hen I grew up in a small church, the service always started with a call to worship. This call was normally an organ piece that shook the auditorium when it started. We all knew it was time to get in our seats and quietly wait for the service to start. When the music began to get quieter, we knew it was time to worship.

I thought about that church recently while I was at choir practice. Our minister of music and worship stopped the rehearsal and invited a man to speak to the choir; he had just attended a conference about leading worship services. This man stood on the platform in front of several hundred singers and, with tears in his eyes, made a statement that will stay with me for the rest of my life. He said, "I have experienced worship tonight." He had been in a conference for worship leaders and pastors the preceding three days, but he experienced more worship in 30 minutes of our rehearsal.

What do these situations say about worship? Many would say that the small church was practicing a ritual rather than worshiping God; the choir rehearsal was for learning music, not for worshipping; and the man who attended a conference, was there to learn techniques for leading services and not there for worship.

I would have to disagree with all three assessments. The Bible tells us that God seeks true worshipers – those who will worship him in spirit and in truth. It doesn't say that he is looking for people who are in church or in their prayer closet or singing in a choir. Over the years, we morphed that definition of worship to the point that God does not even have to be there for us to call it worship. As long as there is music and emotion, we feel that we can call it worship.

Worship is an attitude. In the Old Testament there are many examples of worship. Most of them involve a single person prostrate on the ground before God. Many times there was not a word spoken by the worshiper. The place was not special before the worship, but it was holy after the worship because God was there.

I am of the opinion that God's people are to be chronic worshipers. By that I mean our worship should be ongoing and unstoppable. We need to be in an attitude of worship every second of every day. When we do that, even the technical machinations of a choir rehearsal will be a time of worship to God.

Don't put God in a box. Today's church decries the ritual and liturgy of the "old" churches. We have replaced the formality with the casual and contemporary. I sometimes wonder if we just replace one ritual with another. Worship has nothing to do with style or surroundings. We must not limit our worship to a particular time or place or program.

God deserves and demands our worship everywhere we are, no matter what we are doing. John 4:23-24 describes true worshipers who “worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." If we maintain an attitude of worship, nothing will be able to bring us down. When that happens, we will find ourselves breaking out in an act of praise.

Editor's note: This article is an op-ed and, therefore, reflects the opinions of the writer.