Astonishing Grace, Week 3: Religion and Gospel

Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership

INTRODUCTION WEEK 3: Religion verses Gospel

READ: Philippians 3:7-11

ASK:
1. How would you define a religion? By that definition is Christianity a religion?

2. In what ways can ‘religion’ be harmful?

3. What is the difference that the gospel invites us to?

REFLECT:

RELIGION, noun: A personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. A cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

GOSPEL, noun: The message concerning Christ, the kingdom of God, and salvation. One of the first four New Testament books that tell of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Something accepted or promoted as infallible truth or as a guiding principle or doctrine.

“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.”
-Tim Keller

Keller’s distinction between religion and gospel is essential as we understand how to be centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ in our worship leading and daily lives. Religion ultimately has a selfish goal….to make sure I am right by God so I can be blessed and in God’s favor. This often leads us to:

- A sense of superiority because of our good works or our religiousness
- Anger, frustration, or despair when our life doesn’t go well. We think that frustrating or bad events in our lives occur because a.) God is punishing us, b.) we have not been good enough, or c.) we feel God owes us something for being religious).
- An inability to take criticism: when criticized we either attack back or are demoralized.
- A lack of intimacy or joy in our prayer life.
- A marked lack of joy and thankfulness in our religious observances (our services and personal worship focuses more on judgments than Christ).

In all of these attributes we see a marked lack of joy, gratitude, thankfulness, love, truth, or goodness. That is why Paul says: “for (Christ’s) sake I have lost all things, I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.” Religion promotes this “righteousness of our own” that leads to selfishness, judgment, and frustration. But in Christ we have a relationship that leads to freedom and joy. Religion promotes the attitude: “I obey therefore I am accepted” while the gospel gives the radical, world changing message of ‘I am accepted, therefore I obey.”

So often we confuse this order, thinking that Christianity is primarily about obeying God’s laws, so that maybe we will be deemed worthy and be saved someday. This kind of religiosity is what Paul writes is ‘rubbish’. It only leads us to self-righteousness and self-centeredness, which is ultimately bondage. The message of the gospel though is one of ASTONISHING GRACE; that we are accepted and freed from sin and death, that Christ has died for our pasts, present, and our futures and all you need to do is say YES.

So our main goal in leading worship is to lead people to the gospel message. We ultimately want people to know the message, experience the grace and love of God in their own lives, and share it with their families, co-workers, church community, and the world around them. We can only share this though as we have experienced it and experience it ourselves. So, a couple questions for us to think about in closing:

1. Do you believe that you are accepted by God by sheer grace through the work of Christ regardless of anything you do or have done or could do?
2. Do you functionally live what you believe?

“It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of their time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is: are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in god’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, and to touch God’s incarnate Word and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness?”
– Henri Nouwen, In The Name of Jesus

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
John 1:14-18, Romans 3:21-26, Galatians 1:6-10, 2 Timothy 1:6-12, Hebrews 4:12-16, 1 Peter 1:13-16

Astonishing Grace, Week 2: What Is Gospel Centered Worship Leading?

Astonishing Grace
Studies in Gospel Centered Worship Leadership
Week 2: What Does It Mean to Be Gospel Centered?

READ:
Galatians 5:1-6

ASK:
1. What is circumcision and how could it be a ‘yoke of slavery’ for the people Paul is talking to?


2. What is the freedom that Paul is describing?


3. How does this relate to being ‘gospel centered’ in our lives and worship leading? What can get in the way of this? What helps us center on the gospel individually and as a worship team?


REFLECT:
You would think that being “gospel centered” would be a given when it comes to worship leading, right? But as we know, it is often not the case. As we all have experienced at times, sometimes worship services seem to have very little to do with GRACE. Sometimes we barely hear any word of Jesus or God’s redemptive work during a worship time and other times worship can seem more like a professional concert, or a lifeless ritual, than an amazing expression of God’s love in Christ Jesus. Other times we can feel manipulated or told explicitly or implicitly that we do not really love God or worship God unless we worship in this way or that way. All of these are indicators that something has gotten in the way of the gospel in a worship service.

This is why Paul is so against circumcision in our passage from Galatians. Circumcision (the removal of the foreskin of the penis) often produces snickers and jokes when it is talked about in Bible study, but to the Jewish people it was (and is) a deadly serious ritual and central to their identity as people of God. In Genesis 17:10-14 God commands Abraham to circumcise his household, as a sign that they are part of the covenant that God made with Abraham and from that day on, all of Abraham’s people have circumcised their male children on the 8th day. In Galatians Paul is speaking against teachers who were urging non-Jewish believers in Christ to also get circumcised.

