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.)

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Summer 2012 sermon series at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church

Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm (it sounds very much like a proverb), and, by virtue of its placement, it is the introduction to the entire book of Psalms.  As such, it makes a very interesting point that we often miss when reading it narrowly in English.  The key theme verse is:

His (or her) delight is in the law of the LORD,
And on His law he (or she) meditates day and night.
(Psalm 1:2, NIV) 

Several commentators point out that here we have the whole book of Psalms being introduced as torah, which we translate (probably somewhat inadequately) as "law."  But torah in this context does not really mean so much God's moral law, or even the Pentateuch.  Torah means here, more generally, "instruction."  But even then, we might be tempted to think that this is saying that the Psalms exist to teach us something cognitive, to fill our brains with information about God.  Torah as "instruction" is more robust.  It is more like instruction that leads to growth.  Torah is formation.

Psalm 1, as an introduction to the Psalter, is making an important point about the nature of worship: Worship forms us.  It shapes us.  As we worship, God does soul-surgery, making us different than we were.  Our habits are retrained toward the things God desires.  God changes our "wanter," as I've heard others say.  We want different things than we used to.  We start thinking God's thoughts after Him.  We start living the "liturgical life," with all its up and down rhythms, the other six days of the week.

Certainly Psalm 1 exists to encourage us to meditate on Scripture as a primary means for growth and nourishment.  But there is another message contained here, simply because Psalm 1 is Psalm 1 and not Psalm 36 or 114.  Worship is formational.  Pastors and worship leaders should heed this well as we think about planning and leading worship services week in and week out.  The center of our disciple-making call is wrapped up in the content and shape of our worship.

Our annual Maundy Thursday Family Service at Cherry Creek Presbyterian Church in Denver is probably one of the more unique times of worship that I've ever been a part of.  It is an interactive, multi-sensory, truly intergenerational experience.  We started doing it in this format four or five years ago, and it's quickly become a tradition.  Several years ago, God convicted our staff and leadership about our lack of attention to children as full-fledged worshipers.  We began a slow but persistent overhaul of how we thought about and engaged children in worship, and the Maundy Thursday Family Service was a part of that process.

We observed how high and formal our Good Friday Service was, and we wanted to be able to allow for a service where our kids would feel less on the outskirts, straining to understand, and more in the inner circle, quite literally.  So we devised a more informal worship service that included dinner as a part of the worship service. Dinner...yeah, it's biblical...and maybe it's especially appropriate for Maundy Thursday, a day commemorating the happenings in the Upper Room and Christ's great mandatum (where we get the word "Maundy"): "a new command I give you...love one another."

As best as we can, with the supplies we have, we transform center court of our multi-purpose center into a replica of what the original Last Supper table might have looked like.  The seating most likely would have been a Roman triclinium setup, with a U-shaped table, where those participating would have reclined forward on cushions.  We modify this idea, creating a center table on floor-level where, during a portion of the service, the kids come to gather for an interactive teaching time, bringing pillows around the table's edge, where the kids, while munching, learn about what the Last Supper would have been like and what Communion is all about (the adults end up learning a bit, too.)

With circular dining tables surrounding center court, we create a pretty communal atmosphere.  People share a meal that would have (slightly) resembled a typical first century meal: fish, chicken (because fish is scary for some), dates, grapes, bread, and a few slight variations like hummus and cheese.  And that's how the service begins, with people eating, talking, and enjoying one another's company.  We opened the meal in prayer.

Zac Hicks (guitar), Lucille Reilly (recorder, hammered dulcimer), Paul Adams (percussion)This year, as dinner was wrapping up, our ensemble (me on guitar, a percussionist, and a hammered dulcimerist) led some music (Rich Mullins' "Creed," to connect communion with the Apostles' Creed), with the congregation joining in on Matt Redman's "How Great is Your Faithfulness," interspersed with amazing, lengthy recitations from three of our kids on God's faithfulness in Christ through every book of the Bible.  The people cheered each kid on, and we were all moved by God's faithfulness from Genesis through Revelation.

We gathered all the kids around for the table experience, which is always a magical, unforgettable encounter, led by our Director of Student Ministries, Chris Piehl.

Our senior pastor, Brad Strait, then taught briefly on Communion and instituted the elements.  As our people came forward to receive the Lord's Supper, whole families came, and kids not ready to receive Communion were invited to take from a cluster of grapes that one of our youth were holding alongside our elders with the bread and cup.

We played an instrumental version of "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded," adapted for guitar and recorder, pulling from J. S. Bach's arrangement along with some of Paul Simon's variation on the tune in the last verse.  

Our music moved into one of our favorite Communion songs at CCPC, "We Will Dance," a Vineyard song by David Ruis that does a really nice job bringing the festive, eschatological themes of the Eucharist to the fore--lots of longing for the Second Coming and the marriage feast of the Lamb:

Sing a song of celebration, lift up a shout of praise
For the bridegroom is come, the glorious One
And oh, we will look on His face,
We'll go to a much better place

So dance with all your might
Lift up your hands and clap for joy
For the time's drawing near
When He will appear
And oh, we will stand by His side
A strong, pure, spotless bride

We will dance on the streets that are golden
The glorious bride and the great Son of Man
And every tribe and tongue and nation
Will join in the song of the Lamb 

Words & Music: David Ruis; ©1993 Mercy / Vineyard Publishing

The final part of the service was an interactive time of people grabbing a few inches of chain from the center of their tables, tying red ribbons on them, symbolizing sins that we're holding, burdens that we're carrying, and bonds holding us down.  Then, while singing "Amazing Grace," people came to center-court and threw our chains down.  

It was a moving experience to hear the chains slamming against the table; it made the freedom of the good news God's grace through Jesus all the more visceral.  After a prayer and the benediction, people left with a strong sense of the "heavy joy" of Maundy Thursday evening.

We musicians shared in communion together at the close of the service.