Worship as Amnesia's Preventative Medicine

The Old Testament's "Deuteronomy Glasses"

Most Old Testament scholars point to the book of Deuteronomy as one of the most significant books in that part of the canon.  It sums up the entire Pentateuch (the first five books of the OT), and it is the lens through which many of the other books--especially the historical books and the prophets--were written and heard by their original hearers.  In fact, some scholars are so convinced by Deuteronomy's influence that they call Joshua - 2 Kings the "Deuteronomistic History."  

Deuteronomy's prevailing mantra is, "Remember...do not forget."  In English, "remember" is used 16 times in the book, overwhelmingly as a command for the people of God to not forget what God did when He redeemed them out of the bondage of Egypt (see esp. Deut 24).  The OT historical books and prophets are the painful recounting of Israel's checkered past of not remembering, re-remembering, then forgetting again.

One of the main reasons God set up the liturgical system He did (sacrifices, priestly duties, annual worship calendar) was to provide rituals that burned into the hearts, minds, and souls of the people of God His salvation-story, precisely because He knew that their forgetfulness would be their own doom. God's liturgy, rightly enacted and wholeheartedly engaged, was intended as preventative medicine against the amnesia of the people of God.  Put another way, God established the rhythms of worship to help us remember who we are.

Worship as Covenant Renewal

It seems that a lot of evangelicals are confused, mystified, or downright spooked by the notion of worship as "covenant renewal."  I was reminded of this in some of the comment-chains following a recent post I wrote on The Gospel Coalition's new worship site.  But worship as covenant renewal, in its most basic form, is nothing more than what has been articulated above--renewing and remembering God's covenant with us in Jesus Christ.

Christ's Church is no different than Israel of old.  We are stiff-necked, hard-hearted, forgetful people.  Between Sundays, we fight the entropy and devolution that lingering sin propels.  One of the best answers I've ever heard as to why Christians continue to sin is that we fall into sin when we forget who we are--dearly bought, highly esteemed, adopted children of the Most High, Triune God of all ages.  Good worship serves to jog our memories about our identity in Christ.

Three Applications

This immediately forces questions about both the content and the structure of our worship.  Many things follow.  I'll name three:

1. We realize that it's important to place so much more emphasis on God's character, promises, and work, and so much less emphasis on our feelings toward God.

Remembering who we are is based on who God declares we are in Christ.  This is an external action, spoken over and onto us from outside of us, and then planted in us by the "alien invader" known as the Holy Spirit.  Worship sets and songs which are dominated by how we feel about God do little, then, to help us remember who we are and avoid amnesia.  Singing and speaking our (even felt) response to God has its place, but it must not dominate worship's form and content.  When it does, our memory will slip away.

2. We realize that we need to be explicit about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The core of God's covenant with us is the person and work of Jesus Christ.  The more explicit we make this news, the better.  We can't be too heavy-handed in remembering Christ's righteous life and His sacrificial death.  We need the gospel to slap us in the face, punch us in the gut, kick us in the behind, knock us in the knees, and sweep us at the ankles.  We need a grace-assault that leaves no part of ourselves untouched.  We are stubborn and calloused.  Nothing short of a knockout in the first round will do.  We need to sing about it, pray it, read it, preach it, taste it, see it, hear it, and feel it.

3. We realize that ritualistic repetition is important and formative.

Suddenly, we realize that God's OT strategy of engaging in repetitive ritual wasn't just for our ancient brothers and sisters.  Fixed ritual (calls to worship, confessions of sin, assurances of God's pardon, etc.), especially the kind that causes our weary bones to stumble through the gospel story, begins to shape our subconscious, affecting the way relate to God the other six days of the week.  Soon, we see Gospel-patterns more easily emerge from our instincts in the way we engage God and others on Tuesday, when we've sinned and sought forgiveness.  That process is the very process of remembering.  Our amnesia has been thwarted.

Salvation History in Twelve Easy Songs

Did You Sneeze?

