Worship in Spirit and in Truth

Worship is a quirky thing to define and really just to talk about.  We are called to live sacrificial lives (Romans 12.1)  and yet we aren’t even capable of understanding this truth without the Holy Spirit.  (1 Cor. 2.14)  While this applies to every aspect of our relationship with Christ (that is to say the work of Christ applied to our hearts by the spirit), I want to look at this as it applies to the narrow of sense of corporate worship.

It is easy for us to let our pendulum swing too far in one direction.  We find ourselves somewhere between having “totally spirit led worship” or being totally resistant and rigorous in our methodology.  I think the balance we should embrace can be found in two parallel scriptures, Eph. 5.18 -19 and Col. 3.16.  It uses being filled with the word of Christ and the Spirit to accomplish the same ends, which is to teach and admonish, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  I don’t believe this is an either/or situation.  This is a both/and.  Just as Christ said in John 16, He will send the Counselor to guide us into all truth.  Christ is the revelation of God, He is the Redeemer, He is the Word, but he sends the Spirit to apply these to our lives.

Practically, I like to envision the Spirit’s work in the Old Testament to enable the craftsmen in the constructing of the Tabernacle.  The tabernacle is where God dwelt among his people on earth.  Now, God dwells among his people in His church (1 Cor. 3.16).  The Spirit gives gifts to each member of the body to help build and grow the church.  He is sanctifying us (among other purposes)  because the place of God’s dwelling should be perfect.  Only God himself can craft that perfection, but He works through us to accomplish that goal.

I say all of this to emphasize the Spirit’s role in our corporate worship.  We should acknowledge His role and agenda.  He makes worship possible and directs it at Christ.  Not only that, he gives us the gifts that make horizontal expressions of worship possible; the teaching and admonishing of the body.  So whatever role you are in, do it whole-heartedly.  You have been gifted by the Spirit to help accomplish the perfection of the Temple of God.

Ministers of what?

Ok, ok. I was on a roll and then I suddenly stopped blogging. Well, that’s what happens when you’re plagued with a cold and then a mountain of work with just a few added responsibilities of being the best man in a wedding. So, I’ve had to forego some of the blogging, but I do need to do a little bit of catch up. I have several things I’ve wanted to write about, but I’m going to address an issue I’ve mulled over for months now. What exactly is the substance of the music ministry? I think our answers will make a huge impact.

Since the mode of proclamation for music ministers requires so much time and effort (i.e., music), it’s easy for us to get caught up in the means. But the truth is that we are ministers of the word, not of music. If the focus of your ministry is on the details of notation, it is time to reorganize your priorities. I’m not trying to diminish excellence; not by any means. I believe that you convey much about the importance of your message in the care you use to communicate it.

However, proclamation of the word is the center piece of Christian worship. This does not mean that everything is less important than preaching. It means that everything should be preaching. This concept of proclamation should permeate all of our activities in worship.  In essence, we should be seeking to saturate the music and liturgy from top to bottom with the word.  If this is true (and it is), then this has some serious ramifications for us.  It means that we need to be well-versed in scripture.  It means that we need to take great care to choose content that says what we want it say and not just sound the way that we want it to sound.  It also means that our musical standards should be sky-high because we are proclaiming the gospel.  We are proclaiming the word.  Imagine if the King of Glory were to walk in to your church service and the fanfare sounded like a middle school band camp?  I realize that there can be limitations to our talent level, but I think more often those are imposed by an insufficient view of the importance of what we have been called to.

This sounds like I’m arguing both sides, and I am.  The problem for many of us is that the pendulum swings too far in a particular direction.  Honestly, we need balance.  We can’t just say that the pastor is responsible for the word and we are to focus on the music.  That would be say that your music ministry is not a ministry at all.  We as ministers should be going to great lengths to provide a balanced diet of scripture in what we sing, say, and pray.  However, if we believe that the content of the songs and liturgy is our only focus, then we aren’t conveying the grandeur of God’s glory that we are privileged to communicate.

