Thinking Theologically about Worship 5
MORE THAN WORDS: Worship as Emotional Expression
READ: Psalm 95
DISCUSS:
1. As we look back at ‘worship as remembrance’, how does the psalmist call the people to remember salvation history in the psalm?
2. What is the emotional response that we see in this psalm? How do we see that expressed? What other emotional responses in worship have you noticed in the Bible? (read Psalms 10:1, 12:1-2, 22:1-8, 44: 23-26, 130)
3. What is unique about music and singing in expressing our deepest emotions? How do you see this happening in worship?
4. Do you view worship as a ‘sacred space’ to share our deepest emotions, thoughts, fears, longings, and hopes to God? Why or why not?
5. What are some ways that we can create an environment where people can feel safe to express their whole lives to the God of Grace?? What are the obstacles?
6. How does music and singing in worship focus us and put us in a right frame of mind to encounter God?
REFLECT:
All of worship is response, as Ralph Martin writes: “All worship of God finds its origin in the objective ‘moment’ when God acts and comes into our world in free love. From that ‘moment’ worship becomes the human response to divine revelation.” As we discussed last week, we respond to God in worship when we remember God’s work and orient our lives on Him. This week we are discussing how we respond to God by expressing our whole lives to God in worship.
1. Worship is Emotional.
Worship of the triune God is inherently emotional, because worship cuts to the core of our very being. Worship is encounter with the living God, our creator, lover, redeemer, friend, and Lord, so worship naturally evokes our deepest longings, fears, hopes, frustrations, insecurities, gladness, doubts, and joys. We see this throughout the scriptures, but it is especially portrayed in the Psalms. Walter Brueggeman, Old Testament Scholar, writes this: “The surprise of Israel’s prayer and worship is that the extravagance of praise does not silence or censor Israel’s need but seems to legitimate and authorize a second extravagance, the extravagance of complaint, lament, accusation, petition, indignation, assault, insistence.”
I know from my own life and from many, many people that I have talked to about issues of faith that we have a hard time giving God the hardest and most vulnerable parts of our lives. We have a hard time sharing our doubts, insecurities, worries, and deepest fears, and sometimes we even have a hard time sharing our joys and triumphs, maybe worrying that God does not delight in them with us. The Psalms, though, show us a different understanding of worship, As Brueggeman writes: “The Psalms draw our whole lives under the rule of God, where everything may be submitted to Yahweh.” The Hebrew people understood this, so they felt comfortable bringing to God all that they were feeling, from every aspect and movement of their lives, whether they were praising God or yelling ‘my God why have you forsaken me!’, and they trusted that God was listening and responding.
2. Music and singing in worship are unique languages of emotional expression.
Music has a unique way of helping us express our deepest emotions, and that is why most of the Psalms were meant to be sung in call and response style. We all know how music has impacted and shaped our lives. And we all know how we look to music to echo or express our frustrations, anger, sadness, and joys. This is why music and singing have always been a part of worship, in both Old Testament and New Testament worship, because they are natural responses to ‘divine revelation’.
When we experience God’s mighty works and goodness it is a natural response to “sing for joy to the Lord” and “extol Him with music and song.” (Psalms 95.1) Music is a universal part of the human experience and reflects our non-cognitive feelings and emotions. It captures emotion, mood, feelings, and gives expression to what can’t be said through speech alone. “Consequently,” Stanley Grenz argues, “it is fitting that the people of God express their Christian consciousness through music. In doing so we offer to God our emotions in addition to our creeds, our feelings as well as our beliefs. We offer to him the joy we sense because of His goodness; we share in the sorrow and pain Christ bore on the cross; and we anticipate the day our Lord will return.”
3. Worship is a safe, ‘sacred space’ to give our whole lives to God.
Worship is also safe ‘sacred space’ for us to give our emotions, thoughts, fears, longings, and hopes to God. Johannes Reidel comments in his book ‘Soul Music’ how this tenet has been foundational historically in the worship of black churches in America. Since all musical, artistic and emotional expression was oppressed and squelched by white slave owners, Christian hymns, music, and songs became the “legal place to use up the spiritual and emotional reservoir dammed up by the experience of slavery.” In worship they could be reminded of their history, traditions, and humanity while putting their fears and hope in God.
