Do Not Distract

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

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

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

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

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

Why Do We Worship?

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

The first task of the worship leader is to glorify God. The word “worship” comes from the word ‘worth-ship’ and means literally to give someone or something worth or value.  The center of our worship then, both in our corporate worship on Sunday and our worship of God throughout the week is to give God the glory He deserves. As Ralph Martin writes in his great book on worship, The Worship of God: “Worshippers embark on an enterprise undertaken not simply to satisfy their needs or to make them feel better or to minister to their aesthetic taste or social well-being, but to express the worthiness of God Himself.”(p. 17) Because of this our question in worship changes from: ‘did this worship service bless me and make me happy?’ to ‘did this service bless God and make God happy?’ Did this service express the worthiness of God and find its center in the sufficiency of Christ? ’ 

1. To Glorify God

And as we change our question we realize that we as worship leaders have a different task. Our task is not to make people feel good, to impact them, or to deliver them an encounter with God. That is God’s task through the Holy Spirit. Our task is to glorify God and share the story of God’s redemptive work in the world through Jesus Christ. It is not enough just to talk about and honor ‘God’. Very religion honors some version of ‘God’. Similarly, it is not our task to solely focus on ‘being good people’, because all religions focus on morality.  Our Christian worship gains its form and uniqueness in God’s revelation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  As J.J Von Allen writes: “Christian worship is not just about honoring God but what God has done through Jesus Christ. Our worship begins and ends with Christ and recapitulates salvation history.” 

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

2. To Lead the Congregations Song

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

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

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

Whole Life Worship

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

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

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

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

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

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

ORIENTATION

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

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

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

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

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

DISORIENTATION

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

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

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

DISORIENTATION (LAMENT)

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

And as we look at the scriptures it is amazing to see that God does not run from those questions and neither are we to run from them as worshippers.  Walter Brueggeman writes: “The surprise of Israel’s prayer and worship is that the extravagance of praise does not silence or censor Israel’s need but seems to legitimate and authorize a second extravagance, the extravagance of complaint, lament, accusation, petition, indignation, assault, insistence.”

I love how Brueggeman puts this: that our praise is to be extravagant in worship. We are called to give our very best in worship to God; to lavish on God praise and worship and to make it extravagant. Yet God also welcomes another extravagance, that of complaint, lament, petition, and even indignation and assault. It is refreshing to realize that God does not only want to hear our praise, he wants to hear our honest anguish as well.  So often we think that God is just saying, “come on, just get over it!” when we are in the midst of doubt or trouble, but that is not the picture of God we see in the scriptures. We see in the scriptures a God who deeply is concerned, who deeply listens, and deeply responds to your cries.

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

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

REORIENTATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RESPONSE

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

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

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

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

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

Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership

Thinking Theologically 8:
The Holy Spirit in Worship

READ:
John 14:15-17, 26-27, 15:26-27, 16:5-16

DISCUSS:
1. Where have you had a hard time understanding the Holy Spirit?

2. What do we learn about the Holy Spirit in these verses?

3. What is the relationship between father, son, and Holy Spirit in these passages?

4. How does the Holy Spirit relate to what we do as worship leaders?

5. How has the Holy Spirit been working in your life?

REFLECT:
How Does the Holy Spirit move, shape, and define our worship? I serve a church where worshipers represent over 30 different Christian denominations from around the world, and I notice weekly that they have vastly different understandings of how the Holy Spirit works in their lives and worship.

In some of their traditions they hardly talk about the Holy Spirit at all, and in others everything is defined by the Holy Spirit. So, some people are uncomfortable when we talk about the Holy Spirit too much and others would rather we were more ‘spirit led’ and focused on the outward spiritual gifts (tongues, prophesy, being ‘slain’ in the spirit, etc…) in worship.

So, as we seek to continue through our Bible study to build a framework of how to understand worship and our task of leading worship through music, liturgy, and preaching, we need to understand how to view the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in worship.

In our passage today, Jesus explains that the Spirit calls us to worship, convicts us of sin and guilt, teaches us the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ, leads us to a new perspective on our lives and world, and gives us truth and peace. There is no worship of the triune God without the Holy Spirit. Whether we acknowledge the Spirit or not, as Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 12:3 “no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.”

1. Calls us to worship and convicts us of Sin and guilt.
In the past weeks we have talked about worship as an encounter with God that is transformative and this week we see that the Holy Spirit is the instigator and facilitator of this transformative encounter. As we have discussed before, when we come into the presence of God the first thing we hear is God’s ‘NO’. Through our own power we can do nothing to know God or bring an offering that is pleasing to Him. As theologian Ralph Martin writes, through sin all of our hearts are “turned in upon themselves so that we turn all God’s gifts to poison.”

