AN INDEX TO YOUR FAITH!
The worship seminar went well on the weekend. As usual I totally overprepared. I'm haunted by the words of a trusted friend who suggested to me recently that I'm a perfectionist. He meant not in a good way but rather in a way that trusts in myself and my abilities rather than God and God's strength!
Anyway, enough self-flagellation! No blood was spilt on the carpet over the weekend. This is no mean feat when you have a room full of people who are very talented and passionate musicians and you are trying to ask questions about the content of some of their favourite songs! We all had a great time exploring what is worship and what are we trying to do on a Sunday morning? We had some very robust discussions at times where we let our differences grow us (I hope). I suggested that Sunday worship is less about creating a certain "experience" for people and more about spiritual formation of the people of God. Less about "getting something out of it" and more about growing a gospel people. Rather than making experience primary and trying to create some emotions we need to be faithful to the gospel (content) and allow that to produce it's own experiences. This will sometimes mean profound thankfulness and joy but other times lament or confession or wrestling with God. If we make experience (especially creating that warm fuzzy feeling) primary we run the risk of abusing the gospel for our own ends (i.e. creating an experience). We need to trust in the power of the gospel to grow a gospel people and allow this to create it's own experiences. My conclusion was that Sunday morning worship is about nurturing and growing a gospel people. Therefore, the content matters to make sure we are growing a gospel people and not just any sort of people.
A couple of fantastic and haunting quotes I really like in my research which both come from a journal article by Kevin Vanhoozer called "Worship at the Well" in the Trinity Journal 23 (2002):
"We worship what we know. If our knowledge is not deep, our worship won't be either."
"Our worship [and prayer] is the index to how well we have understood our faith."
And finally a quote from N.T. Wright (via Vanhoozer's article):
"If your idea of God...[and] salvation offered in Christ, is vague or remote, your idea of worship will be fuzzy and ill-informed."
10:24 AM
sounds really cool and healthy. i underprepare, (as an expression of my own laziness) but then the people seem to make up for that...what does 'proper' preparation look like?
also, those quotes are very very poignant.
thanks
10:22 AM
Hi there,
How do you be true to the gospel in worship?
Having been a worship leader and recently stepping out of music ministry, I wonder if music is made too much of in church? It is essentially an emotional tool used by the christian and secular world alike. Does worship in music boil down to the leader and participants heart and motivations rather than the music itself? Most worship leaders know the things to do with the music (tempo, volume, chords etc) that will extract certain responses from the congregation and I can't help but wonder what makes worship music so different from secular music? Is the object of worship and adoration the only difference and should there be something more?
Cheers,
Sean
2:00 PM
Hi Sean, I agree that music has much power and can be manipulated. However, my thoughts are focussed on the significance of worship songs in terms of relaying the faith. I think that worship songs aren't simply about beat etc - there's no particular beat or instrument that is 'more Christian' than another. What does define what is Christian is the words of the songs. Do the words adequately portray the gospel or do they portray something else? The words we sing matter much as it is here that we give expression to our faith and often learn our faith. I don't hear a lot of people repeating a line from one of my sermons (no matter how much I try) but they do repeat or sing worship songs. Worship is our response to who God is and what God has done and through it we confess our faith in Him into one another's ears. The question therefore becomes are we confessing Christian faith or something else?
3:38 PM
Thanks Andrew...loved your comment about people repeating lines from your sermon...cracked me up!! I agree, the lyrics of 'christian' songs do need to reflect the gospel if not 'preach' it straight out! Do you think people listen to or often realise the lyrics they sing? We are singing a song in church which says "I'm taking up my cross, Laying down my life.... Pick it up". It is a praise song and everyone is dancing, smiling etc. I wondered last week if we realised what 'taking my cross' really means. And then I just think I'm being pedantic and nit-picking. I should be happy that peopole are praising God.
5:00 PM
It's a tough road to begin to look at the issue of what we are singing. You start to feel like you are not a 'proper' worshiper. But for me it is because I want to worship God (rather than me) that I get hung up on the lyrics of some of our songs. Like the words to the song you quoted. Is there any good news in the idea that I take up my cross, or lay down my life or pick it up? I think not!! The gospel tells me that Jesus takes up my cross and lays down his life for me on my behalf because I'm not able to! In fact, all my attempts to do this (pick up my own cross etc) is me shaking my fist at God in defiance of Him (see Romans chpts 1-3). The lyrics of this song fly in the face of the gospel (i.e. shake their fist at God) and yet this is what we sing in our corporate worship! Lord help us! This hardly passes on the good treasure of the gospel that we were entrusted with! As Mark Strom (Principal of BCNZ) said at our church on the weekend - the gospel is not ultimately about me or you - it's about Jesus! What he has done is doing and will do. Anything else is not Christian faith. I know this sounds grumpy but I think a lot is at stake.
