Sojourn Music

How I Got Over

If the tattoo-sleeved shirt-tailed 20-something worship leaders of today, with their fog machines and colored lights, had even a fraction of the authenticity of Mahalia Jackson, I'd be significantly more interested in contemporary worship music.

Doesn't it seem odd . . . ?

Michael Spencer is always saying things that I wish I'd said, and have often tried to say, but Michael says it much more clearly and simply. Here's an example. In regard to worship music, concerning which I recently posted this, Michael says,

Doesn’t it seem odd to sing man-centered songs with almost no mention of the Gospel and not even notice that our affections aren’t being directed toward Christ at all? I like a tune and a fun chorus. I like to see people involved emotionally, but the New Testament has entire hymns explaining the incarnation and none about “the secret place.” I’m just sayin…

Yup, it sure does seem odd.

Michael makes nine other good points, so go read it, please.

Blog Alert

As far as I know, there are 2 Christian bloggers in the state of Maine--which of course should not be surprising, since we're part of the least religious region in the U.S. Anyway, the other Christian blogg that I know about is the inestimable Joshua Otte, who helps pastor a church down the road a piece. Josh just started a new blog called Gathered Worship. It looks like something I'm going to need to check out frequently. Take for example his extensive collection of free worship resources. You might also want to read his two posts featuring lengthy quotations from Driscoll and Breshears' Vintage Jesus, What Worship Is Not, and What Worship Is.

Worship is a life or death issue.

Josh Otte (who blogs at Eucatastrophe 101) has really whetted my appetite to read this book:

We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry, by G. K. Beale

Josh posts 7 reasons why he's reading this book, and they're good ones all. Here's a sample to whet your appetite too. Reason #2:

Worship is a life or death issue. Beale’s thesis is "We resemble what we revere, either for ruin or for restoration." That means there’s no middle ground. True worship brings restoration; Idolatry brings ruin. True worship brings reconciliation; idolatry brings conflict. True worship strengthens marriages; idolatry is the root of “marriage problems.” True worship fuels hope and peace, even in suffering; idolatry perpetrates despair, depression, and isolation. I hope to test this book in every day life so that I’ll be conformed to the image of Jesus to the greater glory of God and the greatest joy of all.

"Disordered love"

Nate, you're gonna love this one:

Our central lie is in the discrepancy between the language of worship and the actions of worship. We confess “Jesus is Lord” but only submit to the part of Christ’s authority that fits our grand personal designs, doesn’t cause pain, doesn’t disrupt the American dream, doesn’t draw us across ethnic and racial divisions, doesn’t add the pressure of too much guilt, doesn’t mean forgiving as we have been forgiven, doesn’t ask for more than a check to show compassion. We “sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” expressing our desire to know Jesus, but the Jesus we want to know is the sanitized Jesus that looks a lot like us when we think we are at our best. Despite God’s Word to the contrary, we think we can say that we love God and yet hate our neighbor, neglect the widow, forget the orphan, fail to visit the prisoner, ignore the oppressed. Its the sign of disordered love. When we do this, our worship becomes a lie to God.

It's from The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice, by Mark Labberton. I found it over at Rich Johnson's blog.

Gathered Worship and the Mission of God

I've mentioned that I went to a worship conference last weekend, led by Maine blogger Josh Otte and Gordon-Conwell prof. Gary A. Parrett. I wanted to share a little of what I heard there, partly because it definitely plays into the recent discussion (here) of the ideas surrounding being a "missional" church.

Josh's presentation was called "The Value of Gathered Worship." One of the concepts he spoke of was the way that "gathered worship" informs and strengthens "scattered worship." Under this heading he said, "We gather for encouragement, we scatter for mission." Ah, there's that word again. Mission. It's clear that Josh is one of those who believes that the Christian life is more than getting from God.

At another point Josh said that "gathered worship motivates a Spirit-empowered mission." As you can see, Josh was looking at worship in the greater context of the mission of the church, or perhaps we might say the mission of God, which is worked out in and through his people.

Josh spoke of "being the church instead of merely going to church." For me, one significant implication of all this is that church re-focuses our attention from what we can get from God at church to how we can be God's people out there "between the stop-signs of life."

But that will not happen if worship does not help to focus our attention and affection on God and his purposes not merely for me personally, but for his world. Josh said, "Gathered worship shapes a Christ-centered, gospel-driven community." And here he quotes Tim Keller:

"The deep problem, then, in the Christian life is that we have not thought out the deep implications of the gospel; we have not 'used' the gospel in and on all parts of our life."

Therefore Josh recommends that we know, read, study, sing, pray, and celebrate the gospel from day to day. Our doing so in gathered worship will strengthen and motivate our doing so in "scattered worship," in our homes and workplaces, etc., the other six days of the week.

