Lesson video

Hello and welcome to this lesson on worship in Christianity.

My name is Miss Kendrick and I'm going to be teaching all of the lessons in this Christian Practises unit.

We're going to start off by looking at why do Christians worship God in the first place? This is going to link to beliefs about God's qualities, and what Christians believe that God has done.

We are going to look at different types of prayer and the Lord's Prayer in Christianity.

And we're also going to look at different types of worship and the types of worship known as liturgical and non-liturgical worship.

And I will give you the definitions for those words as we get to it.

Now, something that's really important to be aware of in this unit is that the practises that Christians do are based on the beliefs that they have, and that's why it's often good to do the practises unit after you've done the beliefs unit.

Because if you don't know what Christians believe about God, then it's very difficult to understand how the practises make sense because those practises are a response to that belief.

In some ways, Christians might say that the practises that they do are a way of taking part in God's story, and in their beliefs about what they believe God has done.

But we'll look at that as we start to get into some more examples.

You are going to need a pen or a pencil, a different coloured pen or pencil so that you can make corrections and additions to your answers, and you're going to need some paper 'cause you are going to need to write some things down in this lesson and at the end, hopefully you'll have a really good sort of record of what you've learned in this lesson.

The first thing I'm going to get you to do is do a mind map and I want you to think about what qualities do you think Christians think God has? So what that means is what do Christians believe God is like? I'm going to give you a couple of minutes to make that mind map, have a little think about some key words that might be useful here, and then we'll have a look at my mind map together.

Okay, I wonder whether you've got some of these things on your mind map as well.

So here we've got their beliefs that God is all powerful or omnipotent and all loving, omnibenevolent, the belief that he is a judge.

So Christians believe that God is going to judge people, perhaps based on their actions or maybe based on their faith and we've got the belief that God is the saviour, that's normally linked to Jesus specifically, the belief God's eternal, all knowing, that he is good and created a good world and that he is the creator.

So we've got lots of different beliefs here.

Now these different beliefs that Christians have about God lead to worship.

Worship is to show acts of love and adoration.

If you worship something, then you're going to be really devoted to it.

If you worship a person, which Christians would say you shouldn't do, you're going to, I don't know, bestow gifts upon them and show how much you care about them.

Sometimes you might hear that phrase actually, if someone really likes someone or really adores somebody, someone might say, "Oh, they absolutely worship them." Now, for Christians, there are lots of different ways of worship and actually, the term worship is a very broad one, and includes lots and lots of different acts.

In this lesson, we're going to focus on prayer and we're also going to look at worship that follows a set pattern and worship that might be more informal.

So just to be aware, there's lots of things you can include, we're going to look at some other examples as well.

But before we look at those examples, I would like you to pause the video on the next slide and answer some questions.

So we're starting off with prayer.

Now most Christians believe that God is a personal God who answers prayer and that as he is personal, he wants to have a relationship with humans.

And an important part of relationships is talking to somebody, isn't it? If you had somebody who you said were your friends, but you never ever spoke to them, then people might question as to whether or not you were really friends.

Or actually if you used to be friends with somebody and you're not anymore, and someone asks about them, you might go "oh, well I don't speak to them anymore." Because speaking to somebody is a really important part of a relationship.

So Christians believe that this is an important part of prayer, that it builds a relationship with God.

It's not just about praying for something that you want, or anything like that, but it's just showing that you care about God and you want him in your life.

Christians will also pray because Jesus taught them to and in a moment, we're going to look at the Lord's Prayer, which is the prayer Jesus taught to his disciples.

But firstly, I've told you two reasons why Christians pray, can you remember what they are? Have a think for a moment, you can say it out loud or just think in your head or even write it down.

Okay, so the two reasons I gave were most Christians believe that God answers prayer, that God will act in the world, and most Christians believe that prayer builds a personal relationship with God.

So if you didn't get those two, I think you should write those down and do it as full sentences.

So give two reasons why Christians pray and your answer.

So pause the video to do that.

Right, so we are going to look at the Lord's Prayer.

Now the Lord's Prayer is recorded in the Bible, and the way it came about was that Jesus' disciples said, "Lord, teach us how to pray," because they saw that Jesus had a very deep prayer life.

The gospels talk about Jesus regularly going off to a quiet place to pray and it often records him speaking to God the Father.

And not only this, but the disciples saw Jesus' prayers being answered.

