Treating Sermons Like a Wine Tasting

Walter Kaiser writes:¹ 

According to the “New Homiletic” [a term coined by David Allen], every sermon or lesson from the Bible must chiefly be “interesting.” But what biblical support could we give for this assertion?

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Worship Leading, Ageism, and the Fear of Getting Old

Talk show host Dennis Prager is well-known for saying that his generation—the boomer generation—is the stupidest generation in American history. This comment, perhaps extreme, summarizes the multitudinous errors of that generation of young people that grew up and ushered in the large cultural changes in the United States in the 1960s.  One of those errors is the worship of youth.  The phrase “youth culture” would have been unintelligible prior to the 60s, but now it is common speak.  The glamorization of youthfulness affects everything from marketing and entertainment to presidential elections and local church ministry.  And obsession with youth culture has affected the ministry of worship, as well.

I had a recent phone conversation with a worship leader friend of mine who leads music on the other side of the country.  In a candid moment, we were both expressing concerns about the longevity of our jobs as local church music leaders.  We wondered whether, in ten to fifteen years, we would be viewed as out-of-date, irrelevant, washed up, and cheesy—one of those old guys trying to look and act young.  Ultimately, we questioned whether we would be as effective in doing our task once we started “looking old.”

No worship leader really voices it.  No congregation overtly acknowledges it.  But many of us think there is something lacking in a worship leader who has gray hair or smile lines.  He or she must not be truly “with it” and up on trends (another value exposed which needs to be challenged).  He or she wouldn’t be capable of authentically crafting and leading a musical style that is current and fresh.  They might be just fine in a traditional or blended worship environment, but if we want to “reach young people,” a forty-something at the helm is no good.

This is lamentable.  And (to make up a word) repentable.  That we were even having such a discussion tells us that culture’s obsession with youth has invaded the heart of the church.  What does the Bible have to say about being old?

Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding? (Job 12:12)

I thought, “Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.” (Job 32:7)

At the window of my house I looked down through the lattice. I saw among the simple, I noticed among the young men, a youth who had no sense. He was going down the street near her corner, walking along in the direction of her house. (Proverbs 7:6-8)

The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old. (Proverbs 20:29)

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father.  Treat…older women as mothers. (1 Timothy 5:1, 2)

Prior to the 60s, the elderly were much more celebrated in culture.  Most native cultures—from Native Americans to native Hawaiians to native Africans—favor the aged as the source of knowledge and wisdom.  Such cultures actually look to the elderly for guidance for the future (imagine that!).  Nowadays in the West, the elderly are irrelevant cultural cast-offs.  They are the Dalit caste of modern America.  We quarantine them in homes.  In church meetings, we roll our eyes when old Mr. Jones stands up and wags his finger in the air.  And we worship leaders brush off their comments like dust on our feet.  And we move “forward.”

Though I’ve never heard it from a single one of them, I’d bet that every twenty-something who’s been a worship leader for more than a year has had the thought, “What happens when I get older?”  (Implication: I have to do something different, because this can’t work.)  I know a few forty- and fifty-something worship leaders who are currently looking for positions in churches, and I know that the market is tougher for them. 

This ageism is more than just bias and prejudice.  It’s sinful idolatry.  And I’m guilty myself of playing into the hands of these gods every time I entertain a fear of getting older or judge an “older” worship leader as irrelevant or out of touch.

The truth is: the more I’ve gotten to know the generations of worship leaders above me, the more I realize that the Bible is true.  With age comes wisdom.  Churches should desire older worship leaders.  Though youth should not be despised (1 Timothy 4:12), biblical wisdom reminds us that being young carries liabilities against which we need to be on guard.  I long for my generation of worship leaders to have open and honest conversation about this evil bubbling under the surface.  I long for us to confess it, to repent of it, and to seek its change.

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.

Tradition vs. Traditionalism: Worship, Idolatry, and the Heart

Part of the reason Lent exists is for us to confront our sin and idolatry head-on... 

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition." - Jaroslav Pelikan, U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 1989

When God called me to my church almost four years ago, I sensed that a primary call of mine would be to help pastor our congregation, both corporately and individually, away from traditionalism and toward a Christ-centered embrace of tradition.  I'll be candid in my analysis of the situation. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are one of the last standing evangelical churches with vibrant traditional worship.¹  To be sure, there are churches in Denver with strong traditional worship, but most of them do not have evangelical pulpits.  And certainly there are churches in Denver with committed, orthodox preaching, but almost all of them are “contemporary,” stylistically.  This puts us in a very peculiar place because, as evangelical churches have swung away from traditional worship, we have become a haven for what I call “evangelical traditionalist refugees”—people whose hearts most intimately connect with traditional worship who have no other place to go for evangelical preaching.  (There are, of course, many things to lament about how deeply embedded consumerism is in the evangelical psyche, such that we find ourselves in this place, but that is for another time and another post.)

