Do Not Distract

When leading musical worship and preparing liturgists for church services my first rule is: TRY NOT TO DISTRACT. Try not to distract people from giving their praise to God and encountering the Holy Spirit in worship. That is my overriding concern in preparing worship teams and liturgists weekly.

We have all been in church services where an instrument or voice is way off the pitch, or the band is not playing the right notes, vocalists are not together, or it sounds like the team is not playing together.  And we have all witnessed the awkward pauses, readers who we cannot understand or do not project, and confusion in the order of services that happens in all churches occasionally. Even in the most well organized services problems occur occasionally and that is to be expected, yet if they happen too often they tend to put the focus more on the problems than the message that the leaders are trying to communicate. 

It is my goal and the goal of the teams I work with to practice and rehearse enough so that we can minimize the distractions and create sacred space for people to encounter God and gives their lives to Him in worship.  Music teams can be distracting if the sound of the band sounds muddy or clumsy, if band members play the wrong notes, if they don’t know the arrangement, or if they have not practiced or rehearsed well. Also if the arrangement of the song is too complicated it can be distracting, as well as if the song itself or melody is confusing, the key is too high or low, or if the band is not mixed well.   Liturgists can be distracting if they don't know the readings or they speak too soft, too fast, or intelligibly. 

Worship teams can also be distracting if they are TOO polished. If the band plays and acts like rock stars on stage or if the readers all act like Billy Graham this can also distract the attention of worship and focus the attention of worshippers on the performance rather than the God they are singing about.  That is why I usually discourage sweeping guitar solos or other musical gymnastics on stage during worship and I encourage readers to be themselves and act like themselves in front of people.  We are not about showing how good we are as musicians or leaders but showing how good God is.

My goal is that all the worship leaders would practice well and know the transitions well so that distractions can be minimized and we would all be more free to focus on God and worship.  I also desire teams to see this preparation as an act of worship and obedience to God, so that they can do their preparation 'as to the Lord'. 

Why Do We Worship?

Before all else, worship is about glorifying God. That is the purpose of worship and the reason we exist as human beings. For those who lead worship musically and liturgically our first task is to lead the congregations praise and verbalize our glorification of God.  Worship is also a response to God and an expression of our love for God and gratitude for all God has done. So, the worship leader also leads the congregations song, which is an expression of their response to God. 

The first task of the worship leader is to glorify God. The word “worship” comes from the word ‘worth-ship’ and means literally to give someone or something worth or value.  The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship of God 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.”(p. 17) Because of this our question in worship changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ Did this service express the worthiness of God and find its center in the sufficiency of Christ? ’ 

1. To Glorify God

And as we change our question we realize that we as worship leaders have a different task. Our task is not to make people feel good, to impact them, or to deliver them an encounter with God. That is God’s task through the Holy Spirit. Our task is to glorify God and share the story of God’s redemptive work in the world through Jesus Christ. 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.” 

As worship leaders we ‘recapitulate salvation history’ every week by making sure that the gospel is sung through our worship songs. Ask yourselves this: If a non-Christian who had never stepped into a church before came to our service, how much of the gospel would they understand through the worship time…not just the sermon, but the songs we sing, the ways we act, and all the other elements of worship? So we need to ask the question regularly of how we are doing at helping people orient their lives on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and view their lives through the lens of Christ

2. To Lead the Congregations Song

The second task of worship leaders has to do with leading the congregation’s song. As worship leaders we are not just giving the congregation a religious performance but we are leading them into an expression of their own praise and worship through song, prayer, and liturgy.  As worship leaders, we are called to be the ‘pied pipers’ who lead in such a way that it allows others to sing and engage with God in worship. 

All worship leaders have looked out at the congregation at times and noticed that nobody seems to be singing with you or following you, and more than that, some seem to be scowling. This is not just a problem in our church but in all churches. John Bell, a hymn writer and leader of the Iona Community in Scotland writes: “one in four people in many Western Countries don’t sing because they believe they can’t. That belief is inevitably grounded in some comment made to them when they were young. And the same thing happens with many church congregations.” (The Singing Thing Too, p.13)

Because so few people feel empowered to sing or responsively express their praise, our task as worship leaders is to help our congregation and to alleviate any possible barriers to people offering their praises to God. We do this by planning well, practicing well with the band, and leading the congregation well in worship.  John Bell writes, “In worship God expects every voice to play a part,” which means that God wants our congregations to be more than spectators in worship and us as leaders to be more than performers. It is our job as worship leaders to allow people to find their voice in worship and give them space to express their whole lives to God. And as our congregations begin to do that, they will find that “though worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, 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.” (Graham Kendrick) 

