A Great New Online Resource Hub for Worship Leaders

Since its inception, the Gospel Coalition has served as a “third space” for folks of various denominational ties to come together to celebrate what we hold in common—the gospel.  However, it’s more than just another attempt at common-ground ecumenism, which has often ended up in such a watered down unity that it barely tastes anything like historic, orthodox Christianity.  No, it’s not that the non-essentials are unimportant. It’s that the full, robust gospel is of great, preeminent importance, and it is therefore worth our best attempts at prizing it in all our conversations about life, faith, and ministry.

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When the Holy Spirit Breaks Open the Worship Service (Or, the Surprise of Super Bowl Sunday at Cherry Creek)

Just in case you were mistaken, this isn't a worship service. It's a football game.Quite at the last minute yesterday, I felt nothing less than a strong compulsion from the Holy Spirit to urge our congregation to do something in worship quite foreign to us.  Many moons ago, I posted on physical expressiveness in worship with what I’ve found to be a very compelling argument. 

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More and More are Returning to Tradition

In case you haven’t seen the 2007 US News article, "A Return to Tradition," it's worth a read.  It corroborates a lot of what this blog has been saying over its short life-span.  Retrieval and recovery is something that evangelicals are becoming more and more interested in, but it's not limited to evangelicals.  Check out the article.

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Famous Modern Worship Leader Seeks PhD in Theology

Critics who paint modern worship as being thoughtless, a-theological, and mind-numbing are having to come to grips with an increasingly large canvas.  Their broad-brush strokes aren’t so broad, anymore.  Modern worship is diversifying its portfolio.  Could we ever have imagined ten years ago that a major touring modern worship artist would pursue theological education at the doctoral level?  No, Chris Tomlin isn’t headed to Harvard.

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Is “God Inhabits the Praises of His People” Really Biblical?

I reluctantly lift up the truce-flag of exegetical honesty.  I desperately want it to say it.  Many worship leaders (including myself) have quoted it as saying it.  It would be a great proof-text-style summary verse for a very important aspect of the theology of worship.  But the fact is that the translational evidence leans heavily against us being able to say that “God inhabits the praises of His people” is an accurate rendering of the Hebrew of Psalm 22:3.  Now, it is certainly a possible translation, but it is not the one that makes the best sense of the poetry.  Before we unpack this, let’s look at why it would be so valuable for it to say what it doesn’t say.

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Worship Leader Magazine's 20 Most Influential Worship Albums - Reflections

Worship Leader Magazine - January 2012 IssueThe most recent issue of Worship Leader Magazine released their list of the top twenty most influential worship albums of the last twenty years.  Many of the album-mentions include articles of reflection and appreciation written by other worship leaders and songwriters in the mainstream worship music industry.  The list is interesting and worth some analysis.

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Do Some of Our Historic Images of Jesus Hinder Our Ability to See God as Joyful?

If you don't think that art has the ability to shape the spirituality and worship of the Church, hopefully this little exercise will shift your perspective.  What's your reaction to the statement, "God is an intensely joyful God"?  Or, perhaps more starkly, "God is Joy."

My Pentecostal brothers and sisters have no problem with joy in worship.  Modern worship capitalizes on it.  But what about the more traditional-liturgical traditions?  Is there a sense of joy in our worship?  Many of my somber, cerebral, liturgy-loving friends would say, “Of course! It’s just internal, reverential joy.”  Okay, sure.  If I’m honest with myself, though (I won’t speak for others), when I’m experiencing the richest joy there is, I would have a terribly hard time containing it within a “reverential” shell.  It would probably burst forth.  I might smile.  Perhaps I’d even shout.  Perhaps I’d even dance.  Come to think of it, are reverence and joy at such odds that to express one would be diametrically opposed to expressing the other?

Even if my more high church brothers and sisters aren’t responding to these little jabs, perhaps we might see how our historic Christological art has affected our thinking and worship of God, and specifically the Second Person of the Trinity.