Most of this has been written out of a desire to see music ministry live up to it’s full potential.  And to clarify, we’re not supposed to be competing with the preaching ministry, but they should be working in perfect compliment.  While the preaching ministry has the ability to expand on concepts and make them applicable, God has gifted us with music that can accomplish so much.  We can sing his praises, but we can also teach and admonish one another.  We sing the beautiful words of psalms and hymns and they get tucked away in our brains to be recalled later; a luxury that preachers don’t so often have. Music ministry is a weighty task that takes our full effort to do rightly.  Our expectations of our ministries should be high and well rounded.  Anything less is a disservice to God and the people of our congregations.

Persistent Training.

This is a continuation of last week’s blog, ‘Pervasive Worship.’ Now that we have an understanding of our essence as worshipers, we must look at what it takes to stay on the path of faith. As Christians, it’s easy to fall into this mystical belief that once we’re saved, the work is done and we just go on spiritual autopilot. Everything is downhill from here. You can ask anyone who knows me well, I am truly disturbed when someone tells me that everything will just work out. Especially when it comes to spiritual matters.

It may be true to some extent, but that is definitely not what the bible says about our sanctification experience. Paul tells us that we are to work out our salvation [Phil. 2.12-13]. We’re not to work FOR our salvation. That’s impossible and it’s already been accomplished. If that’s why you’re being “obedient,” stop it.

However, as a follower of Christ, it is by God’s grace that we get to share in the experience of being sanctified; that is being made like Christ. We will prove to ourselves our salvation by working it out through faithful obedience. Paul tells Timothy to be in the Word of God and in prayer. This will train us to be godly. “While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come [1 Tim. 4.8].” So we’re not just being godly for some arbitrary characteristic, but rather this gives us assurance (not to mention other very important reasons, but those aren’t the subject of this blog). We can see the hope of Christ’s work in our own lives. It is for the sake of this hope that we have been charged to fight the good fight of faith and take hold of our eternal life that we have been called to.

So what does that mean? How do we work out our salvation? We train ourselves for godliness. We should be exhausting ourselves in pursuit of Christ. We pursue righteousness when we are deepening our relationship with God through the reading of his word and prayer. We pursue holiness when we put our sins to death; when we flee from our temptations. We pursue love when we desire God and when we put others before ourselves. We pursue faith when we put everything we consider of worth at the feet of Jesus. In doing these things, we will see Christ in our own lives. We will get a clearer understanding of the debt paid on our behalf. We will hear the call louder and louder to fervently preach the gospel and to serve the people around us.

When we fail to do these things, we forfeit the best that God has for us.  This world is full of evil that wants to rob us of our faith.  That’s why Paul tells us to put on the full armor of God [Eph. 6.13-17].  It’s hard enough to be a minister without having doubts about our own identity in Christ.  Your ministry will rise and fall with your personal spiritual race.  And not because being a good Christian earns you blessings.  There may be some truth to that, but it’s at God’s discretion.  What is impossible is to make wise and righteous decisions boldly without being firmly planted in the truth you’re preaching.

---

Sources/ Suggested reading:

Whitney, Donald. Personal Spiritual Disciplines. Grudem, Wayne, Systematic Theology, Ch. 38: Sanctification.

Come On, AT&T.

I have never been more disappointed in a large corporation than I was this summer when I realized that AT&T would not be offering internet tethering for the iPhone, like providers do everywhere else in the world.  This isn’t because I’m a giant nerd (I am, but that’s not why).  It’s just upsetting that there are so many loyal customers who pay ridiculous amounts of money to have an iPhone and the one little thing they could offer to really make it worth it, they can’t handle giving away.  Why?  Because it’s not lucrative enough?  AT&T makes an estimated 60 million dollars a month in additional revenue from iPhones [gigaom.com, April 2009].  And if they don’t start being a little less selfless and a little more loyal to their customers, they’re going to be kicking themselves when they lose their exclusivity contract.  Droves of people will flock from AT&T to whatever carrier has the best network (Verizon) or whoever offers the best value (T-Mobile).

