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.

Click to read more ...

Worship Without the Gospel is Not True Worship

Any worship we participate in, without engaging the good news about Jesus Christ and what He has done, is false worship.  It is idolatry.  It is self-justification.  My friend and up-and-coming pastor, Nathan Hoag, brought back from the Gospel Coalition Conference the April 2011 edition of TableTalk, which contained a wonderful little article by Donald Whitney on “The Gospel & Worship.”¹  Here are some choice quotes which work really well as stand-alone reflections on how the good news relates to corporate worship.  The third quote is my favorite:

There may be nothing in the realm of religion by which people vainly attempt to establish their acceptability to God more than by acts of public or private worship. As a result, worship can degrade into one of the most legalistic activities a person can pursue.  In the minds of many, you are right with God if you go to church…Though perhaps they do not expressly state it, they believe that because they discipline themselves to regularly attend an event where the gospel is proclaimed, they have sufficiently participated in the gospel.

The gospel takes the natural, worldly view that worship is a person justifying himself by reaching up to God and corrects it with the truth that worship is a person responding to the God who has reached down through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

People do not decide to become worshipers of God; rather the gospel produces worshipers.

God made our hearts, and He made them to find their greatest joy and satisfaction in Himself. So when, through the gospel, we “come to know God, or rather be known by God” (Gal. 4:9), our hearts turn to God and open in worship to Him like flowers turn and open to the sun. Thus it is that worship begins with an understanding of the gospel.

We also need the gospel during worship in part because of the sins we commit in worship. We may sing, speak, or pray thoughtlessly or hypocritically in various moments of worship. The application of the gospel to our minds and hearts in worship encourages us that our sins during worship are forgiven and that the Lord receives us even though our worship is imperfect.

Love of the gospel and love of worshiping the God of the gospel are inseparable. A true grasp of the former leads to devotion to the latter.

¹Donald S. Whitney, “The Gospel & Worship,” in TableTalk, 35.4 (April 2011), 58-59.

The Latest Developments in Thoughtful Worship

This blog is dedicated to discussions surrounding worship, church, theology, and culture.  A subtext of that agenda is to encourage Christian (and particularly evangelical) worship along its trajectory toward more thoughtfulness, biblical reflection, theological awareness, and historicity.  A sub-subtext of that subtext is to encourage this growing movement of folks dedicated to the setting of old hymns to new music.  I do this not because hymns are the be-all and end-all of the deficiencies of modern worship, but because this one practice embodies so many of the subtext's aforementioned values.  Many hymns are thoughtful.  Many hymns are soaked in scripture.  Many hymns are written from a fiery theological heart.  And all hymns except current-day ones force the Church to reckon with the fact that she is a body rooted in history--a history of God's past worth celebrating. 

So, people might get tired of me barking about this very specific thing called the "hymns movement," but they must remember that this movement is a herald of the shifts taking place with these bigger, more fundamental issues in American/Western Christian worship today.

I am therefore excited to share a brief "status update" of the movement.  More rumblings, more exposure, more buy-in.  The hymns movement continues to affect and infect the Church with greater potency and wider distribution.  Four things stand out.

Less than 48 hours ago, the 2011 Gospel Coalition Conference kicked off with none other than a hymn sing, gathering together and exposing before a new generation of eager, cross-denominational, Gospel-loving evangelicals some of the heavy-hitters in the hymns movement: Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace (Sandra McCracken, Matthew Smith); Mike Cosper and Sojourn Music.  As Cardiphonia likewise reported, Noisetrade is giving away a free sampler of these artists.  One more indicator that the next generation of pastors and church leaders care about deep, substantive worship, exemplified in hymnody.

Seven days ago, High Street Hymns released their third major hymns album, Hearts and Voices, centered on hymns for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.  It is available at a very affordable price on bandcamp.

In less than two weeks, Sojourn Music will release another album, The Water and the Blood, a second installment of an ongoing project to reshape the hymn texts of Isaac Watts for new ears.  As will be explained in my upcoming review, Sojourn continues to push out the narrow musical boundaries of contemporary/modern worship, forging ahead while reaching back hundreds of years into the vault of Christian hymnody.

In five days, an album will be released which features a bunch of well-known mainstream modern worship leaders headlining re-tuned hymn-texts of Charles Wesley.  It is called Love Divine.  I have already spoken about what a significant mile-marker this is, notwithstanding the fact that it will probably go unnoticed (though I hope not).

A little over two weeks ago, a unique conference took place in St. Louis.  Hymns movement leader Bifrost Arts hosted a gathering on "Liturgy, Music, and Space."  The average age was interestingly young, given that the topics discussed at the conference were ideas that contemporary worship used to say that only "older people" cared about: liturgy, history, aesthetics, theology, inter-generationalism, etc.

Folks, there's no organizing force behind the coincidence of these things...at least no human one.  This can be characterized as nothing short of a movement of the Spirit through renewal of the worship of God.  All this is very significant.

