Thinking Theologically 1: Am I A Theologian?
READ: Matt 7:24-27
DISCUSS:
1. Dallas Willard once said that “we are at the mercy of our ideas”. What do you think this means?
2. What is your definition of ‘theology’? What does it mean to ‘think theologically’? Especially as a worship leader? How does our theology play out in the songs we sing, the ways we act, what we say in worship?
3. What is the danger, as described in our passage? How does our scripture today model ‘thinking theologically’?
REFLECT:
As a drummer, a singer, a keyboardist, a guitarist, or a bass player you may not think of yourself as a theologian, but you are. All who lead our congregations in worship, whether we are music leaders, musicians, pastors, or liturgists, give a theological statement every time we stand in front of our congregations. Theology literally means ‘the study of God’. Sometimes Christians cut down theology as being all head and no heart, but theology is important because it deals with our ideas about God. Who is God? What does God want? How is God working in our lives? As Dallas Willard wrote, “we are at the mercy of our ideas,” so our answers to these questions will define how we live our lives and lead our congregations in worship.
The problem though, with all of us at times, is that we think very little about our ‘theologies’ and the ‘ideas’ that define us are often inconsistent or contradictory. We see this play out in our lives especially in great times of personal struggle or temptation. For example, a young woman is struggling because her boyfriend wants to have sex. Theologically, her beliefs about sex are based on the scriptural understanding that God has sanctioned sex only within the bounds of marriage, yet her IDEAS about sex are more shaped by her culture, the media, and her friends, which conflict with her theology. So this internal conflict may lead her to disobey her beliefs in place of her ideas without even really understanding what is going on.
The same often happens in our leadership in worship. So often our ideas about what is good, interesting, crowd pleasing, and engaging in worship are shaped by our culture, upbringing, friends/family, and the media. And this is not necessarily wrong, but it can, at times, conflict with our theology of worship. If our primary focus as a church is (whether we realize it or not) how excellent musically we are, how cool our lighting and multimedia is, how fun, or entertaining our services are, then our worship services may have high performance quality and excellence, but confusing and contradicting messages about who God is, where God is, and what God is asking of the congregation in worship.
Whether we realize it or not, everything is our worship service gives a theological statement. So often we think that our song choices, liturgy, or preaching are the only times we speak theologically. But in worship everything speaks theologically, because everything in worship is infused with meaning. So, our demeanor as a leader gives a theological statement, the musical dynamics and transitions we use speak theologically, the ways we pray, incorporate silence, speaking, singing, standing and sitting, etc…teaches people about God. Even the way the band is positioned, and the ways the chairs are set up in the room speak theologically! There is no dead time in a worship service; everything has a theological message. And this makes understanding our own theologies and the theology which we portray as a band member and worship team deeply important.
A friend of mine and I have had a long running debate about the use of guitar solos in a worship set. He believes that solo’s can help people have an unstructured space to be with God if used correctly, and I tend to feel that extended guitar solos in a worship service are more about performance than worship. We both though agree that guitar solos are much more than a personal preference but a theological statement. It is not just about whether we like guitar solos or not, but about what a guitar solo portrays theologically and how it functions in worship service. For me, guitar solos make me think of worship as a concert, a spectator sport, when God is calling us all to participate, but my friend sees a well positioned solo as an invitation to prayer and meditation, a sign that God wants to be with us and meet us where we are.
As our debate continues my friend and I both agree that though this may seem like a trivial issue, there is nothing trivial about our worship service. Worship is our life’s blood as Christians; it is the very air we breathe, so we are called to take it seriously. And worship teaches, so every time we gather for worship we remind the congregation who God is, where God is, and what God requires of them.
God longs for His grace in Jesus Christ to become what is most true and real in our lives; more true and real than all the other ideas that we have learned and embraced. So we are called to conform our ideas to what we believe, to “build our house on the Rock”(Matthew 7:24-27), so that we can portray the gospel of Jesus Christ consistently through our worship services and through our lives.
Remember, as worship leaders you are not just members of another band: you are teaching people who God is and how to approach God in worship. So, if you are not thinking theologically you are in danger of committing idolatry and of leading people into the worship of another God that is not Jesus Christ.
If you are unsure about how to ‘think theologically’ and what exactly you believe, I encourage you to take 30 minutes and write a personal statement of belief. This might end up taking over 30 minutes, but at least take that much time to begin. In this statement just ask yourself: what do I believe about God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, church, life eternal, sanctification, etc…. Take 30min to an hour to do this and then compare it with the APCH statement of belief (on the website: www.apch.nl). Were there any variations? Now, begin to think through the songs we sing, etc…. through the lens of that mission statement. After you have written your statement of faith, you could write a personal mission statement about how you want to live out what you believe.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 119: 9-16, John 1:1-14, Colossians 3:15-17, Hebrews 4:11-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Complete Worship Leader, Kevin J. Navarro
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 9, COSTLY GRACE
Hey friends,
Here is the Bible study we went through last night on “Costly Grace.” As musicians, singers, and leaders, Bonhoeffer’s message challenges us to take a inward look at our beliefs and faith before we lead others in worship. Our guest preacher this last week quoted A.W Tozer: “what you believe about God will tell everything about you,” and it is the same about our worship leading….what we believe about God will tell everything about our worship leading. So I hope you are challenged about the ‘costliness’ grace by our study this week!
This study concludes our introduction to this series. In future weeks and months we will be exploring these themes:
- gospel beliefs
- gospel character
- gospel discipleship
- gospel excellence
- gospel artistry
- gospel leadership
And lastly…..I want to encourage you, if you still attending the church and living close to Den Haag, to attend the Prodigal God Study in September. This study will just confirm and deepen your understanding of the topics we have been discussing over the past months. You can sign up on the website or at church.
So.....here is this weeks study:
INTRODUCTION WEEK 9: Costly Grace
Here is the Bible study we went through last night on “Costly Grace.” As musicians, singers, and leaders, Bonhoeffer’s message challenges us to take a inward look at our beliefs and faith before we lead others in worship. Our guest preacher this last week quoted A.W Tozer: “what you believe about God will tell everything about you,” and it is the same about our worship leading….what we believe about God will tell everything about our worship leading. So I hope you are challenged about the ‘costliness’ grace by our study this week!
This study concludes our introduction to this series. In future weeks and months we will be exploring these themes:
- gospel beliefs
- gospel character
- gospel discipleship
- gospel excellence
- gospel artistry
- gospel leadership
And lastly…..I want to encourage you, if you still attending the church and living close to Den Haag, to attend the Prodigal God Study in September. This study will just confirm and deepen your understanding of the topics we have been discussing over the past months. You can sign up on the website or at church.
So.....here is this weeks study:
INTRODUCTION WEEK 9: Costly Grace
READ:
Philippians 3:7-11, Luke 5:1-11
DISCUSS:
1. How did we define cheap grace last week? How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
2. What is it about Grace that is costly? How did grace cost God everything? How does it cost us our lives? How is your life/the church/the world, better because of Grace?
3. Is your life and your church characterized more by costly or cheap grace? What step could you take to follow Jesus Christ in your life today?
REFLECT:
Who, or what, would you say, is the chief enemy of the church? Secularism? Humanism? Atheism? All of those movements definitely disagree with the claims of the church, but are they our ‘enemies’? Probably not. The worst enemies often come from within, and as we learned from Deitrich Bonhoeffer last week, the chief enemy of the church is cheap grace. It is the enemy of the church because it distorts the very core of the Christian faith and deceives us into believing a ‘gospel’ that is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As we talked about last week, Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as ‘data without life’, forgiveness without repentance’, and ‘forgiveness without discipleship.’ All of us can testify to how we have ‘cheapened grace’ in these ways at times in our lives and we have all experienced churches that practice cheap grace. Bonhoeffer though reminds us that Grace is something much greater and much more wonderful that we often imagine it to be. And he assures us that the Holy Spirit is always calling us back to ‘costly grace’, which is the only answer to the world’s problems and a priceless gift and treasure to those who would receive it. As Bonhoeffer writes:
“Grace is costly because it calls us to follow and grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life and grace because it gives a person the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a great price.’ And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.” Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p45
Grace is costly for Bonhoeffer, because it cost God everything to give, it costs everything for us to follow, and though it might mean death for us to follow, it is the only thing that can give us true life.
1. Grace is costly because it cost God everything.
Grace is such a nice idea that often we forget how much it cost God to give it. Whenever we trivialize grace or God’s love we need to remember that Grace cost God everything to give. Our sin and wretchedness as humans is so evil and corrupt that the only way God could save us is through the willing sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The gripping moments of Matthew 27:45-46 where Jesus cries out from the cross “my God, why have you forsaken me?” become even more poignant when we realize that God, at that moment, experienced God-forsakenness. God himself experienced desperate hopelessness. So often we forget what it cost God to come and save humanity. God gave His only Son…..so God knows what it is like to experience their child tortured and killed. But even more, Jesus is God incarnate….so at that moment God knew the terrible anguish of the cross and the darkness of hopelessness in Himself. He knows what it is like to lose everything. He knows what it is like to be forsaken, to be lost, to die. And God does this willingly for us. As Jurgen Moltmann writes in his book, The Crucified God, "God's power is not expressed by the fact that he controls all things (the opposite of love), but in that he bears all things and suffers all things." This is amazing grace!