I learned a big German word in seminary that I often throw around when I want to feel self-righteously smarter than other people—heilsgeschichte (pronounced “hiles-guh-SHICKH-tuh”).  Biblical theologians use this word, translated “salvation history,” to talk about Scripture’s meta-narrative—its single plotline traced from Genesis to Revelation. 

In my opinion, the best reflections on salvation history zero in on interpreting all of Scripture in light of and through the lens of Jesus Christ (you might be surprised that some reflections on salvation history don’t do this).  The way I figure, if Christ interpreted all of Scripture in light of Himself, I can do no better than to attempt to try to find Him, well, everywhere (Luke 24:27).  I want Jesus’ exegetical method to be mine.

The Blood + The Breath, by Caroline Cobb

Now what happens when an artist investigates and explicates this heilsgeschichte?  For singer-songwriter Caroline Cobb, a concept album called The Blood + The Breath was birthed, creatively telling the story of Jesus in the Scriptures.  Needless to say, I’m an instant and huge fan of this project.  For me, this scratches so many artistic and theological itches.  It was released on Tuesday, so please buy it here ( iTunes | physical copy ), buy it early, and buy it often.

Pastors like me long to encourage artists like Caroline to do theological reflection through various artistic media precisely so: (1) we don’t forget that truth is not just right but beautiful; and (2) it is in the experience of truth’s beauty that we come to a more deep understanding of it (with the most holistic sense of “understanding” in mind here).  When we experience truth’s beauty, who we are as redeemed human beings becomes more fully realized.  Artists have something unique to contribute to our spiritual formation as disciples of Christ. 

The Album’s Story

Each song on The Blood + The Breath parachutes down into specific markers in the landscape of salvation history, all the while not losing the forest for the trees.  However, it begins and ends with a Prologue and reprised Epilogue which revel in Romans 11:32-36 and Colossians 1:15-20, word for word, line by line.  Its music has the epic feel and Divine calm of John 1. 

The second track, “Garden,” flies over creation and lands in Eden.  Even in the first two songs, we here the themes of blood and breath explored, here in this song tarrying in the ambiguity of the “breathiness” of the Holy Spirit in creation and re-creation:

I will breathe into the dust
The breath of life and all my love
And when you open your eyes
You will see and be satisfied
Because I will be with you
I will be with you, I

The final verse walks on from Eden, to Babel, to the golden calf (but ends again with grace, just as any instance of salvation history does):

Pick the lies right off the tree
Your eyes are opened but not to see
Build a tower to the sky
You think you know, you think you’re wise
Melt your gold down to a god
Sell your soul to pay for your facade
Trade your truth for silence
I’ll let you loose if you want it

“All the Stars” explores the Abrahamic covenant with a twinkling piano motif, and next comes “The Passover Song,” which is one of my favorites on the album.  It is brilliant musically and textually.  Its lyrics are worth reading in full:

There’s a promise in our veins
But it’s faded by all these years in chains
Send a prophet, send the plagues
That by sunrise we will no more be slaves

Take the lamb, take the blood
And paint it on our doorways
At night death will come but pass us by

This is all our hope and peace 

In the morning we will rise
Taste the freedom we thought we’d never find
We will dance now in the streets
Once held captive now we shall live as kings

Lift your head, your voice
And sing of your salvation
Of the blood of the lamb that gave us life

Now by this we’ll overcome
Now by this we’ll reach our home

There’s a poison in our veins
And it leads to death we cannot escape
Send a ransom a perfect Son
Remedy the curse with His precious blood

And the Lamb that will come
His cross will be our doorway
And the red of His blood will make us white
And daughters and sons
Rejoice in resurrection
And death swallowed up in endless life

Glory, glory this I sing
All my praise for this I bring
Naught of good that I have done
Nothing but the blood of Jesus 

What I love about this song is that it accomplishes musically what does textually, with its quotations of the hymn “Nothing But the Blood” as a lens through which to process the first Passover, in all its gore and glory, justice and joy. 

“Your Wounds” and “Dry Bones” pick up in the prophets—Isaiah and Ezekiel.  Notable in “Dry Bones” is its use of the parched, gritty style of country blues, filled with musical agitation, fitting for Ezekiel’s vision of the Resurrection as brittle bones vivify as they become wrapped in supple flesh.