The net effect of our church being a Traditionalist Refugee Camp is that, left unchecked, this has a hardening effect on the ethos and mindset of our people.  Our worshipers have often left their previous churches scarred, alienated, and hurt.  They therefore enter our doors with pain and sometimes a chip on their shoulder.  They find like-minded commarades—a community which shares their values and sensibilities—and they tend to, often in private conversation or small groups, disparage other forms and expressions of worship.  The deep wounds feed fear of change.  Fear of change begins to grip the heart, and a healthy appreciation of tradition is corrupted into a worship of tradition.  This is traditionalism.

The difference between tradition and traditionalism is an issue ultimately of the heart.  Tradition is a beautiful thing.  In fact, tradition is necessary to truly be the Church.  The Church, at any point in time, must recognize that it is a trans-temporal community.  Saints who have gone before and saints who will follow are, ongoingly, our brothers and sisters.  One of the reasons we embrace Church tradition is simply because it is part of what it means to truly be the Church.  To ignore tradition would be to cut ourselves off from a huge part of the body of Christ, the “catholic Church” (in the words of the Apostles’ Creed).  But, as Tim Keller has said time and again, idolatry occurs when we take good things (like tradition) and make them ultimate things. 

How can one know when tradition has been corrupted into traditionalism?  It’s all about symptoms which betray the root disease.  Symptoms can include:

• reaction of fear, defensiveness, or anger when any deviation from the norm takes place
• an unloving or judgmental attitude toward those who do not embrace tradition as you do
• a persistent need to speak your mind about the matter to and with others
• a strong penchant toward defending tradition at every turn
• comments which use possessive and personal pronouns: “what speaks to me,” “what I love,” “my preferences,” etc.

What is the cure?  The cure is only apparent when an adequate diagnosis is given.  We could encourage traditionalists to “be more loving” or to, in the words of Philippians 2, “consider others better than yourselves.”  We could preach against the sins of bitterness, fear, and wrongly-expressed anger.  But none of these things get at the heart of the matter.  The issue lies at the throne of the heart.  If tradition reigns on the throne of your heart, you will defend it at any cost.  You will find fault with anyone who challenges it.  You will protect it as a loyal servant would his or her lord and master.  You will judge those who do not equally revere it as you do.  Lords, masters, and kings demand that kind of allegiance.  The diagnosis, then, is ultimately misplaced affection.  You love tradition more than you love Jesus.  No, you would never say that, because, theologically, you know that’s wrong.  But your actions betray what’s truly in your heart.

When Christ is on the throne of your heart, tradition cannot be corrupted into traditionalism.  Christ reigns, without peer.  When we love Christ more than tradition, we can say, “Though I don’t go hog-wild over repeating refrains, drums, blocks of songs, and electric guitars, I recognize that some are freed up to engage with God there, and I’m not going to break fellowship over it.  I’m going to sing alongside my sister, giving it my best.” And by the way, this goes both ways.  When it comes to worship, if the gospel is taking root in a community of faith, we will see the kind of mutual submission described in Ephesians 5.  We will see people joyfully laying down their preferences.  The lion will lie down with the lamb, babies will play in snakes’ dens, and traditionalists will worship with contemporary folks.  We will see contemporary folks laying down their idolatries of, in the words of T. David Gordon, “contemporaneity-as-a-value” (i.e. what’s new is what’s best) and embracing tradition because they love all of Christ’s body.   

¹ The label “traditional” is nearly as broad and nebulous as “contemporary,” of course, and I share a grief over the deficiencies of these terms and over the division in Christ’s church that such polarization has caused.  Nevertheless, I haven’t found better terms to use as I seek to speak into this issue.  Our traditional worship, if I can speak in spectral terms, puts us on the 75-mark between “low church traditional” (0; more Baptistic/revivalistic) and “high church traditional” (100; more Anglican/classical/liturgical).  So our service tends to have a Presbyterian liturgical structure, a more classically-oriented stylistic expression with choir and organ, alongside occasional revivalistic expressions.

Worshiping at the iThrone of Apple

It’s interesting that Apple’s logo is a bitten piece of fruit.  The first time that happened, the whole world fell apart.

