Thinking Theologically 8:
The Holy Spirit in Worship
READ:
John 14:15-17, 26-27, 15:26-27, 16:5-16
DISCUSS:
1. Where have you had a hard time understanding the Holy Spirit?
2. What do we learn about the Holy Spirit in these verses?
3. What is the relationship between father, son, and Holy Spirit in these passages?
4. How does the Holy Spirit relate to what we do as worship leaders?
5. How has the Holy Spirit been working in your life?
REFLECT:
How Does the Holy Spirit move, shape, and define our worship? I serve a church where worshipers represent over 30 different Christian denominations from around the world, and I notice weekly that they have vastly different understandings of how the Holy Spirit works in their lives and worship.
In some of their traditions they hardly talk about the Holy Spirit at all, and in others everything is defined by the Holy Spirit. So, some people are uncomfortable when we talk about the Holy Spirit too much and others would rather we were more ‘spirit led’ and focused on the outward spiritual gifts (tongues, prophesy, being ‘slain’ in the spirit, etc…) in worship.
So, as we seek to continue through our Bible study to build a framework of how to understand worship and our task of leading worship through music, liturgy, and preaching, we need to understand how to view the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in worship.
In our passage today, Jesus explains that the Spirit calls us to worship, convicts us of sin and guilt, teaches us the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ, leads us to a new perspective on our lives and world, and gives us truth and peace. There is no worship of the triune God without the Holy Spirit. Whether we acknowledge the Spirit or not, as Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 12:3 “no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”
1. Calls us to worship and convicts us of Sin and guilt.
In the past weeks we have talked about worship as an encounter with God that is transformative and this week we see that the Holy Spirit is the instigator and facilitator of this transformative encounter. As we have discussed before, when we come into the presence of God the first thing we hear is God’s ‘NO’. Through our own power we can do nothing to know God or bring an offering that is pleasing to Him. As theologian Ralph Martin writes, through sin all of our hearts are “turned in upon themselves so that we turn all God’s gifts to poison.”
Because of this we often use worship for our own selfish needs or agenda. Whenever we seek to “get something from worship” all we are doing is seeking our own agenda, which will always fail because the church can’t promise happiness, security, health, and prosperity. On our own we can’t even praise God without falling into selfishness.
2. Teaches us the truth of God in Jesus Christ.
That is why we need to rely on the Holy Spirit in our worship. We rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us into the presence of God and keep our focus there. Without the Spirit’s presence it is impossible to focus on God or understand His loving design revealed in Jesus Christ. As Jesus comments in John 16:13 “but when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” The Spirit’s whole work is to focus us on Jesus Christ. He has no word of His own, but as Jesus continues in John 15:14: “He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”
Sometimes we think that we will get something more from God if we focus on the Holy Spirit (special knowledge, special powers, special gifts, etc….), but God has sent the Holy Spirit to help us draw near the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ, and to focus our lives on Him.
As Ralph Martin writes: “The Spirit’s work is to make it possible to focus on God and Jesus Christ and to keep our gaze fixed there, whether the temptation to avert it comes in the form of a luxuriant emotionalism, a fierce call to compromise, or an etherealizing of our faith whose contact with history is made tenuous.”
3. Gives us new perspective on our lives and our world.
Because the Holy Spirit leads us to God’s truth, our perspective on ourselves and the world begins to change as God’s spirit works in our lives.
John Calvin describes it this way: “as we cannot come to Christ unless we are drawn by the Spirit of God, so when we are drawn we are lifted up in mind and heart above our understanding. For the soul, illumined by Him, takes on a new keenness… and humans understanding, thus beamed by the light of the Holy Spirit, then at last truly begins to taste those things which belong to the kingdom of God.”
So, every time we are reading the Bible and something suddenly makes sense, we can thank God’s Spirit. Every time we are convicted of sin, every time we come to a new revelation about our lives that changes us, we can thank the Holy Spirit. And we can trust that in our worship services God is doing the same in the lives of our congregation, though we may not be able to see it.
God gives us new perspective through the Holy Spirit. And one of the main ways this works in believers is helping us understand who we are as the body of Christ. The Spirit is always working to build up the church and help us find our true gifts and purpose. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:1, 4-7: “Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
The Holy Spirit blesses the community of faith with wisdom and guidance, charismatic gifts and signs, new perspective and love towards others. These gifts are given to individuals but are meant to bless and edify the body of Christ. The Spirit desires to bless us individually but the main goal of the spirit is the unity, health, and mission of the body of Christ, for the renewal and redemption of the world. As a church we always gone astray when we forget who are in Christ and we forget the Holy Spirit’s work in forging us into a new people, with new gifts, and with a new purpose in the world.
4. Gives us truth and peace.
Jesus comments in John 14:26-27: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
As we trust God to help us and guide us through His Holy Spirit, there is deep comfort that He is working in our lives and the lives of those we serve to guide them, bless them, and show them the way. We can have peace, as we lead worship; that God is leading us into all truth as we focus on Jesus Christ, so we don’t have to worry or be afraid. What a huge comfort to us, as we trust this and let God’s spirit guide us!
Final Thoughts
It seems to me that often worship leaders either discount or overstate the Holy Spirit’s work in our worship services. Either the Holy Spirit is hardly mentioned and there is little time and space to listen to God’s Spirit speaking through the service, or the Spirit is viewed as a heavenly power outlet that we just need to ‘plug into’ by praying in the spirit and worshipping in the spirit, so that we will receive the additional power and blessing.
Yet in the passages that we have just read, we’ve seen that the Spirit is a great gift given by God to believers, given for our flourishing and growth. So, the Holy Spirit is working whether we are listening or not, and every time we are praying or worshipping, we are doing so ‘in the spirit’, because the Spirit is the instigator of worship, the convicter of sins, our guide to the truth of the gospel, and our hope and peace.
This gives me great hope as a worship leader because I know that God is working and I don’t somehow need to save those whom I serve through my excellent worship leading and musicianship. And God’s Spirit gives in an assurance that God is doing something every week in worship, whether I see people falling down in the aisles or not. God is working, because God has sent his Spirit to fill us, guide us, empower us, shape us, and move us. Out of this hope my only response can be gratitude, thanksgiving, and praise, which is exactly what our attitude needs to be as leaders of worship.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 51:1-5, Acts 21:1-41, Romans 5:1-5, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Worship of God, Ralph P. Martin
Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership
Thinking Theologically 7:
Worship Leading For Transformation
READ:
Romans 12:1-2
DISCUSS:
1. As we read through the passage, what do you think it means to be ‘conformed to the pattern of the world?’ How are you conformed to the world around you? How does this happen to you and others?
2. What does it mean to be transformed? Do you feel like you are being more conformed or more transformed in your daily life?
3. How can worship be a place of transformation? How do we encounter God revealed in Jesus Christ in worship? How can we hinder transformation?
REFLECT:
As we continue to build a framework of worship, we need to discuss worship as transformation. As we know, worship is more than just a time to remember the salvation story and to express our whole lives to God; worship is is a divine meeting where we encounter the living God. And no-one who encounters the living God is ever the same. We are transformed through the encounter. So, this week we are going to discuss how we are transformed through worship.
In our passage Paul uses the language of the potter in discussing how God works in our lives. “To conform” means literally ‘to take the shape of something’, like a potter would take a lump of clay and conform it into the shape of a bowl or plate. Paul encourages (or warns us) not to ‘take the shape of’ the world around us’. The Message version of the Bible captures this sentiment well as it translates this verse: “Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.” So we are encouraged and commanded to be transformed.
“To be transformed”…. comes from the Greek word “Metamorpho”, where we get the word ‘metamorphosis.’ It means ‘to change the essential nature of something’. As a potter, you will never be able to ‘metamorpho’ clay….even though you turn it into a pot or a plate, it will always be essentially clay. This is the same with our walk with God. We can never ‘transform’ ourselves. This comes from God. Paul writes in Romans 6:2-4: “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Our essential nature as humans is sin, and we are 'dead' in our sins. Yet God changes our nature through Christ’s death and resurrection! This is essential for us to remember as we lead worship. We are not the instigators of transformation nor can we somehow make people transform through their own works. Transformation always comes from an encounter with THE HOLY OTHER, in Latin, the “Mysterium Tremendum” (or tremendous mystery).
Because of this, transformation always involves disruption, dis-orientation, dis-equilibrium, because you cannot encounter God and stay the same. Transformation is essential but often uncomfortable because it involves shifting paradigms, challenging long held assumptions, shifting perceptions of reality. We see examples of this throughout the Bible from Jacob wrestling with God at Bethel to Paul on the Damascus road. In fact, everyone who encounters God in the Bible experiences this type of encounter, which then leads to transformation.
The metamorphosis always begins and ends with God. And out of this encounter with God, we are called to ‘renew our minds’, which means to let the reality of the gospel become the most real thing to us. The process of metamorphosis is the process of becoming who we already ARE in Jesus Christ if we have accepted God’s grace through faith. So we are called to stay close to God in prayer, study of scripture, service, fellowship, worship and to challenge the values of the ‘aeon’ we live in. The call to ‘renew our minds’ is the daily call to renew our attitudes about life, ourselves, and each other, (Colossians 3:1-17) and to renew our perceptions about reality and world around us. (Colossians 1:15-23) .
So, as worship leaders we are to called to lead worship for transformation. Transformation occurs when people encounter God and are changed by that encounter. The Holy Spirit instigates this encounter and transforms us as Christ encounters us. As worship leaders we strive to provide ‘space for transformation’, and to engage people with the reality of the gospel through our worship. The question for us though is: Do we view our worship services as places where encounter happens and people are transformed through GRACE?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
John 2:3-21, 2 Corinthians 2:7-18, Colossians 1:15-23, 3:1-17, Philippians 3:20-21,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship Leading For Transformation
READ:
Romans 12:1-2
DISCUSS:
1. As we read through the passage, what do you think it means to be ‘conformed to the pattern of the world?’ How are you conformed to the world around you? How does this happen to you and others?
2. What does it mean to be transformed? Do you feel like you are being more conformed or more transformed in your daily life?
3. How can worship be a place of transformation? How do we encounter God revealed in Jesus Christ in worship? How can we hinder transformation?
REFLECT:
As we continue to build a framework of worship, we need to discuss worship as transformation. As we know, worship is more than just a time to remember the salvation story and to express our whole lives to God; worship is is a divine meeting where we encounter the living God. And no-one who encounters the living God is ever the same. We are transformed through the encounter. So, this week we are going to discuss how we are transformed through worship.
In our passage Paul uses the language of the potter in discussing how God works in our lives. “To conform” means literally ‘to take the shape of something’, like a potter would take a lump of clay and conform it into the shape of a bowl or plate. Paul encourages (or warns us) not to ‘take the shape of’ the world around us’. The Message version of the Bible captures this sentiment well as it translates this verse: “Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.” So we are encouraged and commanded to be transformed.
“To be transformed”…. comes from the Greek word “Metamorpho”, where we get the word ‘metamorphosis.’ It means ‘to change the essential nature of something’. As a potter, you will never be able to ‘metamorpho’ clay….even though you turn it into a pot or a plate, it will always be essentially clay. This is the same with our walk with God. We can never ‘transform’ ourselves. This comes from God. Paul writes in Romans 6:2-4: “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Our essential nature as humans is sin, and we are 'dead' in our sins. Yet God changes our nature through Christ’s death and resurrection! This is essential for us to remember as we lead worship. We are not the instigators of transformation nor can we somehow make people transform through their own works. Transformation always comes from an encounter with THE HOLY OTHER, in Latin, the “Mysterium Tremendum” (or tremendous mystery).
Because of this, transformation always involves disruption, dis-orientation, dis-equilibrium, because you cannot encounter God and stay the same. Transformation is essential but often uncomfortable because it involves shifting paradigms, challenging long held assumptions, shifting perceptions of reality. We see examples of this throughout the Bible from Jacob wrestling with God at Bethel to Paul on the Damascus road. In fact, everyone who encounters God in the Bible experiences this type of encounter, which then leads to transformation.
The metamorphosis always begins and ends with God. And out of this encounter with God, we are called to ‘renew our minds’, which means to let the reality of the gospel become the most real thing to us. The process of metamorphosis is the process of becoming who we already ARE in Jesus Christ if we have accepted God’s grace through faith. So we are called to stay close to God in prayer, study of scripture, service, fellowship, worship and to challenge the values of the ‘aeon’ we live in. The call to ‘renew our minds’ is the daily call to renew our attitudes about life, ourselves, and each other, (Colossians 3:1-17) and to renew our perceptions about reality and world around us. (Colossians 1:15-23) .
So, as worship leaders we are to called to lead worship for transformation. Transformation occurs when people encounter God and are changed by that encounter. The Holy Spirit instigates this encounter and transforms us as Christ encounters us. As worship leaders we strive to provide ‘space for transformation’, and to engage people with the reality of the gospel through our worship. The question for us though is: Do we view our worship services as places where encounter happens and people are transformed through GRACE?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
John 2:3-21, 2 Corinthians 2:7-18, Colossians 1:15-23, 3:1-17, Philippians 3:20-21,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership
Thinking Theologically about Worship 6
God’s NO and God’s YES: Worship as Encounter.
READ:
Colossians 1:15-23
DISCUSS:
1. Read together the first sentence from the ‘reflect’ section. Have you heard that before? What do think?
2. Have you ever had one of those experiences of transcendence that make you think ‘there must be bigger than me’ in nature or other places? How did those experiences shed light on who God is or isn’t for you?
3. Do you agree or disagree with Barth’s understanding of ‘God’s NO.’ (in the reflect section.) How do see this work out in the world?
4. Read Colossians 1:15-23. How is Jesus God’s YES?
5. Have you experience an ‘encounter with the risen Christ’ in worship?
6. How does the idea of ‘worship as encounter’ change your preparation as worship leaders and also your worship experience?
REFLECT:
“The mountains are my cathedral. I don’t need to worship in some building with a bunch of hypocrites to find God. God is all around me. All I need to do is go out and experience Him.”
All of us have heard this kind of statement before and we might even have thought or said something like this at times. And there is truth to the statement….God is all around us. God is everywhere. And we experience something beyond ourselves when we experience the beauty of nature in all its glory. Yet for Christians, there is an important distinction to be made, and this needs to be proclaimed by worship leaders and preachers each week at worship: the true God cannot be known by nature or any other human experience alone. We can experience God’s power, God’s creativity, God’s glory in part through nature and other experiences, but we cannot know God’s character, God’s nature, God’s deep passion and intense love.
Karl Barth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth), the famous German theologian, explains this well. He starts with the understanding that ‘God is wholly other’, which means that God is totally beyond the realm of human understanding and completely inaccessible by any innate human capability. God cannot be known by us in any way. So, when we experience those moments of transcendence in nature and other places, we are not experiencing God but only the faintest echo of the reality of God. We can’t know God through those experiences; we only know that God exists, that God is creative, and that God is powerful.
Barth describes this as the ‘NO’ and ‘YES’ of God. When we as worshippers try to approach God we firstly hear God’s ‘NO’ before we can hear His ‘YES’. God’s ‘NO’ states that humans cannot know God and experience His Grace by their own innate power, emotions, or experience. Without God’s Spirit breaking through we cannot encounter God. This is a hard statement for many churchgoers who attend services primarily to feel better about themselves, explore their own spirituality, or even to ‘connect’ with God. This is also a hard statement for worship traditions that emphasize emotional responses in their worship. God’s ‘NO’ reveals that we are unrighteous, unworthy, and unable to do anything to please God by our own power. It states that there is no way to manipulate God or even connect with God on the basis of our own humanity and no special way to ‘access’ God. This saves worshippers from works righteousness and the endless pursuit of being more open to the spirit, being a better worshipper, being more holy, righteous, sensitive to the Spirit, etc…
Only when we hear this and begin to understand God’s NO can we receive God’s ‘YES’. As Colossians 1:19 states: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Jesus is one who reconciles us to God. We cannot do it by our own power or works. God breaks through to our reality so that we can know God through the living Jesus. Jesus is God’s YES.
So we can only know God through Jesus, but we also can only experience God through an encounter with Jesus Christ. God’s NO is that we cannot know Him or please Him by any of our strivings. Yet God’s YES is that through Jesus Christ God comes to US. So in Jesus Christ we can encounter God in a new way through worship. The word encounter literally means to ‘meet someone unexpectedly or to meet someone in conflict’. Usually, ever Sunday, we and our congregation come to our church services for many different reasons…. We may come out of obligation, to meet with friends, or because we want to to hear something that will impact our lives. Yet regardless of our reasons, God through Jesus Christ encounters us in worship.
Barth describes that this most often happens through proclamation of the Word in song, prayer, reading, and preaching. Barth writes this: “Jesus breaks into our reality through the proclamation of scripture, spoken, sung, or read. So through proclamation “the new robe of righteousness is thrown over (our words, songs, etc..) and even in its earthly character it becomes a new event, the event of God’s own speaking in earthly events, the event of the authoritative vicariate of Jesus Christ.”