“Everything You’ve Heard” moves us to the ministry of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, with some fabulous one- and two-liners that prove that good songwriting can really serve to both illumine Scriptural truth and prophesy it to our hearts:

You’ve heard it said, “don’t you murder anyone”
But you carry your anger like a knife
And your insults like a gun

You’ve heard it said, “don’t you cheat on your wife”
But your mind is a motel room
And you undress the other woman with your eyes

“Gethsemane” focuses on the garden the night before the crucifixion, which is an interesting and unconventional choice when reflecting on Christ’s passion in one shot.  I like it.  It offers a different angle on the cross.  “He Is Risen,” with its simple singability, is one that I could actually envision congregations singing (which I know wasn’t necessarily Cobb’s intent, but is a bonus!).  “Breath of God” is another congregationally-friendly song, and it’s my next favorite on the record, perhaps simply for the line,

O breath of God, O Spirit, come
Fill our mouths and loose our tongues

It’s a new twist for me on the “tongues” concept surrounding Pentecost to think that the reversal of Babel on that fateful day was executed so that our tongues would be unbound to sing God’s praises.  Whoa.  The penultimate song, “Wake Up,” peers at the final resurrection through the looking glass of 1 Corinthians 15. 

The final song very creatively weaves in both the music and themes of the album, all nestled in an ethereal, heavenly, Revelation-like blanket.

Final Thoughts and Giveaway

If you’ve read this far, you’re beginning to see that this album is a work of art and a cohesive whole, showing one great example of how a singer-songwriter does theology through their artistic medium.  I might challenge Cobb to add to her theological reflection one dispensation that was jumped over in The Blood + The Breath, namely, the period of the kings (1 Samuel – 2 Kings), which is so important to the story of salvation history.  But I understand the need to make important edits for the sake of brevity and clarity.

Now for the fun stuff!  I’ve got two giveaway opportunities that Caroline has graciously offered for this blog:

• The first prize is a free digital copy of the album.
• The grand prize is a digital copy, plus physical copy and companion devotional to be mailed to your front doorstep.

All you have to do is tweet or Facebook about this post, and you’ll be entered. (Make sure to tag me so I know you've entered, or you'll slip through the cracks.) This time around, we’re keeping it short and sweet and will close off entries on the end-of-day this Friday.  So hurry up and tweet it or get it up on your Facebook wall.  We'll draw two winners and announce them within a week!

Here’s an auto tweet for you on-the-go folks.  :) 

In the meantime, go get Caroline's album, and tell your friends about it.

The Sunday After a Really Great Sunday

Last week, I posted about one of those rich, powerful Sundays that happened at Coral Ridge.  It was one of those days when many gathered were caught up in the gospel-story and deeply impacted as we entered, confessed, remembered our pardon, gave, listened, received, tasted, and saw.  My charismatic brothers and sisters call it "God showing up."  It's one of those sweet moments where a little bit more of heaven is cracked open for the viewing and God manifests Himself more palpably in comfort and grace, especially at His Table.  

If you're like me, you immediately start getting nervous on Monday.  "Well, how do I top that?" you think as you begin to plan or finalize next week's service.  The performance pressure creeps in, and you begin to try to pull out all the stops to manufacture what happened so organically and unexpectedly.  And then, when that Sunday rolls around, you're almost doomed for failure.  The Sunday after a really great Sunday is never a great Sunday.  Or at least that's what you think.

I'm reminded of the apostle Peter in Matthew 17, who knew that He was experiencing something super-special as He witnessed Christ's transfiguration.  "It's good for us to be here."  Can't we just stay here a bit longer?  I want every Sunday to be that Sunday.  

The reality is, though, that God doesn't seem to work that way. Over my decade-plus career now as a planner and leader of worship services, I've learned a few things about how to navigate the Sunday after a really great Sunday:

First, we can't read into such powerful Sundays that God is blessing us with more because we've been good.  