I’m not sure who originated the thought, but I’ve heard Tim Keller say many times, “Idolatry happens when good things become ultimate things.”  I was passed on an article which made a lot of comparisons between the tech giant Apple and religion…particularly Christianity.  Here are some highlights:

• “Apple products aren’t just consumer-friendly, sexy gadgets, but instruments of the divine.”
• “[Apple can] basically perform the same role in people’s lives that being part of a religious community could, at one time.”
• Steve Jobs’ turtleneck and jeans serve as his clerical “vestments”
• “The ‘Jesus phone’ phrase had sticking power because it resonated with an American audience steeped in Christian mythology.”
• Apple’s humble beginnings (Steve Jobs’ garage) is compared to “the lowly manger of Jesus’ birth.”
• Jobs’ return to Apple a kind of “second coming”
• Microsoft is Apple’s “satanic” enemy
• Apple store iPhone pre-launches have people lining up outside stores, much like religious pilgrimages to holy sites
• “If you’re joining a church, you’re joining a community. And when you buy an Apple product, you’re joining the apple community.”
• “If you say ‘I’m a Christian,’ people will expect you to have certain values and if you say, ‘I’m a Mac user,’ people expect you to have those Mac user values.”

Some of these observations are obviously tongue-in-cheek and satirical.  But satire always germinates in the soil of truth.  There are some fascinating cultural insights here, and I can’t help but make some observations, given that just yesterday, I preached a sermon on Christ’s call to deny ourselves.

One of the points I made in my message was that technology has a powerful ability to enslave us.  Think of the struggle we have to turn our phones off for the hour of worship or for dinner time with the family.  Think of our compulsive instinct to check and reply to email immediately.  Think of the near fear one feels when one realizes they are out and about and have left their mobile device at home.

It’s been said before that though the worship of sticks and stones is seldom seen in the United States, idolatry is rampant.  This article proves that whether culture is primitive or civilized, prehistoric or post-industrial, the human heart will always find something to pour out its time, affections, resources, energies…its worship.  The article mentioned that the iPhone is like Jesus—it is a revolutionary and a savior.  Certainly the centralizing power of the iPhone is astonishing.  Never before have so many disparate streams of modern life converged in one device—phone, email, television, internet, camera, calendaring (just to name the obvious ones).  But while the iPhone can bring together much of your life, it can’t put your life back together.  There will never be an app which can take away our deep, human sense of shame.  A “good thing” can’t do that; only an “ultimate thing.”  Yet, as culture moves forward, we continue to give technology increasing prominence in the pantheon of our hearts.  And nothing can stop it but the expulsive power of a new affection.

Obviously, I’m going to object to one of the assumptions of the article, namely, that Christianity is rooted in myth (the word [or word-group] was used no less than six times in this short article).  It doesn’t matter how much culture sticks its fingers in its ears, the evidence for the historical reliability of the Bible is weighty and convincing (cf., e.g., K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, C. L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament). 

The irony is that, the more Apple grows in feeding the religious impulses of the masses, the more it will fail in increasing measure at providing what only True Religion gives--peace, forgiveness, wholeness, social justice, global restoration, freedom from shame and guilt.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."  -Revelation 21:1-4



Worship as a Cross to Bear: John Wesley’s Anti-Consumeristic Approach

The following is part of a series of blog posts dedicated to exploring John Wesley’s Rules for Singing.

1. Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up and you will find a blessing.

For every Sunday that I have led worship; for every special event where I have led congregational singing, there is always at least one person (but usually a measurable percentage, such as 5-10%) who refuses to sing, and stares at me or the band or the screen.  Their look almost always communicates one of four things—boredom, distraction, disgust, or anger.

The following reasons are the “usuals” that I’ve heard:

• They refuse to sing because it is a certain style
• They refuse to sing because they don’t know the song
• They refuse to sing because the song is too hard to sing
• They refuse to sing because they dislike congregational singing
• They refuse to sing because they believe they have a bad voice
• They refuse to sing because they don’t consider themselves a follower of Jesus and don’t want to give lip service to praising Him (in my opinion, ironically, this is the most honorable reason).

There are more, but these are the biggies.  Wesley has some important words to speak to the matter.  First, we must admit that his words seem very forward and maybe even offensive: “Who are YOU to tell ME how and when to sing with the congregation?  That’s MY choice!”  The individualism and idolatry of self had not yet wrapped its gnarly fingers around the neck of America when Wesley was writing this.  (But obviously something was going on which was significant enough for Wesley to put it into his rules…and put it first, at that.)  Why would Wesley demand that we “sing all”?  Because there are many reasons why it’s tempting not to.  Notice the word “tempting”?  Yes, the enemy takes pleasure out of robbing God of the worship He is due, and all our many “reasons” play right into his hands.  Wesley was aware of this.

Second, Wesley points out another worship-robbing idol: our own comfort.  The fact that, for some, to sing may be a “cross to bear” insinuates that it is still a worthwhile endeavor despite its difficulty.  In fact, it is a way that we become more like Christ.  For the person who says, “I just don’t like singing…I don’t get a lot out of it.”  Wesley’s answer is, “It’s not about you. Deny yourself and take up your cross.”  What a different approach to worship!  Worship (specifically singing) is not a product to be consumed by some and left on the shelf by others.  It is something we all must do, even if it means it is at times (or permanently) difficult for us.