Good thoughts from Linguamish blog
The primary consideration when leading others in worship is that we are creatures of habit. Singing doesn’t come easily for many people and mastering new melodies and lyrics is a complex task. This is very hard for me personally to keep in mind because I am a person that hates doing the same thing twice. For that reason I have a hard time singing a song over and over again. As much as I like songs like Ancient of Days or Lord, I lift your name on high, I can hardly bring myself to sing them since they have been repeated so many thousands of times before. But I’m the weird one. Most people love the same songs over and over again. It is comforting to sing a pleasing melody with words you know. That’s why I’m convinced that most people are imprinted by the songs that they heard when they originally were exposed to Christianity and nothing else ever quite matches up.
What is ironic and a bit sad is that as Christians the primary consideration I mentioned above is centered on us and not God. And furthermore it is limited to singing. To worship is to focus on God and so we should not be focusing on what makes us comfortable but in what exalts God.
The New Testament Scriptures are primarily concerned with prayer and not worship. Prayer is mentioned twice as often as worship in the Gospels and the New Testament as a whole.
According to the model given us by Jesus, prayer first acknowledges the proximity of God, that’s why he is called our Father. Second, God is identified as being in heaven. Third, we exalt him, hallowed be Thy name. Those three elements are essential to me in helping orient our worship of God. In essence we are acknowledging his proximity and also his distance. Then, crucially, we don’t try to bring him down to our level, but rather we proclaim him as exalted.
Almost every error in our relation to God can be found within those three elements:
Our Father: We can fail to recognize that God is personally involved in our lives. This is often called deism.
Who art in heaven: Or we can fail to recognize the one true God who rules the universe. This is a form of idolatry, creating a god in the image of our choice and then worshipping that image.
Hallowed be Thy name: Finally, we can focus on ourselves rather than on proclaiming his glory.
Let me close with the Evening Collect for Wednesday taken from Celebrating Common Prayer. The prayers in the Book of Common Prayer often typify the three characteristics I’ve been talking about:
Evening Collect for Wednesday
Almighty God in Christ you make all things new.
Transform the poverty of our nature
by the riches of your grace
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your heavenly glory
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
A prayer like that makes me want to sing! But more importantly it serves as an inspiration for my own praises.
I’m beginning to see that my challenge as a songwriter is not primarily about inventing melodies and lyrics but in exalting God through prayer. Flowing out of a deep relationship with our Father in heaven, lyrics will be directed toward him rather than trying to “lead” others in worship.
Filed under: Worship
A Life of Praise
Stephen M. Newman
When we look at worship, many of us see it as something we are to do once a week. For others it has become a daily part of our lives. When we look at the element of praise, the Bible is very clear on when and how we are to praise God. It is a very simple directive for the believer:
1. All the time
2. With everything you are
3. With a joyful heart
When we throw around the phrase “a sacrifice of praise,” do we really know what we are saying?. Hebrews 13:15 states that we are to, “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name”.
First, continually means continually. That means all the time…non-stop. Second, continually means continually.
Psalm 34:1 says, “I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.”
Again, this is all the time…24/7. Is that what God meant? Does He expect us to spend all our time praising Him?
Psalms 103:1 says, “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name”.
“All my inmost being”. God doesn’t want a flippant offering of praise as we are walking into the church or as it crosses our minds. He wants everything that is in us to praise His name. He desires wholehearted praise from deep with us that is not inhibited by others. Too often we offer up praise that is not from our hearts. We voice it as if we were talking to a friend on the phone. Praise is a serious thing to God. Heaven is filled with it. He says that He is enthroned in the midst of it. Psalm 22:3 He even named the tribe to which Jesus would come out of “Judah” which means “praise”.
And lastly, we are to do it with joy. Psalm 9:2 says, “I will be glad and rejoice in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High”. Psalm 33:1 states, “Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him”.
How is this possible? You mean when I praise, I have to do it all the time, with all that I am, and joyfully as well? That’s a tall order to say the least. We have to remember, this is a God thing. When we accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior it was a serious decision. It can be compared to living in a place where Kings rule. We are to be totally loyal to the king. Our lives are to be submitted to his direction and will. We are subject to his authority. Those of us that live in the US have become soft in our understanding of what this means. We sit back and enjoy the good life when we are called to be servants…of God and man. We praise ourselves and others more than we do God.
I challenge you to take a look at your life as a child of God and as one who is called to be a worshiper of God. If we keep things in perspective, if we truly keep God first in our lives, the natural outflow will be a life filled with praise. Praise seems to be important to God. It should be important to us. Give Him praise merely for who He is and the rest will follow. He is worthy to receive our praise all the time, with a joyful heart, and with all we are.
