Category Archives: General Christian Worship
More from NT Wright
On Worship:
To enjoy worship for its own sake, or simply out of a cultural appreciation of the ‘performance’ (whether Byrd or heavy rock), would be like Moses coming upon a burning bush and deciding to cook his lunch on it.
NT Wright
For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church, p. 74.
NT Wright on the Trinity
In his book, For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church, NT Wright remarks on the Trinity:
[W]hen you stand in front of this picture [the doctrine of the Trinity], the picture not of a strait-laced doctrine but of the humanized God, you realize, with Isaiah, that all geography, politics, religion, and astronomy is like so much stubble, like a bunch of twittering grasshoppers.
See more at Google Books.
Preparation for Worship Course
This winter, I’ll be teaching an Introduction to Christian Worship course at Christ the King. Below is my tentative course outline. I’m open for revisions, additions and/or subtractions. I’d appreciate any thoughts that anyone has.
(I’m especially looking for a better course title than “Intro to Christian Worship.”)
February 16
What is Worship?
Foundations for Christian Worship
Individual vs. Corporate Worship
February 23
Common Conceptions for Worship (Classroom, Temple, Variety Show, etc.)
Paradigm for Christian Worship (Hebrews 12)
March 2
No Class
Home Assignment – Read a paper by Richard Pratt on the Regulative Principle
Online Lesson
Worship the Way that God Wants (Regulative Principle explained and applied)
Elements of Worship
March 9
Spirit-Filled Worship (John 4)
The Role of Holy Spirit – the Worship Leader
Sacraments
The defining sound
John Piper comments on Michael Raiter’s article The Slow Death of Congregational Singing:
Thirteen years ago we asked: What should be the defining sound of corporate worship at Bethlehem, besides the voice of biblical preaching?
We meant: Should it be pipe organ, piano, guitar, drums, choir, worship team, orchestra, etc. The answer we gave was “The people of Bethlehem singing.”
Any music director or church musician or sound engineer or liturgical music composer or worship leader (or combination of the above) who gives a different answer should find a new role. Quickly.
It has nothing to do with what instruments are used or how old (or new) the songs are but has everything to do with understanding what the corporate part of “corporate worship” means. It doesn’t mean even that we’ll always be successful in making the congregation the primary voice of worship but it must be our goal.
Read the entire (brief) post here.
Hype – Getting our adjectives under control
When I was first learning to write in elementary school, I remember learning about parts of speech. There were nouns – persons, places, things or ideas; verbs – action words; and adjectives – words that describe. Adjectives were the parts of language that made everything more vivid; you didn’t technically have to have them but they added new dimensions to communication.
In thinking about hype, one of the ways that we allow hype to get into our churches is in the adjectives we use. I’m as guilty of it as anyone else. We have exciting new ministries. We have powerful worship services. We have creative, inspiring, and insightful sermons. We have life-changing songs. Really? Really?
It’s part of the continual push to be newer and better. We might not believe it, but with our rhetoric we’re saying: “Those old ministries are passé, check out these new exciting ministries!” “Those old churches are staid and boring, we’re relevant!” And even if it were true, even if the new things were ten-times more exciting and creative, it doesn’t do us much good in the long run anyway. Why? Because the only people who really care if things are that much more exciting are Christians who already go to other houses of worship who want to be a part of the newest, the latest, the greatest thing.
It’s just too much.
What if we saved the word exciting for things that are truly exciting like the Gospel or a new church being planted or someone returning to the church after years away or a baptism or a first communion? That’s exciting. It is exciting to know that my sins, though they are countless, are not counted against me. It is exciting to know that the Holy Spirit is active in my life, uniting me to Christ. It is exciting to see hearts that were once dead in sin like mine made alive in Christ. The Gospel should be what truly excites us – not a bunch of promotional junk surrounding yet another church program.
The greatest singer in rock and roll
Would have to be Romeo
His vocal chords are made of gold
He just looks a little too oldWilco, “The Late Greats”
I pray that my church (and I) would never get to the point that the Gospel just “looks a little too old”.
Why Psalms and Hymns (and not the third category)?
I would imagine that everyone who knows the biblical reference where “Psalms and Hymns” comes from asks the same question.
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
Colossians 3:16 (TNIV)
“What about the third category? What about the spiritual songs?”
That’s a great question.
The short answer is that I think that there are enough spiritual songs out there and that the other two categories are neglected (especially the psalms). There are also side issues of simply wanting to write music and not spend hours fine-tuning lyrics when there are perfectly good lyrics out there.
The long answer is that I started writing when I was in college. Every week, I was learning new music. (Or, to put it more accurately, I was playing along with unknown music and figuring it out as I went along. That was a pretty harrowing experience! Thankfully, all of the music was fairly predictable.) There was such a drive for the latest expression of worship, the freshest tune, the newest lyric, that I got burnt out on it all. This isn’t to say that I wasn’t involved with some fine people who were doing a great job leading several hundred college students each week. It was just that the continual drive for what’s new forced me to stop and take a look at what’s old.
What I discovered was a treasury of incredible lyrics that my peers had all but forgotten. Here were words that were not captive to the latest pop metaphors for God but were rich and full of meaning. I found lyrics that had withstood the test of time and were rightfully called “the great hymns of the faith”. (Of course, there are some truly wretched old hymns, just like there are some fantastic spiritual songs being written today. One isn’t better than the other based upon its genre, necessarily. The content is the standard by which it should be judged.)
I found great hymns with some great tunes but also some great hymns with lesser tunes. Different musical settings of the same text can be wonderful counterparts to each other, as long as they both faithfully represent the content of the text. It’s like looking at a diamond from many different perspectives or like reading the bible in several different translations. They all add to each other. “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” is a fabulous hymn whether it’s sung to “Hamburg” or “Gift of Love” (but not when it’s sung to the tune of “Green Acres”). So I began trying to compose tunes that would accurately reflect the content of hymn texts with a musical vocabulary that was more common to my peers.
For centuries, Christians not only sang hymns, but they also had settings of the Psalms to sing (the Psalter). I can’t possibly write everything there is to write on the use of the Psalms right now, but I’ll leave with an observation that we have all but forgotten the Psalms in public worship and it’s to our detriment.
God has given us the gift of music and he has given us a song to sing. Psalms and hymns allow us to sing the same song as the saints of old – the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs and all who have gone before us. We sing along with the “living faith of the dead” (as Jaroslav Pelikan has written) and join in the thunderous chorus praising:
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
Luke 2:14 (TNIV)
Note: This was a post that I originally wrote on January 28, 2006 but haven’t posted until now. My thoughts on the subject have changed a little but I still agree with the main thrust of what I wrote. Today, I would only qualify that we be vigilant in rejecting any romanticization of the past, thinking that older lyrics (and older theology) must necessarily be better than more modern expressions. We must always be returning to the scriptures as our source for life and our vocabulary for worshiping the living God.