Through proclamation we hear Jesus actually speaking to us and we encounter Jesus as our contemporary. This brings scripture alive and gives our worship a new meaning and power that it didn’t have before. Though the proclamation of worship in song, reading, preaching, praying, meditation, etc…we come into the presence of the living Christ and receive His love, grace, and guidance, not based on our merit or ability but through God’s grace alone. Only through God’s “YES” is there any possibility of responding to God in worship and only in the encounter can there be dialogue with God.
So, as we lead worship as musicians and leaders, we can trust that something far greater is happening as we proclaim God’s goodness and mercy through Jesus Christ. God is encountering His people through the living Christ. So it is our task to provide a ‘sacred space’ for this encounter to happen and to proclaim God’s NO and YES clearly, week after week, so our people can be surprised by Grace as Christ encounters them where they are.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Acts 3:11-20, Romans 1:18-32, Galatians 1:6-10, 1 John 2:18-3:1
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Church Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Word of God by Karl Barth (I hesitate to put this down because it is such hard reading….as every seminarian knows. Yet….if you keep in mind his theological method (that I just very briefly skimmed) it should help you understand Him.)
God’s NO and God’s YES: Worship as Encounter.
READ:
Colossians 1:15-23
DISCUSS:
1. Read together the first sentence from the ‘reflect’ section. Have you heard that before? What do think?
2. Have you ever had one of those experiences of transcendence that make you think ‘there must be bigger than me’ in nature or other places? How did those experiences shed light on who God is or isn’t for you?
3. Do you agree or disagree with Barth’s understanding of ‘God’s NO.’ (in the reflect section.) How do see this work out in the world?
4. Read Colossians 1:15-23. How is Jesus God’s YES?
5. Have you experience an ‘encounter with the risen Christ’ in worship?
6. How does the idea of ‘worship as encounter’ change your preparation as worship leaders and also your worship experience?
REFLECT:
“The mountains are my cathedral. I don’t need to worship in some building with a bunch of hypocrites to find God. God is all around me. All I need to do is go out and experience Him.”
All of us have heard this kind of statement before and we might even have thought or said something like this at times. And there is truth to the statement….God is all around us. God is everywhere. And we experience something beyond ourselves when we experience the beauty of nature in all its glory. Yet for Christians, there is an important distinction to be made, and this needs to be proclaimed by worship leaders and preachers each week at worship: the true God cannot be known by nature or any other human experience alone. We can experience God’s power, God’s creativity, God’s glory in part through nature and other experiences, but we cannot know God’s character, God’s nature, God’s deep passion and intense love.
Karl Barth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth), the famous German theologian, explains this well. He starts with the understanding that ‘God is wholly other’, which means that God is totally beyond the realm of human understanding and completely inaccessible by any innate human capability. God cannot be known by us in any way. So, when we experience those moments of transcendence in nature and other places, we are not experiencing God but only the faintest echo of the reality of God. We can’t know God through those experiences; we only know that God exists, that God is creative, and that God is powerful.
Barth describes this as the ‘NO’ and ‘YES’ of God. When we as worshippers try to approach God we firstly hear God’s ‘NO’ before we can hear His ‘YES’. God’s ‘NO’ states that humans cannot know God and experience His Grace by their own innate power, emotions, or experience. Without God’s Spirit breaking through we cannot encounter God. This is a hard statement for many churchgoers who attend services primarily to feel better about themselves, explore their own spirituality, or even to ‘connect’ with God. This is also a hard statement for worship traditions that emphasize emotional responses in their worship. God’s ‘NO’ reveals that we are unrighteous, unworthy, and unable to do anything to please God by our own power. It states that there is no way to manipulate God or even connect with God on the basis of our own humanity and no special way to ‘access’ God. This saves worshippers from works righteousness and the endless pursuit of being more open to the spirit, being a better worshipper, being more holy, righteous, sensitive to the Spirit, etc…
Only when we hear this and begin to understand God’s NO can we receive God’s ‘YES’. As Colossians 1:19 states: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Jesus is one who reconciles us to God. We cannot do it by our own power or works. God breaks through to our reality so that we can know God through the living Jesus. Jesus is God’s YES.
So we can only know God through Jesus, but we also can only experience God through an encounter with Jesus Christ. God’s NO is that we cannot know Him or please Him by any of our strivings. Yet God’s YES is that through Jesus Christ God comes to US. So in Jesus Christ we can encounter God in a new way through worship. The word encounter literally means to ‘meet someone unexpectedly or to meet someone in conflict’. Usually, ever Sunday, we and our congregation come to our church services for many different reasons…. We may come out of obligation, to meet with friends, or because we want to to hear something that will impact our lives. Yet regardless of our reasons, God through Jesus Christ encounters us in worship.
Barth describes that this most often happens through proclamation of the Word in song, prayer, reading, and preaching. Barth writes this: “Jesus breaks into our reality through the proclamation of scripture, spoken, sung, or read. So through proclamation “the new robe of righteousness is thrown over (our words, songs, etc..) and even in its earthly character it becomes a new event, the event of God’s own speaking in earthly events, the event of the authoritative vicariate of Jesus Christ.”
Through proclamation we hear Jesus actually speaking to us and we encounter Jesus as our contemporary. This brings scripture alive and gives our worship a new meaning and power that it didn’t have before. Though the proclamation of worship in song, reading, preaching, praying, meditation, etc…we come into the presence of the living Christ and receive His love, grace, and guidance, not based on our merit or ability but through God’s grace alone. Only through God’s “YES” is there any possibility of responding to God in worship and only in the encounter can there be dialogue with God.
So, as we lead worship as musicians and leaders, we can trust that something far greater is happening as we proclaim God’s goodness and mercy through Jesus Christ. God is encountering His people through the living Christ. So it is our task to provide a ‘sacred space’ for this encounter to happen and to proclaim God’s NO and YES clearly, week after week, so our people can be surprised by Grace as Christ encounters them where they are.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Acts 3:11-20, Romans 1:18-32, Galatians 1:6-10, 1 John 2:18-3:1
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Church Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Word of God by Karl Barth (I hesitate to put this down because it is such hard reading….as every seminarian knows. Yet….if you keep in mind his theological method (that I just very briefly skimmed) it should help you understand Him.)
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Astonishing Grace: Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership
Thinking Theologically about Worship 5
MORE THAN WORDS: Worship as Emotional Expression
READ: Psalm 95
DISCUSS:
1. As we look back at ‘worship as remembrance’, how does the psalmist call the people to remember salvation history in the psalm?
2. What is the emotional response that we see in this psalm? How do we see that expressed? What other emotional responses in worship have you noticed in the Bible? (read Psalms 10:1, 12:1-2, 22:1-8, 44: 23-26, 130)
3. What is unique about music and singing in expressing our deepest emotions? How do you see this happening in worship?
4. Do you view worship as a ‘sacred space’ to share our deepest emotions, thoughts, fears, longings, and hopes to God? Why or why not?
5. What are some ways that we can create an environment where people can feel safe to express their whole lives to the God of Grace?? What are the obstacles?
6. How does music and singing in worship focus us and put us in a right frame of mind to encounter God?
REFLECT:
All of worship is response, as Ralph Martin writes: “All worship of God finds its origin in the objective ‘moment’ when God acts and comes into our world in free love. From that ‘moment’ worship becomes the human response to divine revelation.” As we discussed last week, we respond to God in worship when we remember God’s work and orient our lives on Him. This week we are discussing how we respond to God by expressing our whole lives to God in worship.
1. Worship is Emotional.
Worship of the triune God is inherently emotional, because worship cuts to the core of our very being. Worship is encounter with the living God, our creator, lover, redeemer, friend, and Lord, so worship naturally evokes our deepest longings, fears, hopes, frustrations, insecurities, gladness, doubts, and joys. We see this throughout the scriptures, but it is especially portrayed in the Psalms. Walter Brueggeman, Old Testament Scholar, writes this: “The surprise of Israel’s prayer and worship is that the extravagance of praise does not silence or censor Israel’s need but seems to legitimate and authorize a second extravagance, the extravagance of complaint, lament, accusation, petition, indignation, assault, insistence.”
I know from my own life and from many, many people that I have talked to about issues of faith that we have a hard time giving God the hardest and most vulnerable parts of our lives. We have a hard time sharing our doubts, insecurities, worries, and deepest fears, and sometimes we even have a hard time sharing our joys and triumphs, maybe worrying that God does not delight in them with us. The Psalms, though, show us a different understanding of worship, As Brueggeman writes: “The Psalms draw our whole lives under the rule of God, where everything may be submitted to Yahweh.” The Hebrew people understood this, so they felt comfortable bringing to God all that they were feeling, from every aspect and movement of their lives, whether they were praising God or yelling ‘my God why have you forsaken me!’, and they trusted that God was listening and responding.
2. Music and singing in worship are unique languages of emotional expression.
Music has a unique way of helping us express our deepest emotions, and that is why most of the Psalms were meant to be sung in call and response style. We all know how music has impacted and shaped our lives. And we all know how we look to music to echo or express our frustrations, anger, sadness, and joys. This is why music and singing have always been a part of worship, in both Old Testament and New Testament worship, because they are natural responses to ‘divine revelation’.
When we experience God’s mighty works and goodness it is a natural response to “sing for joy to the Lord” and “extol Him with music and song.” (Psalms 95.1) Music is a universal part of the human experience and reflects our non-cognitive feelings and emotions. It captures emotion, mood, feelings, and gives expression to what can’t be said through speech alone. “Consequently,” Stanley Grenz argues, “it is fitting that the people of God express their Christian consciousness through music. In doing so we offer to God our emotions in addition to our creeds, our feelings as well as our beliefs. We offer to him the joy we sense because of His goodness; we share in the sorrow and pain Christ bore on the cross; and we anticipate the day our Lord will return.”
3. Worship is a safe, ‘sacred space’ to give our whole lives to God.
Worship is also safe ‘sacred space’ for us to give our emotions, thoughts, fears, longings, and hopes to God. Johannes Reidel comments in his book ‘Soul Music’ how this tenet has been foundational historically in the worship of black churches in America. Since all musical, artistic and emotional expression was oppressed and squelched by white slave owners, Christian hymns, music, and songs became the “legal place to use up the spiritual and emotional reservoir dammed up by the experience of slavery.” In worship they could be reminded of their history, traditions, and humanity while putting their fears and hope in God.
We also need the church in general, and our worship services specifically, to be ‘sacred spaces’ where we can come to express our deepest emotions, pains, longings, hopes, dreams, doubts, worries, joys, and fears to a real God who encounters us in the real world. Through worship God has provided these safe places for the community to cry out and encounter the living, resurrected Christ in a way that is transformational. This kind of ‘sacred space’ can’t be expressed through preaching and liturgy alone, so that is why sing together, have moments of silence, prayer, waiting, and provide other spaces for people to respond with their whole lives.
4. We need preparation and adjustment to give our whole lives to God in worship
A common frustration among worship leaders is that we just don’t see our congregation responding emotionally enough. This may not be true if you are a Pentecostal/Charismatic worship leader (maybe you want them to be less emotional and focus on the message more!) but if you are in a Reformed church, or another denominational church often we look out at our congregation and see may stoic looks and even some that look outright bored!
Even if we see these types of responses at times, we need to be reminded that we and our congregation can’t just flip a switch to focus on God and give their whole lives to Him. We all need to turn out thoughts and feelings from what we have been focusing on unto God. This is why music and singing serve an essential purpose in worship. No element of worship can put us in the right frame of mind like worship music and singing. Approaching God and being in a worshipful spirit requires preparation and adjustment, and worship music has the ability to lift our spirits to new heights of contemplation and expectancy so that we can give God the honor that He deserves.
Singing and sacred music are the most popular elements of Christian worship because of their ability to put us in safe place to respond with our whole being to God and prepare fully to meet Him in worship. Worship also has a communal dimension that explains its popularity and necessity. As Geoffery Wainwright argues that “familiar words and music…unite the whole assembly in active participation to a degree which is hardly true of any other component in the liturgy.” Yet often our music and singing are used in churches merely as garnish for the liturgy and sermon. This is especially true in traditional mainline denominations where most of the ‘worship wars’ are waged. Worship music is a corporate expression of praise and needs to be central to the churches service for there to be true worship. Music and song are not just ‘fillers’ but, as Wainwright says: “divine worship demands and must receive the concentrated attention of all concerned.” Any less is not worship but entertainment.
Hopefully this has helped to you to be encouraged that what you do as worship leaders and musicians is vitally important and I also hope this has spurned some ideas of how we can help our congregations express their whole lives to God in worship and why it is important. If you have any ideas of how this can be done, please post them on the blog!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 22, Psalm 40: 1-3, Psalm 130, Colossians 3:12-14
REFERENCES (for further reading)
I’ve got a lot for you to check out. All are worthy reads:
1. The Message of the Psalms, by Walter Brueggemann
2. Soul Music Black and White by Johannes Reidel
3. Worship: its Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
4. Doxology, the Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life, by Geoffery Wainwright
5. The Worship of God, by Ralph P. Martin
6. Theology for the Community of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
MORE THAN WORDS: Worship as Emotional Expression
READ: Psalm 95
DISCUSS:
1. As we look back at ‘worship as remembrance’, how does the psalmist call the people to remember salvation history in the psalm?
2. What is the emotional response that we see in this psalm? How do we see that expressed? What other emotional responses in worship have you noticed in the Bible? (read Psalms 10:1, 12:1-2, 22:1-8, 44: 23-26, 130)
3. What is unique about music and singing in expressing our deepest emotions? How do you see this happening in worship?
4. Do you view worship as a ‘sacred space’ to share our deepest emotions, thoughts, fears, longings, and hopes to God? Why or why not?
5. What are some ways that we can create an environment where people can feel safe to express their whole lives to the God of Grace?? What are the obstacles?
6. How does music and singing in worship focus us and put us in a right frame of mind to encounter God?
REFLECT:
All of worship is response, as Ralph Martin writes: “All worship of God finds its origin in the objective ‘moment’ when God acts and comes into our world in free love. From that ‘moment’ worship becomes the human response to divine revelation.” As we discussed last week, we respond to God in worship when we remember God’s work and orient our lives on Him. This week we are discussing how we respond to God by expressing our whole lives to God in worship.
1. Worship is Emotional.
Worship of the triune God is inherently emotional, because worship cuts to the core of our very being. Worship is encounter with the living God, our creator, lover, redeemer, friend, and Lord, so worship naturally evokes our deepest longings, fears, hopes, frustrations, insecurities, gladness, doubts, and joys. We see this throughout the scriptures, but it is especially portrayed in the Psalms. Walter Brueggeman, Old Testament Scholar, writes this: “The surprise of Israel’s prayer and worship is that the extravagance of praise does not silence or censor Israel’s need but seems to legitimate and authorize a second extravagance, the extravagance of complaint, lament, accusation, petition, indignation, assault, insistence.”
I know from my own life and from many, many people that I have talked to about issues of faith that we have a hard time giving God the hardest and most vulnerable parts of our lives. We have a hard time sharing our doubts, insecurities, worries, and deepest fears, and sometimes we even have a hard time sharing our joys and triumphs, maybe worrying that God does not delight in them with us. The Psalms, though, show us a different understanding of worship, As Brueggeman writes: “The Psalms draw our whole lives under the rule of God, where everything may be submitted to Yahweh.” The Hebrew people understood this, so they felt comfortable bringing to God all that they were feeling, from every aspect and movement of their lives, whether they were praising God or yelling ‘my God why have you forsaken me!’, and they trusted that God was listening and responding.
2. Music and singing in worship are unique languages of emotional expression.
Music has a unique way of helping us express our deepest emotions, and that is why most of the Psalms were meant to be sung in call and response style. We all know how music has impacted and shaped our lives. And we all know how we look to music to echo or express our frustrations, anger, sadness, and joys. This is why music and singing have always been a part of worship, in both Old Testament and New Testament worship, because they are natural responses to ‘divine revelation’.
When we experience God’s mighty works and goodness it is a natural response to “sing for joy to the Lord” and “extol Him with music and song.” (Psalms 95.1) Music is a universal part of the human experience and reflects our non-cognitive feelings and emotions. It captures emotion, mood, feelings, and gives expression to what can’t be said through speech alone. “Consequently,” Stanley Grenz argues, “it is fitting that the people of God express their Christian consciousness through music. In doing so we offer to God our emotions in addition to our creeds, our feelings as well as our beliefs. We offer to him the joy we sense because of His goodness; we share in the sorrow and pain Christ bore on the cross; and we anticipate the day our Lord will return.”