2. Grace is costly because it costs us our lives.
Grace is the gift of the Christian life and it is the only way to know Christ and what Christ has done for us. There is no other way we can understand God’s love for us. Yet God’s grace is more than idea….it is a person. Jesus Christ. And through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to come and be transformed by grace. This involves a death as well as new life, and that is why it is so costly to us. It is costly because it cost God’s son his life and it is costly because it costs our life.
Grace costs our lives because we cannot understand and be transformed by Grace without following Christ. And God will not be content until He is the only Lord of our lives and our whole lives are transformed by Grace. Christ is the answer and everything else is just dead religion and empty doctrine. Bonhoeffer challenges all Christians that Grace requires a response and it becomes less real and urgent in our lives if we don’t stay close to the source of all grace, Jesus Christ. Consider the story of Peter on the beach in Luke 5:1-11. Jesus encountered Peter and asked him to follow. Would Peter have grown in faith without actually putting down his nets and following? No. It’s the same with us. Our faith will just become a bunch of dead religion unless we do something about it. When we actually follow Christ where he goes, that is where we will find life and understand Grace. If we continue to stay ‘Christ observers’ and not ‘Christ followers’ then we will never understand and be changed by ‘costly grace’.
3. Costly Grace gives a person the only True life.
So costly grace costs our lives but at the same time Grace is the only thing that brings us new life. In dying to our old life we see true and untainted life in Grace. Life not ruled by sin, but ruled by love. In Grace we are assured that we accepted by God and given new life in Jesus Christ. We are no longer as we were and we now have a new identity, a new assurance, a new hope, and a new purpose. Bonhoeffer echoes all of scripture in describing Grace as a fountain of life. It is true, unbridled, real life, and following Christ leads us to the challenge and also the blessings of living Grace out in our ordinary lives. Grace leads us to to give our lives to God and to forgive others, to confront our anger, selfishness, and greed, to value ourselves and others, to work for the thriving and blessing of people, and to be healed….of our own self-hatred, of our deep wounds, our brokenness, and the sin that often so controls us. Grace is liberation….yet it is not cheap.
In our worship leading, it is easy to preach a message of cheap grace. It is easy to get moralistic or to focus on emotions or performance. So, the question for us is: are we following Christ? Are we, as worship leaders, being challenged by ‘costly grace’ in our lives. And are we letting that Grace form the kind of songs we sing, words we say, ways we perform, the ways we plan worship, and the ways we encourage and challenge our congregations? What does this mean for our lives and for our walk with Christ?
“Happy are the simple followers of Jesus who have been overcome by His grace, and are able to sing the praises of the all-sufficient grace of Christ with humbleness of heart. Happy are they who, knowing that Grace can live in the world and not be of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proven to be a fount of mercy.” Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship p. 56
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Luke 15:1-10, Luke 19:1-10, Ephesians 4:17-24, Ephesians 5:1-7, 8-20,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Cost of Discipleship by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers From Prison by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Philippians 3:7-11, Luke 5:1-11
DISCUSS:
1. How did we define cheap grace last week? How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
2. What is it about Grace that is costly? How did grace cost God everything? How does it cost us our lives? How is your life/the church/the world, better because of Grace?
3. Is your life and your church characterized more by costly or cheap grace? What step could you take to follow Jesus Christ in your life today?
REFLECT:
Who, or what, would you say, is the chief enemy of the church? Secularism? Humanism? Atheism? All of those movements definitely disagree with the claims of the church, but are they our ‘enemies’? Probably not. The worst enemies often come from within, and as we learned from Deitrich Bonhoeffer last week, the chief enemy of the church is cheap grace. It is the enemy of the church because it distorts the very core of the Christian faith and deceives us into believing a ‘gospel’ that is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As we talked about last week, Bonhoeffer defines cheap grace as ‘data without life’, forgiveness without repentance’, and ‘forgiveness without discipleship.’ All of us can testify to how we have ‘cheapened grace’ in these ways at times in our lives and we have all experienced churches that practice cheap grace. Bonhoeffer though reminds us that Grace is something much greater and much more wonderful that we often imagine it to be. And he assures us that the Holy Spirit is always calling us back to ‘costly grace’, which is the only answer to the world’s problems and a priceless gift and treasure to those who would receive it. As Bonhoeffer writes:
“Grace is costly because it calls us to follow and grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life and grace because it gives a person the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘ye were bought at a great price.’ And what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.” Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p45
Grace is costly for Bonhoeffer, because it cost God everything to give, it costs everything for us to follow, and though it might mean death for us to follow, it is the only thing that can give us true life.
1. Grace is costly because it cost God everything.
Grace is such a nice idea that often we forget how much it cost God to give it. Whenever we trivialize grace or God’s love we need to remember that Grace cost God everything to give. Our sin and wretchedness as humans is so evil and corrupt that the only way God could save us is through the willing sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The gripping moments of Matthew 27:45-46 where Jesus cries out from the cross “my God, why have you forsaken me?” become even more poignant when we realize that God, at that moment, experienced God-forsakenness. God himself experienced desperate hopelessness. So often we forget what it cost God to come and save humanity. God gave His only Son…..so God knows what it is like to experience their child tortured and killed. But even more, Jesus is God incarnate….so at that moment God knew the terrible anguish of the cross and the darkness of hopelessness in Himself. He knows what it is like to lose everything. He knows what it is like to be forsaken, to be lost, to die. And God does this willingly for us. As Jurgen Moltmann writes in his book, The Crucified God, "God's power is not expressed by the fact that he controls all things (the opposite of love), but in that he bears all things and suffers all things." This is amazing grace!
2. Grace is costly because it costs us our lives.
Grace is the gift of the Christian life and it is the only way to know Christ and what Christ has done for us. There is no other way we can understand God’s love for us. Yet God’s grace is more than idea….it is a person. Jesus Christ. And through the Grace of God in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to come and be transformed by grace. This involves a death as well as new life, and that is why it is so costly to us. It is costly because it cost God’s son his life and it is costly because it costs our life.
Grace costs our lives because we cannot understand and be transformed by Grace without following Christ. And God will not be content until He is the only Lord of our lives and our whole lives are transformed by Grace. Christ is the answer and everything else is just dead religion and empty doctrine. Bonhoeffer challenges all Christians that Grace requires a response and it becomes less real and urgent in our lives if we don’t stay close to the source of all grace, Jesus Christ. Consider the story of Peter on the beach in Luke 5:1-11. Jesus encountered Peter and asked him to follow. Would Peter have grown in faith without actually putting down his nets and following? No. It’s the same with us. Our faith will just become a bunch of dead religion unless we do something about it. When we actually follow Christ where he goes, that is where we will find life and understand Grace. If we continue to stay ‘Christ observers’ and not ‘Christ followers’ then we will never understand and be changed by ‘costly grace’.
3. Costly Grace gives a person the only True life.
So costly grace costs our lives but at the same time Grace is the only thing that brings us new life. In dying to our old life we see true and untainted life in Grace. Life not ruled by sin, but ruled by love. In Grace we are assured that we accepted by God and given new life in Jesus Christ. We are no longer as we were and we now have a new identity, a new assurance, a new hope, and a new purpose. Bonhoeffer echoes all of scripture in describing Grace as a fountain of life. It is true, unbridled, real life, and following Christ leads us to the challenge and also the blessings of living Grace out in our ordinary lives. Grace leads us to to give our lives to God and to forgive others, to confront our anger, selfishness, and greed, to value ourselves and others, to work for the thriving and blessing of people, and to be healed….of our own self-hatred, of our deep wounds, our brokenness, and the sin that often so controls us. Grace is liberation….yet it is not cheap.
In our worship leading, it is easy to preach a message of cheap grace. It is easy to get moralistic or to focus on emotions or performance. So, the question for us is: are we following Christ? Are we, as worship leaders, being challenged by ‘costly grace’ in our lives. And are we letting that Grace form the kind of songs we sing, words we say, ways we perform, the ways we plan worship, and the ways we encourage and challenge our congregations? What does this mean for our lives and for our walk with Christ?
“Happy are the simple followers of Jesus who have been overcome by His grace, and are able to sing the praises of the all-sufficient grace of Christ with humbleness of heart. Happy are they who, knowing that Grace can live in the world and not be of it, who, by following Jesus Christ, are assured of their heavenly citizenship that they are truly free to live their lives in this world. Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace and that grace simply means discipleship. Happy are they who have become Christians in this sense of the word. For them the word of grace has proven to be a fount of mercy.” Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship p. 56
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Luke 15:1-10, Luke 19:1-10, Ephesians 4:17-24, Ephesians 5:1-7, 8-20,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Cost of Discipleship by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers From Prison by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 8
INTRODUCTION WEEK 8: Cheap Grace
READ:
Philippians 3:7-11
DISCUSS:
1. Over the past weeks we have been defining and exploring Grace. If you had to give a one sentence explanation of Grace to a friend, what would you say?