He seemed to have this close, special relationship with God, and Christians believe that that is because Jesus was God that he was the Son of God.

But Christians believe that they can also have a relationship with God the Father just like Jesus did in these gospel stories.

So what we're going to do is we are going to look at the Lord's Prayer.

Hopefully it's quite familiar to you, it's one of the most famous prayers in Christianity and I'm going to talk through it and explain each part.

So the first line of the Lord's Prayer, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name." So there's two things we can take from these first couple of lines.

Number one, Jesus invites his followers to refer to God as Father.

And actually the word he used in Aramaic, which was the language that he spoke is Abba.

And this is a quite intimate word, this is quite an intimate word for father in his culture.

And so he's suggesting straight away that there is this special relationship between a person and God and Jesus is inviting people to partake in that relationship.

And next we've got these words, "hallowed be thy name," and sometimes in other translations you might hear it says "holy is your name," and this is part of worshipping God.

It is declaring who Christians believe God is, that he's holy, that he's special, that he's above anything else, and that he is worthy of praise.

Next part, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done "on Earth as it is in heaven." So this shows the belief that Christians want God's kingdom to come on earth.

So they want earth to be more like heaven, and they want God's will to be done on earth.

They think God's will is good, and so they want to work out his purposes.

It's a little bit like showing obedience to God by saying "your will be done," but also recognising that if God's will is done, then earth would be more heaven like.

It also looks forward, if you've done the previous unit on Christian Beliefs, it also looks forward to the afterlife as well, this idea that one day, all things will be made good again, and there'll be no suffering, which is a very important belief for many Christians.

Next section says, "give us this day our daily bread." Now this is a request.

So like I said, many Christians believe that God answers prayer.

But this request is just for basic needs, it's recognising that God is a provider, and that he is the bread of life.

Jesus is often referred to as the bread of life.

So many Christians in saying this part of the prayer, they're recognising their dependence on God, and recognising that everything they need comes from God.

"And forgive us our trespasses," or this is sometimes translated as sins, "as we forgive those who trespass against us." So this refers to the belief that God is forgiving, but also links to beliefs about repentance.

So one important aspect of prayer for Christians is saying sorry for the things they've done wrong.

And there's also this recognition that if a person has been forgiven by God, then they should also be forgiving towards other people who might have done wrong against them.

And again, there's this idea that this is something that would stop there from being conflict.

If everyone forgave each other, then the world would be a more heavenly place.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." So again, this is a request, and it's requesting that God will guide Christians to live a good life and to avoid doing anything wrong.

"Deliver us from evil" might mean to help people to not be tempted to do bad things, but it also might be a request to keep them safe from bad things and suffering that are in the world.

And the very last part "for thine is the Kingdom, "and the Power, and the Glory, Forever and ever.

"Amen" is simply recognising that God has power over all of the world, and it's again, a way of praising God for his qualities, and for his authority.

So that's the Lord's Prayer and it's a really great one because lots of people are quite familiar with it.

So it's quite easy to learn as a quotation.

When I say to learn as a quotation, you wouldn't have to quote the whole thing if you're writing about it in an assessment, but you can just pick out a couple of lines that are useful to remember.

So what we're going to do is we're going to ask a couple of questions to see what you have taken in.

So which belief does "Our Father" express? I'll give you a moment to read through the options.

Okay it expresses the belief that God is personal and you can be close to him.

Which belief does "give us this day our daily bread" express? The belief that God provides for people.

Which belief does "Hallowed be thy name" express? That God is worthy of praise.

So hallowed is a bit like holy.

Which belief does "lead us not into temptation" express? That God is a guide.

And that's our last question for now.

So what you're going to do is you're going to pause the video, you've got some longer questions to answer, you'll come back for the answers and make sure you're adding to your own work and making corrections where necessary, and then we're going to be looking at some different examples of worship.

So worship is acts of love and devotion, and like I said earlier, prayer is a really big part of worship for Christians.

Christians believe that you can pray pretty much anywhere, they might use formal written prayers, or they might make them up.

They might quickly pray in their heads during the day, or they might have a time in the day that's specifically devoted to praying.

But they'll also engage in many other types of worship and lots of these other types of worship do involve prayer as well, so there's going to be a bit of overlap in some places, and I'm going to show you what they are.

So in this table, I've got nine examples of worship and these are not necessarily all types of worship in Christianity.

