And the Lord Added to Their Number

And the Lord Added to Their Number.  Everything is not worship, clearly, because it is a distinct, biblical possibility to have wrong worship (i.e., objectively, e.g., idolatry) or to worship wrongly (i.e., subjectively, e.g., hypocrisy). But anything can be kindling for meaningful worship. Worship might occur anywhere, if it is directed to Jesus by faith (John 6:29), offered in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), and motivated for the ultimate glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). Much more than a style of music, and much greater than any shared experience, we worship formally, informally, individually, collectively, directly, indirectly, inwardly, and outwardly in line with the psalmist who sang: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:6).

Luke, in Acts 2:42-46, summarized the earliest church as a worshiping community. The first converts worshiped Christ in seven representative ways, by: (1) learning the apostles’ doctrine, (2) engaging in fellowship with one another, (3) observing the Lord’s Supper, (4) praying, (5) sharing what they had for the purpose of distributing what they collected, (6) praising God, and (7) having favor with all the people. It was not a stretch to interpret within each of the church’s core activities an expression of authentic worship to God. A fitting summary statement, like a narrator’s note to the reader, tied it neatly: “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47). While the church worshiped, it was the Lord who added worshipers.

Worship was not merely one aspect of the ingathering of the church; evangelism was not contained in one department of the outreach of the church. Church was all worship, and all worship was evangelistic. Evangelism was the (super)natural byproduct of worship, the overflow of love for Christ, shown toward one another in Christ’s church, and given to others in the community and world in Christ’s name. Jesus gave a similar summary in his prayer for the unity of his followers as having an evangelistic byproduct in the world. “May they all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may be in us, so that they world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:21-23).

Therefore, it is never appropriate to downplay worship, as if “going to church” were disconnected from “going to all nations.” Worship is evangelism, too. By God’s design, it is through our unified, multi-faceted worship of Christ that the world will see, know, and believe in God’s great love to send his only begotten Son to save sinners from their penalty of death through his perfect life, substitutionary death, and triumphant resurrection.