Let me ask you a question: What is the most important thing the church does?
I expect, in any crowd, there would be a range of answers: prayer, preaching, teaching, fellowship, pastoral care, social justice, mission, evangelism. Probably not committee work, or building maintenance!
Each of these features is vital to the life and effectiveness of a local congregation, and to the whole church. But the heart of who we are, as the people of God, is one central calling: we are people who worship. We are created to worship, redeemed to worship, and gathered as the church to celebrate the greatness and goodness of God. We are called to magnify God together. Everything else flows from our worship.
When we worship well, in sincerity and truth, our fellowship deepens, our discipleship grows, our ministry becomes Christ-shaped, and our mission expands. Without worship, in its multitude of ways and means, everything else eventually loses direction and power.
Today we are starting a new sermon series on “The five core purposes of the church,” based on Rick Warren’s insightful and hugely popular book, The Purpose Driven Church. In the book, Warren outlines five reasons for the church’s existence:
- Magnification: celebrating God’s presence and power in public worship and private devotion;
- Membership: connecting with others who follow Jesus – finding my place among God’s people;
- Maturity: growing deeper through spiritual practices, and discovering biblical principles to live my best life;
- Ministry: discovering my gifts and serving others – putting faith into action in my world;
- Mission: sharing the good news of Jesus with others – finding a purpose to live for beyond myself and my small world.
All this is grounded in a beautiful mutual commitment between me and my local church community. As Rick Warren puts it, “My church family gives me:
- God’s purpose to live for (mission)
- God’s people to live with (membership)
- God’s principles to live by (maturity)
- God’s profession to live out (ministry)
- God’s power to live on (magnify)[1]
Today, we are focusing on worship.
Psalm 34:3 says, “Proclaim the Lord’s greatness with me; let us exalt his name together.” The whole of Psalm 34 is a wonderful encouragement to worship.
Likewise, Psalm 95:1-3 says, “Come, let’s shout joyfully to the Lord, shout triumphantly to the rock of our salvation. Let’s enter his presence with thanksgiving; let’s shout triumphantly to him in song. For the Lord is a great God, a great King above all gods.”
Worship begins with the God who has saved us, who daily sustains us, and who invites us, moment by moment, and week by week, to respond in praise, gratitude, and joyful obedience.
In John 4:23f, Jesus announces to a Samaritan woman that the time has come for sincere and purposeful worshippers to “worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Yes [says Jesus], the Father wants such people to worship him.”
Worship is not confined to a place, a tradition, or a language. Worship flows from the Spirit of God within us, aligning our whole lives with the truth of God as it is revealed in Jesus, who is “the Way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).
Why do we engage in practices of worship as members of a Uniting Church? Could we call this congregation a “church” if we ceased to worship God? What does the Uniting Church’s Basis of Union tell us about worship?
The Basis of Union does not mention the word “worship,” but does offer a rich theological vision of worship grounded in the person and work of Christ, and contextualised in the life of a congregation.
Section 3 calls us to confess “that Jesus is Head over all things, the beginning of a new creation, of a new humanity,” and that we as a Church are to be a “fellowship of reconciliation … on the way towards a promised goal.”
Section 4 declares that “Christ who is present when he is preached among people is the Word of the God who acquits the guilty, who gives life to the dead and who brings into being what otherwise could not exist.”
Section 5 states that, “When the Church preaches Jesus Christ, its message is controlled by the Biblical witnesses. The Word of God on whom salvation depends is to be heard and known from Scripture appropriated in the worshipping and witnessing life of the Church.”
In Section 6, the Basis affirms that “it is Christ who by the gift of the Spirit confers the forgiveness, the fellowship, the new life and the freedom which the proclamation and actions [of baptism and the Lord’s Supper] promise; and it is Christ who awakens, purifies and advances in people the faith and hope in which alone such benefits can be accepted.”
Section 14 speaks of ordination “in the presence of a worshipping congregation.”
Section 15 says, “The Congregation is the embodiment in one place of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, worshipping, witnessing and serving as a fellowship of the Spirit in Christ. Its members meet regularly to hear God’s Word, to celebrate the sacraments, to build one another up in love, to share in the wider responsibilities of the Church, and to serve the world.”
There is so much good theology in our Basis of Union. There is so much we can learn about Christian worship even from the indirect ways in which the Basis of Union points to the central value of acts of worship in the context of a worshipping community. Worship is not one activity among others; it is the wellspring of our identity as the church.
Sometimes we confuse worship with music, or with what happens in the first 20 minutes of a Sunday service. Music is a beautiful vehicle for worship, but worship is far broader. Worship means giving to God, in everything we are and do, the worth that belongs to God alone. The English word “worship” comes from “worth-ship”—declaring the supreme worth of Almighty God.
In Romans 12:1, Paul writes, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.” True worship is not confined to Sunday; it is a whole-life response of surrender to God. We worship when we sing and pray, but also when we study, serve, work, and rest in ways that glorify God.
Worship takes place in gathered and scattered contexts. On Sundays we gather as one body to proclaim God’s greatness together; during the week we scatter into our homes, workplaces, and neighbourhoods to live lives of worship in daily obedience.
Worship reorients our lives toward God and the life of God. It recentres our identity. It builds Christian community. It corrects our vision of the good life. It sends us out in mission. This is why it’s our usual practice to conclude Sunday services with a trinitarian benediction or dismissal, sending us out into our world charged with an informed awareness of the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the encompassing fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Without worship, the church is a club or an NGO. With worship, the church becomes a Spirit-filled community centred on the glory of God.
However, authentic worship faces several contemporary challenges. Declining attendance can make public worship feel fragile. Diverse traditions mean that our culture of worship may be contested. Cultural pressures can make worship feel like entertainment. Yet the call remains: to gather faithfully, to worship God in Spirit and truth, to centre our hearts and minds on Christ who renews his people.
Imagine worship that is joyful, celebratory, reflective, Spirit-filled, welcoming, honest, and God-focused. Imagine worship that is beautiful yet accessible, traditional yet open to innovation, reverent yet joyful. That is our calling.
I want to close today by reading a poem by Malcolm Guite, who writes a column on the back page of the UK Church Times. I have three of his collections. Here, he reflects on the experience of the Magi as they came to worship a newborn king:
It might have been just someone else’s story,
Some chosen people get a special king.
We leave them to their own peculiar glory,
We don’t belong, it doesn’t mean a thing.
But when these strangers came announcing news
Of something new that’s come to all mankind,
The quiet heavens opened, and we heard
The call of worship: come and seek, and find.[2]
Sermon 832 copyright © 2025 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 19 October 2025. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
References
[1] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church: Every Church is Big in God’s Eyes (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 117.
[2] Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons (Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press, 2023).
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