3. Worship is a safe, ‘sacred space’ to give our whole lives to God.
Worship is also safe ‘sacred space’ for us to give our emotions, thoughts, fears, longings, and hopes to God. Johannes Reidel comments in his book ‘Soul Music’ how this tenet has been foundational historically in the worship of black churches in America. Since all musical, artistic and emotional expression was oppressed and squelched by white slave owners, Christian hymns, music, and songs became the “legal place to use up the spiritual and emotional reservoir dammed up by the experience of slavery.” In worship they could be reminded of their history, traditions, and humanity while putting their fears and hope in God.
We also need the church in general, and our worship services specifically, to be ‘sacred spaces’ where we can come to express our deepest emotions, pains, longings, hopes, dreams, doubts, worries, joys, and fears to a real God who encounters us in the real world. Through worship God has provided these safe places for the community to cry out and encounter the living, resurrected Christ in a way that is transformational. This kind of ‘sacred space’ can’t be expressed through preaching and liturgy alone, so that is why sing together, have moments of silence, prayer, waiting, and provide other spaces for people to respond with their whole lives.
4. We need preparation and adjustment to give our whole lives to God in worship
A common frustration among worship leaders is that we just don’t see our congregation responding emotionally enough. This may not be true if you are a Pentecostal/Charismatic worship leader (maybe you want them to be less emotional and focus on the message more!) but if you are in a Reformed church, or another denominational church often we look out at our congregation and see may stoic looks and even some that look outright bored!
Even if we see these types of responses at times, we need to be reminded that we and our congregation can’t just flip a switch to focus on God and give their whole lives to Him. We all need to turn out thoughts and feelings from what we have been focusing on unto God. This is why music and singing serve an essential purpose in worship. No element of worship can put us in the right frame of mind like worship music and singing. Approaching God and being in a worshipful spirit requires preparation and adjustment, and worship music has the ability to lift our spirits to new heights of contemplation and expectancy so that we can give God the honor that He deserves.
Singing and sacred music are the most popular elements of Christian worship because of their ability to put us in safe place to respond with our whole being to God and prepare fully to meet Him in worship. Worship also has a communal dimension that explains its popularity and necessity. As Geoffery Wainwright argues that “familiar words and music…unite the whole assembly in active participation to a degree which is hardly true of any other component in the liturgy.” Yet often our music and singing are used in churches merely as garnish for the liturgy and sermon. This is especially true in traditional mainline denominations where most of the ‘worship wars’ are waged. Worship music is a corporate expression of praise and needs to be central to the churches service for there to be true worship. Music and song are not just ‘fillers’ but, as Wainwright says: “divine worship demands and must receive the concentrated attention of all concerned.” Any less is not worship but entertainment.
Hopefully this has helped to you to be encouraged that what you do as worship leaders and musicians is vitally important and I also hope this has spurned some ideas of how we can help our congregations express their whole lives to God in worship and why it is important. If you have any ideas of how this can be done, please post them on the blog!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 22, Psalm 40: 1-3, Psalm 130, Colossians 3:12-14
REFERENCES (for further reading)
I’ve got a lot for you to check out. All are worthy reads:
1. The Message of the Psalms, by Walter Brueggemann
2. Soul Music Black and White by Johannes Reidel
3. Worship: its Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
4. Doxology, the Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life, by Geoffery Wainwright
5. The Worship of God, by Ralph P. Martin
6. Theology for the Community of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 13
Thinking Theologically 4: Worship as Remembrance
READ:
Jonah 2: 7-9
DISCUSS:
1. What happened when Jonah remembered God? What is role of ‘remembering’ in worship?
2. How is idolatry connected to ‘forgetting’ in our passage? How does this happen to us?
3. How does worship ‘orient’ us?
4. Think about the last two worship services you attended. If you take away the sermon, what ‘story’ would the other elements of worship (from songs, prayers, etc…, to peoples demeanor on stage, etc…) be telling? If you had never stepped into a church before what would you understand of the gospel through the service?
5. How are we doing at ‘recapitulating salvation history’ each week as worship leaders?
REFLECT:
As we continue our section on ‘thinking theologically’ we are going to spend the next few weeks thinking together about how to understand worship. In this section we have already discussed how important it is to understand our own theology and how we are theologically teaching our congregation through the songs we sing and the ways we lead. Over the next few weeks we are going think through a theological framework of worship, building from our definition of worship as ‘giving worth and glory to God’ and seeking to understand how worship functions in the worshipping community and our lives individually.
We begin with worship as remembrance. As Robert Webber writes, worship in its most basic form “celebrates God’s saving deed in Jesus Christ,” and in the words of theologian Stanley Grenz: “in worship we gather to “commemorate the foundational events of our spiritual existence, at the center of which is the action of God in Christ delivering humankind from the bondage of sin.”
Christian worship first and foremost remembers the salvation story; that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has always been seeking to save and deliver humanity from sin and decay, and God does this through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Any worship time or church service that doesn’t tell this story through word, song, and other expression is simply not Christian worship.
As we look back through scripture we see this idea of worship as ‘remembering the story’ is the central focus of worship. From the beginning God remembered His covenant with His people (Genesis 9:15-16, Exodus 2:24-25, 1 Chronicles 16:12-15, Isaiah 54:4-7, Luke 1:68-75) and asked only that his people would remember Him as well. (Deuteronomy 4:10, 5:15, Deuteronomy 8, etc…) Remembering was the foundation of Israel’s practice and worship: the law, the feasts, and worship at the temple (Deuteronomy 4:9-14, 8:1-20-the law, 16:3-feasts, Exodus 3:12-worship) and the people of Israel, especially in times of hardship, often would ask God to remember His covenant with them and save them. (Job 10:9, Psalm 74:2-22, Jeremiah 14:21). When we forget God we fall into sin and begin to worship other Gods (Deuteronomy 9:7-23, Isaiah 17:10-14, Romans 1:21-32) and when we remember God’s love and work we are drawn closer to God and God’s purposes (Ecclesiasties 12:1-8, Psalm 119: 49-56, Jonah 2:7-9, John 16:1-4, Matthew 7:25-34).
A steady example of how worship as remembrance works (for me at least!) is my iphone. Before I bought an iphone I was constantly getting lost, as many of you know. Especially on streets here in Den Haag which, like most European streets, often change names, become one ways, or just end without notice, I would regularly be 30 minutes late because of getting lost (especially in the older parts of town). But then I got an iphone and everything changed. Especially the GPS on the iphone oriented me to exactly where I was and how to get where I needed to go. It is not perfect and I sometimes still get lost, but I have at least shaved 20 minutes off my old get lost time!
And this is the same with worship. In worship we are oriented on God and God’s ways. Often we lose our way and forget God in our lives, so we come to worship to be oriented again on God and to remember again who God is and who we are because of God’s great love and care. And out of this comes a new perspective on our lives and the world around us.
So as worship leaders it is essential that every week, through our songs, liturgy, preaching, times of silence and speaking, times of prayer, spontaneous worship, etc…. that we tell the story. And it is not enough just to talk about and honor ‘God’. Very religion honors some version of ‘God’. Similarly, it is not our task to solely focus on ‘being good people’, because all religions focus on morality. Our Christian worship gains its form and uniqueness in God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. As J.J Von Allen writes: “Christian worship is not just about honoring God but what God has done through Jesus Christ. Our worship begins and ends with Christ and recapitulates salvation history.”
Every week our task is to ‘recapitulate salvation history’ and to remember God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. If a non-Christian who had never stepped into a church before came to your service, how much of the gospel would they understand through your worship time…not just the sermon, but the songs we sing, the ways we act, and all the other elements of worship? How are we doing at helping people orient their lives on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and view their lives through the lens of Christ?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Deuteronomy 8: 1-18, Psalm 119: 49-56, Chronicles 16:7-15, 2 Timothy 2:8-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship: It’s Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
Theology For The Community Of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
READ:
Jonah 2: 7-9
DISCUSS:
1. What happened when Jonah remembered God? What is role of ‘remembering’ in worship?
2. How is idolatry connected to ‘forgetting’ in our passage? How does this happen to us?
3. How does worship ‘orient’ us?
4. Think about the last two worship services you attended. If you take away the sermon, what ‘story’ would the other elements of worship (from songs, prayers, etc…, to peoples demeanor on stage, etc…) be telling? If you had never stepped into a church before what would you understand of the gospel through the service?
5. How are we doing at ‘recapitulating salvation history’ each week as worship leaders?
REFLECT:
As we continue our section on ‘thinking theologically’ we are going to spend the next few weeks thinking together about how to understand worship. In this section we have already discussed how important it is to understand our own theology and how we are theologically teaching our congregation through the songs we sing and the ways we lead. Over the next few weeks we are going think through a theological framework of worship, building from our definition of worship as ‘giving worth and glory to God’ and seeking to understand how worship functions in the worshipping community and our lives individually.
We begin with worship as remembrance. As Robert Webber writes, worship in its most basic form “celebrates God’s saving deed in Jesus Christ,” and in the words of theologian Stanley Grenz: “in worship we gather to “commemorate the foundational events of our spiritual existence, at the center of which is the action of God in Christ delivering humankind from the bondage of sin.”
Christian worship first and foremost remembers the salvation story; that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has always been seeking to save and deliver humanity from sin and decay, and God does this through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Any worship time or church service that doesn’t tell this story through word, song, and other expression is simply not Christian worship.
As we look back through scripture we see this idea of worship as ‘remembering the story’ is the central focus of worship. From the beginning God remembered His covenant with His people (Genesis 9:15-16, Exodus 2:24-25, 1 Chronicles 16:12-15, Isaiah 54:4-7, Luke 1:68-75) and asked only that his people would remember Him as well. (Deuteronomy 4:10, 5:15, Deuteronomy 8, etc…) Remembering was the foundation of Israel’s practice and worship: the law, the feasts, and worship at the temple (Deuteronomy 4:9-14, 8:1-20-the law, 16:3-feasts, Exodus 3:12-worship) and the people of Israel, especially in times of hardship, often would ask God to remember His covenant with them and save them. (Job 10:9, Psalm 74:2-22, Jeremiah 14:21). When we forget God we fall into sin and begin to worship other Gods (Deuteronomy 9:7-23, Isaiah 17:10-14, Romans 1:21-32) and when we remember God’s love and work we are drawn closer to God and God’s purposes (Ecclesiasties 12:1-8, Psalm 119: 49-56, Jonah 2:7-9, John 16:1-4, Matthew 7:25-34).
A steady example of how worship as remembrance works (for me at least!) is my iphone. Before I bought an iphone I was constantly getting lost, as many of you know. Especially on streets here in Den Haag which, like most European streets, often change names, become one ways, or just end without notice, I would regularly be 30 minutes late because of getting lost (especially in the older parts of town). But then I got an iphone and everything changed. Especially the GPS on the iphone oriented me to exactly where I was and how to get where I needed to go. It is not perfect and I sometimes still get lost, but I have at least shaved 20 minutes off my old get lost time!
And this is the same with worship. In worship we are oriented on God and God’s ways. Often we lose our way and forget God in our lives, so we come to worship to be oriented again on God and to remember again who God is and who we are because of God’s great love and care. And out of this comes a new perspective on our lives and the world around us.
So as worship leaders it is essential that every week, through our songs, liturgy, preaching, times of silence and speaking, times of prayer, spontaneous worship, etc…. that we tell the story. And it is not enough just to talk about and honor ‘God’. Very religion honors some version of ‘God’. Similarly, it is not our task to solely focus on ‘being good people’, because all religions focus on morality. Our Christian worship gains its form and uniqueness in God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. As J.J Von Allen writes: “Christian worship is not just about honoring God but what God has done through Jesus Christ. Our worship begins and ends with Christ and recapitulates salvation history.”
Every week our task is to ‘recapitulate salvation history’ and to remember God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. If a non-Christian who had never stepped into a church before came to your service, how much of the gospel would they understand through your worship time…not just the sermon, but the songs we sing, the ways we act, and all the other elements of worship? How are we doing at helping people orient their lives on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and view their lives through the lens of Christ?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Deuteronomy 8: 1-18, Psalm 119: 49-56, Chronicles 16:7-15, 2 Timothy 2:8-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship: It’s Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
Theology For The Community Of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 12
Thinking Theologically 3: Who Is The Audience?
READ: Psalm 96:4-10
DISCUSS:
1. Think about the last concert you went to. What make it great? What made it terrible? Think about the last worship service you attended and ask the same questions.
2. What is the danger in evaluating worship services based on our personal preferences?
3. How do you view ‘performance’ in worship? Does it feel different to play music in church and to play in a bar or club? What is that difference?
4. Have you been in churches where you have felt that worship is primarily about performance? Describe your experience. Did it detract from worship? How?
5. According to our passage, who is the audience of our worship? Who, then, are the performers? How does this change our understanding of performance in worship?
REFLECT:
Think back on a favorite concert/opera/performance that you have seen in the past year. What made it amazing for you? Was it the singers beautiful voice, the orchestra or the bands musical versatility and excellence, the well crafted songs or stage presentation? Now think back on one of the worst performances you have ever heard. What made it terrible? What did you talk about with your friends/family afterwards?
Just as with a concert or performance we find ourselves making the same types of observations about our worship services. Observations like: ‘the choir sounded amazing!’, ‘the sermon was boring’, ‘I didn’t like that song the praise band played’, ‘the service was too long/too short’, etc… These often become the main topics of conversation after church, and while this is not necessarily wrong or bad, it could lead us into danger if we are not careful.
The danger is this: to miss who the audience of worship is. If we go to a concert or a performance then we are the audience: we have paid our money and we want to be entertained. The experience is based on us, the consumer. But when we come to church the audience is actually not us at all, but GOD. We have come to praise God and give our lives to the creator of all things, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 96:6-8: “O nations of the world recognize the Lord; recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong. Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in all His holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him. Tell all the nations, “The Lord reigns!” The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly.”
The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship throughout the week is to give God the glory He deserves. As Ralph Martin writes in his great book on worship, “The Worship of God”: “Worshippers embark on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy their needs or to make them feel better or to minister to their aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself.”
So our question changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ This changes everything: our worship planning and practicing, the ways we play our instruments, sing, and act in worship, and ways we approach worship in general.
And as we focus on God we find something wonderful happening….we experience God’s Grace and goodness. Worship leader Graham Kendrick writes: “Worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, though it is marvelous to discover that in giving God pleasure, we ourselves enter into what can become our richest and most wholesome experience in life.” May we all experience the wonder of God’s Grace as we focus on Him in worship!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Chron 16:28-30, Psalm 29:1-4, Philippians 2:9-11, Revelation 5:11-14, 7:9
REFERENCES (for further reading)
"The Worship of God", by Ralph Martin
"A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman
READ: Psalm 96:4-10
DISCUSS:
1. Think about the last concert you went to. What make it great? What made it terrible? Think about the last worship service you attended and ask the same questions.
2. What is the danger in evaluating worship services based on our personal preferences?
3. How do you view ‘performance’ in worship? Does it feel different to play music in church and to play in a bar or club? What is that difference?
4. Have you been in churches where you have felt that worship is primarily about performance? Describe your experience. Did it detract from worship? How?
5. According to our passage, who is the audience of our worship? Who, then, are the performers? How does this change our understanding of performance in worship?
REFLECT:
Think back on a favorite concert/opera/performance that you have seen in the past year. What made it amazing for you? Was it the singers beautiful voice, the orchestra or the bands musical versatility and excellence, the well crafted songs or stage presentation? Now think back on one of the worst performances you have ever heard. What made it terrible? What did you talk about with your friends/family afterwards?
Just as with a concert or performance we find ourselves making the same types of observations about our worship services. Observations like: ‘the choir sounded amazing!’, ‘the sermon was boring’, ‘I didn’t like that song the praise band played’, ‘the service was too long/too short’, etc… These often become the main topics of conversation after church, and while this is not necessarily wrong or bad, it could lead us into danger if we are not careful.
The danger is this: to miss who the audience of worship is. If we go to a concert or a performance then we are the audience: we have paid our money and we want to be entertained. The experience is based on us, the consumer. But when we come to church the audience is actually not us at all, but GOD. We have come to praise God and give our lives to the creator of all things, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 96:6-8: “O nations of the world recognize the Lord; recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong. Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in all His holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him. Tell all the nations, “The Lord reigns!” The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly.”
The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship throughout the week is to give God the glory He deserves. As Ralph Martin writes in his great book on worship, “The Worship of God”: “Worshippers embark on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy their needs or to make them feel better or to minister to their aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself.”
So our question changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ This changes everything: our worship planning and practicing, the ways we play our instruments, sing, and act in worship, and ways we approach worship in general.
And as we focus on God we find something wonderful happening….we experience God’s Grace and goodness. Worship leader Graham Kendrick writes: “Worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, though it is marvelous to discover that in giving God pleasure, we ourselves enter into what can become our richest and most wholesome experience in life.” May we all experience the wonder of God’s Grace as we focus on Him in worship!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Chron 16:28-30, Psalm 29:1-4, Philippians 2:9-11, Revelation 5:11-14, 7:9
REFERENCES (for further reading)
"The Worship of God", by Ralph Martin
"A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 11
Thinking Theologically 2: Which God Do We Worship?
