The months—or even the years—following COVID-19 were especially challenging for pastors. For it quickly became apparent that the lifting of restrictions related to public meetings didn’t mean everyone was rushing or even coming back. In the haze of 2021, I argued that part of the reason for this was the careless language employed throughout lockdown. “For a year,” I wrote, “believers were repeatedly told that watching a video in your lounge is the same as gathering in community for worship.” So by failing to drive a hard distinction between streaming church services and Lord’s Day worship we sowed indifference to the latter. But I’m not here to go over all of that. My point in bringing it up is to highlight the remarkable power of words, in the context of Christian discipleship and how we speak about worship, especially Sunday worship.

As my tongue-in-cheek title suggests, this article addresses the overemphasis on all of life being worship. For this way of speaking is, in my opinion, another factor that contributes to low levels of commitment to Sunday worship among professing Christians. Just as the constant reassurance during COVID-19 that meeting online was business as usual for churches contributed to low return rates, I’m convinced that certain language concerning worship does the same.

The Worship Wars and Words

I’m told that through the ‘80s and ‘90s Christians were caught up in what some have described as ‘worship wars.’ Owning to being as yet unborn in the ‘80s and an unbeliever in the ’90s, I arrived late to said wars, in the early 2000s. Around the same time, Vaughan Roberts’ True Worship settled the matter for many people. He argued that instead of getting caught up in debates over what we do on Sundays, we should reclaim a biblical definition of worship: obedience to God in all of life. Low Evangelicals like myself loved it, finding in Roberts a champion against both Charismatics and crunchy Reformed types.

Of course, worship language isn’t and shouldn’t be restricted to what happens on Sunday. “I appeal to you,” writes Paul, “by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). Here the apostle refers to all of life being worship. We are to be “living sacrifices,” offering up “spiritual worship”—neither here nor there, but “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). So Roberts, among others, argues when we think of worship we need to also think outside of church services and Sunday. This isn’t to say we don’t worship when we meet, however that isn’t really distinct from what we do on Monday through Saturday. All of life is worship, whether you’re singing praises with your church family or in the shower.

An Important Corrective: All of Life Is Worship

Before highlighting some of the problems with this view, especially how it negatively influences the prioritising of Lord’s Day worship, it is worth acknowledging that conceiving of all of life as worship is an important biblical corrective.

As I attempted to show with the help of Ephesians 4:1-16, David Foster Wallace, and Fight Club, all of us worship, in all of life. We all give our lives, our time and devotion, to various lords and gods. As I put it, “we’re unwittingly captive…Whether these are heart idols or ideologies…all of us spend our lives in service of someone or something.”

Few writers have developed this better than Timothy Keller. In his Counterfeit Gods he defines an idol as “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give…anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.” Everyone’s life is spent in devotion and commitment, the only difference is who or what we serve.

With the above point in mind, all of life invariably involves worship. And books like True Worship rightly exhort Christians to glorify God wherever he has placed them. God commands obedience throughout the week. We don’t only worship God for a couple of hours on Sunday morning. For as Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). That exhortation extends well beyond Lord’s Day worship.

An Over-Correction That Cheapens the Lord’s Day

Now, however valuable this corrective, its overemphasis has almost certainly led to a lower view of Sunday worship among Christians. Personally, if I didn’t consider Lord’s Day worship to be unique I wouldn’t prioritise it; if Sunday worship services aren’t a profoundly exceptional aspect of our “spiritual worship” (cf. the Reformed tradition), I’d attend another meeting during the week that’s more convenient. I can encourage other believers there, read the Bible or listen to a Bible talk, and even sing. Why bother with Sunday? 

Furthermore, the contemporary liturgy of music set plus Bible talk and as little else as possible has compounded matters, since many worship services today are woefully thin. They’re barely dissimilar from streaming a Citizens album followed by a Keller sermon during your morning commute. This is your spiritual worship, apparently. Shout some encouragement out the car window afterwards and you’ve checked all the boxes of the contemporary Sunday liturgy. Thus we’ve cheapened Lord’s Day worship both by conflating it with worship more generally and by stripping it of any real substance or theological richness. No wonder people aren’t prioritising Sundays.

It’s Both/And

Books such as Vaughan Roberts’ True Worship provided a necessary and biblical corrective when they came out—even though you can all of what he says and more in book three of the Institutes; for example, Calvin comments on Romans 12:1, “we are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory” (3.7.1).

However, I’m not sure the best way to make Christians take glorifying God in all of life more seriously is to make little of Lord’s Day worship. This seems like a bad trade-off, especially if it’s led to lower Sunday attendance.

If we reduce corporate gatherings to singing, Bible talks and mutual encouragement it’s difficult to see the significance of a single, highpoint when the whole church meets to worship. Yes, all of life is worship. No, that doesn’t mean Sunday isn’t exceptional. “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).