I grew up thinking that worship is the time at church where we sing songs to God. When I walk into a church service we worship, then it's scripture reading, and then the sermon, sometimes communion, response, announcement, doxology, and then silent prayer and dismissal. During our fellowship gatherings, we may have worship, the program, announcement, and then go home.
That thinking didn't stick with me for too long. When I was around 12 or 13 years old, I decided to join the youth fellowship worship team. It was mandatory to attend worship training. And in that training, an older sister in Christ taught us the theology behind worship from the passage in
John 4. From verse 23 and 24 I learned clearly that worship is not just singing songs. It is a
lifestyle expressed by our spirit in light of the truth. I thank God that He has corrected my thinking about worship since then.
My thinking was changed but I still referred to the people leading the songs as a
worship team. When I was 17, I served on the
worship team as a guitarist at a conference. At my university, we had a
worship cell group where we meet together, learn,
jam, and talk (I didn't attend a lot of the meetings). In my life, whenever there is a worship team, there will always be an A/V team that would help with the audio when the sound gets fed through the mic to the speakers.
When I talk about worship, I realize there is a broader meaning than just music. But sometimes I don't want to appear too picky, since this is just a semantics issue and
everyone refers to the music stuff as worship, so I would use that term when I converse and understand that when people say "worship" they mean the music
most of the time (depends on the context).
However, I don't know what in me finally clicked. I never bothered changing that terminology before because I was so used to calling it worship, or worship team. Something finally clicked in me and it became my pet peeve. It bothers me that worship is so often used synonymous to singing and/or music. I don't like to call it worship team anymore. If I want to call something a worship team, then everyone serving at that service (music, A/V, ushers, preacher, etc.) is the worship team.
For those leading us in music, I feel more comfortable calling that a praise team, leading us in a time of praise to God. Music team? Musical aspect of worship? That still sounds better than
worship team. That word is too broad to be narrowed down to one of its many aspects. So whoever is reading this, maybe you should consider changing the way you use the term
worship, too.
Some may say it's
just semantics, so it doesn't
really matter. Maybe. But ask yourself, are you holding onto tradition or are you convinced from Scripture that this is the best way to refer to the people who lead you in singing praises to your God?