READ: Matthew 9:9-13
DISCUSS:
1. What do you think it would have meant to be a sinner in Matthew 9:9-13? How would it have meant to be a Pharisee? What are the implications on our worship?
2. After reading the quote by Will Willimon (below), how can we miss God in worship? Or worship the wrong God? How does this happen? What God our we worshipping?
3. What does God desire of us in our worship? What do you think God thinks of our churches worship?
REFLECT:
In Matthew 9:9-13 we witness Jesus teaching both the ‘sinners’ and the ‘religious’ people of the day a lesson about worship. In the passage Jesus calls an outsider and sinner, Matthew, to become one of his followers. It is a beautiful occasion, yet it’s tarnished that evening when the ‘religious’ of the day, the Pharisees, crash Matthew’s dinner party and criticize Jesus’ consorting with Matthew and other outcasts and sinners like him. Jesus responds to them with this radical statement: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Imagine being a ‘sinner’ in the room that evening. You are reminded everyday that you are an outsider and ‘unclean’ by everyone around you, but now this Rabbi is proclaiming that you are at the center of God’s heart and the focus of God’s ministry! You would want to worship this God not out of guilt or fear, but out of gratitude for God’s love.
But now put yourself in the Pharisee’s shoes. You have lived your whole life meticulously following the law, as God commanded in the Old Testament. Yet now this Rabbi comes out of nowhere and tells you that you have forgotten who God really is and lost the heart of worship. Jesus even quotes from Hosea 6:6: “for I desire mercy and not sacrifice” to stress the point that in all your religiousness you have missed God. You would be offended!
Throughout gospels Jesus was very concerned that the followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had forgotten who God really is. They read the scriptures and followed God’s law, but their ‘religiousness’ actually led them away from the God who welcomes outsiders and calls sinners home. They missed God in worship.
And this is our danger as well in the church of Jesus Christ 2000 years later. In a sense, we as Christians are the new ‘Pharisees’, and we need to be vigilant to not worship religion or our culture in place of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As William Willimon writes in Worship As Pastoral Care:
“To ask the theological question is simply to ask, What does our worship say about God?, or the corollary, What does God say to us about our worship? Surely this is the toughest and most basic question to be asked, but curiously, it is often the last question we ask. If we think about our worship at all, usually we think in terms of ‘what do I want from our worship?” or, ‘what do my people want from worship?’ without being so daring as to ask , ‘what does God want from worship?’ Is our worship the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or is it the worship of Baal, Aphrodite, and Cupid? Does our worship have integrity measured by the Biblical standards for what our prayer and praise should be? So much of our worship is self-centered, mundane, and tame. How are we to be faithful to the gospel; how do we know the difference between secular idolatry and Christian liturgy, unless we ask, and in some means, answer, the theological question?”
God is both the source and the object of our worship, so it is essential for us to know WHO we are worshipping. As Kevin Navarro writes in his excellent book, The Complete Worship Leader: “Our theology must be accurate if our worship is to be accurate. An intentional neglect of the God who has revealed Himself will degenerate into idolatry.” Thinking theologically then is a critically important skill to develop as we lead worship. But just as important, is for us to give ourselves space to worship. We always talk about not just being ‘worship leaders’ but being ‘lead worshippers’, and though this is sometimes overused, it is true. As we develop our mind as theologians we need to develop our heart as worshippers. We need to focus on growing in the Grace of God and striving to spend time growing in relationship with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. We want to wrap both our head and heart around the gospel and to give space for others to do that as well in our worship services.
Do you think theologically about our worship service weekly and about your playing and presence in worship? Do you take time to worship during the week through prayer, scripture study, and meditation? These are disciplines that we can develop throughout our lives, so don’t be discouraged if your answers to those questions weren’t extremely positive. Just take small steps, In thinking theologically challenge yourself by reading a book about worship and asking questions about what your are portraying theologically in your worship services. To develop your heart worship plan on carving out 20 minutes a day to pray, read, and meditate. If you have done that and it is old or dry, try different disciplines of listening to God in scripture and prayer. I have included a couple exercises for you to try here. Enjoy!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Samuel 15:22-23, Psalm 51:17, Hosea 6:6, John 6:28-29, 1 Corinthians 8:1-6
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship As Pastoral Care by William Willimon
READ: Matthew 9:9-13
DISCUSS:
1. What do you think it would have meant to be a sinner in Matthew 9:9-13? How would it have meant to be a Pharisee? What are the implications on our worship?
2. After reading the quote by Will Willimon (below), how can we miss God in worship? Or worship the wrong God? How does this happen? What God our we worshipping?
3. What does God desire of us in our worship? What do you think God thinks of our churches worship?
REFLECT:
In Matthew 9:9-13 we witness Jesus teaching both the ‘sinners’ and the ‘religious’ people of the day a lesson about worship. In the passage Jesus calls an outsider and sinner, Matthew, to become one of his followers. It is a beautiful occasion, yet it’s tarnished that evening when the ‘religious’ of the day, the Pharisees, crash Matthew’s dinner party and criticize Jesus’ consorting with Matthew and other outcasts and sinners like him. Jesus responds to them with this radical statement: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Imagine being a ‘sinner’ in the room that evening. You are reminded everyday that you are an outsider and ‘unclean’ by everyone around you, but now this Rabbi is proclaiming that you are at the center of God’s heart and the focus of God’s ministry! You would want to worship this God not out of guilt or fear, but out of gratitude for God’s love.
But now put yourself in the Pharisee’s shoes. You have lived your whole life meticulously following the law, as God commanded in the Old Testament. Yet now this Rabbi comes out of nowhere and tells you that you have forgotten who God really is and lost the heart of worship. Jesus even quotes from Hosea 6:6: “for I desire mercy and not sacrifice” to stress the point that in all your religiousness you have missed God. You would be offended!
Throughout gospels Jesus was very concerned that the followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had forgotten who God really is. They read the scriptures and followed God’s law, but their ‘religiousness’ actually led them away from the God who welcomes outsiders and calls sinners home. They missed God in worship.
And this is our danger as well in the church of Jesus Christ 2000 years later. In a sense, we as Christians are the new ‘Pharisees’, and we need to be vigilant to not worship religion or our culture in place of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As William Willimon writes in Worship As Pastoral Care:
“To ask the theological question is simply to ask, What does our worship say about God?, or the corollary, What does God say to us about our worship? Surely this is the toughest and most basic question to be asked, but curiously, it is often the last question we ask. If we think about our worship at all, usually we think in terms of ‘what do I want from our worship?” or, ‘what do my people want from worship?’ without being so daring as to ask , ‘what does God want from worship?’ Is our worship the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or is it the worship of Baal, Aphrodite, and Cupid? Does our worship have integrity measured by the Biblical standards for what our prayer and praise should be? So much of our worship is self-centered, mundane, and tame. How are we to be faithful to the gospel; how do we know the difference between secular idolatry and Christian liturgy, unless we ask, and in some means, answer, the theological question?”
God is both the source and the object of our worship, so it is essential for us to know WHO we are worshipping. As Kevin Navarro writes in his excellent book, The Complete Worship Leader: “Our theology must be accurate if our worship is to be accurate. An intentional neglect of the God who has revealed Himself will degenerate into idolatry.” Thinking theologically then is a critically important skill to develop as we lead worship. But just as important, is for us to give ourselves space to worship. We always talk about not just being ‘worship leaders’ but being ‘lead worshippers’, and though this is sometimes overused, it is true. As we develop our mind as theologians we need to develop our heart as worshippers. We need to focus on growing in the Grace of God and striving to spend time growing in relationship with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. We want to wrap both our head and heart around the gospel and to give space for others to do that as well in our worship services.
Do you think theologically about our worship service weekly and about your playing and presence in worship? Do you take time to worship during the week through prayer, scripture study, and meditation? These are disciplines that we can develop throughout our lives, so don’t be discouraged if your answers to those questions weren’t extremely positive. Just take small steps, In thinking theologically challenge yourself by reading a book about worship and asking questions about what your are portraying theologically in your worship services. To develop your heart worship plan on carving out 20 minutes a day to pray, read, and meditate. If you have done that and it is old or dry, try different disciplines of listening to God in scripture and prayer. I have included a couple exercises for you to try here. Enjoy!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Samuel 15:22-23, Psalm 51:17, Hosea 6:6, John 6:28-29, 1 Corinthians 8:1-6
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship As Pastoral Care by William Willimon
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership, week 10
Thinking Theologically 1: Am I A Theologian?
READ: Matt 7:24-27
DISCUSS:
1. Dallas Willard once said that “we are at the mercy of our ideas”. What do you think this means?
2. What is your definition of ‘theology’? What does it mean to ‘think theologically’? Especially as a worship leader? How does our theology play out in the songs we sing, the ways we act, what we say in worship?
3. What is the danger, as described in our passage? How does our scripture today model ‘thinking theologically’?
REFLECT:
As a drummer, a singer, a keyboardist, a guitarist, or a bass player you may not think of yourself as a theologian, but you are. All who lead our congregations in worship, whether we are music leaders, musicians, pastors, or liturgists, give a theological statement every time we stand in front of our congregations. Theology literally means ‘the study of God’. Sometimes Christians cut down theology as being all head and no heart, but theology is important because it deals with our ideas about God. Who is God? What does God want? How is God working in our lives? As Dallas Willard wrote, “we are at the mercy of our ideas,” so our answers to these questions will define how we live our lives and lead our congregations in worship.
The problem though, with all of us at times, is that we think very little about our ‘theologies’ and the ‘ideas’ that define us are often inconsistent or contradictory. We see this play out in our lives especially in great times of personal struggle or temptation. For example, a young woman is struggling because her boyfriend wants to have sex. Theologically, her beliefs about sex are based on the scriptural understanding that God has sanctioned sex only within the bounds of marriage, yet her IDEAS about sex are more shaped by her culture, the media, and her friends, which conflict with her theology. So this internal conflict may lead her to disobey her beliefs in place of her ideas without even really understanding what is going on.
The same often happens in our leadership in worship. So often our ideas about what is good, interesting, crowd pleasing, and engaging in worship are shaped by our culture, upbringing, friends/family, and the media. And this is not necessarily wrong, but it can, at times, conflict with our theology of worship. If our primary focus as a church is (whether we realize it or not) how excellent musically we are, how cool our lighting and multimedia is, how fun, or entertaining our services are, then our worship services may have high performance quality and excellence, but confusing and contradicting messages about who God is, where God is, and what God is asking of the congregation in worship.
Whether we realize it or not, everything is our worship service gives a theological statement. So often we think that our song choices, liturgy, or preaching are the only times we speak theologically. But in worship everything speaks theologically, because everything in worship is infused with meaning. So, our demeanor as a leader gives a theological statement, the musical dynamics and transitions we use speak theologically, the ways we pray, incorporate silence, speaking, singing, standing and sitting, etc…teaches people about God. Even the way the band is positioned, and the ways the chairs are set up in the room speak theologically! There is no dead time in a worship service; everything has a theological message. And this makes understanding our own theologies and the theology which we portray as a band member and worship team deeply important.
A friend of mine and I have had a long running debate about the use of guitar solos in a worship set. He believes that solo’s can help people have an unstructured space to be with God if used correctly, and I tend to feel that extended guitar solos in a worship service are more about performance than worship. We both though agree that guitar solos are much more than a personal preference but a theological statement. It is not just about whether we like guitar solos or not, but about what a guitar solo portrays theologically and how it functions in worship service. For me, guitar solos make me think of worship as a concert, a spectator sport, when God is calling us all to participate, but my friend sees a well positioned solo as an invitation to prayer and meditation, a sign that God wants to be with us and meet us where we are.
As our debate continues my friend and I both agree that though this may seem like a trivial issue, there is nothing trivial about our worship service. Worship is our life’s blood as Christians; it is the very air we breathe, so we are called to take it seriously. And worship teaches, so every time we gather for worship we remind the congregation who God is, where God is, and what God requires of them.
God longs for His grace in Jesus Christ to become what is most true and real in our lives; more true and real than all the other ideas that we have learned and embraced. So we are called to conform our ideas to what we believe, to “build our house on the Rock”(Matthew 7:24-27), so that we can portray the gospel of Jesus Christ consistently through our worship services and through our lives.
Remember, as worship leaders you are not just members of another band: you are teaching people who God is and how to approach God in worship. So, if you are not thinking theologically you are in danger of committing idolatry and of leading people into the worship of another God that is not Jesus Christ.
If you are unsure about how to ‘think theologically’ and what exactly you believe, I encourage you to take 30 minutes and write a personal statement of belief. This might end up taking over 30 minutes, but at least take that much time to begin. In this statement just ask yourself: what do I believe about God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, church, life eternal, sanctification, etc…. Take 30min to an hour to do this and then compare it with the APCH statement of belief (on the website: www.apch.nl). Were there any variations? Now, begin to think through the songs we sing, etc…. through the lens of that mission statement. After you have written your statement of faith, you could write a personal mission statement about how you want to live out what you believe.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 119: 9-16, John 1:1-14, Colossians 3:15-17, Hebrews 4:11-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Complete Worship Leader, Kevin J. Navarro
READ: Matt 7:24-27
DISCUSS:
1. Dallas Willard once said that “we are at the mercy of our ideas”. What do you think this means?
2. What is your definition of ‘theology’? What does it mean to ‘think theologically’? Especially as a worship leader? How does our theology play out in the songs we sing, the ways we act, what we say in worship?
3. What is the danger, as described in our passage? How does our scripture today model ‘thinking theologically’?
REFLECT:
As a drummer, a singer, a keyboardist, a guitarist, or a bass player you may not think of yourself as a theologian, but you are. All who lead our congregations in worship, whether we are music leaders, musicians, pastors, or liturgists, give a theological statement every time we stand in front of our congregations. Theology literally means ‘the study of God’. Sometimes Christians cut down theology as being all head and no heart, but theology is important because it deals with our ideas about God. Who is God? What does God want? How is God working in our lives? As Dallas Willard wrote, “we are at the mercy of our ideas,” so our answers to these questions will define how we live our lives and lead our congregations in worship.
The problem though, with all of us at times, is that we think very little about our ‘theologies’ and the ‘ideas’ that define us are often inconsistent or contradictory. We see this play out in our lives especially in great times of personal struggle or temptation. For example, a young woman is struggling because her boyfriend wants to have sex. Theologically, her beliefs about sex are based on the scriptural understanding that God has sanctioned sex only within the bounds of marriage, yet her IDEAS about sex are more shaped by her culture, the media, and her friends, which conflict with her theology. So this internal conflict may lead her to disobey her beliefs in place of her ideas without even really understanding what is going on.
The same often happens in our leadership in worship. So often our ideas about what is good, interesting, crowd pleasing, and engaging in worship are shaped by our culture, upbringing, friends/family, and the media. And this is not necessarily wrong, but it can, at times, conflict with our theology of worship. If our primary focus as a church is (whether we realize it or not) how excellent musically we are, how cool our lighting and multimedia is, how fun, or entertaining our services are, then our worship services may have high performance quality and excellence, but confusing and contradicting messages about who God is, where God is, and what God is asking of the congregation in worship.
Whether we realize it or not, everything is our worship service gives a theological statement. So often we think that our song choices, liturgy, or preaching are the only times we speak theologically. But in worship everything speaks theologically, because everything in worship is infused with meaning. So, our demeanor as a leader gives a theological statement, the musical dynamics and transitions we use speak theologically, the ways we pray, incorporate silence, speaking, singing, standing and sitting, etc…teaches people about God. Even the way the band is positioned, and the ways the chairs are set up in the room speak theologically! There is no dead time in a worship service; everything has a theological message. And this makes understanding our own theologies and the theology which we portray as a band member and worship team deeply important.
A friend of mine and I have had a long running debate about the use of guitar solos in a worship set. He believes that solo’s can help people have an unstructured space to be with God if used correctly, and I tend to feel that extended guitar solos in a worship service are more about performance than worship. We both though agree that guitar solos are much more than a personal preference but a theological statement. It is not just about whether we like guitar solos or not, but about what a guitar solo portrays theologically and how it functions in worship service. For me, guitar solos make me think of worship as a concert, a spectator sport, when God is calling us all to participate, but my friend sees a well positioned solo as an invitation to prayer and meditation, a sign that God wants to be with us and meet us where we are.
As our debate continues my friend and I both agree that though this may seem like a trivial issue, there is nothing trivial about our worship service. Worship is our life’s blood as Christians; it is the very air we breathe, so we are called to take it seriously. And worship teaches, so every time we gather for worship we remind the congregation who God is, where God is, and what God requires of them.
God longs for His grace in Jesus Christ to become what is most true and real in our lives; more true and real than all the other ideas that we have learned and embraced. So we are called to conform our ideas to what we believe, to “build our house on the Rock”(Matthew 7:24-27), so that we can portray the gospel of Jesus Christ consistently through our worship services and through our lives.
