Reading Scripture Less to Sing and Preach More
Minimizing the public reading of Scripture in our worship services may be unintentionally conveying a lack of trust in the very Word we claim as foundational to that worship. When we read the Word less so we can sing and preach more, we may actually be implying that a higher level of credibility is found in our exhortations or musical expressions than the Word itself.
John Frame offers two truths that highlight the value of reading God’s Word in our worship: First, where God’s Word is, God is. We should never take God’s Word for granted. To hear the Word of God is to meet with God himself. Second, where God is, the Word is. We should not seek to have an experience with God which bypasses or transcends His Word.[1]
In earlier centuries wooden warships carried cannons as a primary weapon of offense. These massive armaments, some weighing as much as two or three tons and able to fire artillery rounds weighing 24-42 pounds, were mounted on rollers and secured with ropes to avoid damage from their tremendous recoil. A loose cannon was one that broke from its safety restraints, potentially causing serious damage to the ship and its crew.
Reading biblical text less just so we’ll have time to sing or preach more may be compromising the biblical and theological moorings protecting us from those loose canonical drifts that can compromise our worship services.
Scripture must be foundational to our songs, sermons, prayers, verbal transitions, and Communion. It must be read publicly and regularly by men, women, and children of various generations and cultures and allowed to stand on its own without us trying to prop it up with our own manufactured words or tunes.
When biblical text is foundational instead of supplemental to our worship services, it will organically yield our sermons and songs instead of just serving as fertilizer for our own contrived language. Then our congregants will be better equipped to leave in here worship with that text in their hearts and on their lips for continuous worship out there.
[1] John M. Frame, Worship in Spirit and Truth: A Refreshing Study of the Principles and Practice of Biblical Worship (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1996), 90.