WORSHIP AS PASTORAL CARE - Christianity Today

One Saturday I met with a deeply distressed single parent. Since she had no church family, I encouraged her to worship with us on Sunday, which she did with her teenage daughter. When the two of them came to see me on Monday, the daughter, obviously pleased with the release her mother experienced in worship, said, “Mom cried through the whole service.”

Pastoral care of this woman began on Saturday and continued on Monday, but it wasn’t complete without Sunday.

I like to think I listen sensitively and counsel wisely. I know, however, I often overestimate my part and underestimate God’s part in pastoral care. When it comes to having concerns borne, people need a pastor, but they ultimately need to meet with the Almighty.

Like most congregations, we find people coming to us with deep and perplexing problems. We give them encouragement through personal counseling and support groups. But I also tell these people, “Worship with us. It will make a difference over the long haul.” I’ve found that those who maintain regular worship heal faster.

True worship is directed first and foremost to the glory of God. But such worship, I’ve noticed, is also a means of pastoral care.

Worship Counters Self-Centeredness

I met for several weeks with a young man who didn’t have serious psychological problems; he was just too focused on himself. He regularly turned conversations toward his concerns and would serve others only when it was convenient for him.

Over a few months, however, his attachment to self diminished. Now he pays more attention to others, showing more concern for their interests and needs. What made the difference?

“By praying daily and worshiping weekly,” he said, “I became more aware of my self-centeredness.”

Sometimes struggling people will find help only when they begin to look outside themselves toward heaven. Worship, because it focuses outward, can bring a healthy corrective to narcissism, as it did for my young friend. One cannot truly worship God and be fixated on one’s self.

In an entertainment-oriented culture, however, it’s sometimes difficult to keep the focus of worship on God. We’re all tempted to think, at times, I didn’t get anything out of worship today, as if worship is primarily performed for our approval.

I enjoy the story of the man who complained to the minister following church, “I didn’t like the hymns you chose today,” to which the pastor replied, “That’s okay; we weren’t singing them for you.”

Certainly, we must design services that are meaningful for worshipers. But if I want worship to help people pastorally, I must remind myself and my people that worshipers should first ask, “What does God think of my praise? What can I do for him?” The main test of worship is not how well the preacher has preached but how well the worshipers have worshiped.

The paradox is that if we design worship to meet people’s needs, we’re less likely to help them because we are leaving them in their self-oriented state. True worship, where giving to God is more important than getting, is the only worship that heals people of the tyranny of self.

Worship Dispels Loneliness

Struggles have a way of making us feel isolated. Worship, on the other hand, has a way of dispelling the feeling of isolation.

A woman who was coming off a bout with alcohol came to Christ and then started attending our church, the first time on Good Friday. She told me she was lonely. I told her, “Just keep coming, and it will make a difference.”

And although she struggled through her recovery, she’s not lonely anymore. In fact, she has enough strength and self-confidence to reach out to other lonely people and invite them to church.

Worship can cure loneliness. It sets us in the midst of God’s people, where the God who came “to save his people from their sins” (and not just me from my sin) promises to be with his people when they gather. In worship it is no longer just “me and God” facing the world; it is “God and us.”

For me liturgy is one means of driving home this reassuring truth. Confessing the ancient creeds together (especially that phrase from the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the communion of saints . . .”) reminds us that the church is bigger than we are and has been here longer than we have. Singing the Kyrie together (“Lord, have mercy”) helps us identify with others who suffer. And the high point of our worship comes at the Eucharist, when we share together the life of Christ.

Forms that have a long tradition save us from assuming that the world centers around our needs. They put our troubles in perspective and help lonely people experience the healing that fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters, past and present, can bring.

For example, a single mother recently said she was unaccustomed to our Lutheran worship and somewhat intimidated by it at first. As she continued with us, however, she said she grew to appreciate our liturgy; it brought a needed security to her life. Her participation in worship invigorated the counseling we were providing.

Then again, a woman from a nonliturgical background who attended one Sunday told me afterward, “This place is dead.” Her candid comment, whether accurate or not, highlights the danger of liturgy. While tradition can breed security, it may appear to be the security of sleep.

There’s the old joke about a Pentecostal man who once wandered into a liturgical worship service. As the pastor preached, the man responded with, “Praise the Lord!”