You can see how all this is closely tied to this idea of being "missional." I've been using that term as a corrective to the sense, so widespread in this country, that church is nothing more than a place where we can our needs met by God. But to be "missional," it seems to me, is to align ourselves with the purposes of God. This amounts to a revolution in the me-centered focus that we always trend toward in the flesh. It is to focus instead on what God is doing, rather than what we need from him. Our gathered worship can help us with this, Josh said, because it "fuels a God-glorifying passion in all thing." Such worship can help us to share in "God's passion for His glory," Josh said, while at the same time exposing our many idols, which compete with God for our praise and honor.

I think the most memorable "take-away" I brought from Gary Parrett's presentation was his use of Isaiah 6 as it relates to worship (and, need I say, mission). Isaiah is given a vision of the worship in heaven. He sees, in other words, perhaps as no man before him, the glory of God, and his response it to see in turn his own unworthiness. How an earth can I be here, seeing this. It means my death, for sure.

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

But after seeing the glory of God, Isaiah receives the mercy of God. What was unclean is now made clean, entirely by the grace of God.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for."

The next words we hear from Isaiah are quite different. The Lord Himself asks, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And now Isaiah's "woe is me" is replaced by an eagerness to be sent! He cries, "Here I am! Send me!"

This is quite dazzling, don't you think? Isaiah returned from his awed participation in the heavenly worship of God with an eagerness to serve that God, for the purposes of God, on a mission of God's. Professor Parrett said, "wouldn't it be something if our congregation ended their gathered worship with these same words on their lips. "Here I am! Send me!"

What Josh helped me to understand was that worship is not just a pleasurable activity at the start of the Sunday church service, but a crucial aspect of the fulfillment of my mission as a "God-sent" believer.

More thoughts on worship

So the new vision statement at my church is, you may recall, "A people for Christ, for the kingdom, and for the world." And in the first installment of a 5-sermon series intended to "unpack" this statement, our pastor focused first of all on all-out worship as a characteristic of such a people.

Now, I've been saying on all along that modern evangelical Christianity is losing its Christ-centeredness. In a nutshell, we have decided not to talk about sin as sin, and therefore we do not convey an accurate and profound understanding of the human condition. In fact, much of the time we gloss all this over, and in doing so, the cross itself and the doctrine of justification (sorry, I've stopped trying to "winsomely" avoid using such terms) gets shunted aside as no longer quite serving the needs of the moment. With the human condition misunderstood, and the cross thus "deconstructed," the very ministry of Jesus is narrowed and misunderstood.

With these thoughts in mind, I want to go back to the matter of worship. If we combine these two matters -- 1) the imperative to worship the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and 2) the centrality of the cross to all matters of faith and understanding -- then we see that the cross (and the justification it bought for us) becomes the indicative upon which the imperative to worship is based. We worship God, in other words, because Jesus saved us from our sins.

If, on the other hand, we focus on worship while shunting the cross aside, we will probably focus instead on ourselves (since there must, there will always be, something in the focus). We will begin to talk and sing about ourselves worshiping, will begin to describe attitudes of worship in terms of our fervor, rather than in terms of what God has done in Christ. We will even speak routinely of worship without reference to Jesus at all, or routinely interchanging the name of Jesus with that of God in a blurring of the trinitarian persons.

But back to the sermon last week. Under the heading of worship, our pastor spoke among other things of being a people who "celebrate Christ." He cited 1 Peter 1:8, and then the passage in 2 Samuel in which David says to the chiding Michal, "...I will become even more undignified than this..." Also, he cited Ps. 100:1-3, not stopping to show what Christ had to do with either of these passages.

So, I was a little disappointed about this. Not angry, not disgruntled, not terribly put-out, but a little disappointed. It was a missed opportunity. If I were going to speak about celebrating Christ, I might speak of his supremacy in all things, about his being the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I might note Hebrews 10:10, or Romans 3:21-26, or Philippians 2:1-11, or especially Colossians 1:15-23. I would go to Christ's upper room talk with his disciples ("for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God"). Perhaps you can think of a few dozen more passages that show the worthiness of Christ, or the centrality of the cross for our worship.

The point. Yes, let us celebrate Jesus. But we will never come close to understanding his worthiness until we understand the depths of our own unworthiness. If it was necessary that Jesus go to the cross for sinful men, that is then the fundamental basis of all our celebration. Our joy is based on nothing less.

Billy Chia

Blogger Billy Chia interacts with my post called Whitmanesque Worship. Billy gently disagrees, as do most of his commenters, but I think the difference between our two points of view is one of nuance rather than substance. Anyway, the main reason I mention it all is to say that Billy's blog is very worth visiting. Don't forget to browse his blogroll--lots of good bloggers represented there.

Meanwhile, I'm here in the heart of Red Sox Nation just having a grand time watching Big Papi and the boys. Man, I never knew winning could be so much fun! [I know, they haven't won yet, but I'm feeling pretty confidant!]