Remember, as worship leaders you are not just members of another band: you are teaching people who God is and how to approach God in worship. So, if you are not thinking theologically you are in danger of committing idolatry and of leading people into the worship of another God that is not Jesus Christ.
If you are unsure about how to ‘think theologically’ and what exactly you believe, I encourage you to take 30 minutes and write a personal statement of belief. This might end up taking over 30 minutes, but at least take that much time to begin. In this statement just ask yourself: what do I believe about God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, church, life eternal, sanctification, etc…. Take 30min to an hour to do this and then compare it with the APCH statement of belief (on the website: www.apch.nl). Were there any variations? Now, begin to think through the songs we sing, etc…. through the lens of that mission statement. After you have written your statement of faith, you could write a personal mission statement about how you want to live out what you believe.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 119: 9-16, John 1:1-14, Colossians 3:15-17, Hebrews 4:11-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Complete Worship Leader, Kevin J. Navarro
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 9, COSTLY GRACE
Hey friends,
Here is the Bible study we went through last night on “Costly Grace.” As musicians, singers, and leaders, Bonhoeffer’s message challenges us to take a inward look at our beliefs and faith before we lead others in worship. Our guest preacher this last week quoted A.W Tozer: “what you believe about God will tell everything about you,” and it is the same about our worship leading….what we believe about God will tell everything about our worship leading. So I hope you are challenged about the ‘costliness’ grace by our study this week!
This study concludes our introduction to this series. In future weeks and months we will be exploring these themes:
- gospel beliefs
- gospel character
- gospel discipleship
- gospel excellence
- gospel artistry
- gospel leadership
And lastly…..I want to encourage you, if you still attending the church and living close to Den Haag, to attend the Prodigal God Study in September. This study will just confirm and deepen your understanding of the topics we have been discussing over the past months. You can sign up on the website or at church.
So.....here is this weeks study:
INTRODUCTION WEEK 9: Costly Grace
Here is the Bible study we went through last night on “Costly Grace.” As musicians, singers, and leaders, Bonhoeffer’s message challenges us to take a inward look at our beliefs and faith before we lead others in worship. Our guest preacher this last week quoted A.W Tozer: “what you believe about God will tell everything about you,” and it is the same about our worship leading….what we believe about God will tell everything about our worship leading. So I hope you are challenged about the ‘costliness’ grace by our study this week!
This study concludes our introduction to this series. In future weeks and months we will be exploring these themes:
- gospel beliefs
- gospel character
- gospel discipleship
- gospel excellence
- gospel artistry
- gospel leadership
And lastly…..I want to encourage you, if you still attending the church and living close to Den Haag, to attend the Prodigal God Study in September. This study will just confirm and deepen your understanding of the topics we have been discussing over the past months. You can sign up on the website or at church.
So.....here is this weeks study:
INTRODUCTION WEEK 9: Costly Grace
READ:
Philippians 3:7-11, Luke 5:1-11
DISCUSS:
1. How did we define cheap grace last week? How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
2. What is it about Grace that is costly? How did grace cost God everything? How does it cost us our lives? How is your life/the church/the world, better because of Grace?
3. Is your life and your church characterized more by costly or cheap grace? What step could you take to follow Jesus Christ in your life today?
REFLECT:
Who, or what, would you say, is the chief enemy of the church? Secularism? Humanism? Atheism? All of those movements definitely disagree with the claims of the church, but are they our ‘enemies’? Probably not. The worst enemies often come from within, and as we learned from Deitrich Bonhoeffer last week, the chief enemy of the church is cheap grace. It is the enemy of the church because it distorts the very core of the Christian faith and deceives us into believing a ‘gospel’ that is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As we talked about last week, Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as ‘data without life’, forgiveness without repentance’, and ‘forgiveness without discipleship.’ All of us can testify to how we have ‘cheapened grace’ in these ways at times in our lives and we have all experienced churches that practice cheap grace. Bonhoeffer though reminds us that Grace is something much greater and much more wonderful that we often imagine it to be. And he assures us that the Holy Spirit is always calling us back to ‘costly grace’, which is the only answer to the world’s problems and a priceless gift and treasure to those who would receive it. As Bonhoeffer writes:
“Grace is costly because it calls us to follow and grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life and grace because it gives a person the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a great price.’ And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.” Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p45
Grace is costly for Bonhoeffer, because it cost God everything to give, it costs everything for us to follow, and though it might mean death for us to follow, it is the only thing that can give us true life.
1. Grace is costly because it cost God everything.
Grace is such a nice idea that often we forget how much it cost God to give it. Whenever we trivialize grace or God’s love we need to remember that Grace cost God everything to give. Our sin and wretchedness as humans is so evil and corrupt that the only way God could save us is through the willing sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The gripping moments of Matthew 27:45-46 where Jesus cries out from the cross “my God, why have you forsaken me?” become even more poignant when we realize that God, at that moment, experienced God-forsakenness. God himself experienced desperate hopelessness. So often we forget what it cost God to come and save humanity. God gave His only Son…..so God knows what it is like to experience their child tortured and killed. But even more, Jesus is God incarnate….so at that moment God knew the terrible anguish of the cross and the darkness of hopelessness in Himself. He knows what it is like to lose everything. He knows what it is like to be forsaken, to be lost, to die. And God does this willingly for us. As Jurgen Moltmann writes in his book, The Crucified God, "God's power is not expressed by the fact that he controls all things (the opposite of love), but in that he bears all things and suffers all things." This is amazing grace!
2. Grace is costly because it costs us our lives.
Grace is the gift of the Christian life and it is the only way to know Christ and what Christ has done for us. There is no other way we can understand God’s love for us. Yet God’s grace is more than idea….it is a person. Jesus Christ. And through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to come and be transformed by grace. This involves a death as well as new life, and that is why it is so costly to us. It is costly because it cost God’s son his life and it is costly because it costs our life.
Grace costs our lives because we cannot understand and be transformed by Grace without following Christ. And God will not be content until He is the only Lord of our lives and our whole lives are transformed by Grace. Christ is the answer and everything else is just dead religion and empty doctrine. Bonhoeffer challenges all Christians that Grace requires a response and it becomes less real and urgent in our lives if we don’t stay close to the source of all grace, Jesus Christ. Consider the story of Peter on the beach in Luke 5:1-11. Jesus encountered Peter and asked him to follow. Would Peter have grown in faith without actually putting down his nets and following? No. It’s the same with us. Our faith will just become a bunch of dead religion unless we do something about it. When we actually follow Christ where he goes, that is where we will find life and understand Grace. If we continue to stay ‘Christ observers’ and not ‘Christ followers’ then we will never understand and be changed by ‘costly grace’.
3. Costly Grace gives a person the only True life.
So costly grace costs our lives but at the same time Grace is the only thing that brings us new life. In dying to our old life we see true and untainted life in Grace. Life not ruled by sin, but ruled by love. In Grace we are assured that we accepted by God and given new life in Jesus Christ. We are no longer as we were and we now have a new identity, a new assurance, a new hope, and a new purpose. Bonhoeffer echoes all of scripture in describing Grace as a fountain of life. It is true, unbridled, real life, and following Christ leads us to the challenge and also the blessings of living Grace out in our ordinary lives. Grace leads us to to give our lives to God and to forgive others, to confront our anger, selfishness, and greed, to value ourselves and others, to work for the thriving and blessing of people, and to be healed….of our own self-hatred, of our deep wounds, our brokenness, and the sin that often so controls us. Grace is liberation….yet it is not cheap.
In our worship leading, it is easy to preach a message of cheap grace. It is easy to get moralistic or to focus on emotions or performance. So, the question for us is: are we following Christ? Are we, as worship leaders, being challenged by ‘costly grace’ in our lives. And are we letting that Grace form the kind of songs we sing, words we say, ways we perform, the ways we plan worship, and the ways we encourage and challenge our congregations? What does this mean for our lives and for our walk with Christ?
“Happy are the simple followers of Jesus who have been overcome by His grace, and are able to sing the praises of the all-sufficient grace of Christ with humbleness of heart. Happy are they who, knowing that Grace can live in the world and not be of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proven to be a fount of mercy.” Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship p. 56
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Luke 15:1-10, Luke 19:1-10, Ephesians 4:17-24, Ephesians 5:1-7, 8-20,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Cost of Discipleship by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers From Prison by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Philippians 3:7-11, Luke 5:1-11
DISCUSS:
1. How did we define cheap grace last week? How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
2. What is it about Grace that is costly? How did grace cost God everything? How does it cost us our lives? How is your life/the church/the world, better because of Grace?
3. Is your life and your church characterized more by costly or cheap grace? What step could you take to follow Jesus Christ in your life today?
REFLECT:
Who, or what, would you say, is the chief enemy of the church? Secularism? Humanism? Atheism? All of those movements definitely disagree with the claims of the church, but are they our ‘enemies’? Probably not. The worst enemies often come from within, and as we learned from Deitrich Bonhoeffer last week, the chief enemy of the church is cheap grace. It is the enemy of the church because it distorts the very core of the Christian faith and deceives us into believing a ‘gospel’ that is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As we talked about last week, Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as ‘data without life’, forgiveness without repentance’, and ‘forgiveness without discipleship.’ All of us can testify to how we have ‘cheapened grace’ in these ways at times in our lives and we have all experienced churches that practice cheap grace. Bonhoeffer though reminds us that Grace is something much greater and much more wonderful that we often imagine it to be. And he assures us that the Holy Spirit is always calling us back to ‘costly grace’, which is the only answer to the world’s problems and a priceless gift and treasure to those who would receive it. As Bonhoeffer writes:
“Grace is costly because it calls us to follow and grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life and grace because it gives a person the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a great price.’ And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.” Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p45
Grace is costly for Bonhoeffer, because it cost God everything to give, it costs everything for us to follow, and though it might mean death for us to follow, it is the only thing that can give us true life.
1. Grace is costly because it cost God everything.
Grace is such a nice idea that often we forget how much it cost God to give it. Whenever we trivialize grace or God’s love we need to remember that Grace cost God everything to give. Our sin and wretchedness as humans is so evil and corrupt that the only way God could save us is through the willing sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The gripping moments of Matthew 27:45-46 where Jesus cries out from the cross “my God, why have you forsaken me?” become even more poignant when we realize that God, at that moment, experienced God-forsakenness. God himself experienced desperate hopelessness. So often we forget what it cost God to come and save humanity. God gave His only Son…..so God knows what it is like to experience their child tortured and killed. But even more, Jesus is God incarnate….so at that moment God knew the terrible anguish of the cross and the darkness of hopelessness in Himself. He knows what it is like to lose everything. He knows what it is like to be forsaken, to be lost, to die. And God does this willingly for us. As Jurgen Moltmann writes in his book, The Crucified God, "God's power is not expressed by the fact that he controls all things (the opposite of love), but in that he bears all things and suffers all things." This is amazing grace!
2. Grace is costly because it costs us our lives.
Grace is the gift of the Christian life and it is the only way to know Christ and what Christ has done for us. There is no other way we can understand God’s love for us. Yet God’s grace is more than idea….it is a person. Jesus Christ. And through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to come and be transformed by grace. This involves a death as well as new life, and that is why it is so costly to us. It is costly because it cost God’s son his life and it is costly because it costs our life.
Grace costs our lives because we cannot understand and be transformed by Grace without following Christ. And God will not be content until He is the only Lord of our lives and our whole lives are transformed by Grace. Christ is the answer and everything else is just dead religion and empty doctrine. Bonhoeffer challenges all Christians that Grace requires a response and it becomes less real and urgent in our lives if we don’t stay close to the source of all grace, Jesus Christ. Consider the story of Peter on the beach in Luke 5:1-11. Jesus encountered Peter and asked him to follow. Would Peter have grown in faith without actually putting down his nets and following? No. It’s the same with us. Our faith will just become a bunch of dead religion unless we do something about it. When we actually follow Christ where he goes, that is where we will find life and understand Grace. If we continue to stay ‘Christ observers’ and not ‘Christ followers’ then we will never understand and be changed by ‘costly grace’.
3. Costly Grace gives a person the only True life.
So costly grace costs our lives but at the same time Grace is the only thing that brings us new life. In dying to our old life we see true and untainted life in Grace. Life not ruled by sin, but ruled by love. In Grace we are assured that we accepted by God and given new life in Jesus Christ. We are no longer as we were and we now have a new identity, a new assurance, a new hope, and a new purpose. Bonhoeffer echoes all of scripture in describing Grace as a fountain of life. It is true, unbridled, real life, and following Christ leads us to the challenge and also the blessings of living Grace out in our ordinary lives. Grace leads us to to give our lives to God and to forgive others, to confront our anger, selfishness, and greed, to value ourselves and others, to work for the thriving and blessing of people, and to be healed….of our own self-hatred, of our deep wounds, our brokenness, and the sin that often so controls us. Grace is liberation….yet it is not cheap.
In our worship leading, it is easy to preach a message of cheap grace. It is easy to get moralistic or to focus on emotions or performance. So, the question for us is: are we following Christ? Are we, as worship leaders, being challenged by ‘costly grace’ in our lives. And are we letting that Grace form the kind of songs we sing, words we say, ways we perform, the ways we plan worship, and the ways we encourage and challenge our congregations? What does this mean for our lives and for our walk with Christ?
“Happy are the simple followers of Jesus who have been overcome by His grace, and are able to sing the praises of the all-sufficient grace of Christ with humbleness of heart. Happy are they who, knowing that Grace can live in the world and not be of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proven to be a fount of mercy.” Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship p. 56
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Luke 15:1-10, Luke 19:1-10, Ephesians 4:17-24, Ephesians 5:1-7, 8-20,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Cost of Discipleship by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers From Prison by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 8
INTRODUCTION WEEK 8: Cheap Grace
READ:
Philippians 3:7-11
DISCUSS:
1. Over the past weeks we have been defining and exploring Grace. If you had to give a one sentence explanation of Grace to a friend, what would you say?
2. How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
3. Read our passage for this morning. What is Grace costing Paul? Does he see this cost as a burden? What is so costly about Grace that everything else is ‘rubbish to Paul’?
REFLECT:
When we think of something as ‘cheap’, usually we think of something that is poorly made, easily breakable, or not worth much. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor who lived during the turbulent years of WWII, reflected upon the Christian church around the world and especially in Germany, he noticed that the Grace that many churches preach is cheap. It is not worth much to those who espouse it and it is easily breakable in the midst of the culture around them.
Over the past weeks we have discussed the importance of founding our lives and worship leading on GRACE. As we conclude this introduction and begin to explore how GRACE impacts our beliefs, our thoughts on excellence, discipleship, artistry, and leadership, it is important for us to think about the difference between ‘cheap’ and ‘costly’ grace.
When we sing about Grace we often use words like ‘Amazing’, ‘Indelible’, or ‘Bountiful’, but we have very few hymns that term Grace as either ‘cheap’ or ‘costly’. How can grace be cheap? It is God’s action, God’s initiative, God’s work….if anything it is our greatest treasure in the Christian church. How can it be cheap? For Bonhoeffer, it is not God who cheapens Grace but people, and especially Christians individually and churches as a whole. He writes about cheap grace in this way:
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. We are fighting for Costly Grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p43-44
Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace in three ways: it is data without life, forgiveness without repentence, and Grace without discipleship.
1. Cheap Grace is data without life
Grace becomes ‘cheap’ when it firstly becomes just another belief, another doctrine, which fails to touch us and change our lives. For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is just data; it is just another thing people believe and churches confess. It is a nice idea that is not really followed or a nice ideal that is rarely lived. Grace is so radical that it changes everything about us and the world around us, yet so often Christians and churches believe in Grace, but don’t LIVE in it. Grace is just a suggestion or worse, an excuse or a justification.
For Bonhoeffer, Grace that is not lived is not real Grace, but a cheap imitation that only serves us and not God. And more than just being selfish, cheap grace is actually damaging to proclamation of the gospel and the witness of the church. As I quoted before, Bonhoeffer writes that ‘cheap grace is the enemy of the church.’ Cheap grace distorts the gospel and can lead us away from blessings of real grace. And it cripples or destroys the churches’ mission and reputation. Bonhoeffer saw this first hand in the German church that he was a part of during WWII. Every week the state church preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, yet at the same time they supported Hitler’s campaign of hatred and violence. Bonhoeffer himself and many others had to preach illegally because of this and eventually he was arrested and put in a concentration camp because he followed the gospel of Grace and helped seven Jews escape Germany in 1943. He and many others at that time were heartbroken by a church that had lost Grace and therefore lost its mission and purpose as the church.
2. Cheap Grace is forgiveness without repentence
As we believe in Grace we necessarily need to take sin and brokenness in humanity seriously. The gospel of grace necessitates that believe that we need grace, that we are broken, depraved, and bent towards selfishness and self-justification of our actions. Grace then becomes cheapened, when we cease to emphasize sinfulness. Paul Zahn writes that one must have a high view of human sin to have a high view of Grace, and Bonhoeffer echoes that when he writes that cheap grace is ‘forgiveness without repentance, communion without confession.”