11:25 AM
Ali, I think the guts of many contemporary songs foget what God HAS done in Jesus and obsess about what MUST done in order to effect salvation. Picking up our cross is in response to Jesus having picked up his cross for us. The gospels are written from a post-ressurection point of view. Undoubtedly these are the words of the historical Jesus but they took on new meaning for the disciples in the light of the resurrection. Us picking up our cross is in response to the cross of Jesus - an act of discipleship not salvation. Too often these songs forget what Jesus HAS done for us and throw us back onto ourselves to pick up our own crosses rather than trusting that Christ HAS picked up our cross. I think there is a large distinction between the salvific event of the cross AND the resurrection (I say this because too often we sing about the cross without any link to the resurrection - the cross makes little sense without the resurrection) and the discipleship we are called to - picking up our own crosses in RESPONSE to Jesus. There seems to be a forgetfulness today about what Christ HAS done for us on our behalf. Think of the song 'Jesus we enthrone you ... we lift you up with our praise' Isn't he already enthroned and lifted up?! And not by us or our praise but by God?! Who do we think we are that we think think we can enthrone Jesus or lift him up? Isn't that an overstatement about us and what we do and an understatement about God and what God HAS done? This is my point.
10:44 AM
Ali, it is the division between the salvific act and discipleship that I am addressing! What I think flies in the face of the gospel is when faith is determined by something I have to do without to appropriate recognition of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ and that even our faith is not our own - it is a gifted response that comes from Christ in the Spirit (e.g. Tom Torrance and all the others you know about). I think in our rush to proclaim the imperative (take up your cross) we have forgotten the emphasis on the indicative (Christ has taken up your cross on your behalf). I stand by my comments that to throw salvation back onto ourselves and what we do as opposed to what Christ has done on our behalf for us is us shaking our fist at God (see Rom 1:18-23). Salvation (as something we do) abstracted from the gospel of Jesus Christ - the one true human being - is us 'exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal humn being' - shaking our fist at God. Of course the only appropriate response to the gospel is faith (but even this is not our own doing - it is a gift to us from the one true human being in his Spirit!). My sense however is that there is way too much emphasis on me and what I do and way too little emphasis on Christ and what he has, is and will do. I like C. S. Lewis' view of humility: "Humility is not thinking less about yourself. Humility is thinking about yourself less." It's this humility that makes us think less about ourselves (and what we do) and more about God (and what God has donw) that I want to encourage. The stress is on getting the indicative before the imperative not the other way around.
1:16 PM
wow... this is good. I've thought about this stuff for a couple of years now and while I see what you're saying Andrew and I have the same thoughts myself, I also wonder if I have just really been looking too hard. Am I seeing more in the lyrics (or less in some cases) than the writer intended. Of corse, words often don't do justice to the power of what you're feeling or have experienced at times. In saying that, I have heard songs in the last 5 years that I think sound like sad, pathetic love songs....maybe a bit harsh but I've despised singing them.
3:26 PM
Andrew,
If you read my last comment again, I think you'll see that I agree that your concerns are valid. What I don't agree with is that there is no room for songs of response in our hymnody - or songs of exhortation, or rebuke, or teaching. Remember the Psalms. Look at NT songs (eg. Eph 5:14; 2 Tim 11:13).
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but you seem to be identifying an imbalance in the songs sung, believing them to be too human-effort-centred, and, in desiring to correct that imbalance, denied the legitimacy of songs that do not speak of God's role in salvation (which, incidentally, is the same role in discipleship).
Personally, I think it is not necessary (or possible) to put the whole truth into every song. It is true that Jesus took up His cross for us, but it is also true that we need to take up our cross. Now, you could change the words of that song to be, "I take up my cross because You have taken up Your's Lord", but you don't have to and that's not how the (post-resurrection) writers of the gospels wrote, nor how Paul wrote when he told believers to obey, to live good lives etc. Jesus' death
2:32 AM
I find it interesting that "worship" is such a contentious issue in Christian circles. I really like what you say about worship being about continuing to create gospel people (along with all the other components of the service and bits not on a Sunday as well).
I work with uni students and I am so amazed at how these supposedly thinking people never think through what "worship" is, the lyrics to the songs they are singing and would love to learn better worship leading techniques. I would much rather them learn to be Gospel people by living and speaking the Story to others around them.
I too am frustrated by the experienial buzz it can create and how untheological some lyrics are. I have begun to wonder if some of the songs are modelled after boy band songs as they not about acknowledging who God is, but how I feel about God. Eww...
But on the other hand, singing is a great corporate expression of worship. I have struggled to think of other simple corporate expressions akin to group singing. But then, I probably haven't raelly thought long and hard about it.
10:15 AM
Hi Karen, thanks for dropping by. Sorry I haven't responded earlier, I've been ill with the flu. I really connected with your analogy of church music with boy bands - eew! I've often liken it to chick flick movies or feel good movies (not that there's anything wrong with them but that they are hardly an adequate expression of life as we experience it!). In a book I was reading recently the author called this sentimentalism and footnoted a book called "Faking It: The Sentimentalism of Modern Society". I haven't read the book but those words "faking it" (when worship is done poorly) ring true for me and they haunt me. Worship is surely more than "faking it"?!