We also need the church in general, and our worship services specifically, to be ‘sacred spaces’ where we can come to express our deepest emotions, pains, longings, hopes, dreams, doubts, worries, joys, and fears to a real God who encounters us in the real world. Through worship God has provided these safe places for the community to cry out and encounter the living, resurrected Christ in a way that is transformational. This kind of ‘sacred space’ can’t be expressed through preaching and liturgy alone, so that is why sing together, have moments of silence, prayer, waiting, and provide other spaces for people to respond with their whole lives.
4. We need preparation and adjustment to give our whole lives to God in worship
A common frustration among worship leaders is that we just don’t see our congregation responding emotionally enough. This may not be true if you are a Pentecostal/Charismatic worship leader (maybe you want them to be less emotional and focus on the message more!) but if you are in a Reformed church, or another denominational church often we look out at our congregation and see may stoic looks and even some that look outright bored!
Even if we see these types of responses at times, we need to be reminded that we and our congregation can’t just flip a switch to focus on God and give their whole lives to Him. We all need to turn out thoughts and feelings from what we have been focusing on unto God. This is why music and singing serve an essential purpose in worship. No element of worship can put us in the right frame of mind like worship music and singing. Approaching God and being in a worshipful spirit requires preparation and adjustment, and worship music has the ability to lift our spirits to new heights of contemplation and expectancy so that we can give God the honor that He deserves.
Singing and sacred music are the most popular elements of Christian worship because of their ability to put us in safe place to respond with our whole being to God and prepare fully to meet Him in worship. Worship also has a communal dimension that explains its popularity and necessity. As Geoffery Wainwright argues that “familiar words and music…unite the whole assembly in active participation to a degree which is hardly true of any other component in the liturgy.” Yet often our music and singing are used in churches merely as garnish for the liturgy and sermon. This is especially true in traditional mainline denominations where most of the ‘worship wars’ are waged. Worship music is a corporate expression of praise and needs to be central to the churches service for there to be true worship. Music and song are not just ‘fillers’ but, as Wainwright says: “divine worship demands and must receive the concentrated attention of all concerned.” Any less is not worship but entertainment.
Hopefully this has helped to you to be encouraged that what you do as worship leaders and musicians is vitally important and I also hope this has spurned some ideas of how we can help our congregations express their whole lives to God in worship and why it is important. If you have any ideas of how this can be done, please post them on the blog!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 22, Psalm 40: 1-3, Psalm 130, Colossians 3:12-14
REFERENCES (for further reading)
I’ve got a lot for you to check out. All are worthy reads:
1. The Message of the Psalms, by Walter Brueggemann
2. Soul Music Black and White by Johannes Reidel
3. Worship: its Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
4. Doxology, the Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life, by Geoffery Wainwright
5. The Worship of God, by Ralph P. Martin
6. Theology for the Community of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 13
Thinking Theologically 4: Worship as Remembrance
READ:
Jonah 2: 7-9
DISCUSS:
1. What happened when Jonah remembered God? What is role of ‘remembering’ in worship?
2. How is idolatry connected to ‘forgetting’ in our passage? How does this happen to us?
3. How does worship ‘orient’ us?
4. Think about the last two worship services you attended. If you take away the sermon, what ‘story’ would the other elements of worship (from songs, prayers, etc…, to peoples demeanor on stage, etc…) be telling? If you had never stepped into a church before what would you understand of the gospel through the service?
5. How are we doing at ‘recapitulating salvation history’ each week as worship leaders?
REFLECT:
As we continue our section on ‘thinking theologically’ we are going to spend the next few weeks thinking together about how to understand worship. In this section we have already discussed how important it is to understand our own theology and how we are theologically teaching our congregation through the songs we sing and the ways we lead. Over the next few weeks we are going think through a theological framework of worship, building from our definition of worship as ‘giving worth and glory to God’ and seeking to understand how worship functions in the worshipping community and our lives individually.
We begin with worship as remembrance. As Robert Webber writes, worship in its most basic form “celebrates God’s saving deed in Jesus Christ,” and in the words of theologian Stanley Grenz: “in worship we gather to “commemorate the foundational events of our spiritual existence, at the center of which is the action of God in Christ delivering humankind from the bondage of sin.”
Christian worship first and foremost remembers the salvation story; that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has always been seeking to save and deliver humanity from sin and decay, and God does this through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Any worship time or church service that doesn’t tell this story through word, song, and other expression is simply not Christian worship.