2. How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
3. Read our passage for this morning. What is Grace costing Paul? Does he see this cost as a burden? What is so costly about Grace that everything else is ‘rubbish to Paul’?
REFLECT:
When we think of something as ‘cheap’, usually we think of something that is poorly made, easily breakable, or not worth much. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor who lived during the turbulent years of WWII, reflected upon the Christian church around the world and especially in Germany, he noticed that the Grace that many churches preach is cheap. It is not worth much to those who espouse it and it is easily breakable in the midst of the culture around them.
Over the past weeks we have discussed the importance of founding our lives and worship leading on GRACE. As we conclude this introduction and begin to explore how GRACE impacts our beliefs, our thoughts on excellence, discipleship, artistry, and leadership, it is important for us to think about the difference between ‘cheap’ and ‘costly’ grace.
When we sing about Grace we often use words like ‘Amazing’, ‘Indelible’, or ‘Bountiful’, but we have very few hymns that term Grace as either ‘cheap’ or ‘costly’. How can grace be cheap? It is God’s action, God’s initiative, God’s work….if anything it is our greatest treasure in the Christian church. How can it be cheap? For Bonhoeffer, it is not God who cheapens Grace but people, and especially Christians individually and churches as a whole. He writes about cheap grace in this way:
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. We are fighting for Costly Grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p43-44
Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace in three ways: it is data without life, forgiveness without repentence, and Grace without discipleship.
1. Cheap Grace is data without life
Grace becomes ‘cheap’ when it firstly becomes just another belief, another doctrine, which fails to touch us and change our lives. For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is just data; it is just another thing people believe and churches confess. It is a nice idea that is not really followed or a nice ideal that is rarely lived. Grace is so radical that it changes everything about us and the world around us, yet so often Christians and churches believe in Grace, but don’t LIVE in it. Grace is just a suggestion or worse, an excuse or a justification.
For Bonhoeffer, Grace that is not lived is not real Grace, but a cheap imitation that only serves us and not God. And more than just being selfish, cheap grace is actually damaging to proclamation of the gospel and the witness of the church. As I quoted before, Bonhoeffer writes that ‘cheap grace is the enemy of the church.’ Cheap grace distorts the gospel and can lead us away from blessings of real grace. And it cripples or destroys the churches’ mission and reputation. Bonhoeffer saw this first hand in the German church that he was a part of during WWII. Every week the state church preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, yet at the same time they supported Hitler’s campaign of hatred and violence. Bonhoeffer himself and many others had to preach illegally because of this and eventually he was arrested and put in a concentration camp because he followed the gospel of Grace and helped seven Jews escape Germany in 1943. He and many others at that time were heartbroken by a church that had lost Grace and therefore lost its mission and purpose as the church.
2. Cheap Grace is forgiveness without repentence
As we believe in Grace we necessarily need to take sin and brokenness in humanity seriously. The gospel of grace necessitates that believe that we need grace, that we are broken, depraved, and bent towards selfishness and self-justification of our actions. Grace then becomes cheapened, when we cease to emphasize sinfulness. Paul Zahn writes that one must have a high view of human sin to have a high view of Grace, and Bonhoeffer echoes that when he writes that cheap grace is ‘forgiveness without repentance, communion without confession.”
Cheap grace often entices us to believe that since Christ paid for human sin on the cross and forgives us when we call upon him, we don’t really need to worry about repenting, confessing, and trying to live Christ-centered lives. We know that we are being enticed by cheap grace when we start making justifications and excuses for our lives: “I know I am sinning now, but I will come to God later and repent of my sins and turn my life around. I know He will forgive me.” Yet real, costly grace takes sin and our capacity for self-deception and self-justification seriously and also the cost that God paid to heal and redeem us. As our Pastor Tim (and before him Tim Keller) always says “we are far worse than we could ever know and far more loved than we could imagine.” Yet cheap grace does the opposite….we are not that bad, we really don’t need to work on our sins, we don’t need to change, we don’t really need to do anything because God loves us. Cheap grace is often an excuse to do nothing, change nothing, and stand by while we see injustice or overwhelming human need pass us by.
3. Cheap Grace is grace without discipleship
Lastly, with cheap grace there is no need to become a disciple of Christ. Bonhoeffer writes that grace in itself is not complete; it should lead us to follow Christ. It should deeply confront everything that we are and call us, like Peter to leave everything and follow Jesus. Disciples are those who follow someone or something. Jesus has always called disciples, and Bonhoeffer argues that we cannot know real Grace without becoming disciples of Christ. As Bonhoeffer writes: “If grace is God’s answer, the gift of the Christian life, then we cannot dispense with following Christ.” He goes on to write:
“[With cheap grace] the Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p51
We can only know the Grace of God by following closely the author of Grace, Jesus Christ. In Bonhoeffer’s life, he saw his beloved church is Germany be transformed by cheap grace from Christ followers to followers of Hitler who condemned the Jews, put swastikas in the churches instead of crosses, and eventually were forced for worship Hitler instead of Christ. If we don’t follow Jesus Christ, we can make grace into anything we want. Yet grace only gains it’s definition through Jesus Christ. That is why Bonhoeffer wrote during his last days in a German prison, before he was executed in 1945, three weeks before the war ended: “The only thing we can hold on to is Jesus and the only true thing we can do is to follow Jesus.”
Are we holding on to Jesus, and only to Jesus, in our churches? What does that mean for our worship programs? For our lives?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Galatians 1:1-10, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Colossians 3:1-4, 5-17
REFERENCES (for further reading)
-To learn more about Bonhoeffer’s life, watch the movie Bonhoeffer, "Agent of Grace” by Gateway films.
-The best biography, though very long, is Eherhard Bethge’s "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography".
READ:
Philippians 3:7-11
DISCUSS:
1. Over the past weeks we have been defining and exploring Grace. If you had to give a one sentence explanation of Grace to a friend, what would you say?
2. How can we ‘cheapen’ Grace? What are some characteristics of ‘cheap grace’?
3. Read our passage for this morning. What is Grace costing Paul? Does he see this cost as a burden? What is so costly about Grace that everything else is ‘rubbish to Paul’?
REFLECT:
When we think of something as ‘cheap’, usually we think of something that is poorly made, easily breakable, or not worth much. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor who lived during the turbulent years of WWII, reflected upon the Christian church around the world and especially in Germany, he noticed that the Grace that many churches preach is cheap. It is not worth much to those who espouse it and it is easily breakable in the midst of the culture around them.
Over the past weeks we have discussed the importance of founding our lives and worship leading on GRACE. As we conclude this introduction and begin to explore how GRACE impacts our beliefs, our thoughts on excellence, discipleship, artistry, and leadership, it is important for us to think about the difference between ‘cheap’ and ‘costly’ grace.
When we sing about Grace we often use words like ‘Amazing’, ‘Indelible’, or ‘Bountiful’, but we have very few hymns that term Grace as either ‘cheap’ or ‘costly’. How can grace be cheap? It is God’s action, God’s initiative, God’s work….if anything it is our greatest treasure in the Christian church. How can it be cheap? For Bonhoeffer, it is not God who cheapens Grace but people, and especially Christians individually and churches as a whole. He writes about cheap grace in this way:
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. We are fighting for Costly Grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p43-44
Bonhoeffer defined cheap grace in three ways: it is data without life, forgiveness without repentence, and Grace without discipleship.
1. Cheap Grace is data without life
Grace becomes ‘cheap’ when it firstly becomes just another belief, another doctrine, which fails to touch us and change our lives. For Bonhoeffer, cheap grace is just data; it is just another thing people believe and churches confess. It is a nice idea that is not really followed or a nice ideal that is rarely lived. Grace is so radical that it changes everything about us and the world around us, yet so often Christians and churches believe in Grace, but don’t LIVE in it. Grace is just a suggestion or worse, an excuse or a justification.
For Bonhoeffer, Grace that is not lived is not real Grace, but a cheap imitation that only serves us and not God. And more than just being selfish, cheap grace is actually damaging to proclamation of the gospel and the witness of the church. As I quoted before, Bonhoeffer writes that ‘cheap grace is the enemy of the church.’ Cheap grace distorts the gospel and can lead us away from blessings of real grace. And it cripples or destroys the churches’ mission and reputation. Bonhoeffer saw this first hand in the German church that he was a part of during WWII. Every week the state church preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, yet at the same time they supported Hitler’s campaign of hatred and violence. Bonhoeffer himself and many others had to preach illegally because of this and eventually he was arrested and put in a concentration camp because he followed the gospel of Grace and helped seven Jews escape Germany in 1943. He and many others at that time were heartbroken by a church that had lost Grace and therefore lost its mission and purpose as the church.
2. Cheap Grace is forgiveness without repentence
As we believe in Grace we necessarily need to take sin and brokenness in humanity seriously. The gospel of grace necessitates that believe that we need grace, that we are broken, depraved, and bent towards selfishness and self-justification of our actions. Grace then becomes cheapened, when we cease to emphasize sinfulness. Paul Zahn writes that one must have a high view of human sin to have a high view of Grace, and Bonhoeffer echoes that when he writes that cheap grace is ‘forgiveness without repentance, communion without confession.”