Because of this we often use worship for our own selfish needs or agenda. Whenever we seek to “get something from worship” all we are doing is seeking our own agenda, which will always fail because the church can’t promise happiness, security, health, and prosperity. On our own we can’t even praise God without falling into selfishness.

2. Teaches us the truth of God in Jesus Christ.
That is why we need to rely on the Holy Spirit in our worship. We rely on the Holy Spirit to lead us into the presence of God and keep our focus there. Without the Spirit’s presence it is impossible to focus on God or understand His loving design revealed in Jesus Christ. As Jesus comments in John 16:13 “but when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” The Spirit’s whole work is to focus us on Jesus Christ. He has no word of His own, but as Jesus continues in John 15:14: “He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”

Sometimes we think that we will get something more from God if we focus on the Holy Spirit (special knowledge, special powers, special gifts, etc….), but God has sent the Holy Spirit to help us draw near the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ, and to focus our lives on Him.

As Ralph Martin writes: “The Spirit’s work is to make it possible to focus on God and Jesus Christ and to keep our gaze fixed there, whether the temptation to avert it comes in the form of a luxuriant emotionalism, a fierce call to compromise, or an etherealizing of our faith whose contact with history is made tenuous.”

3. Gives us new perspective on our lives and our world.
Because the Holy Spirit leads us to God’s truth, our perspective on ourselves and the world begins to change as God’s spirit works in our lives.

John Calvin describes it this way: “as we cannot come to Christ unless we are drawn by the Spirit of God, so when we are drawn we are lifted up in mind and heart above our understanding. For the soul, illumined by Him, takes on a new keenness… and humans understanding, thus beamed by the light of the Holy Spirit, then at last truly begins to taste those things which belong to the kingdom of God.”

So, every time we are reading the Bible and something suddenly makes sense, we can thank God’s Spirit. Every time we are convicted of sin, every time we come to a new revelation about our lives that changes us, we can thank the Holy Spirit. And we can trust that in our worship services God is doing the same in the lives of our congregation, though we may not be able to see it.

God gives us new perspective through the Holy Spirit. And one of the main ways this works in believers is helping us understand who we are as the body of Christ. The Spirit is always working to build up the church and help us find our true gifts and purpose. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:1, 4-7: “Now about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”

The Holy Spirit blesses the community of faith with wisdom and guidance, charismatic gifts and signs, new perspective and love towards others. These gifts are given to individuals but are meant to bless and edify the body of Christ. The Spirit desires to bless us individually but the main goal of the spirit is the unity, health, and mission of the body of Christ, for the renewal and redemption of the world. As a church we always gone astray when we forget who are in Christ and we forget the Holy Spirit’s work in forging us into a new people, with new gifts, and with a new purpose in the world.

4. Gives us truth and peace.
Jesus comments in John 14:26-27: “The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

As we trust God to help us and guide us through His Holy Spirit, there is deep comfort that He is working in our lives and the lives of those we serve to guide them, bless them, and show them the way. We can have peace, as we lead worship; that God is leading us into all truth as we focus on Jesus Christ, so we don’t have to worry or be afraid. What a huge comfort to us, as we trust this and let God’s spirit guide us!

Final Thoughts
It seems to me that often worship leaders either discount or overstate the Holy Spirit’s work in our worship services. Either the Holy Spirit is hardly mentioned and there is little time and space to listen to God’s Spirit speaking through the service, or the Spirit is viewed as a heavenly power outlet that we just need to ‘plug into’ by praying in the spirit and worshipping in the spirit, so that we will receive the additional power and blessing.

Yet in the passages that we have just read, we’ve seen that the Spirit is a great gift given by God to believers, given for our flourishing and growth. So, the Holy Spirit is working whether we are listening or not, and every time we are praying or worshipping, we are doing so ‘in the spirit’, because the Spirit is the instigator of worship, the convicter of sins, our guide to the truth of the gospel, and our hope and peace.

This gives me great hope as a worship leader because I know that God is working and I don’t somehow need to save those whom I serve through my excellent worship leading and musicianship. And God’s Spirit gives in an assurance that God is doing something every week in worship, whether I see people falling down in the aisles or not. God is working, because God has sent his Spirit to fill us, guide us, empower us, shape us, and move us. Out of this hope my only response can be gratitude, thanksgiving, and praise, which is exactly what our attitude needs to be as leaders of worship.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Psalm 51:1-5, Acts 21:1-41, Romans 5:1-5, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

REFERENCES (for further reading)
The Worship of God, Ralph P. Martin
Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin

Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership

Thinking Theologically 7:
Worship Leading For Transformation

READ:
Romans 12:1-2

DISCUSS:
1. As we read through the passage, what do you think it means to be ‘conformed to the pattern of the world?’ How are you conformed to the world around you? How does this happen to you and others?

