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
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