During our meeting at Catch the Fire, we often spend a long time in sung praise and worship. We define praise as offering thanks to God for who He is and for what He has done. Psalm 150:2 says “Praise Him for His mighty works, praise Him for His unequaled greatness”. We look to spend time finding out what God is like and then praise Him for it. Sometimes this will be through upbeat lively songs, declaring God’s goodness and characteristics and sometime through quieter, more intimate times. Either way, we want our times of sung worship to be an opportunity to declare how amazing our God is and then wait for Him to “…inhabit the praises…” of His people.

These times of sung worship will be often led by the Spirit; so don’t be surprised if we spend some time in spontaneous worship. We look to give plenty of space for people to respond in their own way and with their own words during our times of worship. We believe that worship is about offering God something of worth and not about what we ‘get’ out of it. Of course, God being who He is, we often do end up receiving more of His love when we worship Him, but that is not our aim and purpose for worship. We believe God deserves to be praised irrespective of how our days have been or how we’re feeling. But we also believe that as we spend time adoring Him and looking at Him, we become more like Him.

With this in mind, we always approach our times of worship with the attitude that we want to offer something of worth to God for who He is. This means that we make a choice to worship, even if the style of worship, or the age or genre of songs isn’t our own personal preference.

At Catch the Fire London, we have experienced many times of amazing encounter with God during times of worship. We approach worship with an expectation of encounter – Deuteronomy 4:29 says that if we seek God with our whole heart, we WILL find him. We approach worship on the basis of this promise.