I'm sure there's some things that I've missed off, but I think any more than nine is probably a bit much.

Now, I'm going to go through some of these and explain them, and then we're going to spend some time learning them so that you've got them for examples, okay? So just to be aware before I start going through them, many Christians would say they should spend their whole lives worshipping God.

Some Christians might use the phrase, "you shouldn't go to church to worship, "you should come to church worshipping ." And so it's not something that Christians will go "well, you know, I'll live my normal life "and then on Sunday, I'll do some worship "and then go back to normal life." Many Christians would say that this is something that is going to be part of their whole lives and that is one reason why worship can be so broad, because many Christians will say that, you know, doing things in their day-to-day life in a worshipful way, is a way of worshipping God.

So for example, if someone's creative and they love painting, they might see painting as part of their way of worshipping God.

But we're going to go for some traditional ways of worship for now.

So the first one is prayer, we've already done that.

Next one, singing hymns or songs.

So this might be done in lots of different ways.

So you might have an idea of singing quite traditional hymns with an organ or it might be through modern worship songs which are done with a worship band.

Singing hymns and songs might be done in church with a congregation, or somebody might just sing to God at home by themselves as a form of worship as well, or they might just listen to worship music and meditate on God.

So again, very broad.

Next one is serving the community.

Many Christians believe that worship is not just about an individual act and your individual relationship with God.

But they believe that God loves all people, and so helping other people is a way of worshipping God, and that can be a real sacrifice as well, giving up some of your time maybe to do someone's shopping, for example, could be seen as worshipping through serving the community.

We've got rites.

So a rite is a practise essentially.

So for example, Eucharist and baptism are both rites and these are formal practises in Christianity, which we are going to look at in a lot more detail in other lessons.

So these are things that will be done in church and with other people.

You can't do baptism and Eucharist by yourself, and that's a really important to keep in mind something we're going to look at later on.

Meditating on God, so this might just be having some quiet time, perhaps trying to listen to God 'cause many Christians believe that God will speak to them, either through the Bible or through their conscience or even through an audible voice.

We've got reading the Bible.

So again, that could be meditating on a particular verses or maybe just reading the whole Bible, probably not in one go.

Attending church, and at church, many of these things that we've already looked at are likely to happen.

Listening to sermons, again, that's something that's likely to happen in church but many Christians might listen to sermons that have been recorded.

And giving money to charity.

Again, the way Christians steward their money and their possessions can be seen as an act of worship by joyfully giving money to charity.

So we've got lots of examples there and we're going to spend some time getting to know them.

So I'm going to give you 10 seconds, they might be quite slow seconds, to look at these examples on the table, and then some of them are going to be covered up, there'll be three missing, and I want you to try and see if you can think, figure out which ones are gone.

Then you'll see them again and there'll be a different three missing and hopefully by the end of this task, you'll have a good idea of these different examples in your heads.

Well done if you got all nine, if you didn't get all of them, that's fine, you probably got some and now you know some examples of how Christians worship that you may not have known before.

The next thing we're going to do is we're going to practise answering an explain question.

So the question here is explain two reasons why Christians worship God.

In your answer, you should explain how Christians worship.

So I've got an example here to get you started.

One reason why Christians worship is because they want to follow Jesus' example.

For example, Christians will worship with the Lord's Prayer as Jesus taught this was how they should pray.

So we've got a point and we've got an explanation that adds a little bit more detail.

So let's see if you can do that in your own answer.

All right, well done for writing your answers to that explain question and if your answers were slightly different to mine, that doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, you might have gone for some different reasons.

Just think about have you included some clear evidence or examples from what we've looked at in this lesson, and make sure you've been really specific and that you've explained them.

Next thing we are going to look at liturgical and non-liturgical worship.

So these are fancy words, they might be new to you, but they're actually really easy to understand.

You just need to learn definitions and make sure you remember which way around they go.

So liturgical worship is worship that follows a set pattern.

What this means is that there might be prayers that have been written down that get used regularly, there might be calls and responses.

So if you've ever been in a church service in an Anglican Church or maybe a Roman Catholic Church, then there'll be certain things that the priest or vicar always says and the congregation will respond.

This will often be written down, but if someone's been attending that church for a long time, they probably know it off by heart.

And that's liturgical, because it follows a set pattern and that pattern often follows the common book of prayer.