That's a slippery slope graded on really bad theology.  Because what's the flip side?  Is God removing His blessing the following week because we've been sinful and rebellious?  That line of thinking totally bypasses the finished work of Christ and discounts that God's pleasure in us isn't based on our performance.  God isn't some kind of Presence Genie, dolling out portions of His glory consummate with how much we rub His lamp with our good works.  He's the Father of Grace, pouring out all of His Son, by His Spirit, as a once-for-all sacrifice so that we might enter into His presence and experience Him with confidence.

Second, we need to recognize that we're dancing along the edge of God's mysterious will.  

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8, ESV).  Jesus said this in the context of His famous, secret conversation with Nicodemus about what true salvation looks like.  We can easily extrapolate outward when we see that as God's will blows through by His Spirit, it would be foolish of us to try to fully deconstruct the "why" of the given moment.  Now, for us and last Sunday, I do think there was a corellation between the prayers of the people and God's glory among us, simply because I believe in the efficacy of prayer and Scripture tells me that when we ask, He gives (Matthew 7).  But that's about as far as I want to press it.  I'll use it as a partial, limited stab at a "hindsight analysis," but I'll also be careful not to press it forward into a formula for next week. Formulas like these (if we just pray hard enough, God will show up) slip into what I talked about in the previous point and discount the mystery of the way God's Spirit works.  

Third, we need to remember the better criteria on how to judge a "successful" worship service. 

There's an unhealthy view out there that believes that the only "successful" worship service is one where we feel something ecstatic.  That view leads us down the dangerous road of the first point of hyper-analyzing ourselves, our church, our works, our prayer life, and our performance to root out what we did that caused God's removal of His pleasure and presence.  Again, that kind of thinking is downright wrong, and it is also plainly Satanic--we begin to manufacture accusations, where Christ has said, "It is finished."

It is far better to judge "success" of a worship service based on whether we as worshipers and worship planners have been faithful to do what God has asked us to do in a worship service.  Have we been faithful in engaging elements of worship that Scripture encourages us to?  Have we been faithful in connecting to how that Scriptural call has been realized over the ages in the (in the words of Jim Belcher) "great tradition" of the Church?  Those two questions, in short, can be summarized in, Have we been faithful to display, enact, enter into, and respond to the Gospel story in worship this week?   This moves away from measuring success based on internal feelings and moves toward measuring it based on external revelation.

But, again, please don't read into this, "If we're faithful to do these things, God will bless us with His presence."  I'm not saying that.  What I'm saying is that a good Sunday is good because of Who was displayed, not what was felt.  

You just can't hit a home run every time at bat

I'm reminded of something our homiletics (preaching) professor drilled into us in seminary.  "You can't hit a home run with every sermon," he would say.  He urged that the important thing was to get on base.  Make contact with the ball, and run.  And every once in a while, the connection will be just right, it will soar into the stands, and the stadium will go electric.  This is a healthy, down-to-earth metaphor for worship.  The Spirit determines whether or not the contact is just right.  That's His job.  Our job is to remember the rules of the game and be as faithful to swing that bat when the ball flies by.  And then, if something magic happens, we rejoice and glory in the moment as best as we can.  But, next week, when we approach that plate, we're back to square-one fundamentals, and when we hit that single, as we're jamming to first, we rejoice nonetheless that God is faithful, that Christ is our salvation, and that the Spirit is our Comforter, Guide, and Friend. 

Praying Over People As They Sing

Liturgical Art (folded cranes), Prayers for AIDS Victims, by Nancy ChinnObsessing Over Details is Part of Our Job

If you're a worship leader in the weekly grind like me (whether you're on staff, part of the team/ensemble of musicians, a choir member, or someone who leads spoken elements in a worship service), you know how regularly your mind flies from this to that during a worship service.  In fact, I've often taught young worship leaders just starting out that part of our sacrifice in being a "director" who pulls everything together is that we have the responsibility to attend to the sometimes crazy-making details of a worship service precisely so everyone else doesn't have to.  It's part of how we offer up a sacrifice of praise in accordance with our gifts.