We might think that the language Paul is using is alittle harsh….how could a harmless ritual like circumcision be a ‘yoke of slavery’ to people? A yoke is a harness that is used on farm animals to limit their movements and make them do certain tasks. To Paul, circumcision is a yoke because it adds something to the gospel. The gospel is no longer “you are saved from your sin and set free through Jesus Christ”, it is now “you are saved through Jesus Christ AND circumcision”, and this leads us into slavery to works righteousness and graceless religion.

Many of the messages we receive from the world around us (and unfortunately the church at times as well) are often graceless because they add the ‘AND’ clause to every aspect of our lives: that I need God’s love AND a better body, I need God’s love and a better car, girlfriend, husband, guitar, etc….. This all leads us to the ‘yoke of slavery ‘and away from the glorious freedom Paul urges us to bask in and receive.
So, as we apply this to ‘gospel centered’ living and worship leading, we can identify a few factors that can get in the way of the gospel and lead us into the ‘yoke of slavery’ (we need God AND something else):

- Our inadequacies and fears. These cripple us more than anything. Our inability to give ourselves grace and to live in freedom as God’s children directly affects our ability to receive grace and our congregation’s ability to receive grace when we are worship leading. So many of us struggle with unhealthy shame that forces us to try over and over again to earn God’s love and other peoples approval. Healthy shame focuses on something we did wrong: ‘I was mean to that person and I feel bad for it.’ Unhealthy shame focuses on the fact we ARE wrong, no matter what we DO. So, ‘I am mean to someone and it just confirms that I am a terrible person.’ We are freed from this unhealthy shame as we more and more believe that we are accepted by God and loved as we are, without anything we do.

-Our own sin and depravity. Our own selfish ambition and pride is the flip side to our inadequacy and sometimes the cause of it. We need to realize that even though we may want to serve Christ, we often are motivated out of self ambitions and for selfish reasons. And this is not always necessarily bad or wrong, but it can lead us inadvertently away from the gospel. The key for us is honesty about our motivations and about our decisions. Humility begins with a brutal honesty about who we are and who we are not, so that we can rest in God’s grace. Remember that ‘we are worse that we could even imagine and more loved that you could ever know.’

- An overemphasis on emotion. We value expressing our whole lives in worship, but we can also over-emphasize feelings in worship until they become manipulative. Any time we are chastised for not feeling\doing something in worship (not feeling the Holy Spirit, not feeling overcome by God’s love, not raising your hands, etc…) or we leave feeling that we haven’t worshiped because we haven’t felt something, then we probably are overemphasizing emotion in worship.

- Lack of passion: This is the other side of the emotion debate. We don’t want to use emotions to manipulate, but we also desire to have worship that is passionate, whatever the style or expression. We can feel when a leader or pastor is just going through the motions….and in worship this can lead away from the gospel quickly and into apathy or legalism.

- Expectations. Sometimes expectations can bind us and not free us, especially if we suspect a reason that is not motivated by grace or love. If the only reason to do something is tradition, that is not a good enough reason. Often we experience this in churches, so our starting point is to have grace filled discussions on gospel values and how they affect our worship. We also have expectations from the larger worship culture, especially as contemporary worship leaders. Most of the music we use as worship leaders come from large church movements or mega-churches, and we can be tempted to think that we can only be successful if we look or sound like them. We need to be careful not to use a Passion or Hillsong as a standard of success. They wouldn’t want that either. Our goal is worship God and to disciple passionate, growing, gospel centered followers of Christ. If we have 10 people or 10,000 people doesn’t matter, the center remains the same.

So as we strive to be ‘gospel centered’ as worshippers and a worship team, here are a few practices and attitudes that can help us:

-Focus daily on God and on God’s word. Learn to daily rest in God’s love and God’s grace. Don’t see this as another thing you ‘have’ to do, but an invitation from a loving God who calls to you: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message)

- Practice Honesty. Practice honesty about where you are as a person (what you are struggling with, what you are good at, what you can and cannot/should not do) and about where we are as a worship team. What do we desire? What do we expect from ourselves, and our congregation? Let this honesty not condemn you (or us as a worship team) but lead you into the glorious freedom that the Bible describes.

- Always focus on the story of salvation and Christ love and work. We need to focus always on grace; we need to overemphasize it, over communicate it, and over-emphasize it until our congregation has heard it a million times. Pastor Tim says that we need to preach this message until they are sick of hearing it and then say it a million times more. So, we need to tell the story in every song, every transition, and every word we say. This may sound boring or repetitive, but we only have one gospel to preach and we need to preach it in everything we do!