It also links to festivals and things that happen throughout the year like Saints days and particular seasons in the church.

That's all part of the liturgical calendar.

Now, non-liturgical worship is worship that does not follow a set pattern.

So for example, some Christians might worship by sitting in a room and praying and waiting for somebody to feel like they've heard something from God.

That's something that Quakers often do but lots of other Christians will do it as well or they might have some worship which follows more modern worship music and which doesn't have necessarily the same pattern as hymns and things do.

Now, the thing to keep in mind, there's a couple of things keep in mind.

Number one, even though some denominations are more often going to worship liturgically or non-liturgically, that doesn't mean there's no overlap.

So for example, Anglican churches do officially worship liturgically and they will have those set prayers and calls and responses.

But lots of Anglican churches will also take part in non-liturgical worship.

So they might have certain services which are less formal, or they might just have parts of their services that are less formal as well.

So they might have a part of their service at the end where anyone can come up for prayer and they might have an unstructured time of prayer.

So that's one thing.

Denominations are going to have a bit of variety, but certain denominations are going to be more liturgical than non-liturgical.

Those denominations which aren't traditionally liturgical are probably still going to have a bit of a pattern to their prayers or their worship, because that's just what develops over time.

You end up with a structure that works.

So for example, Baptist Christians might not necessarily have calls and responses in the same way, but they will have traditions that have developed over time.

So it does not fit with a particular denomination, there is going to be some overlap and certain Christians will worship liturgically sometimes and non-liturgically at other times.

It's not just one or the other.

So what I'm going to get you to do is pause so you can write down these definitions.

Okay, so hopefully you got an example for liturgical and non-liturgical.

Now I've just added something else here.

So under liturgical and non-liturgical, there are the words public and private.

Now, just to be really clear, because sometimes students think that liturgical worship is always public, and that non-liturgical worship is always private, or the other way around, and that's just not the case.

They are just different things and there's going to be variation.

So for example, when we're talking about set prayers, a Christian might use those set prayers in a church service, and then they might go home and use those set prayers by themselves in private.

Okay? Or, a Christian might pray by meditating on the Bible and waiting for God's Holy Spirit in private and then they might also do that with some Christian friends or at church.

So you need to understand which types of worship are public and private, and that lots can be interchangeable.

So, rites such as baptism and Eucharist are always going to be public and attending church is always going to be public as well.

And actually, that's three, 'cause I've got attending church as a separate one.

So there's a couple of reasons for this, number one, baptism.

For many Christians, they would say you must have a priest or a vicar there.

Even if they would say that anyone can baptise somebody else, there is still somebody else there rather than someone baptising themself.

Also, baptism is seen as a declaration of faith and you can't really declare your faith if you're doing it by yourself.

Eucharist is also something that is always going to be done publicly.

So for some Christians, that is because they believe it is necessary for a priest or a vicar to prepare the bread and wine.

But for those Christians who believe that anyone can do a thanksgiving meal or a Eucharist meal, then it's still really linked to beliefs about unity in the church.

So many Christians believe that by taking the bread and wine, the church community is showing that they are part of one body.

Just to answer just 'cause I know I would get one student asking me a question right now about if anyone could ever have Eucharist by themselves.

Now, what might happen sometimes if someone's unwell and they're in hospital or in their home and they can't get out and go to church, the priest might and go to their house and do communion with them there.

So that's not public in the same way in that it's not happening in a church, but there's still going to be more than one person there.

So that's just the answer to the question that my imaginary student just asked me.

Attending church also is going to be done publicly and this is because Christians believe that it's important to be part of a church community and to worship with other Christians as well as to worship by themselves.

And so going to church is about being part of a congregation.

So that is also going to be public worship.

So the next thing I'm going to get you to do is answer a couple of questions about why baptism and Eucharist need to be public.

Thank you so much for taking part in this lesson on worship in Christianity, I hope you found it interesting, and in later lessons, we're going to be looking at some of those things in more detail.

Looking at how different Christians practise and understand Eucharist and baptism, and things like that.

So I do hope you'll join me for those lessons.

Until then, I would like you to complete the exit quiz and just to show what you have learned, and do make sure you're practising your knowledge as well.

Just test yourself and think "Can I remember the definition of the word liturgical?" And the more often you do that, the more likely you will be to remember it over a long period of time.

So well done for all your work in this lesson, you can now go and do the quiz.