“A second major reason (a corporate one) for our forgetting that worship is for God is that declining church attendance and decreasing denominational membership have caused many churches to ask the wrong questions, Instead of examining how best the worshiping community can praise and glorify God, they began to inquire, “What can we do in worship to attract the unbeliever?” Consequently, numerous congregations made radical worship changes that arose from and reflected panic more than wisdom. Marketing gurus took advantage of this panic and published numerous books about how certain worship forms could attract unbelievers. Willow Creek Church, which offers laudatory evangelistic events on Sunday mornings and worship for believers on Wednesday nights, has often been falsely imitated by churches who turn their Sunday morning worship services into evangelistic rallies- and forget that worship is owed to God and not the neighbor.”- Marva J. Dawn in “How Shall We Worship?”
“Many dissensions concerning worship arise because of our era’s confusion between worship and evangelism, to the detriment of both, Many factors have led to this misunderstanding. One is the panic about declining numbers noted above. Another is the intensifying passivity of our cultural milieu, which causes some Christians to want to be entertained, rather than do the work of worship. A third is related , for worship services are turned into a congregation’s primary evangelistic tool because the people are not engaged in the practice of witnessing to their neighbors or in the difficulties of loving them.”- Marva J. Dawn “How Shall we worship?”
“The practice of combating idolatries for the sake of genuine worship also equips the members of our churches for resisting the idolatries they encounter in daily life.” -Marva J. Dawn
"As worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. Holy obedience
saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern
life." - Richard Foster
"Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become 'unity' conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship."
-A. W. Tozer
"When I worship, I would rather my heart be without words than my words be without heart. " -Lamar Boschman Ministry Site
"Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditat e before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself; it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others." -Oswald Chambers My Utmost for His Highest
"If believers worship with gladness and passion, anyone not yet a part of the community certainly will be attracted to the One who is the object of their worship. But to focus the worship on evangelistic introduction deprives believers of deeper nurturing toward Church being and deprives God of the intimate and involved worship due him from the Church." -Marva J. DawnWhat does God say to us about our worship? Surely, this is the toughest and most basic question to be asked, but curiously, it is often the last question we ask. If we think about our worship at all, usually we think in terms of, What do I want from our worship? Or, What do MY PEOPLE want from our worship? Without daring to be so bold as to ask, What does GOD want from our worship?" -William H. Willimon
"The first and most solid conclusion which (for me) emerges is that both musical parties, the High Brows and the Low, assume far too easily the spiritual value of the music they want. Neither the greatest excellence of a trained performance from the choir, nor the heartiest and most enthusiastic bellowing from the pews, must be taken to signify that any specifically religious activity is going on. It may be so, or it may not." -(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
"All of history is moving toward one great goal, the white-hot worship of God and his Son among all the peoples of the earth. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.... When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever." -John Piper
"In the end, worship can never be a performance, something you're pretending or putting on. It's got to be an overflow of your heart..... Worship is about getting personal with God, drawing close to God." -Matt Redman