Personal Piety is Not Enough; We Need Worship, Too

Luke Stamps has blessed us with a fabulous post on the Gospel Coalition site.  He observes the historical reasons why evangelicalism has placed a lot of emphasis on personal piety, perhaps to the neglect of corporate worship as a primary means through which God shapes and forms us into the image and likeness of Christ.  He contrasts this with (perhaps a caricature, I would admit, of) Roman Catholic spirituality, with its lack of emphasis on personal piety, so he’s not making light of the importance of our need for an individual, ongoing, and personal relationship with God.  But, in making his point about worship, He frequently interacts with the Westminster Shorter Catechism, including with this question and answer:

Question 89: How is the word made effectual to salvation?

Answer 89: The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.

Stamps’ comment:

It is interesting that the catechism places special emphasis on the formal preaching of the Word, which can only take place when the church is gathered together. It is often said that the corporate worship of the church is diminished when the individuals that make up the church have not been worshiping God in their daily lives throughout the week. Anyone who has ever had the responsibility of leading a local church in public worship can testify to the truth of this claim. But it seems to me that the opposite is true as well: If the church is not engaged in biblically ordered worship through Word, sacrament, and prayer, then it will be very difficult for its members to be equipped for their daily tasks of loving God and loving neighbor.

Stamps goes on to point out that worship is “not incidental, but vital,” meaning that while attending and participating in worship certainly is optional for every one of us, it is not optional if you are desirous to grow in your faith.  God chooses to do too many special things that are unique to the worship context for it to be replaced with any other practice.

Please read this important article!

*****

I believe in this subject.  Here are some previous posts that have addressed it:

Worship's Unique Ability to Give People Spiritual Wisdom and Insight

Flippant Worship Attendance: Stats and Consequences

Why the Gospel Shines Brightest in Worship

Taking Children to Jesus in Worship

Why the Gospel Shines Brightest in Worship

If you know me, then you know that I place myself in the camp of those folks who are big on the Gospel.  I’m one of those obsessed evangelo-philes that can’t get enough of the good news.  I’m convinced that evangelicalism has inadvertently over the years done some diminishing of the Gospel’s scope and depth, and I’m on board with those (like the Gospel Coalition) who want to reclaim it for all its power, beauty, and worth.

What I don’t hear talked about much among the Gospel-lovers is how the context of corporate worship is uniquely qualified to convey, proclaim, preach, and minister the Gospel.  The Gospel is certainly brilliant in and of itself, but it seems that God has ordained that it shine brightest and purest in the context of worship.  Where else can the Gospel be preached in the context of the gathered people of God?  Where else can the Gospel be displayed uniquely in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper?  Where else can the Gospel be rehearsed by the people of God in one collective, sacred liturgical act?  Where else can Gospel-borne community so aptly summarized and pictured?

The Gospel is like a diamond.  It’s beautiful and captivating all the time.  But a diamond’s brilliance and color is at its peak when it is placed in the right setting, viewed under the best lighting, prepared with the ideal polish, and observed from an optimal angle.  God has ordained that worship be the Gospel’s most perfect display case. 

The Gospel is like medicine.  It heals and restores sick and wounded souls.  It shows no favoritism.  If Christians and non-Christians truly receive it, the effect is the same—healing and growth.  But medicine is most effective when it is prescribed in ideal dosages and administered rightly.  Worship is God’s authorized pharmacy for the Gospel.  Sure, the medicine works whether you get it from the black market or the drug store (that seemed to be Paul's point in Philippians 1:12-18).  But the Gospel’s dosage and administration are at its peak potency and effectiveness in the context of worship.

There’s something missing from the discussion if, in speaking of the Gospel, we are subtracting from it its ecclesiological and doxological contexts.  The Gospel is not a nebulous, free-floating message.  It is the good news of Christ given to the Church to give to the world.  So the Gospel has an ecclesiological (church) context.  Furthermore, its message is uniquely displayed by the Church in her worship.  So the Gospel has a doxological (worship) context.

Some might argue, “Well, Jesus didn’t have an ecclesiological and doxological context when He communicated the Gospel.”  But this is creating a false dichotomy, for Christ was and is the fullness of ecclesiology and doxology.  We must first think about the fact that the four gospel-writers went to great lengths to communicate that Christ was the fulfillment of the people of God.  His successful forty days in the wilderness mirrored Israel’s failed forty years in the desert.  His selection of twelve disciples mirrored the twelve tribes of Israel.  His “I Am” statements throughout the first half of the gospel of John are intended to communicate that He is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament feasts and festivals.  So as Christ was ministering the Gospel, He was His own ecclesiological and doxological context.

Secondly, we must remember that Christ sent His Spirit to the Church (Acts 2) in order that the Church, filled with His very Presence, might be the true “body of Christ” to the world.  As some theologians have put it succinctly, in many ways, “Christology is ecclesiology.”  If the Church is the body of Christ, and if Christ is the head, then it makes sense that the Church actually exemplifies Christ’s own earthly ministry of the Gospel best when she is gathered as one body, because she displays Christ most fully when she is together, en masse. And while the Church may gather at other times, her prescribed and sanctioned convocation is weekly corporate worship.

Therefore, we might say that the Gospel is uniquely manifested most acutely at the intersection of Christ, His Church, and worship.  If this is true, then there are many implications for our worship, for both how we view it and what we do in it.  But that's for another day.