AN INDEX TO YOUR FAITH
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Andrew
This is an old post that I thought I'd repost in light of our renewed discussion on worship. It's from when I ran a weekend retreat on worship at our church:
"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."
11:22 AM
Interesting stuff. Now all we need is someone to go and preach that at the next Thirsty. *wink*wink*
11:57 AM
Sounds like you're volunteering BAndy! I think it's incredibly hard to lead worship in our churches today. It's a very public role where everyone's watching and everyone's got an opinion (because we're consumers who think worship leaders must meet our needs and if they don't we'll leave to find another church (product) that will. It's very tough, especially when you add in everyone's differing views on worship etc etc. Worship leaders are always trying their best and I think huges doses grace is what's needed.
8:02 AM
These are a couple of very thoughtful posts Andrew. I was challenged as well by the quotes in your first. What I hear being said here is that as our growth in knowledge and understanding of what God has done in Christ, so too will our understanding of worship grow. There is a danger though, that with all the knowledge and training in the world, one’s worship may still be ‘wooden’ or uninspired. I guess there is a balance to be struck, so this discussion is likely to be endless! As you say in your second post - bucket-loads of grace by all is necessary.
10:28 AM
A really interesting debate in the light of current church culture. My mum and have talked about this a bit too and I thought I'd paste some of my comments from a recent email:
I think that experience per se is not a bad thing – God connects with our emotions and that is going to be “an experience”. King David, the Psalmist, and many others in Scripture demonstrate that emotional experience with God is valid and acceptable and important. However, to seek “an experience” as the reason for your relationship with God (or going to church) whether or not you realise that’s what you are doing, is what I think the quoted guy is referring to as “abuse of the gospel” and “making the gospel serve you” (or something along those lines).
There always has to be room for the Spirit to do what he will, however I’m inclined to think that any church service where there is a consistent and predictable “manifestation” or “experience” is as much limiting the movement of the Spirit as is a “dry” church service. (So much of our worship is focussed on happy feelings, the victorious Christian, what I am going to do for God, how good he makes me feel. We don’t focus so much on suffering, lament, “costly” discipleship, etc.)
Your (mum's)comment: "How deep is 'deep'? If all our preaching experience is from extremely sincere, mainly exhortational type preachers is one handicapped? Will worship/perception of God remain at such a level?"
I wouldn’t go so far as to say handicapped, but if their teaching is not firmly rooted in Scripture (and I don’t just mean picking out verses here and there to support what they are saying) then I would say they don’t have a strong Biblical foundation from which to grow a deep faith. (Micah is really into singing “The wise man built his house upon a rock...”) If we only engage in preaching/teaching where we decide the topic, we decide what it is saying to us and that has lots of funny jokes and stories, are we really allowing the Word to say what it wants to in our lives? Are we placing ourselves under the Word or over it? I would argue (and I’m sure many disagree with me) that the better you know God and His word the “deeper” your worship will be.
I’m not saying that everything we do in church should be dry and boring, far from it. But I guess I come back to the “are we there to come away feeling good about ourselves or are we there to lay ourselves open before God and his Word?” question. I think your petrol station analogy is valid, however, just because you don’t come away “topped up” each week doesn’t mean that God isn’t present and available to you or that he doesn’t show up.