It was a frightening experience standing in the Taoist temple in Tainan, Taiwan. The walls were painted with murals that made Dante’s “Inferno” look like a children’s story. Every imaginable way human beings could be tortured was detailed in the murals with hideous beasts inflicting pain and suffering with glee.
I was in Tainan visiting Southern Baptist missionaries with whom I would work for the next three years as coordinator of a state partnership missions program called Bold Mission Taiwan. The year was 1980. The missionaries took me and other members of the leadership team to the temple to help us better understand the spiritual climate faced in this seaport city.
The gods, the afterlife, ways to gain favor with the gods or what awaited the disobedient were all graphically outlined in the murals.
To call the experience “dark” would be an understatement. The presence of evil was pervasive. All the messages were foreign to the gospel. But residents of the community regularly flowed in and out of the temple to offer prayers and sacrifices that they hoped would help them escape a fate like one depicted in the paintings.
Like most temples in Taiwan — Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian — this temple never closed. People came every part of every day. They came as often as they liked and stayed as long as they liked. The experience was personal so it did not matter if anyone else was present or what else was going on.
At some temples, worshipers made loud noises by throwing coins against metal shelves to get the gods’ attention. The money was gathered and used to support the temple. At others, fireworks were a regular feature. Prayer wheels were common. All were colorful with the fiery Chinese reds, yellows and greens.
Among the many challenges related by the missionaries were the differences in the concept of worship. While most Chinese saw worship as an individual act, Christians gathered to worship as a corporate community. While the local practice was to worship anytime one wanted, Christians emphasized attending a Sunday morning service with a set beginning time. While common worship was done at one’s own pace, Christians went through a set program in which everyone engaged in the same activity at the same time.
Temple leaders talked about how many people came to the temple in the course of a week. Christians reported how many people attended a particular service.
Most of us agreed with the notion that Christians in Taiwan were at a decisive disadvantage when it came to worship. Now I know we were wrong.
We were wrong because we embraced the wrong definition of worship. Worship is not attending a service. Worship is encountering God.
Certainly corporate experiences are important for Christians. Corporate experiences encourage believers. They build up the Christian community. They advance the witness of the faith and enable service in the name of our Lord.
But participating in a corporate experience is not the same thing as participating in a worship experience. Worship is more than music. Worship is more than sermonizing.
Worship is meeting God. Even the term carries the idea of humility for it comes from words meaning to “fall down before” or “bow down before.” Worship involves a mind centered on Christ and includes a heart open and repentant before God.
Worship carries the idea of reverence before God and submission to His will. Worship is done in the Spirit so bodily position is not an issue. Worship is done in truth, never in pretense. Worship is a private, personal experience.
Many of us have forgotten what our Baptist forefathers knew from experience. Corporate worship takes place primarily because of the private worship experience of those participating in the corporate experience. In other words, if one does not have private, personal worship experiences with God during the week, then it is unlikely one will have a corporate worship experience with Him during Sunday morning worship.
Baptists of yesteryear promoted family altars and personal devotional time. My earliest memory of an Alabama Baptist church is one that met quarter time. The church had Sunday School each week, but the preacher came only once a month to lead corporate services. Later “preaching” was held every other week.
Families were expected to read the Bible and pray together each day. In addition, everyone was encouraged to have a private devotional time when he or she got alone with God to read His Word and pray. Like for the Chinese in Taiwan, worship was an individual act. Worship was done anywhere at anytime. Worship was done at one’s own pace. It did not depend on what else was going on. And worship was expressed in different ways.
Today many Baptists pay more attention to the Sunday morning corporate experience than to members’ daily individual worship experiences. More important than how many people attend a particular service may be how many of those people have daily devotional times with God during the week. How many people open God’s Word just to allow Him to speak His truth to their hearts? How many people allow that day’s Bible reading to inform their prayer life? To give expression to the longings of their hearts?
As a preacher of the Word, I know the importance of serious study of Scripture. But there is also a time for simply opening the Bible and letting God speak. Yes, worship can happen in the midst of study but study is not worship. Worship also can happen in the midst of a corporate service, but a corporate service is not worship. Worship is meeting God and that is done on an individual basis.
Worship begins with each of us spending time alone with God in Bible reading and prayer. It begins with opening ourselves to Him personally and privately rather than checking off a list of things a Christian is supposed to do. Worship begins with gratitude to God for what He has already done and obedience to what He wants to do today and tomorrow.
When Christians renew their private, personal worship times with the Lord, then, I believe, we will see a difference in the quality of our corporate worship experiences before Him. Maybe we really will have corporate worship when we gather together on Sunday mornings.
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