Being ‘gospel centered’ in our lives and worship leading means believing and living in the reality that Jesus Christ has set us free from sin and death and given us a new existence, not as slaves but as children of God. In this reality we trust that the Holy Spirit is working to transform us (and others) more and more into the children that God has made us into (Romans 12:1-2). This is all God’s action, because of God’s love and for God’s purposes. There is nothing we can do to earn this. We can only accept it and live in it. So, this week I encourage you to try to identify some of the sources of slavery in your life (and in our worship) and to rest in the fact that you are accepted and loved in Christ Jesus, and led into a glorious and astonishing freedom.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE READINGS (to be read throughout the week):
Psalm 119:41-48, Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:14-28, John 8:31-36, Romans 8:1-8, Hebrews 9:13-15

Astonishing Grace: Studies in Gospel Centered Worship Leadership

This week our worship team is beginning a year long study on “Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership”, and I am going to post our weekly studies here for our teams (and anyone else in cyberspace) to study and interact with. This study will help us explore what it means to be 'gospel centered' in all we do, and especially in our worship leading. Are you wondering what it means to be 'gospel centered'? Read on.

Astonishing Grace

Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership

INTRODUCTION WEEK 1: What is the Gospel?

READ:
John 3:16-21, Ephesians 2:4-10

ASK:
1. This week we are beginning our year long study on ‘Gospel Centered/Driven worship leadership’ and we begin with a very simple question: if someone stopped you on the street and asked you: “what is the gospel?” what would you say?

2. How does our passage from John define “the gospel?”

3. What does it mean to be ‘gospel centered and driven’ in our lives and in our worship leading? Are we naturally ‘gospel centered/driven’ as Christians and as Christian leaders?

My definition of what it means to be “gospel centered”:

Being “gospel centered” means being defined, founded, and driven by the ‘good news’ or gospel: that God has created us in His image, and loves us though we are sinful and fallen; that God sent his only son, Jesus, to save the world and give us new life in Him, through love and sacrifice, by bearing our sins on a cross and rising on the third day to new life; that we are given the Holy Spirit to guide us, confirm us as God’s adopted children, to help us live in Grace and be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That we have a new mission to live as God’s ambassadors on this earth, not as a way to heaven, but as a response to GRACE, giving as we have been given and sharing the astonishing grace of God with others in word and deed, whether it be sharing the story of Christ with friend, working with a ministry to stop sexual slavery, or helping dig a well to provide clean water in Africa. Our response to grace is to freely give grace and to infect our society and world with graceful actions and agreements.

REFLECT:
When I think of what it means to be ‘gospel centered/driven’ I always go back to Ephesians 2:4-10:

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

At the very center of the gospel is a God who instigates rescues and saves, a God who comes as Jesus Christ and gives us a gift through the power of the Holy Spirit that we don’t deserve….GRACE.

Grace can sometimes be a hard concept to understand, so here is a helpful way to understand the difference between Justice, Mercy, and Grace: Justice is getting what you deserve. For example, if a policeman pulls you over because you are speeding, it is justice that you get a ticket. Mercy though is not getting what you deserve. So in our scenario, the policeman would show you mercy by not giving you a ticket, though you deserved it. GRACE then is different than both justice and mercy. Grace is a GIFT you don’t deserve. So if the policeman gave you grace, He would forgive you for speeding, though you don’t deserve it, then also decide to give you a million dollars, just because he wanted to. And this is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ: the God of JUSTICE, has shown us MERCY by coming down to save us and GRACE by saving us from our sins and giving us new life, adoption as children of God, freedom from sin and death, new hope, new vision, the help of the Holy Spirit, etc…. the ‘incomparable riches of God’s grace’ that Ephesians talks about. And the most amazing gift of GRACE is that God has given us himself, a gift we could never deserve and so much more than we could ever think to ask for. And this gift begins to change everything in our lives once we begin to accept it and live in it.

We sing the song “Your Grace Is Enough” often in worship, but do we really believe it? Does it reflect in our lives and in our worship leading? So often as worshippers and worship leaders we preach a message either implicitly or explicitly that grace is NOT enough. It is grace plus an amazing stage, amazing equipment, an amazing image, amazing programs, amazing works. We preach sometimes without words that if our churches aren’t full, we aren’t yet fully blessed. That if our lives aren’t perfect or we struggle with depression or addiction, we have missed the blessing. We sometimes even preach that through God loves us, we still need to do something, feel something, or act in a certain way to earn God’s grace.

Yet the astonishing message of Grace is that you are accepted. Christ has died for your past present, and future. All you need to do is say YES. Grace is enough and everything else is a response to grace; all of our striving to follow God, all of our worship. And grace changes everything: it changes the way we look at ourselves, others, and our relationship with God.

Over the next year we are going to focus on what the good news of astonishing grace means for us as worship leaders and how we both inhabit and impart a message that God’s Grace is enough for us and our church.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURE READINGS(to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 29:11, Zephaniah 3:17, John 1:14-18, Romans 5:15-17, 2 Timothy 1:8-12