Reforming Worship #7 - Dead Limbs Don’t Worship: The Collapse of Individualistic Christianity

In this short series on the matter of worship—and how the modern evangelical church seems to have lost its way—we have been looking at the same problem from different angles. For this final article, I want to focus on one essential facet of the church’s worship. When we speak of the worship of the church, we must remember that it is not a private experience but a collective one. Yet our individualistic age has ruined this, and evangelical churches, instead of resisting the cultural tide, have absorbed it and have now become the very engine that propels this individualism even further.

In the body of Christ, true individuality does not arise from self-expression disconnected from the whole; it flows from the part we play within that whole. Think of your own body: your arms are not unique because they possess life in themselves, but because of the particular function they perform as part of the body. An arm detached from the body is not a unique limb—it is a dead one. So it is with Christians. We are not isolated atoms of worship but members of a complex organism that, when joined together, offers God the worship He deserves.

Many of us read Romans 12 with individualistic assumptions. When Paul urges us to present our bodies as a “living sacrifice,” we often imagine each believer bringing his own private offering before God. But when read in context, Paul immediately connects this living sacrifice to the unity and diversity of the church. What is envisioned is not isolated acts of worship but one collective sacrifice offered by the one body of Christ, each member contributing according to the grace and gifts given by God.

It is true, of course, that worship extends beyond Sunday—we are called to live a life of worship. But it should be equally clear that this reality shapes our corporate worship. And one of the great problems today is that in many churches, people gather in the same room while doing their own spiritual thing. They come to pray their own prayers, confess their own sins, sing their own songs about their own love for Jesus, and listen for a sermon that speaks to their private needs. Churches thrive by catering to a demographic’s felt needs, and as we have seen throughout this series, our worship forms us. If our worship is individualistic in a culture already intoxicated with individualism, we should not be surprised when Christians drown further in it. Instead of healing the problem of our generation, this kind of worship deepens the wound.

What we need is a worship that shapes us to see ourselves as part of the body of Christ. We need liturgy that trains our instincts toward others—toward their needs, their sanctification, their growth in grace. We need sermons that teach us to think of ourselves as a people, not merely as scattered individuals. We need a church that does not exist to fulfill my personal preferences but that unites God’s people in the kind of worship He desires—for His glory and our good.

People say liturgy kills the heart of worship. In reality, liturgy kills individualism—and individualistic people hate that. Yes, there are good liturgies and bad liturgies, just as there are good and bad marriages. But the solution to corrupted worship is not abolition but reformation. Throughout Scripture, the worship of God’s people is deeply liturgical, designed to shape our hearts, minds, affections, and imaginations. Christ did not come to abolish structured worship; He came to elevate it—to bring us from an earthly temple to a heavenly one, from a liturgy of shadows to the divine liturgy where the people of God ascend the Holy Hill and encounter the living God.

Individualistic worship is anti-gospel. May God deliver us from this evil and raise a generation once again who worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

Nino Marques