I am meandering through Al Mohler’s book, He is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World. He begins the book with a chapter on worship. Not in the way that many churches begin the service with worship (i.e. music) and then get to the preaching part. No, rather he begins by making it clear that preaching stands at the heart of the worship of the church. He rightly points out that you can tell much about the theology of a church by the way it worships (indeed, you can tell much about the theology of Al Mohler as he writes about worship).
He looks at Isaiah 6 and suggests the following observations: (1) Authentic worship begins with a vision of the living God, (2) authentic worship leads to the confession of sin, (3) authentic worship leads to the proclamation of the gospel, and (4) authentic worship demands a response.
To be honest the chapter felt a little flat to me, I’m hoping that the next chapter on the Triune God will move the feel from rigid responsibility to something more engaging and alive. Nevertheless, beginning a book on preaching with a chapter on worship seems like a good approach. We need to think more about worship. We need to think about the central role of preaching in the worship of the church. We need to be careful not to limit worship to music and somehow separate it from the preaching of the Word, to which worship should be the response, both in the moment, and in the rest of the week.
