Trinitarian Worship
When I was at Azusa Pacific University, we talked a lot about the Trinity being in worship. I never really understood before all of these discussions that this is so important to have the Trinity be a specific part of worship. I always felt that as long as we were talking about one aspect of God we were good because we were mentioning Him which meant we were worshipping Him. I never thought about the fact that there were three persons that make up who God is and that they should all be addressed in a worship service. This is something that I want to make sure that is understood within all worship leaders, that we need to be people who address every person of the trinity in our services. This will help us understand who God is and how we can better worship Him.
Being younger, we would always sing a song called “Holy, Holy, Holy” and this song would be something that I never truly understood until I listened to the lyrics more clearly.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
I really was someone who would sing that and as a young kid I would not have a grasp on the fact that God was in three persons mainly because our churches do not mention it enough.
The Trinity in Church in the past
In earlier centuries of the church there was many debates about the Trinity. There was debates about where Jesus fit into the Trinity, and how much emphasis the different persons of the Trinity received. Was God the Father more powerful that Jesus the son? Was He equal to God? Is there some sort of hierarchy in the Trinity? Were the Spirit and the Father separate from the son because of His human nature? Was Jesus an actual incarnation of God?
These are questions that plagued the church and this made the church split in certain areas and different schools of thought began to form. This is where we get different creeds from such as the Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
I personally love this creed because it mentions every single person of the Trinity and gives the reason behind our belief in Him.
Trinity in Congregational Worship
One of the most important things that we can do in a worship service is make sure that we are pointedly mentioning each person of the Trinity. I believe that because we are worshipping the God who is in THREE persons that some part of our service should address God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They need to be mentioned in our prayers, in our scripture readings, in our songs, or in our sermons. A lot of the time we focus on only one aspect of God throughout a service but we need to be reminded that we must also mention all of who God is in order to best worship Him well.
I believe that there is simply not enough of the Trinity being consistently talked about today in our church and I believe that making sure that the Trinity is mentioned in every part will give us the opportunity to Worship the Lord to the best of our abilities.
