If you have not yet stumbled upon the musical phenomenon that is Jacob Collier, it is worth pausing for a moment to witness it. Collier, a young British musician whose grasp of harmony borders on the otherworldly, moves with effortless creativity between styles, traditions, and textures. His perfect pitch allows him to hear and build chords most of us could scarcely imagine. But perhaps even more striking than his technical brilliance is the way he invites the crowd into the performance itself.
In concert halls and festival fields around the world, Collier does not merely sing to his audience; he sings through them. Dividing tens of thousands of strangers into sections, he coaxes from them harmonies they did not know they could sing, layers of sound that swell and soar into something far greater than the sum of individual voices. And when you watch it happen—whether among the massed crowds or the millions who later experience it online—you see something ancient stirring beneath the sleek surface of modernity.
In an age that imagines itself secular, self-sufficient, and skeptical, here is a curious phenomenon: a mass of people yearning to transcend themselves, yearning to belong to a beauty beyond what they could achieve alone. They do not have the language for it, perhaps; but they feel it, unmistakably. They were made to worship, even if they have forgotten the name of the One for whom their souls were fashioned.
“You see something ancient stirring beneath the sleek surface of modernity.”
The word “religion” comes to us from the Latin religio—meaning “to bind again,” “to tie back.” In the ancient imagination, religion was not a matter of private belief so much as the public practices and rituals that bound humanity back to its source, tethering the human heart to the divine in a web of prayer, sacrifice, and song. To be religious was to live tied to the heavens—to know oneself as part of a drama far larger than the immediate urgencies of the day.
We live now in a time that prides itself on having severed those cords. And yet, the hunger for transcendence has not died; it has only gone looking for new forms. A stadium packed with strangers, their faces lifted to a harmony they did not invent and could not sustain alone, is evidence enough: the human being remains, at heart, a worshiping creature.
It has always been so.
When Jesus sat beside the well with the Samaritan woman, and the old controversies about places and practices came tumbling out—Which mountain? Which temple?—he pointed her to something deeper than sacred geography or tribal loyalties. “The hour is coming,” he said, “and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23, ESV).
“The human being remains, at heart, a worshiping creature.”
Not simply worshipers of form or feeling.
Not merely singers of songs or keepers of tradition.
But worshipers in spirit and truth—tethered not to a mountain but to the living God.
Notice the tenderness of that word: the Father seeks such people to worship him.
Before the call to go, there is first the call to gaze. Before we are sent out as workers, we are summoned as worshipers.
This, too, is the pattern of the Great Commission. Before Jesus speaks the words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” the Gospel of Matthew records a quieter, prior moment: “When they saw him, they worshiped him” (Matthew 28:17). Worship precedes mission. Adoration fuels commission. The river of discipleship flows from the deep spring of wonder.
In our day, so eager for strategies and programs, we must not forget this:
The church exists not primarily to teach, to fix, to heal, or even to serve.
The church exists, first and forever, to adore.
“The church exists, first and forever, to adore.”
Worship is the wellspring from which every faithful endeavor flows.
It is not the warm-up act to the real business of discipleship.
It is the soil without which no true disciple will take root.
Jacob Collier’s concerts, strange and secular as they may be, bear witness to the truth that the human heart is restless until it finds its home in something beyond itself. His crowds do not know it, but their swelling choruses echo a deeper longing—a longing for the One in whom all harmonies find their source and consummation.
And it is not only the few or the fervent who respond. Collier’s music has become a global phenomenon, drawing hundreds of thousands in person and hundreds of millions online, weaving together the voices of youth from every continent. His appeal rivals that of the great movements of popular culture—on par with the sweeping power of K-pop or the reach of the world’s largest stadium events—yet it is rooted in something more elemental than fashion or fame. It is rooted in the human desire to lift the voice in common song.
If mere music—beautiful, brilliant, but fleeting—can summon a fractured world to sing in unison, how much more will the crucified and risen Christ draw all peoples to himself?
It was he who said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32, ESV).
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
The hunger for transcendence written into every human heart will not be satisfied by concerts or causes or momentary bursts of collective emotion. It can only be satisfied when the song rises around the throne of the Lamb, when every tribe and tongue and nation joins in the music of New Creation.
The ancient preacher was right: God has set eternity in the hearts of men (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
There is within each of us a yearning not merely to last, but to belong—to be bound back, not to our own projections or passions, but to the One who breathed us into being.
Man was made for worship.
And the day is coming—indeed, it has already begun—when all the broken and scattered melodies of the world will be gathered, tuned, and transformed into a single song: the worship of Christ, the true and everlasting harmony.
As we go and make disciples, we go not merely to instruct but to invite.
We call people to lay down their dissonant songs and join the chorus of eternity.
We call them home.