Cheap grace often entices us to believe that since Christ paid for human sin on the cross and forgives us when we call upon him, we don’t really need to worry about repenting, confessing, and trying to live Christ-centered lives. We know that we are being enticed by cheap grace when we start making justifications and excuses for our lives: “I know I am sinning now, but I will come to God later and repent of my sins and turn my life around. I know He will forgive me.” Yet real, costly grace takes sin and our capacity for self-deception and self-justification seriously and also the cost that God paid to heal and redeem us. As our Pastor Tim (and before him Tim Keller) always says “we are far worse than we could ever know and far more loved than we could imagine.” Yet cheap grace does the opposite….we are not that bad, we really don’t need to work on our sins, we don’t need to change, we don’t really need to do anything because God loves us. Cheap grace is often an excuse to do nothing, change nothing, and stand by while we see injustice or overwhelming human need pass us by.
3. Cheap Grace is grace without discipleship
Lastly, with cheap grace there is no need to become a disciple of Christ. Bonhoeffer writes that grace in itself is not complete; it should lead us to follow Christ. It should deeply confront everything that we are and call us, like Peter to leave everything and follow Jesus. Disciples are those who follow someone or something. Jesus has always called disciples, and Bonhoeffer argues that we cannot know real Grace without becoming disciples of Christ. As Bonhoeffer writes: “If grace is God’s answer, the gift of the Christian life, then we cannot dispense with following Christ.” He goes on to write:
“[With cheap grace] the Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that. Grace as the data for our calculations means grace at the cheapest price, but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p51
We can only know the Grace of God by following closely the author of Grace, Jesus Christ. In Bonhoeffer’s life, he saw his beloved church is Germany be transformed by cheap grace from Christ followers to followers of Hitler who condemned the Jews, put swastikas in the churches instead of crosses, and eventually were forced for worship Hitler instead of Christ. If we don’t follow Jesus Christ, we can make grace into anything we want. Yet grace only gains it’s definition through Jesus Christ. That is why Bonhoeffer wrote during his last days in a German prison, before he was executed in 1945, three weeks before the war ended: “The only thing we can hold on to is Jesus and the only true thing we can do is to follow Jesus.”
Are we holding on to Jesus, and only to Jesus, in our churches? What does that mean for our worship programs? For our lives?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Galatians 1:1-10, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Colossians 3:1-4, 5-17
REFERENCES (for further reading)
-To learn more about Bonhoeffer’s life, watch the movie Bonhoeffer, "Agent of Grace” by Gateway films.
-The best biography, though very long, is Eherhard Bethge’s "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography".
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies On Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 7
Sorry for the lapse in studies! My wife and I have been on a belated honeymoon to Peru, but now we are back.
INTRODUCTION WEEK 7: Morality and Gospel Transformation
READ:
Romans 3:24-31, 6:1-14
DISCUSS:
1. How would you characterize life under the law or morality? What are some examples or characteristics of churches that are primarily ‘law based’?
2. If we are ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’ as v24 states, then what do we do to earn or justify God’s salvation? Does that mean we can do whatever we want?
3. For Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Karl Barth, reading Romans 3:24-31 changed their lives….and world history. Why is this message so life changing? How is the message of grace impacting your life?
4. How can we lead worship in a way that is focused on gospel transformation and not self-righteousness based on the law or morality?
REFLECT:
The other day a dear African Christian woman came to me with a troubling question. She had been worrying about this question for weeks and finally she thought she should ask a pastor. Her question was: if someone divorces, are they going to hell? A pastor from her home church in Nigeria had told her this and she was struggling because her husband had recently left her and was now filing for divorce. As we talked more about her situation and her theology I learned that she grew up hearing that if you sin, you are in danger of hell. So because divorce is a sin, she was worried that, even though she did not instigate or want the divorce, that she would be condemned to hell if the divorce went through.
Though maybe not as extreme, most of us grow up hearing similar messages, whether we’ve grown up in the church or not. They are the basic messages of morality: if you are a nice person, people will be nice to you. If you are a good person, good things will happen to you. If you follow the rules, you will be rewarded. Those are often the motivations of our morality, and we so easily fit them into our belief in God: if you do bad things, you will be condemned, if you do good things you will be blessed. The problem with this morality though, is that it doesn’t often fit with reality, as the Christian sister I described earlier experienced. So often we are good, moral people for a reason, because then we will reap the rewards. And this is not a wholly bad concept…..if there was no reason for morality there would be chaos…..but it is just not true. So often we are good and we receive bad things. We are moral and we still get cancer. We are nice to others and we still get hit by a drunk driver. We love our wives or husbands and they still leave. Morality only for the sake of morality is never enough and will only lead us to frustration and, when we apply it to religion, fear.
That is why the gospel always stands as a roadblock to the ‘law’ or all the ways we try to be moral. As Paul writes in Romans 3:21-24: “But now the righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus Christ, God saves us not through our morality, but through His work on the cross. Being moral and good people are not bad things to be or strive for, but they are incomplete, because they always fall short. So God chooses a better way. Through his son Jesus Christ, God saves our past, present, and future though the cross and ressurection.
So, as we seek to be gospel centered believers and leaders, we are not so much seeking to be moral people, but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds.’ (Romans 12:2) Gospel transformation begins and ends with grace, and transforms our condition from one of outsiders and aliens to adopted and accepted sons and daughters (1 Peter 2:9-10). So we are called to stop thinking and living like slaves and start living like sons and daughters, members of God’s royal family. This means that we strive for our lives to be characterized by gracious thanksgiving, passionate obedience, and humble servitude, not out of a law we must follow, but as a free response to Grace.
So often we struggle with Grace, because it does not depend on us and doesn’t even require our response for it to be effective. When I was a youth pastor, one of the top 5 questions asked by youth and college students was: if I am saved by grace, then why do I have to stop sinning? It is also a question that many of us ask at times, especially when in the midst of struggles or temptations. Paul responds to people with very similar struggles in Romans 6:1, when he asks “what shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Yet Paul’s reason to not sin is different than ours often. He continues in Romans chapters 6 and 7 by saying that we are dead to sin, because Christ died for it once and for all on the cross. Because Christ changed our identity from being sinners constantly trying to earn our salvation through morality to being transformed into children and heirs, then we are no longer slaves to sin and shame. As Paul writes in 6:14: “For sin shall not be your master, because you are no longer under the law, but grace.”
This is a new reality for us as Christians and a new freedom that is given by God through Jesus Christ. And as we grow in this reality we will often become startlingly moral, compassionate, and self-sacrificial people, but that is only the icing of the cake, the outward sign of something far more significant happening in our spirits and in our minds. We are being transformed by grace, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, as our minds are changed about who we are and why we are here. We are no longer wanderers trying to please God, but children accepted and loved by God. We are no longer purposeless and hopeless, our purpose is to be ambassadors of our Father, and to radiate the light of His grace into dark places. For the Christian sister I met with a couple days ago, as we talked and looked through scripture, she began to see her situation in a new light. Though she is still devastated by her husband’s betrayal and abandonment, she no longer fears hell and is secure that God still loves her and has saved her by Grace.
As worship leaders we are called to be the first ones to taste the goodness of the gospel and be transformed by the Spirit as we change our minds about Christ. And then we are called to lead worship modeling this new reality in our words, and music, so that our worship service becomes a ‘thin place’ where the new reality breaks through and reminds us who God is, who we are, and why we are here.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 19:7-9, 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, 1 Timothy 2:1-13
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Grace In Practice, A Theology Of Everyday Life, by Paul F.M Zahl
INTRODUCTION WEEK 7: Morality and Gospel Transformation
READ:
Romans 3:24-31, 6:1-14
DISCUSS:
1. How would you characterize life under the law or morality? What are some examples or characteristics of churches that are primarily ‘law based’?
2. If we are ‘justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus’ as v24 states, then what do we do to earn or justify God’s salvation? Does that mean we can do whatever we want?
3. For Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Karl Barth, reading Romans 3:24-31 changed their lives….and world history. Why is this message so life changing? How is the message of grace impacting your life?
4. How can we lead worship in a way that is focused on gospel transformation and not self-righteousness based on the law or morality?
REFLECT:
The other day a dear African Christian woman came to me with a troubling question. She had been worrying about this question for weeks and finally she thought she should ask a pastor. Her question was: if someone divorces, are they going to hell? A pastor from her home church in Nigeria had told her this and she was struggling because her husband had recently left her and was now filing for divorce. As we talked more about her situation and her theology I learned that she grew up hearing that if you sin, you are in danger of hell. So because divorce is a sin, she was worried that, even though she did not instigate or want the divorce, that she would be condemned to hell if the divorce went through.
Though maybe not as extreme, most of us grow up hearing similar messages, whether we’ve grown up in the church or not. They are the basic messages of morality: if you are a nice person, people will be nice to you. If you are a good person, good things will happen to you. If you follow the rules, you will be rewarded. Those are often the motivations of our morality, and we so easily fit them into our belief in God: if you do bad things, you will be condemned, if you do good things you will be blessed. The problem with this morality though, is that it doesn’t often fit with reality, as the Christian sister I described earlier experienced. So often we are good, moral people for a reason, because then we will reap the rewards. And this is not a wholly bad concept…..if there was no reason for morality there would be chaos…..but it is just not true. So often we are good and we receive bad things. We are moral and we still get cancer. We are nice to others and we still get hit by a drunk driver. We love our wives or husbands and they still leave. Morality only for the sake of morality is never enough and will only lead us to frustration and, when we apply it to religion, fear.