As we look back through scripture we see this idea of worship as ‘remembering the story’ is the central focus of worship. From the beginning God remembered His covenant with His people (Genesis 9:15-16, Exodus 2:24-25, 1 Chronicles 16:12-15, Isaiah 54:4-7, Luke 1:68-75) and asked only that his people would remember Him as well. (Deuteronomy 4:10, 5:15, Deuteronomy 8, etc…) Remembering was the foundation of Israel’s practice and worship: the law, the feasts, and worship at the temple (Deuteronomy 4:9-14, 8:1-20-the law, 16:3-feasts, Exodus 3:12-worship) and the people of Israel, especially in times of hardship, often would ask God to remember His covenant with them and save them. (Job 10:9, Psalm 74:2-22, Jeremiah 14:21). When we forget God we fall into sin and begin to worship other Gods (Deuteronomy 9:7-23, Isaiah 17:10-14, Romans 1:21-32) and when we remember God’s love and work we are drawn closer to God and God’s purposes (Ecclesiasties 12:1-8, Psalm 119: 49-56, Jonah 2:7-9, John 16:1-4, Matthew 7:25-34).
A steady example of how worship as remembrance works (for me at least!) is my iphone. Before I bought an iphone I was constantly getting lost, as many of you know. Especially on streets here in Den Haag which, like most European streets, often change names, become one ways, or just end without notice, I would regularly be 30 minutes late because of getting lost (especially in the older parts of town). But then I got an iphone and everything changed. Especially the GPS on the iphone oriented me to exactly where I was and how to get where I needed to go. It is not perfect and I sometimes still get lost, but I have at least shaved 20 minutes off my old get lost time!
And this is the same with worship. In worship we are oriented on God and God’s ways. Often we lose our way and forget God in our lives, so we come to worship to be oriented again on God and to remember again who God is and who we are because of God’s great love and care. And out of this comes a new perspective on our lives and the world around us.
So as worship leaders it is essential that every week, through our songs, liturgy, preaching, times of silence and speaking, times of prayer, spontaneous worship, etc…. that we tell the story. And it is not enough just to talk about and honor ‘God’. Very religion honors some version of ‘God’. Similarly, it is not our task to solely focus on ‘being good people’, because all religions focus on morality. Our Christian worship gains its form and uniqueness in God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. As J.J Von Allen writes: “Christian worship is not just about honoring God but what God has done through Jesus Christ. Our worship begins and ends with Christ and recapitulates salvation history.”
Every week our task is to ‘recapitulate salvation history’ and to remember God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. If a non-Christian who had never stepped into a church before came to your service, how much of the gospel would they understand through your worship time…not just the sermon, but the songs we sing, the ways we act, and all the other elements of worship? How are we doing at helping people orient their lives on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and view their lives through the lens of Christ?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Deuteronomy 8: 1-18, Psalm 119: 49-56, Chronicles 16:7-15, 2 Timothy 2:8-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship: It’s Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
Theology For The Community Of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
READ:
Jonah 2: 7-9
DISCUSS:
1. What happened when Jonah remembered God? What is role of ‘remembering’ in worship?
2. How is idolatry connected to ‘forgetting’ in our passage? How does this happen to us?
3. How does worship ‘orient’ us?
4. Think about the last two worship services you attended. If you take away the sermon, what ‘story’ would the other elements of worship (from songs, prayers, etc…, to peoples demeanor on stage, etc…) be telling? If you had never stepped into a church before what would you understand of the gospel through the service?
5. How are we doing at ‘recapitulating salvation history’ each week as worship leaders?
REFLECT:
As we continue our section on ‘thinking theologically’ we are going to spend the next few weeks thinking together about how to understand worship. In this section we have already discussed how important it is to understand our own theology and how we are theologically teaching our congregation through the songs we sing and the ways we lead. Over the next few weeks we are going think through a theological framework of worship, building from our definition of worship as ‘giving worth and glory to God’ and seeking to understand how worship functions in the worshipping community and our lives individually.
We begin with worship as remembrance. As Robert Webber writes, worship in its most basic form “celebrates God’s saving deed in Jesus Christ,” and in the words of theologian Stanley Grenz: “in worship we gather to “commemorate the foundational events of our spiritual existence, at the center of which is the action of God in Christ delivering humankind from the bondage of sin.”