Whole Life Worship

Awhile ago I did a little informal survey in the community I was living in, both among church members and others I interacted with during that week, and I asked them the same question: when you think of the word ‘worship’, what is the first word or the first words that come to mind? And I was surprised by the diversity of answers I received. One man I met said that the first word that came to his mind when he thought about worship was JUDGEMENT. He was a recovering alcoholic, and he said that over and over again he tried to attend churches but felt that if he was honest about his struggles and his past, he would be kindly escorted out of the sanctuary. A woman in my church said that her first word was JOY. She said that as she listened to worship music, or came to church, joy was what she wanted to feel. And it troubled her when she didn’t feel it. Another man in church said that the first word he thought about when thinking of worship was DUTY. He said that he doesn’t like singing and that half the time he doesn’t understand what the pastor is saying, but he worships because that it’s what Christians do.  And a 10 year old boy responded to my question with one simple word: BORING.

All the answers I received put worship into two broad categories: either worship had to do with a feeling, either a good feeling or a bad feeling, or worship had to do with a duty, something that we have to do. And I imagine that we all fit somewhere into those two broad categories as well. Worship can often just be about feelings….. where we rate our worship experiences based on how we felt: did the worship music grab us, did the sermon inspire us, did the fellowship encourage us? If it did then worship was good and if it didn’t then worship was bad. Or worship often has to do with duty. We go to church because we should. Because we want to be good Christians and that is what good Christians do.  It is more of a duty than a pleasure, our works righteousness, so when things are not going good or we have slipped in our walk with Christ we don’t feel that we can enter into worship because we have not been good enough.

Yet throughout the Bible we see a different perspective about worship that really doesn’t have to do with either our feelings or our duty. The vision of worship we see has to do with God lovingly encountering us in every season of our lives and bringing our whole lives and the world under his reign. The word ‘worship’ comes from the old English ‘worthship’, which means to give worth or value to something or someone. So worship is our first response to God, where we give him the worth and value that he deserves. Yet in the psalms that worship is not a one way street. It is not just about us responding to God. But as we respond to God, God responds to us, and desires to bring our whole lives under his rule in worship.

Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggeman writes that all throughout our lives we encounter four main themes or cycles that seem to happen over and over and over again in our lives and are reflected in the book of Psalms. The first is the cycle of ORIENTATION, when everything is going well and life seems to be functioning the way it should. The second is the cycle of DISORIENTATION, when our world seems to fall apart and we wonder where God is and how this could happen to us, and the third cycle is the cycle of RE-ORIENTATION, where we gain new insight and hope, even in the midst of the struggle, and RESPONSE, when we are compelled to give action to the blessing given to us.

And Brueggeman writes that just as we see those themes working in our lives, we also see them working in the book of Psalms.  If you look through the book of Psalms you will see that the Psalms express worship in all of the areas of life that we encounter. Brueggeman writes that: “the psalms draw our whole lives under the rule of God, where everything may be submitted to YAHWEH.” So worship then in the scriptures has EVERYTHING to do with God encountering us in every season in our lives and bringing our whole lives under HIS rule.

Sometimes we think that we don’t have any place in worship if we are angry or frustrated, or suffering, or struggling, or doubting, or just lazy or comfortable, yet the Hebrew people, who used the Psalms as their prayer book, had no such problem. They could cry out “my God, why have your forsaken me” just as easily as “come let us shout for joy to the Lord”.  They knew that when worshiping both of those extremes could exist together at the same time, because they knew that their whole lives were under the rule of God and that God embraced both their laments and anger as well as their joy and praise. In the psalms we discover that God encounters us in every season of our lives, whether times of ORIENTATION, DISORIENTATION, or REORIENTATION, and desires to bring our whole lives under His Lordship. 

ORIENTATION

The pre-dominate theme of worship that we see in the Bible has to do with ORIENTATION. Orientation describes cycles in life and worship: that are characterized by well being, blessing, and gratitude, when God’s goodness, power, and faithfulness are evident, and the orderliness, coherence, and reliability of life are emphasized, when life is good and the world seems to function as it should.

On August 22, 2009, I experienced a moment of ORIENTATION like few others in my life when I married my wife Kathryn.  Though there were problems and stresses and things that went wrong, I still felt a sense of rightness on that day. All our closest friends and family were gathered around us, we worshipped together and made commitments to love and serve each other and let Christ be the Lord of our relationship and lives, and we had fun: we danced, and ate, and laughed, and enjoyed each other. There was a sense of how things SHOULD be on that day.

