‘I’ve been a Christian for years and years and yet I feel that I’ve been introduced to God almost for the first time. I feel like I’ve just met a family I never realised that I had and I am just so incredibly grateful.’ This was the moving testimony of a Christian woman after a worship and teaching conference on the Trinity. Of course, she had not been literally ignorant of the doctrine of the Trinity - she could have told you that God was three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) yet one being. The problem was that the Trinity was for her just an item on a list of ‘things to believe’ and it did not seem to connect to her real Christian life. It was, if she was honest with herself, a weird, irrelevant doctrine to file away in the back of her mind and ignore. Have you ever felt that way? I certainly have. But then if we just stop for a moment and think about it there must be something very wrong with this attitude. Christianity is God-centred and God is the Trinity so it follows that Christianity must be Trinity-centred. The same must be said about our prayer, praise and worship: Praise is God centred and so, if that God is the Trinity, it should be Trinity-centred. Here is my first question: Is it?

I can recall quite a few praise meetings in which a visitor who knew nothing about Christianity would suppose that Christians worshipped one God whose name was Jesus. The leader opens the meeting saying, ‘We have not come here to meet each other but Jesus.’ We then sing lots of songs directed to Jesus or, ‘You Lord’ (and it seems pretty clear from the context that the ‘Lord’ in the phrase ‘You Lord’ is Jesus). We hear lots of prayers to Jesus. We have a talk all about Jesus followed by, sometimes, a sinners prayer that goes like this, ‘Dear Lord Jesus, thank you that you love us and died for us. We are sorry that we have sinned against you. Please forgive us and come and live in our hearts. Amen.’ Here is my second question: What happened to the Father and the Spirit?

Obviously the scenario above is at the extreme end of things but I have been in several meetings like it. Other times the Father and the Spirit get in but only by the skin of their teeth. Our public worship should aim to facilitate a rich encounter with the Trinitarian God so why does it often fall short? I suspect that it is because we don’t ‘get’ the Trinity and we don’t see its relevance. The sub-conscious reasoning may be, ‘Why complicate the intimacy of our worship by getting tangled up in theological problems?’ Another reason is that the majority of modern worship songs are ‘Jesusonly’ songs or ‘You Lord’ songs. Inevitably this means that the likelihood of choosing Father and Spirit songs is decreased unless one is especially looking out to include them.

But the Trinity is not irrelevant! For the early Christians the Trinity was at the heart of Christian life and faith. Indeed so central is the Trinity that every other Christian belief connects to it. For instance:

Creation: The Father created the universe through his Son by the Spirit’s life-giving power. The universe began to exist and continues to exist by the work of the whole Trinity.
Redemption: The Father so loved the world that he sent his Son, conceived in Mary by the Spirit. The Son spoke his Father’s words and did his Father’s deeds all in the Spirit’s power. On the cross the Son offers his life to the Father through the Spirit. Three days later the Father raised his Son through the Spirit and exalted him to his right hand. From there the Father gave him the Spirit to pour out on the church.
Consummation: The Spirit will raise the dead and the Son will judge everyone on behalf of his Father. All Christ’s enemies will be placed under his feet and then he will hand everything over to the Father so that God will be all in all.

The story of the Bible is God’s story and it is the story of the Trinity. Every act of God is an act of the three persons working in unity. And the same can be said for our own Christian lives and experience. For instance:

Conversion: The Father sends his Spirit to convict people of their sin and of the truth of the gospel. The Spirit draws us to faith in Christ and through Christ to the Father. We are baptised into Christ in the Spirit and baptised in water in the threefold name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Experiences of God: Every experience of and encounter with God the Christian has comes through the Holy Spirit. We can only experience Jesus and the Father through that Spirit.
Worship and Prayer: Acceptable worship and prayer is only possible because of the new and living way opened up by Jesus and we can only go that way as the Spirit enables us. Worship is, as Matt Redman says, a ‘gifted response’.
Mission: The Spirit enables the church to join with Christ in his mission to the world on behalf of the Father. That is what mission is.

We could go on and on but I think that I’ve said enough to suggest that the Trinity is to Christian life and experience what hydrogen is to water: no hydrogen no water – no Trinity no Christianity.

OK. Let’s go back to public worship. I have a strong suspicion that public worship does more to shape the spirituality of Christians than just about anything else. It is in public worship that we find out how to relate to God by being with other Christians who are relating to God. It is not that there is formal teaching on the topic, though there may be, but we simply pick it up by means of a kind of osmosis just as we learn language. This makes public worship crucial in the spiritual formation of the church. It is here that people will learn, or not as the case may be, how to relate to the Trinity. It is here that the richness of the creating and saving deeds of the Trinity will come to expression. It is here that we will discover how to approach God through the Son and in the Spirit. It is in this forum that we will honour the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Here is where we first live and appropriate theology. If our worship is sub-trinitarian then we will create malnourished and malformed Christians. Can we really blame people for not seeing the relevance of the Trinity if we have stripped it out of our songs and prayers? So here are some final questions:

(1) How can we learn to pray in ways that are more overtly Trinitarian?
(2) How should songwriters change what they do to be more Trinitarian?
(3) How can we select songs that, whilst not being overtly Trinitarian, can work together to bring the three persons of God into our awareness?
(4) Can the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist be used to generate an awareness of the whole Trinity?
(5) How can preaching be more Trinitarian?
(6) Can we learn to see the persons of the Trinity more clearly in the Bible reading we do?
(7) How can the creative arts (painting, sculpture, dance, music etc etc) be used to foster a Trinitarian spirituality in worship?

All this really boils down to one question: How can we shape our public worship so that it facilitates a rich encounter with the Christian God? I have tried to address such questions elsewhere and whilst I have no monopoly on answers let me offer a reflection to guide your own thoughts:

Our worship should ceaselessly and effortlessly move back and forth between the threeness of God and the unity of God. It will shift focus from Father, to Son, to Spirit and back again in a restless celebration of divine love and mystery. It will also highlight the deep relations within the Godhead by not allowing the worshippers to lose sight of any of the Persons. At times the worship will draw the Father into focus however the Son and Spirit will be there, out of focus but still in our field of awareness. Other times the Son will attract our attention but not in such a way that we do not see Father and Spirit. When the Spirit attracts our worshipping attention it will always be as the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son. Worship that makes us aware of the inter-relationships within God is fully Trinitarian worship. Trinitarian worship is always ‘through the Son’ and ‘in the Spirit’ but is woven from an ever-changing mosaic of songs, prayers, Bible readings, testimonies, Spirit-gifts, sermons, Holy Communion, drama, dance, art and more besides. The variety is endless and the possibilities infinite but at the heart of it all stands the mystery of the Holy Trinity. That is what Christian worship is.

If you are interested in this issue you may enjoy Robin’s book, Worshipping Trinity: Coming Back to the Heart of Worship, Milton Keynes: Paternoster. ISBN: 1-84227-347-7, £7.99, available February 2005.