Worshiping the Triune God: The Call to Worship

Today we continue our conversation about worshiping the triune God.  In my last post, I talked about the Prelude (worship preparation). Today we talk about the Call to Worship. 

As we think about being called to worship God, we may think about the actual Call to Worship that occurs in our worship service on Sunday morning, perhaps those actual words from Psalm 95:6-7 NIV:

“Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.” 

This is a typical Call to Worship right from Scripture, and it signals a bigger Call to Worship that occurs every Sunday and every day: the call to Worship the triune God who created us, and who is worthy of our praise. This call to worship God goes out long before the actual worship service begins, but is formalized in the Call to Worship in a service. 

In his book, Desiring the Kingdom (Baker Academic), James K. A. Smith recognizes the counter-cultural nature of this call. While Christians are heeding this call to worship all over the world, many people ignore it (161). And yet, says Smith, the call still goes out, and those who heed it are accepting the call to worship God and become fully human. After all, he says, worship “is the fundamental vocation of being human” (162). 

The question is not do you worship, but whom or what do you worship. So as Christians all over the world hear and respond to the call to worship the triune God, they are obeying Scripture’s call to worship God, and in the process are becoming spiritually formed for mission in this world. As Smith says, The Call to Worship “is a call to be(come) human, to take up the vocation of being fully and authentically human, and to be a community of people who image God to the world” (163).

The call to worship God goes out every Sunday and every day. 

How will you respond?