Why Corporate Worship Matters: The Church and the Spirit

A few weeks ago I asked you guys a question I've been mulling over as a worship pastor. Why is it important that the church worships together? There seem to be a few practical reasons that make sense:

• God is worth celebrating as a group.
• It's a great way to teach younger members of the faith and children how to worship God.
• There is an emotive power in a large group of people singing that helps galvanize a community.
• It keeps us in check theologically in how we worship God.
• The Bible says we should do it. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

These are all good reasons for us to worship God together in a corporate setting. I would like to argue, though, that none of these are the most significant reason.In my freshmen year of college, I started to notice a theme throughout Scriptures, a connection between two major theological themes. Pneumatology and Ecclesiology. The Holy Spirit and the Church. The current understandings of both, as they relate to each other, is typically in how the Holy Spirit affects the individual believers who comprise the Church. As the Holy Spirit inhabits the individual believer, He begins to transform the believer and sanctify him. This eventually is evidenced in the Church as the individuals are sanctified by the Spirit. I do believe that this is one way Pneumatology and Ecclesiology intersect.But there's another way, a more direct way, and a far more important way they come together. I started noticing verses like:"In Him you (plural) also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." Ephesians 2:22 (emphasis mine)"There is one body and one Spirit." Ephesians 4:4"Do you (plural) not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" 1 Corinthians 3:16Because of the overwhelming emphasis of individualism over communalism in the West (especially America), the very important connection between the Church and the Spirit is often times overlooked. The church, not defined by the individuals comprising it but the singular community that supersedes the individual, is the physical manifestation of the invisible Spirit of God. The study of the church in a very real sense is the study of the Holy Spirit. Let me repeat this point more succinctly:The Church is the physical manifestation of the invisible Spirit of God.This point is underlying a proper understanding of Ephesians 5:25-32. Wives submit to husbands in the same way the church submits to Christ. The church in that passage, if it only exists as a hodgepodge of individuals, is incapable of doing what it says it does. It is the Holy Spirit who submits to Christ and enables the Church as a whole to submit and be transformed into a "holy bride without blemish."With that understanding of the Holy Spirit as it relates to the corporate Church, I believe the most significant reason for the church to worship together is because it best exemplifies the work of the Holy Spirit. The evidence of the Holy Spirit is not in tongues or second baptism. It is not best shown through any of the pentecostal antics seen in those more "Spirit-filled" churches. The greatest manifestation of the Holy Spirit is that all across the world, throughout history, people from all nations, tongues, backgrounds, and paradigms come together and with one voice affirm the basic truths of God as revealed in the Scripture and worships Him.When the church worships together, the world witnesses the Holy Spirit and the church transforms, if only briefly, into the divine.