Functions of church - worship

The functions of a church may be crudely categorized as worship, discipleship, fellowship and outreach. This can be easily remembered as the directions up, down, in and out. We broke into small groups which pretended to be a church committee responsible for one of these functions. The committees gave a mission statement for their department and what activities would be carried out. We started with worship and spent the rest of the class discussing that.

Worship is our response to God for who He is. We can't be bored in worship because it is not about us. We're not suppose to get something from worship; we are giving to God. While praising God for what he has done is great; it is even better for us to praise God for who He is. (And yes, we learn who God is from what He has done.) Our in-class worship committee quickly concluded that worship subsumes all the other committees. They are correct: not only are the different functions of church related, but all activities center on worship.