Worship // Clark Buys // The heart of worship: (Re)forming the soul with song

Why do Christians sing, week after week? In this talk, we take a look “under the bonnet” of sung worship and explore what is happening beneath the surface. Drawing on Psalm 115, we consider the formative power of worship, becoming like what we trust and revere, and the cultural “stories” that quietly shape our hearts: consumerism, producerism, and individualism.From there, we turn to a simple framework for spiritual formation through worship: habits (repetition over time), body (embodied participation), and community (being formed with and for one another). The invitation is not towards performance, entertainment, or emotional hype, but towards opening the heart to the living presence of God, allowing the story of Scripture to be rehearsed, received, and slowly written into the deepest places of who we are.