Cheap grace often entices us to believe that since Christ paid for human sin on the cross and forgives us when we call upon him, we don’t really need to worry about repenting, confessing, and trying to live Christ-centered lives. We know that we are being enticed by cheap grace when we start making justifications and excuses for our lives: “I know I am sinning now, but I will come to God later and repent of my sins and turn my life around. I know He will forgive me.” Yet real, costly grace takes sin and our capacity for self-deception and self-justification seriously and also the cost that God paid to heal and redeem us. As our Pastor Tim (and before him Tim Keller) always says “we are far worse than we could ever know and far more loved than we could imagine.” Yet cheap grace does the opposite….we are not that bad, we really don’t need to work on our sins, we don’t need to change, we don’t really need to do anything because God loves us. Cheap grace is often an excuse to do nothing, change nothing, and stand by while we see injustice or overwhelming human need pass us by.
3. Cheap Grace is grace without discipleship
Lastly, with cheap grace there is no need to become a disciple of Christ. Bonhoeffer writes that grace in itself is not complete; it should lead us to follow Christ. It should deeply confront everything that we are and call us, like Peter to leave everything and follow Jesus. Disciples are those who follow someone or something. Jesus has always called disciples, and Bonhoeffer argues that we cannot know real Grace without becoming disciples of Christ. As Bonhoeffer writes: “If grace is God’s answer, the gift of the Christian life, then we cannot dispense with following Christ.” He goes on to write:
“[With cheap grace] the Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p51
We can only know the Grace of God by following closely the author of Grace, Jesus Christ. In Bonhoeffer’s life, he saw his beloved church is Germany be transformed by cheap grace from Christ followers to followers of Hitler who condemned the Jews, put swastikas in the churches instead of crosses, and eventually were forced for worship Hitler instead of Christ. If we don’t follow Jesus Christ, we can make grace into anything we want. Yet grace only gains it’s definition through Jesus Christ. That is why Bonhoeffer wrote during his last days in a German prison, before he was executed in 1945, three weeks before the war ended: “The only thing we can hold on to is Jesus and the only true thing we can do is to follow Jesus.”
Are we holding on to Jesus, and only to Jesus, in our churches? What does that mean for our worship programs? For our lives?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Galatians 1:1-10, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Colossians 3:1-4, 5-17
REFERENCES (for further reading)
-To learn more about Bonhoeffer’s life, watch the movie Bonhoeffer, "Agent of Grace” by Gateway films.
-The best biography, though very long, is Eherhard Bethge’s "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography".
READ:
Philippians 3:7-11
DISCUSS:
1. Over the past weeks we have been defining and exploring Grace. If you had to give a one sentence explanation of Grace to a friend, what would you say?
2. How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
3. Read our passage for this morning. What is Grace costing Paul? Does he see this cost as a burden? What is so costly about Grace that everything else is ‘rubbish to Paul’?
REFLECT:
When we think of something as ‘cheap’, usually we think of something that is poorly made, easily breakable, or not worth much. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor who lived during the turbulent years of WWII, reflected upon the Christian church around the world and especially in Germany, he noticed that the Grace that many churches preach is cheap. It is not worth much to those who espouse it and it is easily breakable in the midst of the culture around them.
Over the past weeks we have discussed the importance of founding our lives and worship leading on GRACE. As we conclude this introduction and begin to explore how GRACE impacts our beliefs, our thoughts on excellence, discipleship, artistry, and leadership, it is important for us to think about the difference between ‘cheap’ and ‘costly’ grace.
When we sing about Grace we often use words like ‘Amazing’, ‘Indelible’, or ‘Bountiful’, but we have very few hymns that term Grace as either ‘cheap’ or ‘costly’. How can grace be cheap? It is God’s action, God’s initiative, God’s work….if anything it is our greatest treasure in the Christian church. How can it be cheap? For Bonhoeffer, it is not God who cheapens Grace but people, and especially Christians individually and churches as a whole. He writes about cheap grace in this way:
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. We are fighting for Costly Grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p43-44
Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace in three ways: it is data without life, forgiveness without repentence, and Grace without discipleship.
1. Cheap Grace is data without life
Grace becomes ‘cheap’ when it firstly becomes just another belief, another doctrine, which fails to touch us and change our lives. For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is just data; it is just another thing people believe and churches confess. It is a nice idea that is not really followed or a nice ideal that is rarely lived. Grace is so radical that it changes everything about us and the world around us, yet so often Christians and churches believe in Grace, but don’t LIVE in it. Grace is just a suggestion or worse, an excuse or a justification.
For Bonhoeffer, Grace that is not lived is not real Grace, but a cheap imitation that only serves us and not God. And more than just being selfish, cheap grace is actually damaging to proclamation of the gospel and the witness of the church. As I quoted before, Bonhoeffer writes that ‘cheap grace is the enemy of the church.’ Cheap grace distorts the gospel and can lead us away from blessings of real grace. And it cripples or destroys the churches’ mission and reputation. Bonhoeffer saw this first hand in the German church that he was a part of during WWII. Every week the state church preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, yet at the same time they supported Hitler’s campaign of hatred and violence. Bonhoeffer himself and many others had to preach illegally because of this and eventually he was arrested and put in a concentration camp because he followed the gospel of Grace and helped seven Jews escape Germany in 1943. He and many others at that time were heartbroken by a church that had lost Grace and therefore lost its mission and purpose as the church.
2. Cheap Grace is forgiveness without repentence
As we believe in Grace we necessarily need to take sin and brokenness in humanity seriously. The gospel of grace necessitates that believe that we need grace, that we are broken, depraved, and bent towards selfishness and self-justification of our actions. Grace then becomes cheapened, when we cease to emphasize sinfulness. Paul Zahn writes that one must have a high view of human sin to have a high view of Grace, and Bonhoeffer echoes that when he writes that cheap grace is ‘forgiveness without repentance, communion without confession.”
Cheap grace often entices us to believe that since Christ paid for human sin on the cross and forgives us when we call upon him, we don’t really need to worry about repenting, confessing, and trying to live Christ-centered lives. We know that we are being enticed by cheap grace when we start making justifications and excuses for our lives: “I know I am sinning now, but I will come to God later and repent of my sins and turn my life around. I know He will forgive me.” Yet real, costly grace takes sin and our capacity for self-deception and self-justification seriously and also the cost that God paid to heal and redeem us. As our Pastor Tim (and before him Tim Keller) always says “we are far worse than we could ever know and far more loved than we could imagine.” Yet cheap grace does the opposite….we are not that bad, we really don’t need to work on our sins, we don’t need to change, we don’t really need to do anything because God loves us. Cheap grace is often an excuse to do nothing, change nothing, and stand by while we see injustice or overwhelming human need pass us by.
3. Cheap Grace is grace without discipleship
Lastly, with cheap grace there is no need to become a disciple of Christ. Bonhoeffer writes that grace in itself is not complete; it should lead us to follow Christ. It should deeply confront everything that we are and call us, like Peter to leave everything and follow Jesus. Disciples are those who follow someone or something. Jesus has always called disciples, and Bonhoeffer argues that we cannot know real Grace without becoming disciples of Christ. As Bonhoeffer writes: “If grace is God’s answer, the gift of the Christian life, then we cannot dispense with following Christ.” He goes on to write:
“[With cheap grace] the Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p51
We can only know the Grace of God by following closely the author of Grace, Jesus Christ. In Bonhoeffer’s life, he saw his beloved church is Germany be transformed by cheap grace from Christ followers to followers of Hitler who condemned the Jews, put swastikas in the churches instead of crosses, and eventually were forced for worship Hitler instead of Christ. If we don’t follow Jesus Christ, we can make grace into anything we want. Yet grace only gains it’s definition through Jesus Christ. That is why Bonhoeffer wrote during his last days in a German prison, before he was executed in 1945, three weeks before the war ended: “The only thing we can hold on to is Jesus and the only true thing we can do is to follow Jesus.”
Are we holding on to Jesus, and only to Jesus, in our churches? What does that mean for our worship programs? For our lives?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Galatians 1:1-10, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Colossians 3:1-4, 5-17
REFERENCES (for further reading)
-To learn more about Bonhoeffer’s life, watch the movie Bonhoeffer, "Agent of Grace” by Gateway films.
-The best biography, though very long, is Eherhard Bethge’s "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography".
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies On Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 7
Sorry for the lapse in studies! My wife and I have been on a belated honeymoon to Peru, but now we are back.
INTRODUCTION WEEK 7: Morality and Gospel Transformation
READ:
Romans 3:24-31, 6:1-14
DISCUSS:
1. How would you characterize life under the law or morality? What are some examples or characteristics of churches that are primarily ‘law based’?
2. If we are ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’ as v24 states, then what do we do to earn or justify God’s salvation? Does that mean we can do whatever we want?
3. For Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Karl Barth, reading Romans 3:24-31 changed their lives….and world history. Why is this message so life changing? How is the message of grace impacting your life?
4. How can we lead worship in a way that is focused on gospel transformation and not self-righteousness based on the law or morality?
REFLECT:
The other day a dear African Christian woman came to me with a troubling question. She had been worrying about this question for weeks and finally she thought she should ask a pastor. Her question was: if someone divorces, are they going to hell? A pastor from her home church in Nigeria had told her this and she was struggling because her husband had recently left her and was now filing for divorce. As we talked more about her situation and her theology I learned that she grew up hearing that if you sin, you are in danger of hell. So because divorce is a sin, she was worried that, even though she did not instigate or want the divorce, that she would be condemned to hell if the divorce went through.
Though maybe not as extreme, most of us grow up hearing similar messages, whether we’ve grown up in the church or not. They are the basic messages of morality: if you are a nice person, people will be nice to you. If you are a good person, good things will happen to you. If you follow the rules, you will be rewarded. Those are often the motivations of our morality, and we so easily fit them into our belief in God: if you do bad things, you will be condemned, if you do good things you will be blessed. The problem with this morality though, is that it doesn’t often fit with reality, as the Christian sister I described earlier experienced. So often we are good, moral people for a reason, because then we will reap the rewards. And this is not a wholly bad concept…..if there was no reason for morality there would be chaos…..but it is just not true. So often we are good and we receive bad things. We are moral and we still get cancer. We are nice to others and we still get hit by a drunk driver. We love our wives or husbands and they still leave. Morality only for the sake of morality is never enough and will only lead us to frustration and, when we apply it to religion, fear.
That is why the gospel always stands as a roadblock to the ‘law’ or all the ways we try to be moral. As Paul writes in Romans 3:21-24: “But now the righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus Christ, God saves us not through our morality, but through His work on the cross. Being moral and good people are not bad things to be or strive for, but they are incomplete, because they always fall short. So God chooses a better way. Through his son Jesus Christ, God saves our past, present, and future though the cross and ressurection.
So, as we seek to be gospel centered believers and leaders, we are not so much seeking to be moral people, but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds.’ (Romans 12:2) Gospel transformation begins and ends with grace, and transforms our condition from one of outsiders and aliens to adopted and accepted sons and daughters (1 Peter 2:9-10). So we are called to stop thinking and living like slaves and start living like sons and daughters, members of God’s royal family. This means that we strive for our lives to be characterized by gracious thanksgiving, passionate obedience, and humble servitude, not out of a law we must follow, but as a free response to Grace.
So often we struggle with Grace, because it does not depend on us and doesn’t even require our response for it to be effective. When I was a youth pastor, one of the top 5 questions asked by youth and college students was: if I am saved by grace, then why do I have to stop sinning? It is also a question that many of us ask at times, especially when in the midst of struggles or temptations. Paul responds to people with very similar struggles in Romans 6:1, when he asks “what shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Yet Paul’s reason to not sin is different than ours often. He continues in Romans chapters 6 and 7 by saying that we are dead to sin, because Christ died for it once and for all on the cross. Because Christ changed our identity from being sinners constantly trying to earn our salvation through morality to being transformed into children and heirs, then we are no longer slaves to sin and shame. As Paul writes in 6:14: “For sin shall not be your master, because you are no longer under the law, but grace.”
This is a new reality for us as Christians and a new freedom that is given by God through Jesus Christ. And as we grow in this reality we will often become startlingly moral, compassionate, and self-sacrificial people, but that is only the icing of the cake, the outward sign of something far more significant happening in our spirits and in our minds. We are being transformed by grace, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, as our minds are changed about who we are and why we are here. We are no longer wanderers trying to please God, but children accepted and loved by God. We are no longer purposeless and hopeless, our purpose is to be ambassadors of our Father, and to radiate the light of His grace into dark places. For the Christian sister I met with a couple days ago, as we talked and looked through scripture, she began to see her situation in a new light. Though she is still devastated by her husband’s betrayal and abandonment, she no longer fears hell and is secure that God still loves her and has saved her by Grace.
As worship leaders we are called to be the first ones to taste the goodness of the gospel and be transformed by the Spirit as we change our minds about Christ. And then we are called to lead worship modeling this new reality in our words, and music, so that our worship service becomes a ‘thin place’ where the new reality breaks through and reminds us who God is, who we are, and why we are here.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 19:7-9, 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, 1 Timothy 2:1-13
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Grace In Practice, A Theology Of Everyday Life, by Paul F.M Zahl
INTRODUCTION WEEK 7: Morality and Gospel Transformation
READ:
Romans 3:24-31, 6:1-14
DISCUSS:
1. How would you characterize life under the law or morality? What are some examples or characteristics of churches that are primarily ‘law based’?
2. If we are ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’ as v24 states, then what do we do to earn or justify God’s salvation? Does that mean we can do whatever we want?
3. For Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Karl Barth, reading Romans 3:24-31 changed their lives….and world history. Why is this message so life changing? How is the message of grace impacting your life?
4. How can we lead worship in a way that is focused on gospel transformation and not self-righteousness based on the law or morality?
REFLECT:
The other day a dear African Christian woman came to me with a troubling question. She had been worrying about this question for weeks and finally she thought she should ask a pastor. Her question was: if someone divorces, are they going to hell? A pastor from her home church in Nigeria had told her this and she was struggling because her husband had recently left her and was now filing for divorce. As we talked more about her situation and her theology I learned that she grew up hearing that if you sin, you are in danger of hell. So because divorce is a sin, she was worried that, even though she did not instigate or want the divorce, that she would be condemned to hell if the divorce went through.
Though maybe not as extreme, most of us grow up hearing similar messages, whether we’ve grown up in the church or not. They are the basic messages of morality: if you are a nice person, people will be nice to you. If you are a good person, good things will happen to you. If you follow the rules, you will be rewarded. Those are often the motivations of our morality, and we so easily fit them into our belief in God: if you do bad things, you will be condemned, if you do good things you will be blessed. The problem with this morality though, is that it doesn’t often fit with reality, as the Christian sister I described earlier experienced. So often we are good, moral people for a reason, because then we will reap the rewards. And this is not a wholly bad concept…..if there was no reason for morality there would be chaos…..but it is just not true. So often we are good and we receive bad things. We are moral and we still get cancer. We are nice to others and we still get hit by a drunk driver. We love our wives or husbands and they still leave. Morality only for the sake of morality is never enough and will only lead us to frustration and, when we apply it to religion, fear.
That is why the gospel always stands as a roadblock to the ‘law’ or all the ways we try to be moral. As Paul writes in Romans 3:21-24: “But now the righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus Christ, God saves us not through our morality, but through His work on the cross. Being moral and good people are not bad things to be or strive for, but they are incomplete, because they always fall short. So God chooses a better way. Through his son Jesus Christ, God saves our past, present, and future though the cross and ressurection.
So, as we seek to be gospel centered believers and leaders, we are not so much seeking to be moral people, but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds.’ (Romans 12:2) Gospel transformation begins and ends with grace, and transforms our condition from one of outsiders and aliens to adopted and accepted sons and daughters (1 Peter 2:9-10). So we are called to stop thinking and living like slaves and start living like sons and daughters, members of God’s royal family. This means that we strive for our lives to be characterized by gracious thanksgiving, passionate obedience, and humble servitude, not out of a law we must follow, but as a free response to Grace.
So often we struggle with Grace, because it does not depend on us and doesn’t even require our response for it to be effective. When I was a youth pastor, one of the top 5 questions asked by youth and college students was: if I am saved by grace, then why do I have to stop sinning? It is also a question that many of us ask at times, especially when in the midst of struggles or temptations. Paul responds to people with very similar struggles in Romans 6:1, when he asks “what shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Yet Paul’s reason to not sin is different than ours often. He continues in Romans chapters 6 and 7 by saying that we are dead to sin, because Christ died for it once and for all on the cross. Because Christ changed our identity from being sinners constantly trying to earn our salvation through morality to being transformed into children and heirs, then we are no longer slaves to sin and shame. As Paul writes in 6:14: “For sin shall not be your master, because you are no longer under the law, but grace.”
