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

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

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:

“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

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

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