Christian worship first and foremost remembers the salvation story; that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has always been seeking to save and deliver humanity from sin and decay, and God does this through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Any worship time or church service that doesn’t tell this story through word, song, and other expression is simply not Christian worship.
As we look back through scripture we see this idea of worship as ‘remembering the story’ is the central focus of worship. From the beginning God remembered His covenant with His people (Genesis 9:15-16, Exodus 2:24-25, 1 Chronicles 16:12-15, Isaiah 54:4-7, Luke 1:68-75) and asked only that his people would remember Him as well. (Deuteronomy 4:10, 5:15, Deuteronomy 8, etc…) Remembering was the foundation of Israel’s practice and worship: the law, the feasts, and worship at the temple (Deuteronomy 4:9-14, 8:1-20-the law, 16:3-feasts, Exodus 3:12-worship) and the people of Israel, especially in times of hardship, often would ask God to remember His covenant with them and save them. (Job 10:9, Psalm 74:2-22, Jeremiah 14:21). When we forget God we fall into sin and begin to worship other Gods (Deuteronomy 9:7-23, Isaiah 17:10-14, Romans 1:21-32) and when we remember God’s love and work we are drawn closer to God and God’s purposes (Ecclesiasties 12:1-8, Psalm 119: 49-56, Jonah 2:7-9, John 16:1-4, Matthew 7:25-34).
A steady example of how worship as remembrance works (for me at least!) is my iphone. Before I bought an iphone I was constantly getting lost, as many of you know. Especially on streets here in Den Haag which, like most European streets, often change names, become one ways, or just end without notice, I would regularly be 30 minutes late because of getting lost (especially in the older parts of town). But then I got an iphone and everything changed. Especially the GPS on the iphone oriented me to exactly where I was and how to get where I needed to go. It is not perfect and I sometimes still get lost, but I have at least shaved 20 minutes off my old get lost time!
And this is the same with worship. In worship we are oriented on God and God’s ways. Often we lose our way and forget God in our lives, so we come to worship to be oriented again on God and to remember again who God is and who we are because of God’s great love and care. And out of this comes a new perspective on our lives and the world around us.
So as worship leaders it is essential that every week, through our songs, liturgy, preaching, times of silence and speaking, times of prayer, spontaneous worship, etc…. that we tell the story. And it is not enough just to talk about and honor ‘God’. Very religion honors some version of ‘God’. Similarly, it is not our task to solely focus on ‘being good people’, because all religions focus on morality. Our Christian worship gains its form and uniqueness in God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. As J.J Von Allen writes: “Christian worship is not just about honoring God but what God has done through Jesus Christ. Our worship begins and ends with Christ and recapitulates salvation history.”
Every week our task is to ‘recapitulate salvation history’ and to remember God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. If a non-Christian who had never stepped into a church before came to your service, how much of the gospel would they understand through your worship time…not just the sermon, but the songs we sing, the ways we act, and all the other elements of worship? How are we doing at helping people orient their lives on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and view their lives through the lens of Christ?
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Deuteronomy 8: 1-18, Psalm 119: 49-56, Chronicles 16:7-15, 2 Timothy 2:8-13,
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship: It’s Theology and Practice, by J.J Von Allmen
Theology For The Community Of God, by Stanley J. Grenz
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 12
Thinking Theologically 3: Who Is The Audience?
READ: Psalm 96:4-10
DISCUSS:
1. Think about the last concert you went to. What make it great? What made it terrible? Think about the last worship service you attended and ask the same questions.
2. What is the danger in evaluating worship services based on our personal preferences?
3. How do you view ‘performance’ in worship? Does it feel different to play music in church and to play in a bar or club? What is that difference?
4. Have you been in churches where you have felt that worship is primarily about performance? Describe your experience. Did it detract from worship? How?
5. According to our passage, who is the audience of our worship? Who, then, are the performers? How does this change our understanding of performance in worship?
REFLECT:
Think back on a favorite concert/opera/performance that you have seen in the past year. What made it amazing for you? Was it the singers beautiful voice, the orchestra or the bands musical versatility and excellence, the well crafted songs or stage presentation? Now think back on one of the worst performances you have ever heard. What made it terrible? What did you talk about with your friends/family afterwards?