This is a new reality for us as Christians and a new freedom that is given by God through Jesus Christ. And as we grow in this reality we will often become startlingly moral, compassionate, and self-sacrificial people, but that is only the icing of the cake, the outward sign of something far more significant happening in our spirits and in our minds. We are being transformed by grace, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, as our minds are changed about who we are and why we are here. We are no longer wanderers trying to please God, but children accepted and loved by God. We are no longer purposeless and hopeless, our purpose is to be ambassadors of our Father, and to radiate the light of His grace into dark places. For the Christian sister I met with a couple days ago, as we talked and looked through scripture, she began to see her situation in a new light. Though she is still devastated by her husband’s betrayal and abandonment, she no longer fears hell and is secure that God still loves her and has saved her by Grace.
As worship leaders we are called to be the first ones to taste the goodness of the gospel and be transformed by the Spirit as we change our minds about Christ. And then we are called to lead worship modeling this new reality in our words, and music, so that our worship service becomes a ‘thin place’ where the new reality breaks through and reminds us who God is, who we are, and why we are here.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 19:7-9, 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, 1 Timothy 2:1-13
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Grace In Practice, A Theology Of Everyday Life, by Paul F.M Zahl
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 6
INTRODUCTION WEEK 6: The Gospel and Sin
READ:
Hosea 2:5-23
ASK:
1. How would you define sin?
2. How could you try to replace God in your life? In our worship?
3. Using the marriage metaphor, how would you describe your present relationship with God: a.)Getting acquainted?, b.)Good friends? c.) Engaged? d.) Newlyweds? e.) Having problems or unfaithful? F.) Growing old together?
REFLECT:
As we began to explore last week, sin and shame are two of the main obstacles to centering our lives and worship on the gospel. We discussed how shame distorts our understanding of God and ourselves last week and this week we begin to discuss sin by exploring our vocabulary (or lack of vocabulary) about sin.
As we define sin we usually come up with answers such as ‘breaking God’s law’ or ‘missing the mark’, and those are not bad definitions, just incomplete. Breaking God’s law is important in scripture, but only as part of a much larger problem of broken relationship with God. We can see this in Hosea 2:5-13, which echoes the prophesies of Jeremiah and the other prophets:
She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. 'Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.'
She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal. "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot," declares the LORD."
Here we see God not solely as a judge passing down sentence on a guilty lawbreaker, but as a husband betrayed by his unfaithful wife. The narrative is about Hosea, the prophet, who is called by God to marry Gomer, a prostitute and ‘loose woman’, to show God’s love for Israel. Gomer betrays Hosea over and over again by turning to other lovers, just as Israel betrays God by worshipping other Gods. Gomer had a problem not uncommon in relationships…she was unsatisfied with Hosea. He was just not enough for her, so she went looking for other men who would fulfill her needs….though in the end she would only beaten and abused.
For Gomer, Hosea was not good enough; she thought she needed something else to feel fulfilled and loved, though nothing would ever fill the void and she would always come crawling back, beaten and abused, to her husband. In this prophesy God is telling the Israelites that they are doing the same things; they are running to other God’s because they think that their God is not enough, though they only get hurt in the end.
God shows a remarkable vulnerability in this prophesy and others. He is not depicted as a emotionless, perfect, wholly other God, but a passionate, frustrated, betrayed lover, who has just been rejected by the ones he loves the most. All of us know the sting of betrayal and rejection, and we all know that betrayal or rejection by someone we love hurts the most. And here we see that God feels that same betrayal when we disobey him or choose another God before him.
This passage illustrates that sin is not so much breaking the law of God but breaking the heart of God, putting ourselves or some ‘thing’ in God’s place, which breaks the loving God’s heart. God is a lover, and He desires an intimate, loving connection with his children, likened throughout the scriptures as a marriage. But we, like the Israelites, want God AND something else……God and success, God and my art or my music, God and money, God and my wife. We can expose these other gods in our lives by asking ourselves honestly the simple questions: what can I not live without? What would devastate me and throw my life into turmoil if it were taken away? What defines my worth and value in the world? As we answer those questions we begin to see that at times we place our hope and worth in other places than God. So at the core sin is nothing but a God replacement program, and when we do this we don’t just cause break God’s commandments, earning his wrath, but we break God’s heart, betraying the one who loves us most.
This is a startling way to look at God and it changes our understanding of our own sin and how we are to lead worship. We firstly understand that often we promote the idea of God AND something else in worship…..God and spiritual gifts, God and great worship or preaching, God and the church building, God and excellent music, God and great spiritual prowess or righteousness, etc… And secondly we often forget that God is a passionate lover and wants to connect with us in worship….often worship becomes about getting something and not just getting God. Just think about what it feels like to meet someone you deeply love……when was the last time we felt like that in worship and how do we promote that connection with God in worship? Lastly, in worship we always remember that the loving God has always responded to his own betrayal and frustration at our idolatry with self-sacrifice, compassion, mercy, and grace. As God writes through Hosea, about Gomer, but also about Israel and all God’s people:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.' I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.
The word ‘allure’ in verse 14 literally means “to deceive, to mislead, to go astray, to persuade”. So, though Gomer deserves punishment, Hosea will not give her as she deserves. He will literally go as far as to trick her or persuade her, to get her away, and then to tenderly remind her of his love. God never gives us as we deserve, but always seeks us, and instigates relationship with us, though we try to replace Him. In worship we can trust that God is alluring all people into the desert so that he can speak tenderly to them and transform them in His love. Sin breaks God’s heart, but God responds to sin with amazing grace. This is the gift of the gospel and the message we are called to proclaim in word and song every week.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 25:1-10, Isaiah 1:18, Luke 15:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, Hebrews 4:14-16
READ:
Hosea 2:5-23
ASK:
1. How would you define sin?
2. How could you try to replace God in your life? In our worship?
3. Using the marriage metaphor, how would you describe your present relationship with God: a.)Getting acquainted?, b.)Good friends? c.) Engaged? d.) Newlyweds? e.) Having problems or unfaithful? F.) Growing old together?
REFLECT:
As we began to explore last week, sin and shame are two of the main obstacles to centering our lives and worship on the gospel. We discussed how shame distorts our understanding of God and ourselves last week and this week we begin to discuss sin by exploring our vocabulary (or lack of vocabulary) about sin.
As we define sin we usually come up with answers such as ‘breaking God’s law’ or ‘missing the mark’, and those are not bad definitions, just incomplete. Breaking God’s law is important in scripture, but only as part of a much larger problem of broken relationship with God. We can see this in Hosea 2:5-13, which echoes the prophesies of Jeremiah and the other prophets:
She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. 'Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.'
She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal. "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot," declares the LORD."
Here we see God not solely as a judge passing down sentence on a guilty lawbreaker, but as a husband betrayed by his unfaithful wife. The narrative is about Hosea, the prophet, who is called by God to marry Gomer, a prostitute and ‘loose woman’, to show God’s love for Israel. Gomer betrays Hosea over and over again by turning to other lovers, just as Israel betrays God by worshipping other Gods. Gomer had a problem not uncommon in relationships…she was unsatisfied with Hosea. He was just not enough for her, so she went looking for other men who would fulfill her needs….though in the end she would only beaten and abused.
For Gomer, Hosea was not good enough; she thought she needed something else to feel fulfilled and loved, though nothing would ever fill the void and she would always come crawling back, beaten and abused, to her husband. In this prophesy God is telling the Israelites that they are doing the same things; they are running to other God’s because they think that their God is not enough, though they only get hurt in the end.
God shows a remarkable vulnerability in this prophesy and others. He is not depicted as a emotionless, perfect, wholly other God, but a passionate, frustrated, betrayed lover, who has just been rejected by the ones he loves the most. All of us know the sting of betrayal and rejection, and we all know that betrayal or rejection by someone we love hurts the most. And here we see that God feels that same betrayal when we disobey him or choose another God before him.
This passage illustrates that sin is not so much breaking the law of God but breaking the heart of God, putting ourselves or some ‘thing’ in God’s place, which breaks the loving God’s heart. God is a lover, and He desires an intimate, loving connection with his children, likened throughout the scriptures as a marriage. But we, like the Israelites, want God AND something else……God and success, God and my art or my music, God and money, God and my wife. We can expose these other gods in our lives by asking ourselves honestly the simple questions: what can I not live without? What would devastate me and throw my life into turmoil if it were taken away? What defines my worth and value in the world? As we answer those questions we begin to see that at times we place our hope and worth in other places than God. So at the core sin is nothing but a God replacement program, and when we do this we don’t just cause break God’s commandments, earning his wrath, but we break God’s heart, betraying the one who loves us most.
This is a startling way to look at God and it changes our understanding of our own sin and how we are to lead worship. We firstly understand that often we promote the idea of God AND something else in worship…..God and spiritual gifts, God and great worship or preaching, God and the church building, God and excellent music, God and great spiritual prowess or righteousness, etc… And secondly we often forget that God is a passionate lover and wants to connect with us in worship….often worship becomes about getting something and not just getting God. Just think about what it feels like to meet someone you deeply love……when was the last time we felt like that in worship and how do we promote that connection with God in worship? Lastly, in worship we always remember that the loving God has always responded to his own betrayal and frustration at our idolatry with self-sacrifice, compassion, mercy, and grace. As God writes through Hosea, about Gomer, but also about Israel and all God’s people:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.' I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.
The word ‘allure’ in verse 14 literally means “to deceive, to mislead, to go astray, to persuade”. So, though Gomer deserves punishment, Hosea will not give her as she deserves. He will literally go as far as to trick her or persuade her, to get her away, and then to tenderly remind her of his love. God never gives us as we deserve, but always seeks us, and instigates relationship with us, though we try to replace Him. In worship we can trust that God is alluring all people into the desert so that he can speak tenderly to them and transform them in His love. Sin breaks God’s heart, but God responds to sin with amazing grace. This is the gift of the gospel and the message we are called to proclaim in word and song every week.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 25:1-10, Isaiah 1:18, Luke 15:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, Hebrews 4:14-16
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership, week 5
INTRODUCTION WEEK 5: The Gospel and Shame
READ:
Philippians 3:12-21
ASK:
1. How would you define shame? How does shame feel like? Is shame primarily healthy or unhealthy?
2. How could shame connect us to and/or keep us from living in the hope of the gospel?
3. How is your life different when you live by grace and not unhealthy shame?
REFLECT:
Do you ever feel like there is something wrong with you? Something just not right and it doesn’t ever get better? Do you ever feel like you want to hide from others; that there are shameful, begrudging, lustful, or selfish thoughts that you don’t want the world to see? Do you ever feel, at your lowest points, that you are just not good enough or not worthy of love? That if you really showed someone your whole self you would be rejected? If you have ever felt any of these feelings, there is shame in you. David Atkinson defines shame as “a sense of unease with yourself at the very heart of your being.” Unhealthy shame is the feeling at the pit of your stomach that you are not the person you should be or that you are somehow not good enough, no matter what you do or do not do.
Lewis Smedes, in his book Shame and Grace, discusses that there are two types of shame: healthy and unhealthy shame. Healthy shame has to do with what we do or have done: ‘I hurt my friend and now I feel shame about it.’ This kind of shame can often lead us to growth and health as we respond to those feelings by trying to reconcile or repent. Unhealthy shame though has to do with who we ARE, not just what we do: ‘I hurt my friend and this just proves that I am a terrible person’. Unhealthy shame often distorts reality and keeps us from feeling forgiveness, growth, or grace, because everything goes back the reality that I didn’t just DO something wrong, but I AM wrong.
So often we respond to unhealthy shame by either constantly beating ourselves up or by spending our lives trying to prove ourselves. For ‘beaters’, when someone criticizes you, you are devastated and you beat yourself up. When you do something wrong or make a mistake, you beat yourself up. Even if you did something wrong years ago, you beat yourself up about it. For the ‘provers’, you feel good about yourself because of the way you look, the things you have, the friends who hang out with you, the image you portray, the schools you went to, how ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ you are, how much money you make, what you have made or done, etc…. You avoid unhealthy shame by doing well, yet as you know, you can never do well enough, so you always find yourself struggling to keep the image up.
So, to the ‘beaters’, the gospel says to us…Jesus was beaten up for you, why are you still acting like you aren’t good enough? Jesus was whipped; he was tortured and killed for your sins, why are you still trying to pay for them? God has made you, God accepts you, God has redeemed you in Jesus Christ…..you don’t have to hate yourself anymore! And for the ‘provers’ the gospel tells us: ‘you want to be a workaholic? You will never understand grace. You feel like you have to have fame, or position, or image, or reputation, or money to feel significant? You’ve missed the gospel and you are still trying to save yourself….you are trying to add something to salvation.
The gospel says to us that if we put our faith in Jesus Christ we are accepted, and as we begin to believe this and live in this assurance everything changes about how we see ourselves and others. Because we are saved by grace, we know that we are worse than we could know, but also that we are blessed more than we could ever imagine. And out of this we can be honest with ourselves. We can feel healthy shame and respond when we fail. We can know that we are not the sum of our failures but children of God, saved by GRACE, and accepted by Jesus Christ.
As worship leaders, musicians, and artists, as we seek to be ‘gospel centered’, it is essential for us to confront our unhealthy shame and the ways it causes us either to beat ourselves up or try to prove ourselves. This is an inward journey that sometimes will expose parts of our lives that we are not proud of as we dig to the roots of your shame. Yet if we don’t take this journey we are in danger of missing the gospel entirely and of preaching, through music, songs, expression, and words, a graceless gospel because we haven’t experienced grace.
The Grace of God in Jesus Christ is the only cure for unhealthy shame, the only way we can know God and be transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ. As Lewis Smedes writes:
Are you ready for grace?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Genesis 2:23-25, Psalm 34:1-5, Proverbs 3:35, 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, Ephesians 2:4-8
REFERENCES (for further reading)
1. Shame and Grace, Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve by Lewis B. Smedes
“I Thirst”, a sermon by Timothy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, March, 2008
READ:
Philippians 3:12-21
ASK:
1. How would you define shame? How does shame feel like? Is shame primarily healthy or unhealthy?
2. How could shame connect us to and/or keep us from living in the hope of the gospel?
3. How is your life different when you live by grace and not unhealthy shame?
REFLECT:
Do you ever feel like there is something wrong with you? Something just not right and it doesn’t ever get better? Do you ever feel like you want to hide from others; that there are shameful, begrudging, lustful, or selfish thoughts that you don’t want the world to see? Do you ever feel, at your lowest points, that you are just not good enough or not worthy of love? That if you really showed someone your whole self you would be rejected? If you have ever felt any of these feelings, there is shame in you. David Atkinson defines shame as “a sense of unease with yourself at the very heart of your being.” Unhealthy shame is the feeling at the pit of your stomach that you are not the person you should be or that you are somehow not good enough, no matter what you do or do not do.
Lewis Smedes, in his book Shame and Grace, discusses that there are two types of shame: healthy and unhealthy shame. Healthy shame has to do with what we do or have done: ‘I hurt my friend and now I feel shame about it.’ This kind of shame can often lead us to growth and health as we respond to those feelings by trying to reconcile or repent. Unhealthy shame though has to do with who we ARE, not just what we do: ‘I hurt my friend and this just proves that I am a terrible person’. Unhealthy shame often distorts reality and keeps us from feeling forgiveness, growth, or grace, because everything goes back the reality that I didn’t just DO something wrong, but I AM wrong.
So often we respond to unhealthy shame by either constantly beating ourselves up or by spending our lives trying to prove ourselves. For ‘beaters’, when someone criticizes you, you are devastated and you beat yourself up. When you do something wrong or make a mistake, you beat yourself up. Even if you did something wrong years ago, you beat yourself up about it. For the ‘provers’, you feel good about yourself because of the way you look, the things you have, the friends who hang out with you, the image you portray, the schools you went to, how ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ you are, how much money you make, what you have made or done, etc…. You avoid unhealthy shame by doing well, yet as you know, you can never do well enough, so you always find yourself struggling to keep the image up.
So, to the ‘beaters’, the gospel says to us…Jesus was beaten up for you, why are you still acting like you aren’t good enough? Jesus was whipped; he was tortured and killed for your sins, why are you still trying to pay for them? God has made you, God accepts you, God has redeemed you in Jesus Christ…..you don’t have to hate yourself anymore! And for the ‘provers’ the gospel tells us: ‘you want to be a workaholic? You will never understand grace. You feel like you have to have fame, or position, or image, or reputation, or money to feel significant? You’ve missed the gospel and you are still trying to save yourself….you are trying to add something to salvation.
The gospel says to us that if we put our faith in Jesus Christ we are accepted, and as we begin to believe this and live in this assurance everything changes about how we see ourselves and others. Because we are saved by grace, we know that we are worse than we could know, but also that we are blessed more than we could ever imagine. And out of this we can be honest with ourselves. We can feel healthy shame and respond when we fail. We can know that we are not the sum of our failures but children of God, saved by GRACE, and accepted by Jesus Christ.