John Jefferson Davis, in his fabulous work, Worship and the Reality of God,¹ points out that evangelical worship could stand to rehearse more often one of God’s most inspiring attributes—joy. (By the way, since when have we seen "Joy" as one of the sections of communicable attributes of God in systematic theology texts?)  Davis briefly proofs his claim through showing the richness of joy in God and in early church worship (Acts 2:46-47; Lk 10:21; Jn 15:11; Jn 1:1-3; Prov 8:30-31; Zeph 3:17; Lk 15:5ff; Rev 19:6-7). He then reminds his readers of God’s joy through what may be a shocking statement: “heaven is a happy place; God the Father and God the Son have smiling faces.”²  And, in a footnote, Davis points out something quite profound about ecclesiastical art in both the Western and Eastern Christian traditions:

The images of God in the church and in the Christian’s imagination can have powerful impacts for good or for ill in personal piety and worship.  The crucifix in Roman Catholic churches, portraying a dead and suffering Christ, and the icons of ‘Christ Pantocrator’ in Orthodox churches, portraying a powerful but very somber Jesus, do indeed portray profound biblical truths—but not the whole truth; the joyfulness of the inner life of the Trinity is missing in these images.³

Let it sink in.  When you scan in your mind the depictions of Jesus you’ve seen in paintings, sculptures, and film, what is the prevailing mood?  Now scan your theology (what you believe about God) and your resulting spirituality (the habits through which you personally relate to God).  What do you see?  Is God a highly joyful God in your mind?  Do you relate to God in public and private worship in ways that others would describe as a relationship "full of joy"?  Perhaps a discussion about how art over history has shaped this is a bit chicken-and-egg.  Did art shape our spirituality, or did the ways we thought of God seep into our art?  It's probably some of both, a symbiotic relationship.  But, nevertheless, here we are.

Perhaps I can’t appeal to your intellect.  Maybe you remain unconvinced that you need to see God as more joyful and that this could have a dramatic impact on your individual and corporate worship.  So I’ll try appealing to your hunger.  Don’t you want, deep down inside, to believe God is intensely joyful?  Don’t you yearn to know and love a God who is pulsating delight—delight in Himself, delight in His creation, and delight in you?  I sure do. 

Artists: it looks like we have some work to do.  We have an opportunity to fill a significant gap that could have a shaping impact on Christ's church going forward.  We need more songs, more paintings, more sculptures, more film, more drama, and more dance that give us a balancing picture of God’s eternal joy!

********** 

¹John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence (Downers Grove: IVP, 2010).
²Davis, Worship, 58.
³Davis, Worship, 58, n. 48.

If You're Trying to Think More Pastorally About Worship...

If you’re trying to think more pastorally about worship, then you should read this interview.  It is both a model of what pastoral thinking looks like and a display of some application of thinking pastorally in the local church context.  Bobby Gilles, over at My Song in the Night has a great set of Q & A with Bruce Benedict of Cardiphonia.  My favorite two parts of this interview:

Bobby Gilles: What do you say to a pastor or worship leader who says “Hymns won’t work in my context. People here want new music”?

Bruce Benedict: I’ve been reading through Jamie Smith’s book Desiring the Kingdom getting ready for the Calvin Worship Symposium coming up.  In the book he talks a good deal about how our world does a better job of recognizing and forming our desires than we often realize.  And how the church needs to begin to treat people as more than heads on sticks.  Our worship/music ministries really reveal this.  People want new music in church constantly because that is largely what we are used to being fed by the world.  Even my work-week is typically filled with the latest album and records coming out…

Bobby Gilles: What do you think is the relative importance or balance in the relationship between singable tunes and interesting tunes? 

Bruce Benedict: Great question! This is something I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately. Especially as I’ve realized that what will sound great on a recording isn’t always what will work well for corporate singing…and I think we have to be honest about how each approach requires a different mindset when we sit down to song write.

Because so much of what we are writing is also what we are thinking about, in terms of recording, we can get ourselves into trouble. I think this often provides much of the rub, too, between what we like to sing and what we want to write to record.  This is a tension we need to talk and think about a lot more…especially in terms of being intentional about how we write.

So much of our life is spent listening to music and we are often hard wired to think about what kind of music sounds interesting to us.  Thinking about what is singable is a lot harder.  I often chart out songs I’m working on in a notation software as part of helping me to think through ‘singability’.  I also preview a lot of new songs in monthly potlucks with my musicians where we talk through new songs.

Read the whole interview.