2. What does it mean to be transformed? Do you feel like you are being more conformed or more transformed in your daily life?

3. How can worship be a place of transformation? How do we encounter God revealed in Jesus Christ in worship? How can we hinder transformation?

REFLECT:
As we continue to build a framework of worship, we need to discuss worship as transformation. As we know, worship is more than just a time to remember the salvation story and to express our whole lives to God; worship is is a divine meeting where we encounter the living God. And no-one who encounters the living God is ever the same. We are transformed through the encounter. So, this week we are going to discuss how we are transformed through worship.

In our passage Paul uses the language of the potter in discussing how God works in our lives. “To conform” means literally ‘to take the shape of something’, like a potter would take a lump of clay and conform it into the shape of a bowl or plate. Paul encourages (or warns us) not to ‘take the shape of’ the world around us’. The Message version of the Bible captures this sentiment well as it translates this verse: “Don't become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.” So we are encouraged and commanded to be transformed.

“To be transformed”…. comes from the Greek word “Metamorpho”, where we get the word ‘metamorphosis.’ It means ‘to change the essential nature of something’. As a potter, you will never be able to ‘metamorpho’ clay….even though you turn it into a pot or a plate, it will always be essentially clay. This is the same with our walk with God. We can never ‘transform’ ourselves. This comes from God. Paul writes in Romans 6:2-4: “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Our essential nature as humans is sin, and we are 'dead' in our sins. Yet God changes our nature through Christ’s death and resurrection! This is essential for us to remember as we lead worship. We are not the instigators of transformation nor can we somehow make people transform through their own works. Transformation always comes from an encounter with THE HOLY OTHER, in Latin, the “Mysterium Tremendum” (or tremendous mystery).

Because of this, transformation always involves disruption, dis-orientation, dis-equilibrium, because you cannot encounter God and stay the same. Transformation is essential but often uncomfortable because it involves shifting paradigms, challenging long held assumptions, shifting perceptions of reality. We see examples of this throughout the Bible from Jacob wrestling with God at Bethel to Paul on the Damascus road. In fact, everyone who encounters God in the Bible experiences this type of encounter, which then leads to transformation.

The metamorphosis always begins and ends with God. And out of this encounter with God, we are called to ‘renew our minds’, which means to let the reality of the gospel become the most real thing to us. The process of metamorphosis is the process of becoming who we already ARE in Jesus Christ if we have accepted God’s grace through faith. So we are called to stay close to God in prayer, study of scripture, service, fellowship, worship and to challenge the values of the ‘aeon’ we live in. The call to ‘renew our minds’ is the daily call to renew our attitudes about life, ourselves, and each other, (Colossians 3:1-17) and to renew our perceptions about reality and world around us. (Colossians 1:15-23) .

So, as worship leaders we are to called to lead worship for transformation. Transformation occurs when people encounter God and are changed by that encounter. The Holy Spirit instigates this encounter and transforms us as Christ encounters us. As worship leaders we strive to provide ‘space for transformation’, and to engage people with the reality of the gospel through our worship. The question for us though is: Do we view our worship services as places where encounter happens and people are transformed through GRACE?

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
John 2:3-21, 2 Corinthians 2:7-18, Colossians 1:15-23, 3:1-17, Philippians 3:20-21,

REFERENCES (for further reading)

Astonishing Grace, Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership

Thinking Theologically about Worship 6
God’s NO and God’s YES: Worship as Encounter.

READ:
Colossians 1:15-23

DISCUSS:
1. Read together the first sentence from the ‘reflect’ section. Have you heard that before? What do think?

2. Have you ever had one of those experiences of transcendence that make you think ‘there must be bigger than me’ in nature or other places? How did those experiences shed light on who God is or isn’t for you?

3. Do you agree or disagree with Barth’s understanding of ‘God’s NO.’ (in the reflect section.) How do see this work out in the world?

4. Read Colossians 1:15-23. How is Jesus God’s YES?

5. Have you experience an ‘encounter with the risen Christ’ in worship?

6. How does the idea of ‘worship as encounter’ change your preparation as worship leaders and also your worship experience?