In the hyperactivity of leading a worship service, I've found a couple of practices that are both centering for me and powerful for the people of God.  It's an unspoken, largely unseen ministry that we can engage in while we are in the moment of the worship service. It's a pastoral duty, and it's the simple act of praying for the people of God directly and sincerely.

Yesterday at Coral Ridge

At Coral Ridge, for instance, we celebrate the Lord's Supper by singing our way through it.  Yesterday, we sang three songs, one of them being a fabulous modern invitation song based on an old hymn called, "Come to Me" ( YouTube | iTunes ) by Michael Bleecker and a few others, over at The Village Church.  Its chorus sings:

There is freedom, taste and see
Hear the call: "Come to Me"
Run into His arms of grace
Your burden carried, He will take

I was reflecting with our choir before the service on what the Lord's Supper is and the unique opportunity it presents for people to truly "taste and see" that He is good.  And when we were singing that song, there was a strong sense that the Holy Spirit was prompting me (and us) to pray for people as they came forward.  Another singer was leading the song, and it gave me a chance to simply play guitar, sing off the mic, and look at the people of God as they approached the Table.  The choir and I began, in our hearts, praying for people, that they would be encouraged, strengthened, nourished, and fed.   

Praying Over the People of God in the Moment

That moment reminded me of just how much it has become a subconscious practice of mine during musical pauses and sometimes even while I'm singing and leading.  I look out at the people of God, some of whom I've had lunch or coffee with the week prior and heard their stories of terror and triumph, suffering and success.  I know that the guy over there is absolutely addicted to pornography.  I know that the woman over there despises her husband.  I know that the college student over there is burnt out from the pressures of final exams and "what's next?"  I know that the homeless man over there is just plain hungry.  I know that my co-pastor is struggling with discouragement in ministry.  I know that one of my singers is wrestling with the difficulties of her children.  And as I see them, the Spirit prompts me to pray, in the moment, that God would meet them there, minister to them and help them to not merely go through the motions of a given song, prayer, or element of worship.  

When God Stirs Up the Worship Mojo

I also realized that I could extend this ministry of prayer to others who help lead in worship, particularly the choir.  So, before the service, I encouraged the choir to engage in this practice of "praying over" the people of God during key moments in the service.  I can't tell you what a difference it made.  

But I can tell you that stuff like this doesn't happen every week and sometimes feels largely contingent on the factors of God's pure yet inscrutable will and our brokenness and receptivity.  When it does happen, though, it's magnificent, and I can't help but think that it had something to do with our faulty prayers, lifted up and perfected through Jesus' and the Spirit's prayers before the Father in heaven.  Yesterday, the gospel was palpable, felt, and enlivening.  People were singing more, and there was an "edge" in the room.  My charismatic brothers and sisters will often call that "God showing up," and I agree.  God showed up.  That may not be a neat and tidy theological statement, but it is a perfectly descriptive existential one. Many of us felt it. Many of us wished it could last longer. "Stay with us, Jesus, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over...just a little bit longer, Lord" (Luke 24:29).

Prayer Works

There are times in ministry where God graciously reminds us of the basics--that He has ordained certain means to accomplish His will and purposes.  One of the primary means through which God chooses to act is the prayers of His people.   It's not that our prayers force God's hand, like rubbing the lamp of a genie.  It's more profound and complex than that.  It's that, in many of His acts, God has chosen to accomplish them through the prayers He prompts His people to pray.  For us, it many times feels like its unprompted and spontaneous, but we need to remember that God's providence is so meticulous that He master-plans everything, including our prayer.  And thank God for that.  

So I commend the practice of active prayer for your people right smack dab in the middle of the worship service.  It's predicated upon the fact that, though worship is ritual, and though ritual is powerful and formative in and of itself, it is a moment of actual encounter with the living God. It's not mere playacting. It is interacting.

And the Winner of the Doxology & Theology Giveaway Is...

Two weeks ago, Broadman & Holman released Doxology & Theology, edited by Matt Boswell, in which I had the privilege of authoring a chapter on "The Worship Leader and the Trinity."  We had a little giveaway that involved spreading the love of this wonderful book.

