A while back I posted about watching house wars and contemplating our future in Heaven. Since then, God has continued to show me more and more of just what it means to be part of the body while on this earth.

Last night was All Campus Worship. It was a night where members from all the different parts of God’s body at CMU and even Pitt came together to worship God. To be honest, I was freaking out for right before we began. AB tech had taken a long time to setup and we were way behind schedule. The projector also didn’t quite work out and we had to make some dramatic changes to our setup. But despite all my worries, God showed His faithfulness and His power, in that everything worked out better than we planned because of the “problems”.

During Stronger by Hillsong, we ended with a completely A capella chorus. When we got there Ben said “Keep singing, you guys don’t need us.” And when all the instruments dropped out and only the sound of my brothers and sisters and me singing remained, it was…amazing. It is honestly hard for me to describe what it was like. At the time, I also couldn’t put my finger on why it was so awesome.

This morning, at PCC, I came to understand what it was that struck me. Ironically, we sang stronger again. While I was singing, it suddenly clicked. I stopped, and a smile grew on my face.

In our society, we often think good worship is characterized by fantastic instrumentals, soaring vocals, harmonies that give you goosebumps, and an atmosphere that invokes emotion in us. And yeah, maybe good worship is like that, but GREAT worship is characterized by something totally different.

Just like all things that are great, the key lies in God. I realized that truly great and God glorifying worship isn’t dependent on the instrumentals. It’s not really even dependent on the music. It’s not based on having an awesome worship leader who can really sing or having the harmonies on top that make it sound so cool. It’s not about the amazing electric guitar riff or drum breakdown that makes you just go “YEAH!” Strip that all away.

What makes worship truly great and God glorifying is not how we’re singing, but that we’re singing at all and more so singing together. Each of us stand as a testimony to God’s great love and faithfulness. But more than that, together as one body, we represent an even larger testimony to God. And in the end, it’s really all about God. It was His work that redeemed each and every one of us, giving us the hearts to praise Him. Its His love that draws people of such different backgrounds together as ONE body. And it’s to Him and Him alone that we sing together in unity. It doesn’t matter how in tune or out of tune we sing, that’s not the core of it. But that we stand there bound together by our God and lifting our voices in unison to Him.

The point of all of this isn’t to say we should throw out all our instruments and musicality and do a fully minimalistic worship, although that’d be interesting. But the point is that those things aren’t the core of our worship. Neither am I advocating ceasing all personal worship to only worship corporately. I think there is great value in personal worship. But there is something different and bigger (for lack of a better word) in corporate worship. And ultimately, that’s what we’ll be doing in Heaven, corporate worship all the time (or so I think).

To end this post, I want to make sure that I don’t confuse anyone into thinking it’s all about us, that our presence is what makes worship great. No, but our presence is about pointing to something more. It’s about this:

“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

-Romans 15:5-7

It’s about us coming together in one voice to GLORIFY GOD. And that really only needs us, our voices, and most importantly, GOD.