But this made me think about how I am in my service for Christ.  Especially inside of the church.  How many events and service projects do we plan around getting people in the seats?  Can we serve in a context that doesn’t seek to fill our pews, just purely for the sake of doing Christ’s work?  I think more and more frequently, we see these service opportunities as a promotional opportunity.

I could go all into the root of this problem.  I could probably spend a year beating up the church and myself in the process.  But I feel like that would be really pointless (at least for now).  However, I do want to say something about the ramifications if we don’t change our way of thinking.  People will always be drawn to what features we’re promoting.  If we promote our church, people who are drawn to us will leave as soon as someone else offers something better.  But if we are honestly just serving people in the name of Christ, people will be drawn to a Savior who is endlessly selfless and merciful.  What does this mean for your church numbers?  Who cares.  That’s God’s business. [Matt. 6.1-4]

But I’m not writing this letter to the SBC or some other governing body.  I’m writing this to you, because servanthood is about the individual follower.  Don’t misunderstand, the church exists to care for people, but if the attitude of Christ isn’t endowed at a personal level, the institution of the church can not instill it.  This would be like expecting your marriage license to make you love your spouse.  I say this all because it’s my problem.  And it’s difficult to deal with, but by God’s grace, I will learn to serve for the sake of Christ, not with ulterior motives.

Christian Culture?

I am definitely under the impression that a church’s aesthetics/style, whatever you want to call it, should flow organically from the actual people that make it up.  If we’re seeking to be genuine in our corporate worship, then I can’t see replicating some other church’s formula.  This is how my brain works: our “gathered worship”  is expressed through our style.  That is to say, the actual worship is the obedient adherence to what God commands us to do.  Exactly how we do that is up to us, as long as it’s faithful to scripture.  With me so far?

Soooo… if we place a value on a certain way of doing things and claim that it’s more “Christian” than some other way, that’s religion.  Religion with maybe a touch of idolatry.  This, by the way, is not a “worship wars” problem for me.  This is a “why in the world are we trying to be like other churches when we’re a totally unique body?” problem.

Anyhow, all of this programming and formulating has led to a Christian Culture that has become accepted practice and I believe it’s robbing our church bodies of freedom to express their own personality in faithful worship.  That creativity that God put in us is a reflection of his incredible, infinite depth of creativeness [Gen. 1.27 & 2.19].  I mean, if God weren’t creative, we wouldn’t be here.  God is genuinely glorified when we are creative.  We’re testifying to His own nature.  So, why rob ourselves of that opportunity?

What do you do when a church body has been so entrenched in “Christian culture” that they don’t even know of an identity outside of that?  I think this is a worthy question.  And it’s certainly a question I don’t have an answer for.  I’d like to know what you think.  A great part of our gospel freedom that God has given to us is our freedom to express our worship in a way that’s true to the way God uniquely made us [1 Cor. 10.31].  That’s one big thing that sets us apart from other world religions.  Also, as protestants, many of us have heritages full of people that have fought for our local congregational autonomy (to varying extents).  Let’s not wait for a couple generations to pass before we either work this out of our system, or allow it to become indistinguishable from truth.

Pervasive Worship

Let me be candid.  It’s a daunting and humbling task for me to write on the subject of worship.  Even though I have spent the majority of my life “leading worship” and the last several years trying to define what that really means, I am still hard-pressed  to compact it into the neat little box of a definition.  One of the most difficult hurdles in writing on the matter is this: everyone has their own opinions on what worship is and those opinions drive the way they follow Christ.

This is dangerous ground, people.  And it’s very telling of the nature of worship.  It’s pervasive and extends into the far reaches of our thoughts and actions.  Harold Best writes that we are unceasingly worshiping.  God created us in a way that we are constantly ascribing worth to everything we know.   Those things we place a value on above our own, we worship.  And I can see this played out in my own life.  Where does my money go?  Where does my time go?  Maybe I’m not chasing the latest fashion trends or taking on a second job to afford a new car that I don’t need, but am I more consumed with self preservation than the cause of Christ?  Most of the time, unfortunately.