Derek Foo, who serves as the Head of Worship Ministry at Elim Church Assembly of God in Singapore, won the giveaway. Elim Church gathers about 600 people for worship, and Derek works alongside a worship team of about 30 people!  As you read this, pray for Derek and his ministry to the saints across the globe.

Thanks to all my readership for allowing me to do some self-promotion and for making this release a greater success!

In Worship, We Forget About Ourselves in Order to Remember Who We Really Are

It's All About You, but it Radically Informs Me

Growing up in church, I used to sing a verse from a chorus which encouraged:

Let's forget about ourselves
And magnify His name
And worship Him

I appreciate the sentiment and intention.  We want worship to be God-centered, God-focused, and God-directed. "He must increase, I must decrease."  And most of us have well heard the penetrating critiques of the "me-centered" worship that has characterized not a small part of our modern evangelical doxology.  It's why songs like "It's All About You" and "The Heart of Worship" were written.  

However, "forgetting about ourselves" is only half the truth of what worship is and does.  Worship is also a huge jolt into remembering who we really are.  Weekly and daily, on conscious and unconscious levels, we are formed and shaped by visions of who we are, which compete with God's true Word of our identity.  We spring out of worship each week, and these false identities whisper into our ear lies about our true self--"You are your job achievements," or "You are your success as a parent," or "You are your reputation as a healthy, fit person," or "You are fine just as you are and merely need to accept yourself," or, most penetratingly, "You are an unforgivable sinner, too broken to ever be fixed."  Lies.  Painfully mal-forming, degenerating, corrupting, fragmenting, truth-twisting, life-smashing, soul-crushing lies.

Worship Rescripts Us

Similar to what I was saying when I wrote about how worship is the most human thing we do, Michael Horton writes:

Even if we are lifelong Christians, we forget why we came to church this Sunday until it all happens again: We come in with our shallow scripts that are formed out of the clippings in our imaginations from the ads and celebrities of the last week, only to be reintroduced to our real script and to find ourselves by losing ourselves all over again. It is not merely as we entertain the possibility of being a character in this story, or some other purely subjective strategy, that this narrative has the dramatic power to reconstitute us. Rather, it is as God the Spirit works on us through the proclamation of the Word that we are rescripted: our lives, purpose, identities, and hopes conformed to that "new world" into which the Word and Spirit give us new birth--instead of the other way around. Instead of our remaking God and his Word in terms of our experience and reason, we end up being remade--caught in the action of the divine drama.*

Some Takeaways About This Truth

This is not just high-level, un-groundable, esoteric stuff.  It's deeply applicable.  

For the worshiper:

• It makes worship not merely experiential, emotional, or ritualistic, but formative. Worship becomes so much more deep than just getting a spiritual high or getting re-charged for a new week.  Worship becomes something that actually molds and shapes us.
• It puts corporate worship on the top of our spiritual formation's prioritized task-list.  It throws out the window any sense of lackluster attendance, because it is our lifeline of spiritual health and centeredness, and in it are God's primary intended means of nourishing our souls.
• It raises the stakes on active participation in corporate worship--engaging the whole self, to the best of your ability, at every moment.  Humanly speaking, there is a strong correlation between how actively we participate in worship and how formative it is. God can and does (thankfully) subvert this reality, but the truth is that the more we are engaged, the more we are shaped.

For the worship leader:

• The stakes are raised on our worship planning. We can't just plan a fast-to-slow "worship flow" and think that we've done our due diligence.  We now have to analyze the content of that worship flow for its "remembrance-quotient."  We now have to ask ourselves, "Do the songs we sing, the prayers we pray contribute to God's proclamation of our lives being re-scripted around the identity, person, and work of Jesus Christ, or are we just vaguely emoting about and toward God?"  How much of God's script are we really disclosing to His people?  A partial plot-line?  A slide show?  A chapter?  A preview?  A trailer? God help us if our worship services are cliff notes of the gospel story.
• The gospel of Jesus Christ moves front and center.  If the dead-center of our "remembrance" is the good news of who Christ is and what He has done, it behooves us to make EVERYTHING about worship point to that reality.  The more we move away from that, the more we contribute to our people's amnesia about who they really are.  Hear me clearly.  A sermon preached without the gospel of Jesus Christ, and a worship set planned without the gospel of Jesus Christ, regardless of how "Christian" it sounds or how "biblical" it seems, is neither Christian nor biblical because it is not ground-wired to the epicenter and source of its power--the gospel of Christ.  A gospel-less "Christian" worship service is as good and formative as a pagan service.  No gospel, no power. 