Just as with a concert or performance we find ourselves making the same types of observations about our worship services. Observations like: ‘the choir sounded amazing!’, ‘the sermon was boring’, ‘I didn’t like that song the praise band played’, ‘the service was too long/too short’, etc… These often become the main topics of conversation after church, and while this is not necessarily wrong or bad, it could lead us into danger if we are not careful.
The danger is this: to miss who the audience of worship is. If we go to a concert or a performance then we are the audience: we have paid our money and we want to be entertained. The experience is based on us, the consumer. But when we come to church the audience is actually not us at all, but GOD. We have come to praise God and give our lives to the creator of all things, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 96:6-8: “O nations of the world recognize the Lord; recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong. Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in all His holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him. Tell all the nations, “The Lord reigns!” The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly.”
The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship throughout the week is to give God the glory He deserves. As Ralph Martin writes in his great book on worship, “The Worship of God”: “Worshippers embark on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy their needs or to make them feel better or to minister to their aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself.”
So our question changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ This changes everything: our worship planning and practicing, the ways we play our instruments, sing, and act in worship, and ways we approach worship in general.
And as we focus on God we find something wonderful happening….we experience God’s Grace and goodness. Worship leader Graham Kendrick writes: “Worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, though it is marvelous to discover that in giving God pleasure, we ourselves enter into what can become our richest and most wholesome experience in life.” May we all experience the wonder of God’s Grace as we focus on Him in worship!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Chron 16:28-30, Psalm 29:1-4, Philippians 2:9-11, Revelation 5:11-14, 7:9
REFERENCES (for further reading)
"The Worship of God", by Ralph Martin
"A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman
READ: Psalm 96:4-10
DISCUSS:
1. Think about the last concert you went to. What make it great? What made it terrible? Think about the last worship service you attended and ask the same questions.
2. What is the danger in evaluating worship services based on our personal preferences?
3. How do you view ‘performance’ in worship? Does it feel different to play music in church and to play in a bar or club? What is that difference?
4. Have you been in churches where you have felt that worship is primarily about performance? Describe your experience. Did it detract from worship? How?
5. According to our passage, who is the audience of our worship? Who, then, are the performers? How does this change our understanding of performance in worship?
REFLECT:
Think back on a favorite concert/opera/performance that you have seen in the past year. What made it amazing for you? Was it the singers beautiful voice, the orchestra or the bands musical versatility and excellence, the well crafted songs or stage presentation? Now think back on one of the worst performances you have ever heard. What made it terrible? What did you talk about with your friends/family afterwards?
Just as with a concert or performance we find ourselves making the same types of observations about our worship services. Observations like: ‘the choir sounded amazing!’, ‘the sermon was boring’, ‘I didn’t like that song the praise band played’, ‘the service was too long/too short’, etc… These often become the main topics of conversation after church, and while this is not necessarily wrong or bad, it could lead us into danger if we are not careful.
The danger is this: to miss who the audience of worship is. If we go to a concert or a performance then we are the audience: we have paid our money and we want to be entertained. The experience is based on us, the consumer. But when we come to church the audience is actually not us at all, but GOD. We have come to praise God and give our lives to the creator of all things, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 96:6-8: “O nations of the world recognize the Lord; recognize that the Lord is glorious and strong. Give to the Lord the glory he deserves! Bring your offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in all His holy splendor. Let all the earth tremble before him. Tell all the nations, “The Lord reigns!” The world stands firm and cannot be shaken. He will judge all peoples fairly.”
The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship throughout the week is to give God the glory He deserves. As Ralph Martin writes in his great book on worship, “The Worship of God”: “Worshippers embark on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy their needs or to make them feel better or to minister to their aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself.”
So our question changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ This changes everything: our worship planning and practicing, the ways we play our instruments, sing, and act in worship, and ways we approach worship in general.
And as we focus on God we find something wonderful happening….we experience God’s Grace and goodness. Worship leader Graham Kendrick writes: “Worship is first and foremost for God’s benefit, not ours, though it is marvelous to discover that in giving God pleasure, we ourselves enter into what can become our richest and most wholesome experience in life.” May we all experience the wonder of God’s Grace as we focus on Him in worship!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Chron 16:28-30, Psalm 29:1-4, Philippians 2:9-11, Revelation 5:11-14, 7:9
REFERENCES (for further reading)
"The Worship of God", by Ralph Martin
"A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership, Week 11
Thinking Theologically 2: Which God Do We Worship?
