The Christian faith has been a soul-nourishing force in human history for two millennia. Its power to point the way to salvation, to inspire the highest ideals, to give hope to the oppressed, to transform whole cultures, and to promote goodness and justice, is unmatched by any religion, ideology, or noble cause on the face of the earth.

Yet passion for the things of God, and loyalty to the church, seem to be flagging. Pollsters concur. We are deeply concerned, and rightly so. With the best of intentions we charge around, often on the heroic edge of exhaustion, trying to keep our corner of God's kingdom afloat. These are desperate times, we love Christ and His church, and so we are standing on our heads to make this happen.

We are discovering, though, that inspirational preaching, though profoundly important, is not enough. Likewise powerful, delightful, even spine-tingling music is only a means to an end. People need to hear more than from their peers. We all need to encounter the living God.

The goal of Christianity is to connect needy human beings to God. The very word religion (from the Latin word ligio or ligament) means to bind together. And the test of any religion, including our own, is its ability to deliver on its promises and really to unite us with God, the source of life. The whole point of Christianity, then, is to provide a sustained and life-transforming encounter with God.

Nothing else is an adequate substitute. Take theology, for example. It provides the content of faith, it shapes our worldview, and it influences our behavior. But for all of this, theology is study about God, and as such it is a secondary-level activity. It is a step removed from the heart and core of religion. The Christian faith in its essence is about direct, life-changing encounter with God.

Without sustained actual encounter with God, the practice of even the Christian religion deteriorates into a man-made enterprise, and loses its reason for being. Recent church history is full of tragic examples of once-vibrant churches degenerating into mere social clubs or political organizations. When Christianity fails to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, people will look elsewhere for spiritual satisfaction. From the best bliss than earth imparts, we turn unfilled to Thee again.

The Scriptures make clear just why this is so. They explain in many beautifully-interconnected ways how God is both living and life-giving. From Genesis 2 to Acts 2 and beyond, it is the breath of God that is life-giving. He is the source of life. Where he is absent, and withdraws life-support, life withers away and there is only death and the void. Whenever He is allowed to fade from view, whether from rejection or neglect, invariably there is atrophy. By contrast, though, where He is present, life springs forth. There is awakening and animation. In the presence of God our lives are infused with vitality and what the French can elan--a kind of energy and enthusiasm for life.

True to the intensely interpersonal nature of the Christian faith, the Old Testament portrays these realities anthropomorphically in terms of the direction of God's face. The face of God indicates more than His mere presence. It symbolizes his focused gaze and the direction of His benevolent concern. The face of God is not a picture of God; it is his personal presence. When, so to speak, He hides His face, all is disastrous and death (Deut 31:17, Psalms 88 and 104). But when that same face turns around and shines upon us, we are saved (Psalm 80).

The glory of God radiates from this face. And somehow this radiance emanating from God's face can be caught and reflected by worshiping observers. Like Moses descending from Sinai, they looked to Him, says the Psalmist, and their faces were radiant (Psalm 34:5). The encounter with God is personally transforming.

Evangelical worship has become a huge and hot topic, supported by an expanding publishing industry of its own. Intuitively we know that what goes on when we gather together as a community of faith each Sunday is at the very heart of our life as a Church. What takes place in our services together reflects and in turn profoundly affects the health of our Christian discipleship.

The crucial thing to remember is what this is all about--what the point really is. It is so easy to get mired down in the trivialities of styles and tastes. The purpose of our worship, and our corporate worship times, is to facilitate renewing encounter with the living God. In the short term people will come to church for a variety of reasons. Over the long haul church-attendance has to be found significant at the spiritual level if it is to be sustained.

There continues to be a lot of dissatisfaction expressed over typical evangelical worship experiences. Some people who truly love God go to church out of a sense of duty rather than desire, and come away feeling strangely unwarmed inside. They complain that they didn't get anything out of it. Regardless of whether the fault lies with them or with the worship model being followed, what they are really acknowledging in most cases is that there was not, for them at least, any life-renewing encounter with God. God's face remained hidden to them.

It is understandable when hard-working worship leaders get frustrated with this sort of complaining. With good reason they point out that worship is not primarily for the benefit of the worshipers, but instead is an act of devotion directed toward God. The model of the theater is turned on its head. Instead, as Soren Kierkegaard argued, we the congregation are really the performers and God is the audience. Truly any attempts at worship are doomed if people approach church with a consumer mentality.

By the same token, however, it is wrong to expect people, worn down by the demands, cares and pain of their lives, and wearied by the toxins of a hostile society, should come to church and do nothing but give out to God. The worshiper is far more than a courier who is obliged to leave his package in the mailbox because no one answered the door. God inhabits the praise of his people. He will not leave it a monologue. He turns His face and there is encounter, and in that encounter the worshiper is spiritually nourished.

So both sides in this debate are partially right. I can see in my mind's eye two enormous tapestries hanging down on either side of the cross at the front of a Baptist church. The one on the left shows a serious figure with hands lifted up in need and supplication. It powerfully depicts the upward movement of the impoverished human spirit to God. In its contemporary style it resonates with the spirit of the biblical songs of ascent used by pilgrims climbing towards Jerusalem and the house of God. It resonates with the spirit of those who built high ceilings in medieval cathedrals.