That is why the gospel always stands as a roadblock to the ‘law’ or all the ways we try to be moral. As Paul writes in Romans 3:21-24: “But now the righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus Christ, God saves us not through our morality, but through His work on the cross. Being moral and good people are not bad things to be or strive for, but they are incomplete, because they always fall short. So God chooses a better way. Through his son Jesus Christ, God saves our past, present, and future though the cross and ressurection.
So, as we seek to be gospel centered believers and leaders, we are not so much seeking to be moral people, but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds.’ (Romans 12:2) Gospel transformation begins and ends with grace, and transforms our condition from one of outsiders and aliens to adopted and accepted sons and daughters (1 Peter 2:9-10). So we are called to stop thinking and living like slaves and start living like sons and daughters, members of God’s royal family. This means that we strive for our lives to be characterized by gracious thanksgiving, passionate obedience, and humble servitude, not out of a law we must follow, but as a free response to Grace.
So often we struggle with Grace, because it does not depend on us and doesn’t even require our response for it to be effective. When I was a youth pastor, one of the top 5 questions asked by youth and college students was: if I am saved by grace, then why do I have to stop sinning? It is also a question that many of us ask at times, especially when in the midst of struggles or temptations. Paul responds to people with very similar struggles in Romans 6:1, when he asks “what shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Yet Paul’s reason to not sin is different than ours often. He continues in Romans chapters 6 and 7 by saying that we are dead to sin, because Christ died for it once and for all on the cross. Because Christ changed our identity from being sinners constantly trying to earn our salvation through morality to being transformed into children and heirs, then we are no longer slaves to sin and shame. As Paul writes in 6:14: “For sin shall not be your master, because you are no longer under the law, but grace.”
This is a new reality for us as Christians and a new freedom that is given by God through Jesus Christ. And as we grow in this reality we will often become startlingly moral, compassionate, and self-sacrificial people, but that is only the icing of the cake, the outward sign of something far more significant happening in our spirits and in our minds. We are being transformed by grace, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, as our minds are changed about who we are and why we are here. We are no longer wanderers trying to please God, but children accepted and loved by God. We are no longer purposeless and hopeless, our purpose is to be ambassadors of our Father, and to radiate the light of His grace into dark places. For the Christian sister I met with a couple days ago, as we talked and looked through scripture, she began to see her situation in a new light. Though she is still devastated by her husband’s betrayal and abandonment, she no longer fears hell and is secure that God still loves her and has saved her by Grace.
As worship leaders we are called to be the first ones to taste the goodness of the gospel and be transformed by the Spirit as we change our minds about Christ. And then we are called to lead worship modeling this new reality in our words, and music, so that our worship service becomes a ‘thin place’ where the new reality breaks through and reminds us who God is, who we are, and why we are here.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 19:7-9, 1 Corinthians 15:9-10, 1 Timothy 2:1-13
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Grace In Practice, A Theology Of Everyday Life, by Paul F.M Zahl
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 6
INTRODUCTION WEEK 6: The Gospel and Sin
READ:
Hosea 2:5-23
ASK:
1. How would you define sin?
2. How could you try to replace God in your life? In our worship?
3. Using the marriage metaphor, how would you describe your present relationship with God: a.)Getting acquainted?, b.)Good friends? c.) Engaged? d.) Newlyweds? e.) Having problems or unfaithful? F.) Growing old together?
REFLECT:
As we began to explore last week, sin and shame are two of the main obstacles to centering our lives and worship on the gospel. We discussed how shame distorts our understanding of God and ourselves last week and this week we begin to discuss sin by exploring our vocabulary (or lack of vocabulary) about sin.
As we define sin we usually come up with answers such as ‘breaking God’s law’ or ‘missing the mark’, and those are not bad definitions, just incomplete. Breaking God’s law is important in scripture, but only as part of a much larger problem of broken relationship with God. We can see this in Hosea 2:5-13, which echoes the prophesies of Jeremiah and the other prophets:
She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. 'Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.'
She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal. "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot," declares the LORD."
Here we see God not solely as a judge passing down sentence on a guilty lawbreaker, but as a husband betrayed by his unfaithful wife. The narrative is about Hosea, the prophet, who is called by God to marry Gomer, a prostitute and ‘loose woman’, to show God’s love for Israel. Gomer betrays Hosea over and over again by turning to other lovers, just as Israel betrays God by worshipping other Gods. Gomer had a problem not uncommon in relationships…she was unsatisfied with Hosea. He was just not enough for her, so she went looking for other men who would fulfill her needs….though in the end she would only beaten and abused.
For Gomer, Hosea was not good enough; she thought she needed something else to feel fulfilled and loved, though nothing would ever fill the void and she would always come crawling back, beaten and abused, to her husband. In this prophesy God is telling the Israelites that they are doing the same things; they are running to other God’s because they think that their God is not enough, though they only get hurt in the end.
God shows a remarkable vulnerability in this prophesy and others. He is not depicted as a emotionless, perfect, wholly other God, but a passionate, frustrated, betrayed lover, who has just been rejected by the ones he loves the most. All of us know the sting of betrayal and rejection, and we all know that betrayal or rejection by someone we love hurts the most. And here we see that God feels that same betrayal when we disobey him or choose another God before him.
This passage illustrates that sin is not so much breaking the law of God but breaking the heart of God, putting ourselves or some ‘thing’ in God’s place, which breaks the loving God’s heart. God is a lover, and He desires an intimate, loving connection with his children, likened throughout the scriptures as a marriage. But we, like the Israelites, want God AND something else……God and success, God and my art or my music, God and money, God and my wife. We can expose these other gods in our lives by asking ourselves honestly the simple questions: what can I not live without? What would devastate me and throw my life into turmoil if it were taken away? What defines my worth and value in the world? As we answer those questions we begin to see that at times we place our hope and worth in other places than God. So at the core sin is nothing but a God replacement program, and when we do this we don’t just cause break God’s commandments, earning his wrath, but we break God’s heart, betraying the one who loves us most.
This is a startling way to look at God and it changes our understanding of our own sin and how we are to lead worship. We firstly understand that often we promote the idea of God AND something else in worship…..God and spiritual gifts, God and great worship or preaching, God and the church building, God and excellent music, God and great spiritual prowess or righteousness, etc… And secondly we often forget that God is a passionate lover and wants to connect with us in worship….often worship becomes about getting something and not just getting God. Just think about what it feels like to meet someone you deeply love……when was the last time we felt like that in worship and how do we promote that connection with God in worship? Lastly, in worship we always remember that the loving God has always responded to his own betrayal and frustration at our idolatry with self-sacrifice, compassion, mercy, and grace. As God writes through Hosea, about Gomer, but also about Israel and all God’s people:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.' I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.
The word ‘allure’ in verse 14 literally means “to deceive, to mislead, to go astray, to persuade”. So, though Gomer deserves punishment, Hosea will not give her as she deserves. He will literally go as far as to trick her or persuade her, to get her away, and then to tenderly remind her of his love. God never gives us as we deserve, but always seeks us, and instigates relationship with us, though we try to replace Him. In worship we can trust that God is alluring all people into the desert so that he can speak tenderly to them and transform them in His love. Sin breaks God’s heart, but God responds to sin with amazing grace. This is the gift of the gospel and the message we are called to proclaim in word and song every week.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 25:1-10, Isaiah 1:18, Luke 15:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, Hebrews 4:14-16
READ:
Hosea 2:5-23
ASK:
1. How would you define sin?
2. How could you try to replace God in your life? In our worship?
3. Using the marriage metaphor, how would you describe your present relationship with God: a.)Getting acquainted?, b.)Good friends? c.) Engaged? d.) Newlyweds? e.) Having problems or unfaithful? F.) Growing old together?
REFLECT:
As we began to explore last week, sin and shame are two of the main obstacles to centering our lives and worship on the gospel. We discussed how shame distorts our understanding of God and ourselves last week and this week we begin to discuss sin by exploring our vocabulary (or lack of vocabulary) about sin.
As we define sin we usually come up with answers such as ‘breaking God’s law’ or ‘missing the mark’, and those are not bad definitions, just incomplete. Breaking God’s law is important in scripture, but only as part of a much larger problem of broken relationship with God. We can see this in Hosea 2:5-13, which echoes the prophesies of Jeremiah and the other prophets:
She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. 'Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.'
She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal. "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her nakedness. So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days—all her appointed feasts. I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot," declares the LORD."
Here we see God not solely as a judge passing down sentence on a guilty lawbreaker, but as a husband betrayed by his unfaithful wife. The narrative is about Hosea, the prophet, who is called by God to marry Gomer, a prostitute and ‘loose woman’, to show God’s love for Israel. Gomer betrays Hosea over and over again by turning to other lovers, just as Israel betrays God by worshipping other Gods. Gomer had a problem not uncommon in relationships…she was unsatisfied with Hosea. He was just not enough for her, so she went looking for other men who would fulfill her needs….though in the end she would only beaten and abused.
