1. Worship should be God-centered.
He basically said that people who aren't Christians should not be able to come to church and be familiar and comfortable with the worship. We should come to church expecting to have genuine selfless communion with God. Worship has nothing to do with "me," it is totally God centered. And worship like this is completely unfamiliar to people who aren't Christians.
Honestly, I hate to listen to KLove because I'm tired of hearing songs that have everything to do with me and nothing to do with God. Yea, God loves me and yea God made me special but all of creation doesn't sing my praises, it sings God's praises! People who aren't Christians are already very familiar with "me," they need to hear about God. I actually got to see a church who worshiped this way once and I was totally taken aback. They were so focused on God and their worship was so intense* that I was convicted that I'm not worshiping that way. And the result: their worship was evangelical. We have this idea that we need to sell the gospel to people who aren't Christians. But if we just live it and focus on God, He takes care of it. People who came into that building saw that there was something different about those people.
*Note - By intense I don't mean there should be specific way of worshiping God.
2. Worship should be founded in theology.
I've heard people say before that we should just focus on our relationship with God and not worry about doctrine, that is absolutely ridiculous, and it's an idea that Satan has seeped into the church. You have to know something about God before you can have a relationship with Him. How can we sing about God's great works if we know nothing of the wonders in the Bible? How can we sing about the cross if we don't know anything about justification?
In fact, how I'm feeling may not have anything to do with worship at all. If I have to sing a song a dozen times before it gets to me then it's not true praise. True praise is theological, it should stimulate our mind and then praise comes from that. I'm not saying you shouldn't feel anything when you praise God but that praise should be the out pouring of what we know about God. Buddhists and Hindus sing the same way many of our churches do, they declare something over and over until they finally reach some other state of consciousness.
That was another thing about the church in Knoxville. Once worship was over I looked around and everyone was taking notes! These people were in love with God's word and they wanted to study it and know more about Him. Once again people who aren't Christians will wonder why people are so in love with God's word. And the result again: it's evangelical.
3. Worship should abound in hard times.
In the text Alister Begg used, Paul and Silas were beaten before they were thrown in jail. They weren't in the best of moods. They could have done a number of things instead of praising God: they could have complained, Paul could have demanded his rights as a Roman citizen, they could have comforted each other and said that once they got out they would start evangelizing again. The other people in the jail expected this from them because it's what they would have done, so when Paul and Silas didn't do that, when they started praying and praising God instead the other people in the jail listened. And the result again: it was evangelical.
People who aren't Christians thank God when they are happy. They may thank Him for the safety of their family, they may think Him for their nice house and their 3 meals a day. But when Christians have none of those things and are still praising God, people will wonder why. And when they see that God is all satisfying then they want the same thing. I'll throw in a little John Piper here, "God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him in the midst of loss not prosperity"
So there are my little notes. I highly suggest you listen to the sermon because I left a whole bunch of stuff out and Alistair Begg is way better at explaining things than I am. :)
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