So, I’m just going to forego the necessity of explaining that worship extends beyond the songs we sing on Sunday morning.  Just to keep it brief, worship is the goal, music CAN BE the vehicle.  It isn’t the exclusive expression of worship, but it is one way to honor God.  So how then do we have such a difficult time with music in our churches?  Obviously no matter if you’re given a Lexus or a Pinto to drive, you’ll make it to your destination.  So then I would say the fuss is about the car we’re driving (not literally. Stay with the analogy).

What’s happening is that we are chasing our fulfilled desires and calling it worship.  We want to feel a certain way in a service.  We want to dress a certain way.  We want to hear a certain style of music or preaching.  But what is the true worship of God?  I would say that it is the total yielding of one’s self to Christ because of who God is.  Anything less is idolatry.  Believing that worship is inherent to a specific time and place and in a certain context falls way, way short of the worship of God.  In fact, it’s the worship of our own desires and perceived needs.  When we have been called to sacrifice our lives [Rom. 12.1], constraints like that don’t matter anymore.

The catalyst needs to be our love of God.  That will drive us towards obedience, which is the essence of worship.  Jesus makes this clear in Matthew 22.37-40.  He says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind…”, because obedience begins with understanding who God is and putting your faith in Him.  But how can we trust him if we don’t know him?  The good news is that God has revealed himself to us through his Word [John 1.14-18].  We have an opportunity to know God, and through it be transformed into creatures who earnestly seek His will[Rom.12.2].  This is the beginning of the true worship of God.

Start with the Psalms.  Daily.  There is an endless depth of the character of God found in Israel’s hymnbook.

---

Sources/ Suggested Readings :

Harold Best, Unceasing Worship. John Frame, Worship in Spirit and Truth.

Wineskins.

I’m striving to be more consistent with my postings.  It has been a hectic week, though, trying to finish up all of my projects for classes.  I’m finished with all but one.  Praise God.  Interestingly enough, one of my papers dealt with a topic that I’ve really struggled with over the last couple of years:  the tension between contemporary church and traditional church.  This is a very deep and divisive issue in Evangelical America.  I’m a young guy, often playing contemporary styles of music, so of course I tend to partner myself with “contemporary” congregations.   At the same time, I realize that there is a need for scriptural centrality in our corporate worship services.  This is an area that a lot of models for contemporary structures fall short.  We get so busy trying to be “culturally relevant” that we forget the bible in it’s infinite and eternal relevance.  As a pastor once said, “Give it to me plain, let the spirit do the rest.”

So, as I was doing my paper, I was trying to decipher the core model for corporate worship in the New Testament.  We have a few ordinances (baptism and communion), but otherwise, structure is up for grabs.  I thought about how Jesus changed everything, though.  He talked about how this New Covenant, his total fulfillment of the law… well… it just wouldn’t fit into the old ways of doing things (Luke 5.33-39).  Religiousness was going to be traded in.  Faithful and dutiful worship would not be, though, and thats where things get tricky.

The appealing thing about religion is that you know precisely what actions you have to do to please your god.  But relationship is different.  It’s fueled by an inner desire that causes you to do things that please the other person.  Think about how you interact with family.  This is all the more difficult, because with God, you only see a part of Him.  Only what he has revealed through His Son; like looking in a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13.12).  So religion is easy.  And we are lazy.  And that’s precisely the reason for Luke 5.39!

Anyhow, I think “contemporary” versus “traditional” is really relationship versus religion.  What is talked about in the New Testament as necessary is biblical Truth, love and fellowship.  These are the core needs of the church. However you decide to get there is up to the congregation.  People who wear flip flops to church are just as likely to value the aesthetics of a worship service as the people who dress in suits and ties.  If your structure is as important as (or sometimes MORE important than) faithful worship, then you have a problem.

Contemporary church means genuinely meeting the needs of a body, without looking to the way things have been done before, assuming that there is some extra means of grace in it.  Format is not part of the equation.  Sing your hymns.  Sing your pop hits. As long as it’s done in the Spirit of worship, it’s glorifying to God.