READ: Matthew 9:9-13
DISCUSS:
1. What do you think it would have meant to be a sinner in Matthew 9:9-13? How would it have meant to be a Pharisee? What are the implications on our worship?
2. After reading the quote by Will Willimon (below), how can we miss God in worship? Or worship the wrong God? How does this happen? What God our we worshipping?
3. What does God desire of us in our worship? What do you think God thinks of our churches worship?
REFLECT:
In Matthew 9:9-13 we witness Jesus teaching both the ‘sinners’ and the ‘religious’ people of the day a lesson about worship. In the passage Jesus calls an outsider and sinner, Matthew, to become one of his followers. It is a beautiful occasion, yet it’s tarnished that evening when the ‘religious’ of the day, the Pharisees, crash Matthew’s dinner party and criticize Jesus’ consorting with Matthew and other outcasts and sinners like him. Jesus responds to them with this radical statement: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Imagine being a ‘sinner’ in the room that evening. You are reminded everyday that you are an outsider and ‘unclean’ by everyone around you, but now this Rabbi is proclaiming that you are at the center of God’s heart and the focus of God’s ministry! You would want to worship this God not out of guilt or fear, but out of gratitude for God’s love.
But now put yourself in the Pharisee’s shoes. You have lived your whole life meticulously following the law, as God commanded in the Old Testament. Yet now this Rabbi comes out of nowhere and tells you that you have forgotten who God really is and lost the heart of worship. Jesus even quotes from Hosea 6:6: “for I desire mercy and not sacrifice” to stress the point that in all your religiousness you have missed God. You would be offended!
Throughout gospels Jesus was very concerned that the followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had forgotten who God really is. They read the scriptures and followed God’s law, but their ‘religiousness’ actually led them away from the God who welcomes outsiders and calls sinners home. They missed God in worship.
And this is our danger as well in the church of Jesus Christ 2000 years later. In a sense, we as Christians are the new ‘Pharisees’, and we need to be vigilant to not worship religion or our culture in place of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As William Willimon writes in Worship As Pastoral Care:
“To ask the theological question is simply to ask, What does our worship say about God?, or the corollary, What does God say to us about our worship? Surely this is the toughest and most basic question to be asked, but curiously, it is often the last question we ask. If we think about our worship at all, usually we think in terms of ‘what do I want from our worship?” or, ‘what do my people want from worship?’ without being so daring as to ask , ‘what does God want from worship?’ Is our worship the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or is it the worship of Baal, Aphrodite, and Cupid? Does our worship have integrity measured by the Biblical standards for what our prayer and praise should be? So much of our worship is self-centered, mundane, and tame. How are we to be faithful to the gospel; how do we know the difference between secular idolatry and Christian liturgy, unless we ask, and in some means, answer, the theological question?”
God is both the source and the object of our worship, so it is essential for us to know WHO we are worshipping. As Kevin Navarro writes in his excellent book, The Complete Worship Leader: “Our theology must be accurate if our worship is to be accurate. An intentional neglect of the God who has revealed Himself will degenerate into idolatry.” Thinking theologically then is a critically important skill to develop as we lead worship. But just as important, is for us to give ourselves space to worship. We always talk about not just being ‘worship leaders’ but being ‘lead worshippers’, and though this is sometimes overused, it is true. As we develop our mind as theologians we need to develop our heart as worshippers. We need to focus on growing in the Grace of God and striving to spend time growing in relationship with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. We want to wrap both our head and heart around the gospel and to give space for others to do that as well in our worship services.
Do you think theologically about our worship service weekly and about your playing and presence in worship? Do you take time to worship during the week through prayer, scripture study, and meditation? These are disciplines that we can develop throughout our lives, so don’t be discouraged if your answers to those questions weren’t extremely positive. Just take small steps, In thinking theologically challenge yourself by reading a book about worship and asking questions about what your are portraying theologically in your worship services. To develop your heart worship plan on carving out 20 minutes a day to pray, read, and meditate. If you have done that and it is old or dry, try different disciplines of listening to God in scripture and prayer. I have included a couple exercises for you to try here. Enjoy!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Samuel 15:22-23, Psalm 51:17, Hosea 6:6, John 6:28-29, 1 Corinthians 8:1-6
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship As Pastoral Care by William Willimon
READ: Matthew 9:9-13
DISCUSS:
1. What do you think it would have meant to be a sinner in Matthew 9:9-13? How would it have meant to be a Pharisee? What are the implications on our worship?