So let's remember this paradoxical truth.  We come to worship to place our attention outside of ourselves onto God, His promises, and His Triune mission of gathering the nations in to His intra-Trinitarian self-love, to the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit.  But it is precisely in the moment of forgetting ourselves and hearing that proclamation that we remember who we are--blood-bought, loved, adopted, justified sinners, completely loved by God in Christ.  And, in the midst of this remembrance of who we are, God is remaking us into who we will be.

*Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 52.

How the Gospel Fills Worship with Passion

Dead Worship, Anyone?

Every new worship leader goes through that painful transition period where the rose-colored glasses come off and you realize that not everyone is as "into" worship as you are.  Part of the reason you took on this role is that you simply love to worship God with the people of God, and your fervor is spilling over.  But, when you're doing it week in and week out, and when you're looking out upon the countenances, posture, and engagement of Christ's Bride, you can't help but get a little depressed.

If the good news of Jesus really is as sweeping and epic as the Scriptures proclaim it to be, why do our worship services which seek to display it, retell it, savor it, and revel in it seem so often to not look like the gospel is as grand as it is?  Why do our services lack passion?  (Notice that this line of questioning transcends issues of musical style or high- or low-church liturgy.)  There are hosts of important answers to this question, from cultural, to sociological, to theological, to biological, to psychological, to existential.  

Lincoln's History vs. A Dictionary's History

One answer worth pondering is given by Michael Horton, where he helps us to understand the difference between viewing history "from within" and "from without."  It is the difference between truth and dramatic truth:

H. Richard Niebuhr contrasted "outer" and "inner" history--one as told by a supposedly objective bystander, the other by a participant in that history:

"Lincoln's Gettysburg Address begins with history: 'Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.' The same event is described in the Cambridge Modern History in the following fashion: 'On July 4, 1776, Congress passed the resolution which made the colonies independent communities, issuing at the same time the well-known Declaration of Independence.' ..."

It hardly seems that Lincoln and the Cambridge Modern History were describing the same event. "Hence," Niebuhr adds, "we may call internal history dramatic and its truth dramatic truth, though drama in this case does not mean fiction."  We cannot approach the preaching of the Word as if it were merely describing its doctrinal or moral content; it must be preached as indeed it was written--namely, as the dramatic, developing story of God's creative and redemptive work in Jesus Christ as God's true and faithful Israel.*

The Gospel as Dramatic Truth

We can extrapolate outward the very poignant illustration beyond preaching to the entire worship service and experience.  Do we celebrate the Gospel of Jesus Christ as dramatically as it truly is?  Do we sing, pray, hear, read, and taste the Glorious Message as passion-filled insiders who have been changed by it, or as cold and clinical outsiders who are analyzing it?  It's the difference between Lincoln standing in a context of racial inequality and passionately remembering and rehearsing the Declaration's glorious truths upheld and the dictionary reporting the game-changing event of 1776.

Toward a Solution

"Solving" this problem is multi-faceted and way too complex for my very limited brain to handle.  But there is a very simple and easy first starting place for us as worshipers and worship leaders--personally cultivating a life of savoring the Gospel.  A few weeks ago, Scotty Smith preached a soul-melting sermon at Coral Ridge in which he outlined two simple practices to staying smitten with the love of God in Christ:

• Stay focused on the dying love of Jesus on the cross--perpetually survey, think continually on, place before you, always go back to the cross; never depart from thinking on it, even if at times doing so feels rote.
• Stay focused on the undying love that Jesus has for us--remember, savor, rehearse Jesus' ongoing, perpetual love for you; remember that, in Christ, God cannot be more pleased with you than He already is and that He delights in you as a Father would a child who is perfectly obedient, perfectly selfless, perfectly perfect. 

