. We avoid shoddy or showy leadership. Wisdom is needed to know how this looks, but we know what it sounds like: our people talking not so much about our great skill or our great blunders, but God’s great grace.
9. We Want Our Gatherings to Be Culturally Anchored and Expansive.
Around Jesus’s throne will be men and women from every tribe and language and nation, and their cultures will color our heavenly experience (Rev. 5:9–14; 21:24–26). Our meetings are centered on a person whose redeeming love is expansive and far-reaching. His love defines us, not our style of music, dress, or the like. For this reason, while we are happy for our gatherings to be culturally anchored—to be familiar, to feel like us and our home—we want that for foreign peoples too, so we also want our gatherings to stretch us.
10. We Want Our Gatherings to Draw Outsiders to Christ and Our Attention to the Outermost Parts of the Earth.
Our gatherings involve the worship of God; they also advance it. We are a city on a hill, and our gatherings are the hot spot of Jesus’s light and life in us (Matt. 5:16). From the website to parking, from signage to seating, from how we talk about Christ to how we talk about our church—in all this we want to be accessible, inviting, and clear in all the appropriate ways. God’s worship is advanced in yet another way: through our ever-expanding global vision of God’s work for his name.
11. We Want Our Gatherings to Embolden Us and Humble Us.
How can believers live without fear of God’s judgment, death, and the devil’s tyranny? How can believers live without fear of the world’s condemnation, even threats to our very lives? By gathering each Lord’s Day. We are bold in God’s presence, even in an often-unwelcoming world, because we know he welcomes us. We are bold, but no less humble. We draw near “with confidence” to God because we know he gives what we’re desperate for: “grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).
12. We Want Our Gatherings to Stir Us to Rest in Christ and Not Rest until He Returns.
Sometimes Sunday is called the Sabbath or a day of rest. That’s not quite right. The Lord’s Day is when we celebrate the arrival of Sabbath rest for all who trust in Jesus (Matt. 11:28). Rest has already come, but we know that Jesus’s work is not yet complete. We feel this already/not-yet tension in our bodies, in our troubles, and on Sundays when our heart isn’t in it. We have found rest in Christ, yes, but we gather to say to one another over and again, “Strive to enter that rest” (Heb. 4:11).
These twelve points would be too much to expand on here. However, one point is especially pertinent to the shape and substance of our meeting.
Our Foundational Design Principle
Let’s ruminate a bit more on that second aim: “we want our gatherings to be formed and filled by the Word of God.”
When you construct a building, you are constrained by the laws of physics. Those constraints are not ultimately limiting, but freeing. With careful attention to this authority, buildings shoot into the sky to carry all kinds of life and activity.
So what is the authoritative guide for the architecture of our gatherings?
Sola Scriptura—a Latin phrase which means “Scripture Alone.” We believe that salvation is revealed in Scripture alone and, apart from the Word of God, we cannot know how we may be saved.
This principle applies not only to salvation but also to the Christian life and church’s worship. We say at times that Scripture regulates the church’s worship.
A commitment to the authority of Scripture doesn’t yield one rigid form of corporate worship across time and culture. But it does regulate what we do and, to a good extent, how we go about what we do.
In the next post, we’ll get into the various elements of our gathering and how they fit together. In doing so, our intent is to trust God’s means for his own worship, doing what he has prescribed in a way that fits his nature and the nature of the church.
