Junior Roman Dickow, sophomore Grace Carpenter and senior Max Holdorf play instruments and sing together at El Matador State Beach on Oct. 23. Photos by Melissa Houston
Every Sunday morning, my home church starts the service and after a few minutes, the congregation stands as the band plays music. People stand and sing along to songs that declare praise to God, and after a sermon along with some announcements and a prayer, before the final prayer of the service, we continue in our routine: worship.
As I sat in church one Sunday morning, the worship band ended their last song before my pastor got in front of the congregation. He mentioned the giving of money, and how worship music isn’t the only expression of worship for believers.
“Worship is a heart posture before the Lord,” senior Max Holdorf said. “A heart of worship is coming humbly before the Lord and declaring that He is God and you are not.”
A genre is a category of artistic, musical or literary composition that is characterized by a particular style, form or content. Genres, such as worship music, come with culture. They are often expressed through styles of clothing, dancing and the type of gathering expected to listen to the music.
When people think of another genre, they often associate the music together based on sound as well as lyrical content, but sound often gets priority when it’s time to categorize. On the other hand, worship music prioritizes lyrical content, and the sound can range drastically.
“A worship song, for me, has to declare truth about who God is and prompt the singer or musician or listener to agree with that truth,” Holdorf said.
United Through Worship
While some students might recognize Humanities Prof. Nicholas Cumming as their Religion or Humanities professor, others might recognize him as an occasional guitar player who joins WAVES WORSHIP at The Well, a weekly worship event held at Pepperdine’s Amphitheatre.
“Something that’s so unique about Pepperdine [is] that you can worship with students,” Cumming said.
Cumming is a member of the Churches of Christ, where musical worship is done a capella. Cumming said he views his musical ability as an irony, since he can play instruments but said he has no ability to sing.
Despite his self-proclaimed inability to sing, Cumming said he believes at the time of worship, Christians are uniting in their recognition that they all stand under God. Despite the different things that might want to separate them, the Church is united by recognizing that Christians aren’t their own gods.
“We all stand under one God as a united people, redeemed by Him and being led closer to Him,” Cumming said. “When we unite in the Churches of Christ, we unite with our voices. Everybody sings out, even horrible singers like me who sing out, and yet our voices all kind of come together as one chorus. At The Well, it’s a mix of instrumental and voice that all mold together towards God.
“And again, I think that’s a great sign of what we’ll see in heaven, where all voices are united as well in worship to God forever. So it unites us in so many ways,” Cumming said.
Pepperdine’s Hub for Spiritual Life hosts The Well at the Amphitheatre, a weekly worship event. The Well isn’t restricted to students and the Hub’s website describes it as an opportunity for believers from all backgrounds to come together for fellowship, music and spiritual teaching.
When Cumming joins The Well, he said he’s singing alongside students as well as members of the WAVES WORSHIP band, who recently released their first album in September 2025.
Lily Salanty, associate director of Worship for the Hub, helps lead WAVES WORSHIP. Salanty said she believes that worship is the reason humans were created, and is a response to God’s presence.
Salanty said when humans have an encounter with God, they’re led into humility and purified. That encounter leads to letting go of unforgiveness and holding onto bitterness, because the light of God illuminates everything in our hearts we aren’t meant to carry or live into.
“The blood of Jesus covers us all, like we’re all one under Him,” Salanty said. “If your identity is in Christ, that means over all things, over everything that you believe, every opinion that you have, you are a son or daughter of God and so is your neighbor.”
An Act of Worship
“Your will above all else, my purpose remains, the art of losing myself, in bringing You praise,” Hillsong UNITED‘s Joel Houston sings on the band’s 2016 track “From The Inside Out.”
While I reflected on the words my pastor said that one Sunday morning, I thought about how Christian worship isn’t just singing along when called to do so during a church service.
“It’s really hard to give worship a singular definition, because all that we do is worship,” Salanty said. “Worship is not just singing.”
As a member of the Churches of Christ, Cumming’s home church doesn’t use instruments, and he said playing the guitar for him has always been worship outside of his actual congregation in more specific instances. He believes God gave him a desire and passion to learn how to play the guitar and he tries to find specific ways to bring that skill back towards God more intentionally.
Whether he’s playing a contemporary Christian song or a song by The Beatles, Cumming said he believes if he were being a good Christian he would always orient his guitar playing as an act of worship towards God.
While Cumming acknowledged musical worship is one part of worship, he said another part that’s equally important concerns the inside.
“I can be out worshiping with my hands up and excited, but if inside I’m oriented toward something else — to put it very nicely — if I’ve made myself an idol, if I’ve made my career, money or something else an idol, what am I actually worshiping?” Cumming asked.
Cumming said he believes that every aspect of our lives can and should be an aspect of worship, because it should always be asking that question of how am I being obedient to the will of God. Whether that’s being illustrated through emails and text messages, or conversations with colleagues and interactions with students, he believes it should all be oriented in that direction.
He gave the example of a mathematician doing hard work on a theorem or a natural scientist examining God’s world and how those can be acts of worship because it’s really down to what’s going on the inside.
“Jesus uses some examples of people going out in the public square, just giving all these big loud prayers, saying how great they are and how good they are at worshiping,” Cumming said. “And he values the person that quietly goes in, into a quiet place and offers themselves to him. He’d rather have that than the big loud spectacle. But the big loud spectacle, if oriented correctly, can be just as valuable.”
I reflected on what Cumming said about orientation of the heart, and how doing actions of worship — like giving the offering money my pastor mentioned — isn’t all there is to worship, but giving it with the right orientation is, and I understood what he meant about having the right orientation even during moments that might not feel like “typical worship.”
When I asked Cumming about what personal worship should look like in the life of a Christian, he referenced what the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship.”
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Email Nick Charkhedian: nareg.charkhedian@pepperdine.edu