As worship leaders, musicians, and artists, as we seek to be ‘gospel centered’, it is essential for us to confront our unhealthy shame and the ways it causes us either to beat ourselves up or try to prove ourselves. This is an inward journey that sometimes will expose parts of our lives that we are not proud of as we dig to the roots of your shame. Yet if we don’t take this journey we are in danger of missing the gospel entirely and of preaching, through music, songs, expression, and words, a graceless gospel because we haven’t experienced grace.
The Grace of God in Jesus Christ is the only cure for unhealthy shame, the only way we can know God and be transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ. As Lewis Smedes writes:
“Grace overcomes shame, not by uncovering an overlooked cache of excellence within ourselves but simply by accepting us, the whole of us, with no regard for beauty or ugliness, our virtue or our vices. We are accepted wholesale. Accepted with no possibility of being rejected. Accepted once and accepted forever. Accepted at the ultimate depth of our being. We are given what we have longed for in every nook and nuance of every relationship.
We are ready for grace when we are bone tired of our struggle to be worthy and acceptable. After we have tried to long to earn the approval of everyone important to us, we are ready for grace. When we are tired of trying to be the person somebody sometime convinced us we had to be, we are ready for grace. When we have given up all hope of ever being an acceptable human being, we may hear in our hearts the ultimate reassurance: we are accepted, accepted by grace.”
Are you ready for grace?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Genesis 2:23-25, Psalm 34:1-5, Proverbs 3:35, 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, Ephesians 2:4-8
REFERENCES (for further reading)
1. Shame and Grace, Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve by Lewis B. Smedes
“I Thirst”, a sermon by Timothy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, March, 2008
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Week 4: Religion Based and Gospel Based Worship Leading
Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership
INTRODUCTION WEEK 4: Religion Based Worship Leading and Gospel Based Worship Leading
READ:
Philippians 4:4-9
ASK:
1. Based on our previous discussions, what is the general difference between gospel and religion.?
2. What are the differences in motivation, practice, and performance between ‘gospel based’ worship and ‘religion based’ worship?
REFLECT:
Last week we discussed the difference between religion and the gospel, which can be encapsulated in a quote by Timothy Keller: “Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you are accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”
This week we are going to focus on how this difference affects our worship leading. In our church do we primarily provide worship leadership that is gospel based or religion based? Below we see how this difference shapes our motivations, practices, and performance.
1. Motivation:
So often we confuse the true order of things. Often we can slide back into the belief that if we obey we will be blessed, and in the same way, if we don’t obey we will be cursed. And this motivation can seep into our worship of God and our leadership so easily. Yet the true order of things that drips from every page of the gospel is: you ARE blessed, so obey. We are accepted by God through Jesus Christ, so now we can serve God freely, as children and not slaves. This changes everything about our motivation as worshippers and worship leaders. We no longer judge worship by whether we received an emotional high, listened to great music, or heard a powerful message. As leaders we are freed from the tyranny of seeing our attendance at a worship service as a way to gauge success or to be a good leader. Instead, we begin to see our worship service as an expression of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ and the love relationship we have in Him.
Religious motivations often have to do with either personal preferences or self-righteousness. As Tim Keller writes in his excellent book “The Reason For God”: “Religion, generally speaking, tends to create a slippery slope in the heart. Each religion informs it’s followers that they have “the truth” and this naturally leads them to feel superior to those with differing beliefs. Also, religion tells its followers that they are saved and connected to God by devotedly performing the truth. This moves them to separate from those who are less devoted and pure in life. Therefore, it is easy for one religious group to stereotype and caricature other ones. Once this situation exists it can easily spiral down into marginalization of others or even to active oppression, abuse, or violence against them. “ Religious motivations can also work the other way…..instead of leading us to feel superior they lead us to always feel inferior, never good enough, and then they fill us with fear and worry.
Motivations in scripture though have a decidedly different tone. We see throughout the Old and New Testaments the primary reason to worship is RESPONSE….a response to God’s goodness, love, and faithfulness, and a way to express our gratitude, joy, trust, peace, and love. Paul encapsulates this perfectly in Philippians 4:4-8: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
So ultimately, our gospel motivation is a desire to praise God and be shaped by the gospel. And our task as worship leaders is to emphasize these themes over and over again, and to make sure we are not falling back into self-centered, graceless, self-righteous religious worship in the words we say or songs we sing.
2. Practices
Our motivations then inform and transform our ‘practices’ in worship. Our practices describe our liturgical structures, worship styles, the lyrics and music of the songs we sing, how many songs we sing, the content of the liturgy and sermons, and the ways we lead worship. If we primarily lead worship out of a ‘religion based’ motivation then our practices will be rigid, unyielding, and marked with, a lack of faith, gratitude, and love. There will also be a sense of superiority over others that makes any changes in worship a huge fight…..as evidenced in why we call the conflicts on worship in churches “the worship wars.”
Years ago I was working in a church that was in the midst of a ‘worship war’….we were trying to introduce a contemporary service in the midst of a very traditional church. At elder meetings I was surprised at how many people were livid at even the suggestion of altering the service in any way. Then there were those on the contemporary side (including myself) that were just as angry and judgmental at the other side’s close-mindedness and lack of faith. The situation almost spiraled out of control until one of the elders gently diffused our anger and helped us to see just how far from the gospel we had gotten in our quest to promote a certain worship style. We had forgotten that we are called to ‘love one another as Jesus has loved us (John 13:34) and we had denigrated to religiously judging each other on our opinions on worship.
So we took a step back as a church and focused again on loving and forgiving each other, and when we began to discuss the subject again, we realized that our struggles with worship styles (and each other) didn’t really have anything to do with the gospel, but with our own preferences and our own religious mis-conceptions (that only traditional or contemporary worship is REALLY worship or REALLY able to bring us closer to God.). As we were able focus on God’s desires in worship and our response as Christian brothers and sisters to the gospel, we were able to see that both contemporary and traditional worship styles fit into gospel worship.
Evangelist and teacher Judson Cornwall puts the difference between gospel and religious worship practices this way: "Whenever the method of worship becomes more important than the Person of worship, we have already prostituted our worship. There are entire congregations who worship praise and praise worship but who have not yet learned to praise and worship God in Jesus Christ."
As we lead worship as musicians, singers, leaders, liturgists, or preachers, we keep away from religious practices by examining our motivations regularly and then focusing every week on the gospel proclamation that God loves his people and has sought to save them throughout history, culminating in the person and work of his son Jesus Christ.
3. Performance
As we approach the distinction between gospel and religion based performance, we have two main issues to consider: a.) how we view performance in our worship services, and b.) how we view excellence personally and in our worship teams/choirs.
As we base our worship more and more in gospel our worship services become more focused on congregational participation in the gospel story, and less focused on performance for performance’ sake. At times we can go to a church and remark upon how great the music was but have a very hard time understanding what they were singing about or what their reason for singing the song in worship was in the first place. So often our motivations for performance in worship have decidedly religious undertones….we often want to produce and perform amazing music so that the congregation will like us and think we are doing a good job, or we sometimes perform to show the community that our church has an amazing music program. At other times we perform to produce a certain emotional response, and at other times we just want to perform ‘quality music’ and show people what ‘high quality music is.’ Those are not all terrible reasons to perform, but they are not gospel reasons.
As we as worship leaders are immersed in the gospel we realize more and more than the goal of worship music and all our ‘practices’ of worship is not performance but participation; to give our congregations the opportunity to participate with the story of the gospel and experience the grace and love of Christ as a community of faith. I am not saying that we shouldn’t grow in excellence as musicians, choirs, as worship teams (we will discuss ‘gospel excellence’ later in the study) but that our primary objective is not merely to be excellent, but to be excellent with a purpose….to invite participation with the gospel and the author of our gospel hope, Jesus.
This relates then to how we view excellence as musicians/worship leaders, and worship teams/choirs. Our main goal is to ‘lead the congregations’ song’, and we are called to do that with excellence, so that we don’t distract people from the gospel. But so often we can make excellence an idol……excellence as the ultimate goal instead of knowing and being known by the risen Christ.
One of our worship leaders brought up an example of the confusion surrounding what is ‘gospel excellence’ last night with an example of two worship leaders she has worked with. One was very accepting and basically let anyone participate who wanted to, regardless of their skills. The result was a very graceful atmosphere but often very poor quality worship. Another was a professional guitarist for worship and had a very high standard for worship. If you were not good enough he would tell you that you were not gifted as a musician and should find another ministry. And he was often harsh and demanding at practices. So the result was very high quality musicianship with very little grace.
In gospel based excellence we want to strive for the middle ground. We don’t want to settle for mediocrity, but to see the development of our gifts (and others gifts) as a response to the grace and freedom we have been given in Jesus Christ. We don’t also want to make excellence an idol that becomes ultimately more important than the gospel. As we focus on the gospel we understand that all people are loved by God and have abilities and talents that need to be encouraged. So we focus as much on development as excellence, and strive to help each other grow in our skills as well as in our relationship with God and understanding of worship.
Please e-mail or write on the blog your responses to this. I am especially interested in how you practically incorporate this understanding of grace and religion into your worship and worship leading. I have spoken a lot in generalities and extremes, so personal examples would help us all incorporate this into our daily lives. Thanks!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 51, Isaiah 53:1-12, John 1:15-18, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 1 John 5:1-5
INTRODUCTION WEEK 4: Religion Based Worship Leading and Gospel Based Worship Leading
READ:
Philippians 4:4-9
ASK:
1. Based on our previous discussions, what is the general difference between gospel and religion.?
2. What are the differences in motivation, practice, and performance between ‘gospel based’ worship and ‘religion based’ worship?
REFLECT:
Last week we discussed the difference between religion and the gospel, which can be encapsulated in a quote by Timothy Keller: “Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you are accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”
This week we are going to focus on how this difference affects our worship leading. In our church do we primarily provide worship leadership that is gospel based or religion based? Below we see how this difference shapes our motivations, practices, and performance.
1. Motivation:
So often we confuse the true order of things. Often we can slide back into the belief that if we obey we will be blessed, and in the same way, if we don’t obey we will be cursed. And this motivation can seep into our worship of God and our leadership so easily. Yet the true order of things that drips from every page of the gospel is: you ARE blessed, so obey. We are accepted by God through Jesus Christ, so now we can serve God freely, as children and not slaves. This changes everything about our motivation as worshippers and worship leaders. We no longer judge worship by whether we received an emotional high, listened to great music, or heard a powerful message. As leaders we are freed from the tyranny of seeing our attendance at a worship service as a way to gauge success or to be a good leader. Instead, we begin to see our worship service as an expression of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ and the love relationship we have in Him.
Religious motivations often have to do with either personal preferences or self-righteousness. As Tim Keller writes in his excellent book “The Reason For God”: “Religion, generally speaking, tends to create a slippery slope in the heart. Each religion informs it’s followers that they have “the truth” and this naturally leads them to feel superior to those with differing beliefs. Also, religion tells its followers that they are saved and connected to God by devotedly performing the truth. This moves them to separate from those who are less devoted and pure in life. Therefore, it is easy for one religious group to stereotype and caricature other ones. Once this situation exists it can easily spiral down into marginalization of others or even to active oppression, abuse, or violence against them. “ Religious motivations can also work the other way…..instead of leading us to feel superior they lead us to always feel inferior, never good enough, and then they fill us with fear and worry.
Motivations in scripture though have a decidedly different tone. We see throughout the Old and New Testaments the primary reason to worship is RESPONSE….a response to God’s goodness, love, and faithfulness, and a way to express our gratitude, joy, trust, peace, and love. Paul encapsulates this perfectly in Philippians 4:4-8: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
So ultimately, our gospel motivation is a desire to praise God and be shaped by the gospel. And our task as worship leaders is to emphasize these themes over and over again, and to make sure we are not falling back into self-centered, graceless, self-righteous religious worship in the words we say or songs we sing.
2. Practices
Our motivations then inform and transform our ‘practices’ in worship. Our practices describe our liturgical structures, worship styles, the lyrics and music of the songs we sing, how many songs we sing, the content of the liturgy and sermons, and the ways we lead worship. If we primarily lead worship out of a ‘religion based’ motivation then our practices will be rigid, unyielding, and marked with, a lack of faith, gratitude, and love. There will also be a sense of superiority over others that makes any changes in worship a huge fight…..as evidenced in why we call the conflicts on worship in churches “the worship wars.”
Years ago I was working in a church that was in the midst of a ‘worship war’….we were trying to introduce a contemporary service in the midst of a very traditional church. At elder meetings I was surprised at how many people were livid at even the suggestion of altering the service in any way. Then there were those on the contemporary side (including myself) that were just as angry and judgmental at the other side’s close-mindedness and lack of faith. The situation almost spiraled out of control until one of the elders gently diffused our anger and helped us to see just how far from the gospel we had gotten in our quest to promote a certain worship style. We had forgotten that we are called to ‘love one another as Jesus has loved us (John 13:34) and we had denigrated to religiously judging each other on our opinions on worship.
So we took a step back as a church and focused again on loving and forgiving each other, and when we began to discuss the subject again, we realized that our struggles with worship styles (and each other) didn’t really have anything to do with the gospel, but with our own preferences and our own religious mis-conceptions (that only traditional or contemporary worship is REALLY worship or REALLY able to bring us closer to God.). As we were able focus on God’s desires in worship and our response as Christian brothers and sisters to the gospel, we were able to see that both contemporary and traditional worship styles fit into gospel worship.
Evangelist and teacher Judson Cornwall puts the difference between gospel and religious worship practices this way: "Whenever the method of worship becomes more important than the Person of worship, we have already prostituted our worship. There are entire congregations who worship praise and praise worship but who have not yet learned to praise and worship God in Jesus Christ."
As we lead worship as musicians, singers, leaders, liturgists, or preachers, we keep away from religious practices by examining our motivations regularly and then focusing every week on the gospel proclamation that God loves his people and has sought to save them throughout history, culminating in the person and work of his son Jesus Christ.
3. Performance
As we approach the distinction between gospel and religion based performance, we have two main issues to consider: a.) how we view performance in our worship services, and b.) how we view excellence personally and in our worship teams/choirs.
As we base our worship more and more in gospel our worship services become more focused on congregational participation in the gospel story, and less focused on performance for performance’ sake. At times we can go to a church and remark upon how great the music was but have a very hard time understanding what they were singing about or what their reason for singing the song in worship was in the first place. So often our motivations for performance in worship have decidedly religious undertones….we often want to produce and perform amazing music so that the congregation will like us and think we are doing a good job, or we sometimes perform to show the community that our church has an amazing music program. At other times we perform to produce a certain emotional response, and at other times we just want to perform ‘quality music’ and show people what ‘high quality music is.’ Those are not all terrible reasons to perform, but they are not gospel reasons.
As we as worship leaders are immersed in the gospel we realize more and more than the goal of worship music and all our ‘practices’ of worship is not performance but participation; to give our congregations the opportunity to participate with the story of the gospel and experience the grace and love of Christ as a community of faith. I am not saying that we shouldn’t grow in excellence as musicians, choirs, as worship teams (we will discuss ‘gospel excellence’ later in the study) but that our primary objective is not merely to be excellent, but to be excellent with a purpose….to invite participation with the gospel and the author of our gospel hope, Jesus.
This relates then to how we view excellence as musicians/worship leaders, and worship teams/choirs. Our main goal is to ‘lead the congregations’ song’, and we are called to do that with excellence, so that we don’t distract people from the gospel. But so often we can make excellence an idol……excellence as the ultimate goal instead of knowing and being known by the risen Christ.
One of our worship leaders brought up an example of the confusion surrounding what is ‘gospel excellence’ last night with an example of two worship leaders she has worked with. One was very accepting and basically let anyone participate who wanted to, regardless of their skills. The result was a very graceful atmosphere but often very poor quality worship. Another was a professional guitarist for worship and had a very high standard for worship. If you were not good enough he would tell you that you were not gifted as a musician and should find another ministry. And he was often harsh and demanding at practices. So the result was very high quality musicianship with very little grace.
In gospel based excellence we want to strive for the middle ground. We don’t want to settle for mediocrity, but to see the development of our gifts (and others gifts) as a response to the grace and freedom we have been given in Jesus Christ. We don’t also want to make excellence an idol that becomes ultimately more important than the gospel. As we focus on the gospel we understand that all people are loved by God and have abilities and talents that need to be encouraged. So we focus as much on development as excellence, and strive to help each other grow in our skills as well as in our relationship with God and understanding of worship.
Please e-mail or write on the blog your responses to this. I am especially interested in how you practically incorporate this understanding of grace and religion into your worship and worship leading. I have spoken a lot in generalities and extremes, so personal examples would help us all incorporate this into our daily lives. Thanks!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 51, Isaiah 53:1-12, John 1:15-18, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 1 John 5:1-5
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