How to Evaluate Songs for Congregational Worship

Congregational worship is one of the most important things that a church
does. It supersedes missions, evangelism, service, and counseling (though it
could be argued that these are, in a way, forms of worship--see Hebrews
13:15-16). John Piper has said the following:

"Missions is not the
ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions
exists because worship
doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God
is ultimate, not
man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the
redeemed fall
on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be not
more. It is a
temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.” (Let the Nations
Be Glad,
p. 17)

So, worship supersedes all these other activities because God is
ultimate, not man, and these all exist so that other people will be brought
to
see the excellencies of God through His church, and will in turn become
worshippers themselves. The glory of God is, as Jonathan Edwards put it,
“the
end for which God created the world” (Romans 11:36, Isaiah 43:7,
Ephesians
1:5,6,12,14, Psalm 29:1,2and Isaiah 48:11).

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