Cultivation of a passion for the good news of Christ is the most important thing that pastors and worship leaders can do to lead their flock.  Human beings have an instinct for being able to identify the difference between those who believe in truth coldly from the outside and those who believe in it passionately from the inside.  

And, by the way, this is at the center of what it means to be a "Spirit-filled" worshiper and lead "Spirit-filled" worship.  Someone who is Spirit-filled swoons for the things the Spirit swoons for.  The Bible is clear that the Spirit's heart skips a beat over Jesus.  The Spirit desires, even "lusts after" the Son (Gal 5:13-26).  Being Spirit-filled means to get caught up in the intra-Trinitarian infatuation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  

So let's keep in step with the Spirit by doing no more and no less than lingering at the foot of the cross to survey Christ's dying love and meditating on the very throne room of the Father, where Christ has ascended, and is pleading His undying love for us, to which the Father replies, "This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased."  Because the punch line is, when God is talking about Jesus, He's talking about us (Eph 2:6).

*Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 58-59.

The Worship Leader and the Trinity, Part 2

Andrei Rublev, Angels at Mamre**FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY of Doxology & Theology, released last week, still going on.  Enter by going here.**

The previous post in this two-part series outlined the first half of my chapter, "The Worship Leader and the Trinity," in Doxology & Theology: How the Gospel Forms the Worship Leader, where we saw how the Trinity effects the possibility and proximity of worship and protects the priority and purity of worship.  We now move from high-level to ground-level in processing a Trinitarian saturation of our worship.

The Trinity Affects the Posture and Procedure of Worship

1) The Trinity encourages a peaceful, humble posture in worship.  
There's a tendency, when we engage in worship and faith, to live with a level of anxiety about pleasing God, "having our heart in the right place," or "being a clean vessel."  The Trinity puts these pensive, doubting, fearful thoughts to rest because of the finished work He provides.  When we understand just how active, aggressive, and thorough the Trinity's work is in our salavation, we are both humbled and at peace.

2) The Trinity shapes how worship proceeds.  
When we grasp what the Trinity truly and actively does in our salvation and worship, we begin to recognize that God the Father not only calls us to salvation and worship but actually, throught the Son, by the power of the Spirit, also provides us with the response to that call.  Trinitarian worship, therefore, takes the shape of a dialogue--God speaks, we respond, God speaks, we respond, etc.  When our worship is structured as such, we reflect, practice, and truly embody the work of the Trinity among us.  Even further, though, this dialogue, because of the way the Trinity does His magnificent work, takes the shape of the gospel

• God's holy glory
• our recognition of our brokenness, depravity and inadequacy 
• God's provision of Christ, inviting us to intimate fellowship with the Trinity

When we walk through this general three-part story in worship, we "rehearse the gospel," worshiping in "Trinitarian procedure."  Gospel-shaped worship is Trinitarian worship.

The Trinity Directs the Practices and Propositions of Worship

1) The Trinity should be reflected in our worship practices.
How does the way we conduct worship--from our "stage" setup, to our architecture, to the proportion of congregational vs. pastoral/leadership participation, to our musical style, to the language of our prayers and readings--reflect that our God exists in Trinitarian community?  Practices that err on the side of the communal versus the individual "look" more Trinitarian because they mirror God's oneness within His many-ness.  Suddenly, supposedly neutral, mundane, and up-for-grabs things can be informed by God's very nature.

2) The Trinity shapes the propositions of our sermons, prayers, songs, and readings.
When most speak, write, and think about "Trinitarian worship," this is usually the most obvious starting place.  How well are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit named and addressed in our worship services?  Do our songs, prayers, messages, and readings overtly reflect the Trinitarian nature of God?  (In this section, I argue that gospel- and Christ-centered preaching is a gloriously Trinitarian practice, whereas moralistic, self-help, and prosperity preaching is not just bad but anti-Trinitarian).

Want to see how these ideas are fleshed out?  Get the book!