Occasionally, I guest post over at the Reformed Worship blog. Most recently, they published some practical reflections of mine on the relationship between worship and mission in a post entitled, “The Biology of Missional Worship.” I highlight an important recent book on the subject and the great metaphors contained therein. And then, based on one of my favorite worship theologians, Jean-Jacques von Allmen, I offer an additional metaphor.

Usually, worship and mission are discussed in separate spheres, such that when they are finally discussed together, it often seems like we need to do a lot of reconcilation work. In another post, I talked about how some of the branches of the missional movement has tended to downplay worship. Likewise, we might say that there are some churches whose focus is so singularly on the corporate worship experience (all their resources of time, energy, and man/woman-power go there) often lose sight of the call to mission that is in the very DNA of what it means to be the Church. My plea in this post in Reformed Worship is for us not to see worship and mission in competition but in symbiotic (mutually life-giving) relationship. Again, I offer a metaphor that I think helps.

Go read the post! (And, keep in mind that these thoughts get fleshed out in greater detail in my chapter, “The Worship Pastor as Missionary,” in the forthcoming book The Worship Pastor [Zondervan, 2016]).