Newest FREE Cardiphonia Record Resets Old Ascension Hymns

Those of us that are part of the retuned hymn movement speak in our more internal discussions about the various "waves" of the movement, and Bruce Benedict at Cardiphonia certainly has continued to be one of the leading forces in the second or third wave.  Cardiphonia has now established a pattern of "flash mob" compilation recordings, gathering various artists from various parts of the country with various stylistic bents.  Their latest album, out this week, is Hymns for the Ascension, centering on that important but under-appreciated event of Jesus' departure from earth to His rightful seat of power and advocacy in heaven (check out my post about why the Ascension is really, really important).  In my opinion, the songwriting and production quality of the Cardiphonia compilations continues to get better and better.  

For churches that don't follow the liturgical year, is this album of any value?  Are any of these songs usable?  Certainly.  For folks in those contexts, I'd encourage you to think about how the ascension highlights aspects of the gospel we tend to talk about less.  When we sing the gospel, we most often talk about the cross, atonement, forgiveness, and sacrifice.  But the beauty of the gospel goes deeper.  The ascension highlights these aspects:

• Jesus as our priestly mediator
• Jesus as our advocate, "pleading the merit of His blood" before the Judge
• Jesus as Ruler and King

 The second point is especially gripping to me.  Jesus prays for us!  He goes to bat for us before the Father.  Imagine the kind of ministry that would take place among our people if we sung about that more often!  So, you don't need to be "liturgical" to make use of this album; we don't need an ascension-themed Sunday to get mileage out of singing about the ascension.  

I will also say that the quality, artistry, and even quirks of this album (my song included) shouldn't take away our ability as worship leaders and planners, to do the job of "listening through" the songs to hear their basic melodic and chord structure.  Sometimes, we get so caught up in the production that quite singable songs sound unsingable.  That's the perennial tension of the "recorded product."  Nevertheless, many of these songs are congregationally friendly in a surprisingly diverse amount of worship contexts.  I will hopefully be incorporating at least one of these even in our traditional service (Majorins' beautiful "God Ascended").

Best yet, it's FREE, and any donations go to Jobs for Life.  Check it out!  (I'll post on my song and behind-the-scenes composition choices soon.)

Connecting Old and New: Denver Artist Jake Weidmann

Denver’s local 5280 Magazine recently highlighted one of the most exciting new artists I’ve seen in recent years.  Jake Weidmann is no bohemian, though.  He’s a deep thinker, distilling through his art concentrated amounts of psychological and anthropological insight all through a theological grid.  Hearing him talk about his art up close and personal is inspiring and moving.  Fellowship Denver’s Worship Arts Director, Adam Anglin (check out his new album with Edbrooke Collective), and I recently got to visit Jake in his studio, and what you see in this post are some of the shots taken from that visit.  (By the way, if you want closeups of any of the art featured here, Jake has it all on his site.)

The "final exam" of a Master Penman is to execute one's own certificate. This is Jake's. He also carved the frame.Jake is perhaps best known as one of the eleven Master Penmen in the world, being skilled and certified in the painstaking, nearly athletic craft of multi-formed calligraphy (e.g. script, off-hand flourishing, illumination, and black letter).  He uses this skill to create a lot of mixed media pieces that are deep, evocative, and loaded with meaning. 

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One Simple Reason Why the Ascension is Important

Ascension, Stained Glass Panel (Gothic), Germany, 14th c.Today is what more "liturgically"-oriented Christians in the Western tradition call "The Ascension of our Lord."  Why do we give a special day to that event that seems nothing more than Jesus' travel plans between earth and heaven.  Earth is important.  Heaven is important.  But the flight in between?

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Worship is Where the Church Tries on Her Bridal Garment

Worship forms trajectory.  If we are a people "in the world, not of the world"; if we are pilgrims and sojourners; if this world is not our home; if we are a people whose perpetual cry is "come, Lord Jesus," then worship is one of the chief contexts in which we're reminded of that.  To put this in theological terms, worship is supposed to be intensely eschatological.  I often mention that worship is one of the chief contexts in which humanity finds its satisfaction for the deepest longings of life, but in this regard, worship is incredibly unsatisfying.  In fact, worship should make us "eschatologically itchy"--it should make us long for the Fullness which in worship we only see in part.