REFLECT:
“The mountains are my cathedral. I don’t need to worship in some building with a bunch of hypocrites to find God. God is all around me. All I need to do is go out and experience Him.”

All of us have heard this kind of statement before and we might even have thought or said something like this at times. And there is truth to the statement….God is all around us. God is everywhere. And we experience something beyond ourselves when we experience the beauty of nature in all its glory. Yet for Christians, there is an important distinction to be made, and this needs to be proclaimed by worship leaders and preachers each week at worship: the true God cannot be known by nature or any other human experience alone. We can experience God’s power, God’s creativity, God’s glory in part through nature and other experiences, but we cannot know God’s character, God’s nature, God’s deep passion and intense love.

Karl Barth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Barth), the famous German theologian, explains this well. He starts with the understanding that ‘God is wholly other’, which means that God is totally beyond the realm of human understanding and completely inaccessible by any innate human capability. God cannot be known by us in any way. So, when we experience those moments of transcendence in nature and other places, we are not experiencing God but only the faintest echo of the reality of God. We can’t know God through those experiences; we only know that God exists, that God is creative, and that God is powerful.

Barth describes this as the ‘NO’ and ‘YES’ of God. When we as worshippers try to approach God we firstly hear God’s ‘NO’ before we can hear His ‘YES’. God’s ‘NO’ states that humans cannot know God and experience His Grace by their own innate power, emotions, or experience. Without God’s Spirit breaking through we cannot encounter God. This is a hard statement for many churchgoers who attend services primarily to feel better about themselves, explore their own spirituality, or even to ‘connect’ with God. This is also a hard statement for worship traditions that emphasize emotional responses in their worship. God’s ‘NO’ reveals that we are unrighteous, unworthy, and unable to do anything to please God by our own power. It states that there is no way to manipulate God or even connect with God on the basis of our own humanity and no special way to ‘access’ God. This saves worshippers from works righteousness and the endless pursuit of being more open to the spirit, being a better worshipper, being more holy, righteous, sensitive to the Spirit, etc…

Only when we hear this and begin to understand God’s NO can we receive God’s ‘YES’. As Colossians 1:19 states: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Jesus is one who reconciles us to God. We cannot do it by our own power or works. God breaks through to our reality so that we can know God through the living Jesus. Jesus is God’s YES.

So we can only know God through Jesus, but we also can only experience God through an encounter with Jesus Christ. God’s NO is that we cannot know Him or please Him by any of our strivings. Yet God’s YES is that through Jesus Christ God comes to US. So in Jesus Christ we can encounter God in a new way through worship. The word encounter literally means to ‘meet someone unexpectedly or to meet someone in conflict’. Usually, ever Sunday, we and our congregation come to our church services for many different reasons…. We may come out of obligation, to meet with friends, or because we want to to hear something that will impact our lives. Yet regardless of our reasons, God through Jesus Christ encounters us in worship.

Barth describes that this most often happens through proclamation of the Word in song, prayer, reading, and preaching. Barth writes this: “Jesus breaks into our reality through the proclamation of scripture, spoken, sung, or read. So through proclamation “the new robe of righteousness is thrown over (our words, songs, etc..) and even in its earthly character it becomes a new event, the event of God’s own speaking in earthly events, the event of the authoritative vicariate of Jesus Christ.”

Through proclamation we hear Jesus actually speaking to us and we encounter Jesus as our contemporary. This brings scripture alive and gives our worship a new meaning and power that it didn’t have before. Though the proclamation of worship in song, reading, preaching, praying, meditation, etc…we come into the presence of the living Christ and receive His love, grace, and guidance, not based on our merit or ability but through God’s grace alone. Only through God’s “YES” is there any possibility of responding to God in worship and only in the encounter can there be dialogue with God.

So, as we lead worship as musicians and leaders, we can trust that something far greater is happening as we proclaim God’s goodness and mercy through Jesus Christ. God is encountering His people through the living Christ. So it is our task to provide a ‘sacred space’ for this encounter to happen and to proclaim God’s NO and YES clearly, week after week, so our people can be surprised by Grace as Christ encounters them where they are.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES (to read throughout the week):
Acts 3:11-20, Romans 1:18-32, Galatians 1:6-10, 1 John 2:18-3:1

REFERENCES (for further reading)
Church Dogmatics, Vol. 1: Word of God by Karl Barth (I hesitate to put this down because it is such hard reading….as every seminarian knows. Yet….if you keep in mind his theological method (that I just very briefly skimmed) it should help you understand Him.)

Astonishing Grace: Studies on Gospel Centered Worship Leadership

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