Now, I know that for some of you, your wedding day was not an orienting experience. Maybe it was just the opposite. Yet, for all of us, if we look back, we can see these times of orientation in our lives. It could be something big like the birth of a child, an anniversary, or a wedding, or just the small blessings like a fun night with family or friends, a great interaction with your child, a good conversation, a powerful worship service, or just the accomplishment of a job well done. 

And when we experience those moments we are called to THANK GOD. So often we second guess goodness in our lives, we wonder if it is real or if we deserve it, or sometimes we hold onto too tightly or let it go too quickly, yet the goodness we experience is meant to be an echo of a much larger goodness all around us, the goodness of God, who the Psalmist proclaims is the GREAT God, the great king above all Gods, whose loving kindness is better than life itself.

Throughout the Psalms we see the theme of ORIENTATION over and over again: that God is good, that he reigns, that He is more powerful than all other forces in the universe, and that who HE is, as God, is to define who we are, and who we are called to be in the world.  

DISORIENTATION

Yet this is often hard though, as we all can attest to, because we don’t live our lives mostly in moments of ORIENTATION. We live our lives often in the midst of DISORIENTATION, where though we may trust God’s power and goodness, we know that there is something wrong with ourselves and the world around us, and that God often seems silent, or worse, not there at all. 

DISORIENTATION describes both our struggles with sin and our larger experience of living in a broken world. It describes dangerous and difficult times of dislocation and disorientation in life when the sky does fall and the world does seem to come to an end. These times are characterized by anguish, suffering, doubt, frustration, suffering, hatred, hurt, sin, self-pity, and death and these psalms are PENITENTIAL AND LAMENT; both about what is wrong with ME and what s wrong with the world around me.

The first expression of disorientation in our lives is concerned with what is wrong with ME, and the church has always expressed this disorientation in worship through confession.  In confession we stop running and invite God into our own darkness and we acknowledge that as we are running, God is running even harder to catch us and redeem us.  The first step into disorientation is admitting to ourselves and God that though we are far more loved that we may realize, we are also far more sinful than we will admit. This is often when we practice confession in the midst of our worship services as we ponder our sinfulness and need of God’s redemptive love.

DISORIENTATION (LAMENT)

Yet Psalm 22 reveals another expression of disorientation that has to do with the larger reality of living in a broken world. So often we wonder: ‘why do bad things happen to God people?’ Why is there so much suffering and hatred in the world?’ Why do the wicked prosper? Why is power king while the poorest and neediest suffer?”  Or the questions might turn more personal: “Why did that happen to me? Why did you create me this way? Why did I lose my job? Why cancer? Why did my daughter die? Why did I get hurt? All these questions and so many others voice the larger reality that we live in a world that often seems out of control and that God often seems silent or worse, not in the picture at all.”

And as we look at the scriptures it is amazing to see that God does not run from those questions and neither are we to run from them as worshippers.  Walter Brueggeman writes: “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 love how Brueggeman puts this: that our praise is to be extravagant in worship. We are called to give our very best in worship to God; to lavish on God praise and worship and to make it extravagant. Yet God also welcomes another extravagance, that of complaint, lament, petition, and even indignation and assault. It is refreshing to realize that God does not only want to hear our praise, he wants to hear our honest anguish as well.  So often we think that God is just saying, “come on, just get over it!” when we are in the midst of doubt or trouble, but that is not the picture of God we see in the scriptures. We see in the scriptures a God who deeply is concerned, who deeply listens, and deeply responds to your cries.

An old college professor and mentor of mine named Jerry Sittser experienced this reality in a way that I will never forget. One night, as he was driving home from an event with his four kids, his wife, and his mother they were hit by a drunk driver and in one fell swoop Jerry’s mother, wife, and youngest daughter were killed, and his remaining three children were left severely injured.  And he told me that in the days after the accident he hated God for allowing this to happen, but he couldn’t stop believing. And he told me how in the weeks after the accident the psalms and writings on lament became a bridge to faith for him, because they gave a language to his pain, and to the mystery of how a loving God could allow such tremendous destruction to his family.

So often when tragedy happens, or deep frustration occurs in our lives, or we look at around at the pain and suffering in the world, it can feel like huge waves just crashing against us, and we are just swept in and then swept away over and over again. And God doesn’t ever promise to magically transport us out of those waves, but he promises to be with us in the midst of them and to help us to stand. So, giving God our laments is a way we stand with God, and stay with God, and hold onto God in the midst of the tumult and the waves.  In those times of disorientation God wants you to just hold onto him, to know him as the one who loves you, and to give all your pain to him, because he is strong enough to take it.