One of the great future events recorded in Revelation that serves as a metaphor for the consummation of the ages is the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev 19).  Theologian Jean-Jacques von Allmen righly calls worship an opportunity for the church "to try on its bridal garments."1 What a powerful image! Think of the excited bride, putting on her dress in advance and looking herself over in the mirror.  She's not merely thinking, "What a beautiful dress."  She's putting the whole picture of the wedding day together in her imagination.  She's imagining walking down the aisle, saying her vows, seeing the one she loves in the finest of dress.  She's imagining the crowd, the excitement in the air, and the singularity of purpose for which everyone has gathered.  She's anticipating the most important day of her life.

Worship is very much the same thing.  It is allowing the future to break into the present in our imaginations and in actuality.  When we sing, we're caught up in the endless hallelujah of the the heavenly beings who ceaselessly cry, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come" (Rev 4:8).  The music of heaven reverberates in our music.  The prayers of the saints above reverberate in our prayers below (Rev 5:8).  The Word of God preached recapitulates the divine Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God (John 1:1).  And, perhaps most importantly, when we receive the Lord's Supper, we're tasting a percentage of a fraction of the Feast which is to come.  If we were to draw a Venn diagram, with one circle being "heaven" and the other being "earth," their overlapping section would read "worship."  

So let's get down to brass tacks for worship leaders and planners.  How is the future evidenced in the worship we plan?  Are the songs we sing so focused on "me" and "now" that there is no room for "us" in the "then"?  Do the words of our prayers and songs (they're the same thing, actually) exhibit, somewhere, somehow, a longing for what is to come?  Is our preaching shaping our people to be "eschatologically itchy"?  The trouble is, the real way we find satisfaction in worship is by being reminded of our identity in Christ in such a way that makes us hunger for its completion.  It's ironic.  We are satisfied with the notion not that we are completely satisfied now but that we will be satisfied, and when we rob ourselves of remembering that future satisfaction, worship becomes less satisfying.  Being intensely now-focused robs the people of God of the deepest kind of satisfaction that we can have.

Put yet another way, with other theological terms, good worship reaffirms our justification, energizing our sanctification, making us thirst for our glorification.  "Gospel-centered worship" is therefore necessarily eschatological.  

There are many grids through which we must evaluate the content of our worship services, and the End is certainly one of them.  How much eschatology is in our doxology?  How much longing is in our liturgy?  Does our worship give balance to the fact that we are engaging with a God who not only was and is, but is to come?

There are many practical benefits to eschatologically-oriented worship (meaning to suffering, energizing to mission, strengthening the hope of the saints, etc.), which we'll maybe tease out in another post.  But for now, let's just sit with the question of how well our worship is doing in pointing us down the road.

Can you think of other ways that worship is, or should be, eschatological?

*****

¹Jean-Jacques von Allmen, Worship: Its Theology and Practice (New York: Oxford, 1965), 99.

Introducing Edbrooke Collective and Their Debut Album, Rewritten

I began praying several years ago, as I became more and more aware that God was raising up like-minded musicians and worship leaders across the country, that He'd stir up gospel-centered, theologically-minded, historically-aware, tradition-embracing artists in Denver.  Whether it's God's direct answer to those prayers, or whether it's the law of averages (actually my understanding of God's providence doesn't allow for "laws of averages"!), I'm watching our sleepy mountainous city wake up.  And I'm finding many not-so-strange bedfellows crop up, particularly in the Acts 29 network of churches and church plants.

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A Free EP that Summarizes the Bible

One of the most compelling aspects of the Reformed tradition for me is its emphasis on the Bible as one story from beginning to end.  This stream of Christianity just seems bent on finding and exposing every last bit of connective tissue between the first Adam and the Second.  And I can't get enough of it.

This must be why I'm loving Kristen Gilles' new EP, The Whole Big Story.  Each song seeks to stretch its wingspan from the bombastic beginning of Genesis 1 to the eternal ending of Revelation 22.

"Bold Before God's Throne," a Hebrews-esque exploration, connects the Old Testament cult with the New Testament Christ.

In "Rising Tide," Bobby & Kristen explore the Beginning and the End with solid, hymn-like juxtapositions.  Here's verse 2:

What Satan thought was victory 
Became the means of his defeat 
The Lord, on cruel Calvary 
Crushed Satan’s head beneath His feet

But my favorite song explores what I think it one of the under-appreciated metaphoric symbols of Scripture.  "You Grew the Tree" explores the tie between the Genesis-tree and the Passion-tree.  A hefty portion:

You spoke into the void, 
Created every star. 
You made the earth and everything 
That sin would one day mar 

And then, Lord, by Your Word 
Appeared each form of life; 
And in Your image Adam came 
And from him came a wife. 