For Gomer, Hosea was not good enough; she thought she needed something else to feel fulfilled and loved, though nothing would ever fill the void and she would always come crawling back, beaten and abused, to her husband. In this prophesy God is telling the Israelites that they are doing the same things; they are running to other God’s because they think that their God is not enough, though they only get hurt in the end.
God shows a remarkable vulnerability in this prophesy and others. He is not depicted as a emotionless, perfect, wholly other God, but a passionate, frustrated, betrayed lover, who has just been rejected by the ones he loves the most. All of us know the sting of betrayal and rejection, and we all know that betrayal or rejection by someone we love hurts the most. And here we see that God feels that same betrayal when we disobey him or choose another God before him.
This passage illustrates that sin is not so much breaking the law of God but breaking the heart of God, putting ourselves or some ‘thing’ in God’s place, which breaks the loving God’s heart. God is a lover, and He desires an intimate, loving connection with his children, likened throughout the scriptures as a marriage. But we, like the Israelites, want God AND something else……God and success, God and my art or my music, God and money, God and my wife. We can expose these other gods in our lives by asking ourselves honestly the simple questions: what can I not live without? What would devastate me and throw my life into turmoil if it were taken away? What defines my worth and value in the world? As we answer those questions we begin to see that at times we place our hope and worth in other places than God. So at the core sin is nothing but a God replacement program, and when we do this we don’t just cause break God’s commandments, earning his wrath, but we break God’s heart, betraying the one who loves us most.
This is a startling way to look at God and it changes our understanding of our own sin and how we are to lead worship. We firstly understand that often we promote the idea of God AND something else in worship…..God and spiritual gifts, God and great worship or preaching, God and the church building, God and excellent music, God and great spiritual prowess or righteousness, etc… And secondly we often forget that God is a passionate lover and wants to connect with us in worship….often worship becomes about getting something and not just getting God. Just think about what it feels like to meet someone you deeply love……when was the last time we felt like that in worship and how do we promote that connection with God in worship? Lastly, in worship we always remember that the loving God has always responded to his own betrayal and frustration at our idolatry with self-sacrifice, compassion, mercy, and grace. As God writes through Hosea, about Gomer, but also about Israel and all God’s people:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. "In that day," declares the LORD, "you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my master.' I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.
The word ‘allure’ in verse 14 literally means “to deceive, to mislead, to go astray, to persuade”. So, though Gomer deserves punishment, Hosea will not give her as she deserves. He will literally go as far as to trick her or persuade her, to get her away, and then to tenderly remind her of his love. God never gives us as we deserve, but always seeks us, and instigates relationship with us, though we try to replace Him. In worship we can trust that God is alluring all people into the desert so that he can speak tenderly to them and transform them in His love. Sin breaks God’s heart, but God responds to sin with amazing grace. This is the gift of the gospel and the message we are called to proclaim in word and song every week.
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Jeremiah 3:6-25, Psalm 25:1-10, Isaiah 1:18, Luke 15:1-7, Romans 5:1-11, Hebrews 4:14-16
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership, week 5
INTRODUCTION WEEK 5: The Gospel and Shame
READ:
Philippians 3:12-21
ASK:
1. How would you define shame? How does shame feel like? Is shame primarily healthy or unhealthy?
2. How could shame connect us to and/or keep us from living in the hope of the gospel?
3. How is your life different when you live by grace and not unhealthy shame?
REFLECT:
Do you ever feel like there is something wrong with you? Something just not right and it doesn’t ever get better? Do you ever feel like you want to hide from others; that there are shameful, begrudging, lustful, or selfish thoughts that you don’t want the world to see? Do you ever feel, at your lowest points, that you are just not good enough or not worthy of love? That if you really showed someone your whole self you would be rejected? If you have ever felt any of these feelings, there is shame in you. David Atkinson defines shame as “a sense of unease with yourself at the very heart of your being.” Unhealthy shame is the feeling at the pit of your stomach that you are not the person you should be or that you are somehow not good enough, no matter what you do or do not do.
Lewis Smedes, in his book Shame and Grace, discusses that there are two types of shame: healthy and unhealthy shame. Healthy shame has to do with what we do or have done: ‘I hurt my friend and now I feel shame about it.’ This kind of shame can often lead us to growth and health as we respond to those feelings by trying to reconcile or repent. Unhealthy shame though has to do with who we ARE, not just what we do: ‘I hurt my friend and this just proves that I am a terrible person’. Unhealthy shame often distorts reality and keeps us from feeling forgiveness, growth, or grace, because everything goes back the reality that I didn’t just DO something wrong, but I AM wrong.
So often we respond to unhealthy shame by either constantly beating ourselves up or by spending our lives trying to prove ourselves. For ‘beaters’, when someone criticizes you, you are devastated and you beat yourself up. When you do something wrong or make a mistake, you beat yourself up. Even if you did something wrong years ago, you beat yourself up about it. For the ‘provers’, you feel good about yourself because of the way you look, the things you have, the friends who hang out with you, the image you portray, the schools you went to, how ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ you are, how much money you make, what you have made or done, etc…. You avoid unhealthy shame by doing well, yet as you know, you can never do well enough, so you always find yourself struggling to keep the image up.
So, to the ‘beaters’, the gospel says to us…Jesus was beaten up for you, why are you still acting like you aren’t good enough? Jesus was whipped; he was tortured and killed for your sins, why are you still trying to pay for them? God has made you, God accepts you, God has redeemed you in Jesus Christ…..you don’t have to hate yourself anymore! And for the ‘provers’ the gospel tells us: ‘you want to be a workaholic? You will never understand grace. You feel like you have to have fame, or position, or image, or reputation, or money to feel significant? You’ve missed the gospel and you are still trying to save yourself….you are trying to add something to salvation.
The gospel says to us that if we put our faith in Jesus Christ we are accepted, and as we begin to believe this and live in this assurance everything changes about how we see ourselves and others. Because we are saved by grace, we know that we are worse than we could know, but also that we are blessed more than we could ever imagine. And out of this we can be honest with ourselves. We can feel healthy shame and respond when we fail. We can know that we are not the sum of our failures but children of God, saved by GRACE, and accepted by Jesus Christ.
As worship leaders, musicians, and artists, as we seek to be ‘gospel centered’, it is essential for us to confront our unhealthy shame and the ways it causes us either to beat ourselves up or try to prove ourselves. This is an inward journey that sometimes will expose parts of our lives that we are not proud of as we dig to the roots of your shame. Yet if we don’t take this journey we are in danger of missing the gospel entirely and of preaching, through music, songs, expression, and words, a graceless gospel because we haven’t experienced grace.
The Grace of God in Jesus Christ is the only cure for unhealthy shame, the only way we can know God and be transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ. As Lewis Smedes writes:
Are you ready for grace?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Genesis 2:23-25, Psalm 34:1-5, Proverbs 3:35, 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, Ephesians 2:4-8
REFERENCES (for further reading)
1. Shame and Grace, Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve by Lewis B. Smedes
“I Thirst”, a sermon by Timothy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, March, 2008
READ:
Philippians 3:12-21
ASK:
1. How would you define shame? How does shame feel like? Is shame primarily healthy or unhealthy?
2. How could shame connect us to and/or keep us from living in the hope of the gospel?
3. How is your life different when you live by grace and not unhealthy shame?
REFLECT:
Do you ever feel like there is something wrong with you? Something just not right and it doesn’t ever get better? Do you ever feel like you want to hide from others; that there are shameful, begrudging, lustful, or selfish thoughts that you don’t want the world to see? Do you ever feel, at your lowest points, that you are just not good enough or not worthy of love? That if you really showed someone your whole self you would be rejected? If you have ever felt any of these feelings, there is shame in you. David Atkinson defines shame as “a sense of unease with yourself at the very heart of your being.” Unhealthy shame is the feeling at the pit of your stomach that you are not the person you should be or that you are somehow not good enough, no matter what you do or do not do.
Lewis Smedes, in his book Shame and Grace, discusses that there are two types of shame: healthy and unhealthy shame. Healthy shame has to do with what we do or have done: ‘I hurt my friend and now I feel shame about it.’ This kind of shame can often lead us to growth and health as we respond to those feelings by trying to reconcile or repent. Unhealthy shame though has to do with who we ARE, not just what we do: ‘I hurt my friend and this just proves that I am a terrible person’. Unhealthy shame often distorts reality and keeps us from feeling forgiveness, growth, or grace, because everything goes back the reality that I didn’t just DO something wrong, but I AM wrong.
So often we respond to unhealthy shame by either constantly beating ourselves up or by spending our lives trying to prove ourselves. For ‘beaters’, when someone criticizes you, you are devastated and you beat yourself up. When you do something wrong or make a mistake, you beat yourself up. Even if you did something wrong years ago, you beat yourself up about it. For the ‘provers’, you feel good about yourself because of the way you look, the things you have, the friends who hang out with you, the image you portray, the schools you went to, how ‘hot’ or ‘cool’ you are, how much money you make, what you have made or done, etc…. You avoid unhealthy shame by doing well, yet as you know, you can never do well enough, so you always find yourself struggling to keep the image up.