2. After reading the quote by Will Willimon (below), how can we miss God in worship? Or worship the wrong God? How does this happen? What God our we worshipping?
3. What does God desire of us in our worship? What do you think God thinks of our churches worship?
REFLECT:
In Matthew 9:9-13 we witness Jesus teaching both the ‘sinners’ and the ‘religious’ people of the day a lesson about worship. In the passage Jesus calls an outsider and sinner, Matthew, to become one of his followers. It is a beautiful occasion, yet it’s tarnished that evening when the ‘religious’ of the day, the Pharisees, crash Matthew’s dinner party and criticize Jesus’ consorting with Matthew and other outcasts and sinners like him. Jesus responds to them with this radical statement: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Imagine being a ‘sinner’ in the room that evening. You are reminded everyday that you are an outsider and ‘unclean’ by everyone around you, but now this Rabbi is proclaiming that you are at the center of God’s heart and the focus of God’s ministry! You would want to worship this God not out of guilt or fear, but out of gratitude for God’s love.
But now put yourself in the Pharisee’s shoes. You have lived your whole life meticulously following the law, as God commanded in the Old Testament. Yet now this Rabbi comes out of nowhere and tells you that you have forgotten who God really is and lost the heart of worship. Jesus even quotes from Hosea 6:6: “for I desire mercy and not sacrifice” to stress the point that in all your religiousness you have missed God. You would be offended!
Throughout gospels Jesus was very concerned that the followers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had forgotten who God really is. They read the scriptures and followed God’s law, but their ‘religiousness’ actually led them away from the God who welcomes outsiders and calls sinners home. They missed God in worship.
And this is our danger as well in the church of Jesus Christ 2000 years later. In a sense, we as Christians are the new ‘Pharisees’, and we need to be vigilant to not worship religion or our culture in place of the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. As William Willimon writes in Worship As Pastoral Care:
“To ask the theological question is simply to ask, What does our worship say about God?, or the corollary, What does God say to us about our worship? Surely this is the toughest and most basic question to be asked, but curiously, it is often the last question we ask. If we think about our worship at all, usually we think in terms of ‘what do I want from our worship?” or, ‘what do my people want from worship?’ without being so daring as to ask , ‘what does God want from worship?’ Is our worship the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or is it the worship of Baal, Aphrodite, and Cupid? Does our worship have integrity measured by the Biblical standards for what our prayer and praise should be? So much of our worship is self-centered, mundane, and tame. How are we to be faithful to the gospel; how do we know the difference between secular idolatry and Christian liturgy, unless we ask, and in some means, answer, the theological question?”
God is both the source and the object of our worship, so it is essential for us to know WHO we are worshipping. As Kevin Navarro writes in his excellent book, The Complete Worship Leader: “Our theology must be accurate if our worship is to be accurate. An intentional neglect of the God who has revealed Himself will degenerate into idolatry.” Thinking theologically then is a critically important skill to develop as we lead worship. But just as important, is for us to give ourselves space to worship. We always talk about not just being ‘worship leaders’ but being ‘lead worshippers’, and though this is sometimes overused, it is true. As we develop our mind as theologians we need to develop our heart as worshippers. We need to focus on growing in the Grace of God and striving to spend time growing in relationship with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. We want to wrap both our head and heart around the gospel and to give space for others to do that as well in our worship services.
Do you think theologically about our worship service weekly and about your playing and presence in worship? Do you take time to worship during the week through prayer, scripture study, and meditation? These are disciplines that we can develop throughout our lives, so don’t be discouraged if your answers to those questions weren’t extremely positive. Just take small steps, In thinking theologically challenge yourself by reading a book about worship and asking questions about what your are portraying theologically in your worship services. To develop your heart worship plan on carving out 20 minutes a day to pray, read, and meditate. If you have done that and it is old or dry, try different disciplines of listening to God in scripture and prayer. I have included a couple exercises for you to try here. Enjoy!
ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
1 Samuel 15:22-23, Psalm 51:17, Hosea 6:6, John 6:28-29, 1 Corinthians 8:1-6
REFERENCES (for further reading)
Worship As Pastoral Care by William Willimon
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Astonishing Grace: studies on Gospel centered worship leadership, week 10
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
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, 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".
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