REORIENTATION

If we began to write down our Laments we could probably fill page after page, both of our own personal laments, the laments of those around us, and all the laments we can lift up for the poverty, violence, hatred, and destruction throughout the world.  Yet I wonder what it would be like if you took another sheet and put it right next to the sheet of laments and titled it “Who God is…” What attributes of God would you write that would respond to those laments? Putting down attributes like “God is loving” or “God is merciful” may feel a little hollow, because they don’t describe how God is showing his love and mercy in the midst of those laments.

Yet in scripture we only see one possible name to put down: Jesus. Jesus is God’s answer to our laments.  As Colossians affirms, Jesus is very nature God,  He is everything God is, contained as a human being. And our God is a God is a God who suffered just like us: he was tortured; he was tormented, he was killed, enduring the worst of humanities sin and the world’s brokenness, and he is risen and alive today.  Christ has experienced every lament that we could give, every obstacle we face, every doubt, fear, and trouble, and he died for them and rose with them. That is why He is our great high priest who can empathize with us and know our weakness, because he experienced what we experienced and looks on us with love and compassion. And when we begin to understand this and let Christ work in our lives, then eventually we begin to experience times of REORIENTATION. It may take days, or weeks or years, but as God works in our lives we eventually come to new understanding. 

Reorientation describes times in our lives where there is new perspective, new hope and strength for the journey, where there is a turning from mourning and longing to acceptance, and where there is joy and surprise that comes from the new gifts of God and the God who gives humanity new hope and life in Jesus Christ.

My mentor Jerry described one of his first moments of ‘re-orientation’ in his book “A Grace Disguised”. He wrote that months after the accident would have this reoccurring nightmare where he was being chased by a vast, all consuming darkness.  In the west he could see the setting sun and in his dream he would frantically run towards the sunset, all the time seeing the sun going down more and more and knowing that the darkness was catching up to him.  He wrote of feeling an absolute terror in his soul about this, that he would live in the darkness forever and that he had lost all hope.

He was so troubled by this he asked his sister for help, and his sister spoke something so simple yet profound that it started to change his perspective. She said: “in your dream you are trying to catch the sun but you will never catch it. The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise on the other side.’ And that is the moment where everything started to change for Sittser. He realized that he would never find healing or new perspective by avoiding his pain and struggle, and if he wanted to find perspective and new life he would need to walk through the darkness and let the sun meet him.  

And as we seek times of REORIENTATION that is our choice as well.  To not run from the darkness or disorientation that surrounds us, but to let God lead us through it. Last month someone asked me what my favorite image of Advent and Christmas was, and I think they were expecting me to say something like ‘the manger, or the shepherds, or the little baby Jesus”, but I think I surprised her by saying that my main image of ADVENT and Christmas is darkness: that Jesus was born on a dark night and in dark times with little hope, and that Jesus birth happened with most people in the dark about it, yet this man, born in darkness, is the light of the world, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus knows the darkness better than we do, and as we seek REORIENTATION we are called to seek God in Christ, to grow in Him, to love him, and to give our lives to him, so that we can be ready for the light when it comes and appreciate it when it is here.

RESPONSE

So our question this morning, as we have every morning, is how are we to respond? Worship always requires a response, because if we meet this God who lovingly engages us in all the seasons of our lives and reveals himself in Jesus Christ, then we cannot be the same. We must be changed.

So that response may mean for you that you need to forgive someone, because you realize that God is encountering you in the midst of your hatred, hurt, and frustration, and desiring to bring you under his lordship. Or maybe your response is a new understanding of God’s presence with you in the midst of your pain, or struggle. That God is walking with you through the darkness so you don’t have to run from it and can face it with Him.

Or it could mean just going out in service and love to others in this city or around the world who are suffering and struggling and breaking around you, because you know that God just as God is embracing you in the midst of all the seasons of your life, God is embracing them as well, and desires them to know His love.

Or it could mean just a different understanding of worship. As you come into this place or you worship God through this week you can know no matter if the music is excellent or terrible and no matter if the preaching was astounding or boring, that God is encountering you and embracing you no matter how you feel, and that this is a place where God is bringing your whole lives under his Lordship.

May we know the Grace of God that comes to us at such great cost and embrace God’s love to us in Jesus Christ as He embraces us.