So, to the ‘beaters’, the gospel says to us…Jesus was beaten up for you, why are you still acting like you aren’t good enough? Jesus was whipped; he was tortured and killed for your sins, why are you still trying to pay for them? God has made you, God accepts you, God has redeemed you in Jesus Christ…..you don’t have to hate yourself anymore! And for the ‘provers’ the gospel tells us: ‘you want to be a workaholic? You will never understand grace. You feel like you have to have fame, or position, or image, or reputation, or money to feel significant? You’ve missed the gospel and you are still trying to save yourself….you are trying to add something to salvation.
The gospel says to us that if we put our faith in Jesus Christ we are accepted, and as we begin to believe this and live in this assurance everything changes about how we see ourselves and others. Because we are saved by grace, we know that we are worse than we could know, but also that we are blessed more than we could ever imagine. And out of this we can be honest with ourselves. We can feel healthy shame and respond when we fail. We can know that we are not the sum of our failures but children of God, saved by GRACE, and accepted by Jesus Christ.
As worship leaders, musicians, and artists, as we seek to be ‘gospel centered’, it is essential for us to confront our unhealthy shame and the ways it causes us either to beat ourselves up or try to prove ourselves. This is an inward journey that sometimes will expose parts of our lives that we are not proud of as we dig to the roots of your shame. Yet if we don’t take this journey we are in danger of missing the gospel entirely and of preaching, through music, songs, expression, and words, a graceless gospel because we haven’t experienced grace.
The Grace of God in Jesus Christ is the only cure for unhealthy shame, the only way we can know God and be transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ. As Lewis Smedes writes:
“Grace overcomes shame, not by uncovering an overlooked cache of excellence within ourselves but simply by accepting us, the whole of us, with no regard for beauty or ugliness, our virtue or our vices. We are accepted wholesale. Accepted with no possibility of being rejected. Accepted once and accepted forever. Accepted at the ultimate depth of our being. We are given what we have longed for in every nook and nuance of every relationship.
We are ready for grace when we are bone tired of our struggle to be worthy and acceptable. After we have tried to long to earn the approval of everyone important to us, we are ready for grace. When we are tired of trying to be the person somebody sometime convinced us we had to be, we are ready for grace. When we have given up all hope of ever being an acceptable human being, we may hear in our hearts the ultimate reassurance: we are accepted, accepted by grace.”
Are you ready for grace?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Genesis 2:23-25, Psalm 34:1-5, Proverbs 3:35, 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, Ephesians 2:4-8
REFERENCES (for further reading)
1. Shame and Grace, Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve by Lewis B. Smedes
“I Thirst”, a sermon by Timothy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, March, 2008
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Week 4: Religion Based and Gospel Based Worship Leading
Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership
INTRODUCTION WEEK 4: Religion Based Worship Leading and Gospel Based Worship Leading
READ:
Philippians 4:4-9
ASK:
1. Based on our previous discussions, what is the general difference between gospel and religion.?
2. What are the differences in motivation, practice, and performance between ‘gospel based’ worship and ‘religion based’ worship?
REFLECT:
Last week we discussed the difference between religion and the gospel, which can be encapsulated in a quote by Timothy Keller: “Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you are accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”
This week we are going to focus on how this difference affects our worship leading. In our church do we primarily provide worship leadership that is gospel based or religion based? Below we see how this difference shapes our motivations, practices, and performance.
1. Motivation:
So often we confuse the true order of things. Often we can slide back into the belief that if we obey we will be blessed, and in the same way, if we don’t obey we will be cursed. And this motivation can seep into our worship of God and our leadership so easily. Yet the true order of things that drips from every page of the gospel is: you ARE blessed, so obey. We are accepted by God through Jesus Christ, so now we can serve God freely, as children and not slaves. This changes everything about our motivation as worshippers and worship leaders. We no longer judge worship by whether we received an emotional high, listened to great music, or heard a powerful message. As leaders we are freed from the tyranny of seeing our attendance at a worship service as a way to gauge success or to be a good leader. Instead, we begin to see our worship service as an expression of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ and the love relationship we have in Him.
Religious motivations often have to do with either personal preferences or self-righteousness. As Tim Keller writes in his excellent book “The Reason For God”: “Religion, generally speaking, tends to create a slippery slope in the heart. Each religion informs it’s followers that they have “the truth” and this naturally leads them to feel superior to those with differing beliefs. Also, religion tells its followers that they are saved and connected to God by devotedly performing the truth. This moves them to separate from those who are less devoted and pure in life. Therefore, it is easy for one religious group to stereotype and caricature other ones. Once this situation exists it can easily spiral down into marginalization of others or even to active oppression, abuse, or violence against them. “ Religious motivations can also work the other way…..instead of leading us to feel superior they lead us to always feel inferior, never good enough, and then they fill us with fear and worry.
Motivations in scripture though have a decidedly different tone. We see throughout the Old and New Testaments the primary reason to worship is RESPONSE….a response to God’s goodness, love, and faithfulness, and a way to express our gratitude, joy, trust, peace, and love. Paul encapsulates this perfectly in Philippians 4:4-8: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
So ultimately, our gospel motivation is a desire to praise God and be shaped by the gospel. And our task as worship leaders is to emphasize these themes over and over again, and to make sure we are not falling back into self-centered, graceless, self-righteous religious worship in the words we say or songs we sing.
2. Practices
Our motivations then inform and transform our ‘practices’ in worship. Our practices describe our liturgical structures, worship styles, the lyrics and music of the songs we sing, how many songs we sing, the content of the liturgy and sermons, and the ways we lead worship. If we primarily lead worship out of a ‘religion based’ motivation then our practices will be rigid, unyielding, and marked with, a lack of faith, gratitude, and love. There will also be a sense of superiority over others that makes any changes in worship a huge fight…..as evidenced in why we call the conflicts on worship in churches “the worship wars.”
Years ago I was working in a church that was in the midst of a ‘worship war’….we were trying to introduce a contemporary service in the midst of a very traditional church. At elder meetings I was surprised at how many people were livid at even the suggestion of altering the service in any way. Then there were those on the contemporary side (including myself) that were just as angry and judgmental at the other side’s close-mindedness and lack of faith. The situation almost spiraled out of control until one of the elders gently diffused our anger and helped us to see just how far from the gospel we had gotten in our quest to promote a certain worship style. We had forgotten that we are called to ‘love one another as Jesus has loved us (John 13:34) and we had denigrated to religiously judging each other on our opinions on worship.
So we took a step back as a church and focused again on loving and forgiving each other, and when we began to discuss the subject again, we realized that our struggles with worship styles (and each other) didn’t really have anything to do with the gospel, but with our own preferences and our own religious mis-conceptions (that only traditional or contemporary worship is REALLY worship or REALLY able to bring us closer to God.). As we were able focus on God’s desires in worship and our response as Christian brothers and sisters to the gospel, we were able to see that both contemporary and traditional worship styles fit into gospel worship.
Evangelist and teacher Judson Cornwall puts the difference between gospel and religious worship practices this way: "Whenever the method of worship becomes more important than the Person of worship, we have already prostituted our worship. There are entire congregations who worship praise and praise worship but who have not yet learned to praise and worship God in Jesus Christ."
As we lead worship as musicians, singers, leaders, liturgists, or preachers, we keep away from religious practices by examining our motivations regularly and then focusing every week on the gospel proclamation that God loves his people and has sought to save them throughout history, culminating in the person and work of his son Jesus Christ.
3. Performance
As we approach the distinction between gospel and religion based performance, we have two main issues to consider: a.) how we view performance in our worship services, and b.) how we view excellence personally and in our worship teams/choirs.
As we base our worship more and more in gospel our worship services become more focused on congregational participation in the gospel story, and less focused on performance for performance’ sake. At times we can go to a church and remark upon how great the music was but have a very hard time understanding what they were singing about or what their reason for singing the song in worship was in the first place. So often our motivations for performance in worship have decidedly religious undertones….we often want to produce and perform amazing music so that the congregation will like us and think we are doing a good job, or we sometimes perform to show the community that our church has an amazing music program. At other times we perform to produce a certain emotional response, and at other times we just want to perform ‘quality music’ and show people what ‘high quality music is.’ Those are not all terrible reasons to perform, but they are not gospel reasons.
As we as worship leaders are immersed in the gospel we realize more and more than the goal of worship music and all our ‘practices’ of worship is not performance but participation; to give our congregations the opportunity to participate with the story of the gospel and experience the grace and love of Christ as a community of faith. I am not saying that we shouldn’t grow in excellence as musicians, choirs, as worship teams (we will discuss ‘gospel excellence’ later in the study) but that our primary objective is not merely to be excellent, but to be excellent with a purpose….to invite participation with the gospel and the author of our gospel hope, Jesus.