And to the right of the cross is the second tapestry. On it a powerful arm and hand thrusts downwards, with index finger extended Michelangelo-like, and touches the darkened, nighttime city of humanity below. It is the response of God. In the words of A. B. Simpson:

From the heart of man a cry,

From the hand of God supply.

Life-giving encounter with God is not, then, one-directional but two. It is an alternating current.

It involves our approach to Him in a worshipful manner. And then there is that fresh vision of Him and response from Him which in turn renews us at our point of need.

Our Reverent Approach to God

The first element in the dynamic of life-giving encounter with God is to look up. It is easier said than done. For one thing, we have to somehow overcome our disposition towards narcissism. For another, the world is too much with us, and we need help to overcome its distractions and gravitational pull. Scholars of religion tell us that humans are simultaneously attracted and repelled by the God we find awesome. We know we need him, but we are also easily put off, and prefer the safe and the familiar. Holiness, in the phrase of Robert Wenz, is God's alien beauty. For all these reasons the art of worship is like a second-language, generally learned with difficulty and only slowly.

When I was a boy, my father pastored a cavernous old Baptist church in downtown Toronto. I remember the large gothic script arched over the entire choir loft high on the ceiling: O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness (Psalm 96:9). It hovered there in a serene, otherworldly way over all the bustling, earthy goings-on down below.

Sometimes as a child I pondered what the beauty of holiness might look like. There were, to be sure, moments when we caught glimmers of it, when God felt near. Periodically, when a sincere baptismal candidate surfaced in a rush of water, and the congregation responded by lurching into another emotionally-thick verse of Trust and Obey, one could palpably feel the presence and pleasure of God. A text from some Pauline epistle might be expounded on a warm summer Sunday evening in such a rich and self-authenticating way that you felt transported into a direct encounter with the very breath of God, and enveloped with a sense of well-being. There were a handful of saintly old prayer-warriors, whose kindly but piercingly discerning gazes served as icons and witnesses to the reality of the unseen spiritual realms.

Such things assured us that God was real. Overall, however, we were not particularly skilled at getting close to God and the beauty of His holiness. Beauty and reverence were not our strong suits. By and large we struggled to know how to respond to God's command to draw near to Him so that He would draw near to us. But that was, and still is, a greatest challenge we face as a church needing to behold the face of God and have Him shine upon us. And those worship leaders who personally model a devout spirit, and are gifted in their ability to help others of us approach God in a deepening spirit of consecration, reverence and wonder, are a precious gift to the Body of Christ.

The worship leader's mandate is to help us see God. To this end leaders should try to be as unobtrusive as possible. There is no need to fill every second with an uninterrupted stream of words and superfluous instructions. Likewise not all preaching needs to be for instructional purposes. There is something called worship preaching, where imagination and word-smithing are devoted to presenting God in his glory. With deft strokes, such a preacher casts a biblically-faithful and compelling vision of God. Above all, as an evangelical, the preacher will have a profound grasp of the graciousness and grace of God, and communicate that healing wonder in a myriad of ways. He cooperates with the Holy Spirit in exalting Christ, who, when lifted up, tends to draw all people to himself.

Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, these efforts become a living word to the exhausted souls of those looking upwards for someone beyond themselves. In the miracle of the Spirit's work, this vision of God comes to life, and is transformed from a picture of God into the very presence of God. In such times we could hear a pin drop, and our souls are renewed as they absorb the glory of the face of God.

For a host of reasons such encounters are life-giving. For one thing, they remind us and assure us that God is there. They enable us to reaffirm our faith that this is true, and that we will continue to build our lives, and chart our courses, on this conviction. These encounters are also assurances that we are not alone. God is there for us, and this fact gives us the hope to go on.

We are drawn to the beautiful. This is part of our natures. And equally fundamental to our natures is an inclination to imitate the things we admire most. And so it is that holiness of life follows naturally from a love of God's holiness. Beholding Him gives us a derivative radiance (2 Cor. 3:17-18). To behold His glory, and to truly see Him with spiritual eyes, is personally transforming.

Through encounter with God we are lifted up into the higher perspective of God Himself, and see things from a vantage point beyond our immediate self-interests and the details of the present moment. In the presence of God we are able to rise above our ingrained pettiness and narcissism, and our longing for a cause greater than ourselves is satisfied. Beyond our anxious grip on fleeting life, and our panic over our own immortality, we find consolation in belonging to an immortal God who transcends history and who has promised us a share in his own eternal life.

The church is right to prioritize worship. Even evangelism is no replacement for it. No other agenda, however laudable in itself, should be allowed to compromise the priority and integrity of the Church's life-giving worship. Besides, true worship has strong evangelistic and apologetic side-effects anyway. The Apostle Paul knew that when the church worshiped in the presence of the living God, unbelieving observers would be compelled to confess that God is really among you (I Cor. 14:25). In this sense may our churches be true Bethels, houses of God. And may the benediction of the Book of Numbers be fulfilled in us: The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace (Numbers 6:24-26).