My paper is actually a bit more eloquent, and far more informative than this blog.  If you want to read it, comment or email me.  It’s only a few pages long, but it’s way better than this rant.

Hence the title of this blog

I think it’s ironic that idle and idol are homonyms.  Idleness is generally the cause of idolatry, for Christians least.  When we stop thinking and doing, we become idle.  It’s exactly at that point when we pick our idols and begin to worship gods other than the One, True and Living.  Usually this god is ourselves; our flesh that we are desperately trying to satisfy.  And what’s truly sad is that this idolatry causes us to be progressively less and less effective in our own faith (Ps. 115.2-8).   For Christians who live in the freedom of New Covenant worship, we sometimes act exactly like the Assyrians who did not even have the spirit upon them, as we do.

They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought. (2 Kings 17.33)

And so, we engage in the same kind of ritualistic worship.  Although I do believe God intended the corporate act of worship to engage our visceral senses, the rituals of worship without true sacrificial worship is worthless ( Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory).  It’s just the motions.  Idolatry robs us of the ability to genuinely worship God, no matter how deeply you believe going to a worship service and raising your hands and singing loudly is real worship.  If you are going home and serving yourself, you are not worshiping God.  The bible defines Christocentric worship as being ‘living sacrifices’ (Romans 12.1).  So if we have the ritual, but not the actual worship, our acts of worship are worthless. (Remember Cain and Abel?)  The songs and all the trappings of a worship service are but rags, anyhow.  I could go on, but I digress.

I believe, through what I’ve seen and read, that this serving of the self leads to a possibly more catastrophic end for us Christians.  It leads to reinterpretation of the scripture from our personal experience (i.e. justifying our choices and actions based on the way we feel about something). This postmodernism is a plague, but it’s enticing because it allows us to have our cake and eat it, too.  We can make God fit into our custom mold that lets us get away with ungodliness, believing that we are not to judge others, but ultimately I believe that we are saying “don’t judge me for the way I live.”  I think 1 Corinthians 5 has plenty to say about those in the church who live by the flesh without remorse.  Read it.  You’ll see.  And I’m not saying that people don’t fall.  I’m saying there is a biblical standard for the way we are to live, and you can’t work the flesh into the equation, no matter how hard you try.  I actually have so many thoughts on this, I’m going to have to split it up over time.

The bottom line is, we are to discipline ourselves (1 Tim.  4.7).  This means we can’t just sit around and think about the way we feel, because then there would be no absolute truth, and Jesus made it very clear that he is the Truth and the way is very narrow; probably more narrow than we’d like to believe these days.  If we aren’t busy disciplining ourselves, we are idle.  When we are idle, we are left with the desires of the flesh.  When we are consumed with the flesh instead of a renewed mind, we are left to idolatry.  You can’t be an idolater and get worship right.  You just can’t.

Hence the title of the blog.

Getting a head start on the new year.

I know it’s a little early to start something new.  I would normally wait until January 1st, but by then I may lose a bit of my zealousness; it comes and goes.

I just wanted to start a fresh blog;  something that carries a bit more substance than just chronicling my everyday life, but rather a record of my thoughts as they change over time.  Hopefully, they will be for the better.  I’ve seen a lot over the last couple of years.  I’ve been in churches, in school, traveling the country, living with friends, living alone.  All of these new experiences affect the way a guy thinks about the world.  It’s a much bigger place than I ever imagined.  I’ve seen a lot of good things – much of God’s glory expressed through people, nature, music… the list goes on.

On the contrary, I’ve seen a lot of bad things –  Bad motives, bad theology, bad doctrine… this list is much longer than the latter.  The worst part is that I’ve seen many (if not most) of these insufficiencies in myself.  As I struggle through these thoughts, I want to remember where I’ve been.  At the very least, I would like to expose my inner controversies so that I might grow.  At the very most, I might inspire someone to do the same.  Either way, I’m making this journey.  If anyone decides to join me, that would be fantastic.  Otherwise, most of my musings will be cast into a deep digital abyss.  However, I will always be able to look back and see where I was and give glory to God for what has happened.  That will be worth all of the trouble.