This relates then to how we view excellence as musicians/worship leaders, and worship teams/choirs. Our main goal is to ‘lead the congregations’ song’, and we are called to do that with excellence, so that we don’t distract people from the gospel. But so often we can make excellence an idol……excellence as the ultimate goal instead of knowing and being known by the risen Christ.
One of our worship leaders brought up an example of the confusion surrounding what is ‘gospel excellence’ last night with an example of two worship leaders she has worked with. One was very accepting and basically let anyone participate who wanted to, regardless of their skills. The result was a very graceful atmosphere but often very poor quality worship. Another was a professional guitarist for worship and had a very high standard for worship. If you were not good enough he would tell you that you were not gifted as a musician and should find another ministry. And he was often harsh and demanding at practices. So the result was very high quality musicianship with very little grace.
In gospel based excellence we want to strive for the middle ground. We don’t want to settle for mediocrity, but to see the development of our gifts (and others gifts) as a response to the grace and freedom we have been given in Jesus Christ. We don’t also want to make excellence an idol that becomes ultimately more important than the gospel. As we focus on the gospel we understand that all people are loved by God and have abilities and talents that need to be encouraged. So we focus as much on development as excellence, and strive to help each other grow in our skills as well as in our relationship with God and understanding of worship.
Please e-mail or write on the blog your responses to this. I am especially interested in how you practically incorporate this understanding of grace and religion into your worship and worship leading. I have spoken a lot in generalities and extremes, so personal examples would help us all incorporate this into our daily lives. Thanks!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 51, Isaiah 53:1-12, John 1:15-18, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 1 John 5:1-5
INTRODUCTION WEEK 4: Religion Based Worship Leading and Gospel Based Worship Leading
READ:
Philippians 4:4-9
ASK:
1. Based on our previous discussions, what is the general difference between gospel and religion.?
2. What are the differences in motivation, practice, and performance between ‘gospel based’ worship and ‘religion based’ worship?
REFLECT:
Last week we discussed the difference between religion and the gospel, which can be encapsulated in a quote by Timothy Keller: “Religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you are accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”
This week we are going to focus on how this difference affects our worship leading. In our church do we primarily provide worship leadership that is gospel based or religion based? Below we see how this difference shapes our motivations, practices, and performance.
1. Motivation:
So often we confuse the true order of things. Often we can slide back into the belief that if we obey we will be blessed, and in the same way, if we don’t obey we will be cursed. And this motivation can seep into our worship of God and our leadership so easily. Yet the true order of things that drips from every page of the gospel is: you ARE blessed, so obey. We are accepted by God through Jesus Christ, so now we can serve God freely, as children and not slaves. This changes everything about our motivation as worshippers and worship leaders. We no longer judge worship by whether we received an emotional high, listened to great music, or heard a powerful message. As leaders we are freed from the tyranny of seeing our attendance at a worship service as a way to gauge success or to be a good leader. Instead, we begin to see our worship service as an expression of the freedom we have in Jesus Christ and the love relationship we have in Him.
Religious motivations often have to do with either personal preferences or self-righteousness. As Tim Keller writes in his excellent book “The Reason For God”: “Religion, generally speaking, tends to create a slippery slope in the heart. Each religion informs it’s followers that they have “the truth” and this naturally leads them to feel superior to those with differing beliefs. Also, religion tells its followers that they are saved and connected to God by devotedly performing the truth. This moves them to separate from those who are less devoted and pure in life. Therefore, it is easy for one religious group to stereotype and caricature other ones. Once this situation exists it can easily spiral down into marginalization of others or even to active oppression, abuse, or violence against them. “ Religious motivations can also work the other way…..instead of leading us to feel superior they lead us to always feel inferior, never good enough, and then they fill us with fear and worry.
Motivations in scripture though have a decidedly different tone. We see throughout the Old and New Testaments the primary reason to worship is RESPONSE….a response to God’s goodness, love, and faithfulness, and a way to express our gratitude, joy, trust, peace, and love. Paul encapsulates this perfectly in Philippians 4:4-8: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
So ultimately, our gospel motivation is a desire to praise God and be shaped by the gospel. And our task as worship leaders is to emphasize these themes over and over again, and to make sure we are not falling back into self-centered, graceless, self-righteous religious worship in the words we say or songs we sing.
2. Practices
Our motivations then inform and transform our ‘practices’ in worship. Our practices describe our liturgical structures, worship styles, the lyrics and music of the songs we sing, how many songs we sing, the content of the liturgy and sermons, and the ways we lead worship. If we primarily lead worship out of a ‘religion based’ motivation then our practices will be rigid, unyielding, and marked with, a lack of faith, gratitude, and love. There will also be a sense of superiority over others that makes any changes in worship a huge fight…..as evidenced in why we call the conflicts on worship in churches “the worship wars.”
Years ago I was working in a church that was in the midst of a ‘worship war’….we were trying to introduce a contemporary service in the midst of a very traditional church. At elder meetings I was surprised at how many people were livid at even the suggestion of altering the service in any way. Then there were those on the contemporary side (including myself) that were just as angry and judgmental at the other side’s close-mindedness and lack of faith. The situation almost spiraled out of control until one of the elders gently diffused our anger and helped us to see just how far from the gospel we had gotten in our quest to promote a certain worship style. We had forgotten that we are called to ‘love one another as Jesus has loved us (John 13:34) and we had denigrated to religiously judging each other on our opinions on worship.
So we took a step back as a church and focused again on loving and forgiving each other, and when we began to discuss the subject again, we realized that our struggles with worship styles (and each other) didn’t really have anything to do with the gospel, but with our own preferences and our own religious mis-conceptions (that only traditional or contemporary worship is REALLY worship or REALLY able to bring us closer to God.). As we were able focus on God’s desires in worship and our response as Christian brothers and sisters to the gospel, we were able to see that both contemporary and traditional worship styles fit into gospel worship.
Evangelist and teacher Judson Cornwall puts the difference between gospel and religious worship practices this way: "Whenever the method of worship becomes more important than the Person of worship, we have already prostituted our worship. There are entire congregations who worship praise and praise worship but who have not yet learned to praise and worship God in Jesus Christ."
As we lead worship as musicians, singers, leaders, liturgists, or preachers, we keep away from religious practices by examining our motivations regularly and then focusing every week on the gospel proclamation that God loves his people and has sought to save them throughout history, culminating in the person and work of his son Jesus Christ.
3. Performance
As we approach the distinction between gospel and religion based performance, we have two main issues to consider: a.) how we view performance in our worship services, and b.) how we view excellence personally and in our worship teams/choirs.
As we base our worship more and more in gospel our worship services become more focused on congregational participation in the gospel story, and less focused on performance for performance’ sake. At times we can go to a church and remark upon how great the music was but have a very hard time understanding what they were singing about or what their reason for singing the song in worship was in the first place. So often our motivations for performance in worship have decidedly religious undertones….we often want to produce and perform amazing music so that the congregation will like us and think we are doing a good job, or we sometimes perform to show the community that our church has an amazing music program. At other times we perform to produce a certain emotional response, and at other times we just want to perform ‘quality music’ and show people what ‘high quality music is.’ Those are not all terrible reasons to perform, but they are not gospel reasons.
As we as worship leaders are immersed in the gospel we realize more and more than the goal of worship music and all our ‘practices’ of worship is not performance but participation; to give our congregations the opportunity to participate with the story of the gospel and experience the grace and love of Christ as a community of faith. I am not saying that we shouldn’t grow in excellence as musicians, choirs, as worship teams (we will discuss ‘gospel excellence’ later in the study) but that our primary objective is not merely to be excellent, but to be excellent with a purpose….to invite participation with the gospel and the author of our gospel hope, Jesus.
This relates then to how we view excellence as musicians/worship leaders, and worship teams/choirs. Our main goal is to ‘lead the congregations’ song’, and we are called to do that with excellence, so that we don’t distract people from the gospel. But so often we can make excellence an idol……excellence as the ultimate goal instead of knowing and being known by the risen Christ.
One of our worship leaders brought up an example of the confusion surrounding what is ‘gospel excellence’ last night with an example of two worship leaders she has worked with. One was very accepting and basically let anyone participate who wanted to, regardless of their skills. The result was a very graceful atmosphere but often very poor quality worship. Another was a professional guitarist for worship and had a very high standard for worship. If you were not good enough he would tell you that you were not gifted as a musician and should find another ministry. And he was often harsh and demanding at practices. So the result was very high quality musicianship with very little grace.
In gospel based excellence we want to strive for the middle ground. We don’t want to settle for mediocrity, but to see the development of our gifts (and others gifts) as a response to the grace and freedom we have been given in Jesus Christ. We don’t also want to make excellence an idol that becomes ultimately more important than the gospel. As we focus on the gospel we understand that all people are loved by God and have abilities and talents that need to be encouraged. So we focus as much on development as excellence, and strive to help each other grow in our skills as well as in our relationship with God and understanding of worship.
Please e-mail or write on the blog your responses to this. I am especially interested in how you practically incorporate this understanding of grace and religion into your worship and worship leading. I have spoken a lot in generalities and extremes, so personal examples would help us all incorporate this into our daily lives. Thanks!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 51, Isaiah 53:1-12, John 1:15-18, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, 1 John 5:1-5
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