A woman finally turned around and scolded him, “Excuse me, but we don’t praise the Lord in the Lutheran church.”

But a man down the pew corrected her, “Yes we do; it’s on page 19.”

Although liturgy can help, we know it isn’t the sole answer. So we try regularly to bridge the past and present, form and freedom. For example, we include free times of prayer as a part of corporate liturgical responses. We also sing more contemporary worship songs along with the great hymns of the church.

In short, worship that is grounded in tradition and responsive to the Spirit can remind people, especially people who feel isolated in their troubles, that there is a community larger than themselves with whom they can pray and be comforted.

Worship Helps People Step Out in Hope

Ralph Martin writes in The Worship of God that the act of praise is a “dialogue, involving the interchange of the divine initiative and the human response. Worship pulsates with a two-beat rhythm expressed simply as ‘we come to God’ and ‘God comes to us.’ “

When we recognize that worship is divine initiation and human response, it can become a means of unlocking people from personal moods.

When people face enormous problems, it’s easy for them to get discouraged, which leads to passivity, which, in turn, can lead to more discouragement. People become chained in a tight circle of hopelessness. Worship breaks into that circle by requiring people to do something-something positive and hopeful-to give glory to God.

King David didn’t always feel upbeat. Yet even in his discouraged moments, he could pray, “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Ps. 34:1). I believe that kept him from despondent inactivity.

Our custodian, John, became a Christian out of a life of drugs and crime. When we hired him, he was still struggling to break free from his past. Singing was one thing that helped stabilize John. In fact, we always knew where John was working because he sang all day. As he sang the songs and hymns he learned in worship, the Holy Spirit reprogrammed his mind, replacing darkness with light.

Praise enlists worshipers in active response to God-“with hearts and hands and voices.” After acting in hope, people become more hopeful.

Fine-Tuning Worship for Pastoral Care

Since we recognize these effects of worship on people, here are some ways we shape our services.

To highlight the fact that no one stands alone, I hug everyone I can on Sunday. Many don’t get that even from their nuclear family. A hug tells people they’re special, even those who make me feel like I’m embracing a telephone pole.

We also give care to specific individuals in the service. Before one Mother’s Day service, Lynn was feeling down and had requested prayer. Before coming to faith in Christ, she had left her teenage children, and although she had received a new family since, she hadn’t yet reconciled with her past.

During the service, I shared her concern (with her permission) with the congregation, and then I asked some people near her to gather around her as I prayed. “I felt loved,” Lynn said afterward, as she thanked me.

Seeing worship as pastoral care has raised my expectations for the service and changed the way I approach it. Since God can save people from all sorts of trouble, I am more careful to share the gospel as a part of each sermon.

Since God will release people from the power of sin, I lead the liturgical confession of sins and absolution with the sense that spiritual life depends on them. We pray for people by name during the service, whether the request is healing for body, soul, or spirit.

Preparing for worship, then, means more than preparing a sermon. In fact, when I find myself spending ten hours on a sermon and fifteen minutes throwing together a worship service, I’m not properly acknowledging the importance of the pastoral care dynamic of worship.

Introducing the “Wonderful Counselor”

People need God more than they need me. It is God who can ultimately encourage, change, heal, and comfort them. Worship is a primary means of helping people see God in the midst of their troubled lives. Counseling and the Sunday service, then, have the same goal in mind: to put people in touch with the healing power of God.

After one service, a woman said to me, “I don’t know why, but I started crying as soon as we started singing.” I have heard that often from new people. It is not the brilliance of singers or the professionalism of instrumentalists; it is the sense of God’s presence that moves them.

One Sunday we invited someone I thought was a guest preacher. He didn’t preach, however; he sat down at the piano and led us in worship. In a gentle and joyful way, he brought us into the presence of God.

My secretary later commented about that service: “During the worship time, the Holy Spirit was teaching me many things-things I needed to do, things I needed to say, areas I needed to give up to the Lord.

“When our guest stopped playing, I thought he was going to start preaching. What I hadn’t realized is that he had taken the entire time for worship and that he didn’t intend to preach. At first I felt let down, but then I realized how much the Lord had helped me just through the worship.”

In sum, Jesus, the “Wonderful Counselor,” knows better than I how to get through to people. He sends the Paraclete, the Helper, to come alongside people. So although I don’t schedule counseling appointments on Sunday, God often does-right during the worship service.