But even then You knew 
The curse our pride would bring. 
The only way to save mankind— 
You’d die ... 
 
You grew the tree. You grew the tree. 
You knew what we’d do, 
but still You grew the tree. 

The song also teases out something I've never thought of before--that God, in His meticulous providence, called forth the tree from the ground that would grow up to be fashioned into the wood of the cross.  Imagine God, in his exhaustive knowledge, observing that cursed plant, and year after year allowing it to grow.  What a thought!

You gave the sun and rain 
To grow the fated wood. 
You could have ripped it from the ground; 
Year after year it stood. 

And then rebellious men 
Made of it a cross, 
Planning bloody wickedness 
In place of nature’s loss.  

The Gilleses model what they preach on their fantastic blog, My Song in the Night.  They exemplify good songwriting, stretching imaginative boundaries, and looking at Scripture from fresh angles.  Best yet, the album is free.  And here it is.

Why the Tension Exists Between Private and Public Worship

I experienced a real "aha" moment recently when reading Jean-Jacques von Allmen's fabulous work, Worship: Its Theology and Practice.  Sometimes I find that, in discussing the concept of worship with thoughtful folks in the church, we're talking past each other with what we mean by "worship."  One person is referring to whole-life worship while the other is talking about gathered, corporate worship.  And there certainly is a tension between these two realities.  On the one hand, the concept of whole-life worship reminds us that no aspect of our life is left untouched in the quest of the glory of God (Col 3:17).  People who champion this approach helpfully point out that folks who think they've done their "worship duty" by attending Sunday services fall short of God's summons on their lives the other six days of the week.  On the other hand, there is something unique and irreducible about the public gathering of the people of God.  People who champion public worship rightly point out that an overemphasis on whole-life worship can often lead to downplaying the importance of coming together weekly with God's people for the special things that God reserves for that context only (e.g. the Lord's Supper).  

When we take a step back, though, we have to at least for a moment scratch our heads as to why we even have such discussions and emphases and why it is that we often talk past each other when we discuss worship.  When dualisms like these are exposed, it often means that there's a tension to be maintained for a proper biblical understanding (think of other classic dualisms like God's oneness / threeness, Jesus' divinity / humanity, Divine sovereignty / human responsibility, etc.).  So why is there a healthy tension between private, individual, whole-life worship and public, corporate, Lord's Day worship?  

Von Allmen says that this tension walks on the same tight rope as the theology of the Kingdom of God:

[Corporate worship] is necessary because the Kingdom of God is not yet established with power. [Corporate worship] as such is necessary because the whole of life has not yet been transformed into worship.  Thus it suggests that the Kingdom exists already, like the leaven in the dough, but is not yet established. It shows that Sunday is other than weekday, that all is not yet Sunday.¹

Whoa. Did you catch that? The private / public worship divide is directly related to the already / not yet divide of the Kingdom of God.  If we're honest, there's a tension in all of us when we worship on the Lord's Day and then "go out into the world" Monday through Saturday.  This rhythm is a good rhythm...a necessary rhythm, even, for now.  But it feels partial.  It feels incomplete.  It feels forward-pointing.  It feels pilgrim-ish, not home-ish.  And it makes complete sense.

Personally, I want there to be more of a unity and seamlessness between my Lord's Day life and my weekday life.  I want the worship in one sector to more naturally feed into and feed upon the worship in the other sector.  Certainly part of this is my fault--my own sin, brokenness.  But it's also the fault of the broken world (well, I guess I'm culpable for that, too), waiting like a pregnant woman for her due date.  The Kingdom is not yet fully realized, and we will always walk through our seven-day rhythm with a funny taste in our mouth.  Evidently, that's the flavor of "not yet" rolling around on our tongue.

¹Jean Jacques von Allmen, Worship: Its Theology and Practice (New York: Oxford, 1965), 116-117.

More Communion, More Roots: David Crowder's Final Album and the Trajectory of Modern Worship

Worship Leader Magazine recently published an interview of David Crowder shortly after the release of their final album, Give Us Rest or (A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys]).  (Even the title carries with it our modern generation's characteristic mixture of reverence and irreverence, being a requiem with a not-so-subtle reference to Spinal Tap...I know that's not everyone's cup of tea, but it sure is mine.)

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