Sing What You Mean
| by Terri Pettyjohn |
When do we stop singing phrases and begin to offer praise? There is an old hymn that says, “I’ll go where you want me to go”. How many Christians would never think about stooping to lying, but by singing words without meaning them, have lied? Not only do we mean we won’t go to the mission field, but we sure won’t go anywhere that is not in our dayplanner. But, when we close our eyes and shut the world out something begins to happen to our hearts and minds and what we are singing becomes our praise to Him, it is no longer vague and impersonal, it is our conversation with God at this special moment. When we sing the words of adoration to our God, make them the prayer of your heart. Be careful not to sing what you wouldn’t speak with your mouth. The Bible says that someday we must give account for every word we’ve spoken, so make sure your mouth and your heart are in sync before you sing what you don’t mean.
Matthew 12:36 “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.”
Worship – A Daily Thing
Terri Pettyjohn, Experiencing God website
I’ve come to the conclusion that it is almost impossible to come to church on Sunday morning and have a meaningful worship experience if I haven’t worshipped during the week in my own time with God.
It’s like the little child who comes to a birthday party expecting to be the honored guest, everything revolves around them for that moment. How many times have we been that little child when it comes to our worship on Sunday? “Tada, I’m here!”.
I can almost see God shaking His head wondering why we can’t get it right. The party isn’t about us, it’s about Him and all He’s done for us. There would be no reason to celebrate had there not been a cross, I’m not worthy to be at His party except for the blood that washed me clean and lets me stand in His presence. Try worshipping for seven days by yourself and then coming to church to worship with other Christians, you’ll never view worship the same again.
John 4:23 “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
The Central Component of Worship
From IsaiahXI site
Within the Christian Church there are many examples of liturgically-structured and less-structured types of worship. Most faith traditions include music, prayer, the observance of the Lord’s Supper, baptism, Scripture reading and homiletics/preaching. Others add to these forms drama, interpretive movement and visual arts. My point is not to enter into a debate between the regulative and normative principles of worship and whether or not these elements should be included in worship. My aim is to discuss the theological content of these elements if they are included in worship.
A common belief within the Church, especially the evangelical Church, is that the purpose of each form of worship is to prepare the congregation to hear and respond to the sermon delivered by the preacher. When I was growing up, we called the worship service “preaching.” “Mommy, are we going to preaching today?” I have not heard that use of the word in many years, although I have no doubt it is still around. Statements such as this one assume that the sermon is the central and only necessary component of any worship service, that everything else is perfunctory and unintentionally sets the sermon on a level equal to Scripture.
Is the belief that preaching is the central part of any worship service a biblical one? I have not found any scriptural support for such a belief. In fact, the Bible commands us at various points to include other elements in our worship, including singing, prayer and exhortation. Too, the goal of preaching, as I understand it, is to exegete and disseminate the Word of God in such a way that the people of God internalize it and apply it to their lives. Haddon W. Robinson defines the word “preach†in hisBiblical Preaching. “Preach means ‘to cry out, herald, exhort‘” (emphasis in original).(1) In his article ”The Preacher and the Text: What Is the Goal of the Message?“ Aaron Menikoff argues well that the ultimate goal in preaching is “to make much of the sovereign, holy, gracious, loving, unchanging Lord.”(2) Preaching, however, is not the only way these goals can be accomplished. In fact, it is imperative that the other forms of worship accomplish these goals as well.
While preaching is an integral part of corporate worship, it is not the central aspect of worship. If there were to be no preaching during any given worship service, God could be glorified by other forms, assuming those forms were grounded in Scripture and worship could still take place. Neither is music the central component of worship; if music were omitted from a worship service, the people of God would still be able to worship. In general, however, both of these forms — and others that might be included from time to time — serve to point the people of God to the Word, written and Living. Their inclusion in worship is to the great benefit of the Kingdom.
Each form of worship mentioned above falls into one of two categories: the Pure Word and the Interpreted Word.
The reading of scripture is a deliverance of the Word of God in the purest form available to us (the issues of translation not withstanding). There is no interpretation to it. There is no alteration. It is Scripture, plain and simple.
Prayer is an interactive conversation with God Himself and, like the reading of Scripture, is a pure form of communication with God. The concepts behind the two ordinances, the Lord’s Supper and baptism, are observances of biblical events. One recalls the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and the other recalls the baptism of Jesus Christ and is a public symbol of obedience to Him. Regardless of the methods used to reenact these ordinances—whether passing containers of crackers and individual cups of grape juice or intinction for the Lord’s Supper, or immersion or sprinkling for baptism (these are altogether separately debatable issues) — the concept of each of these forms is a reenactment of the Word, without repackaging or reframing.
The other forms, however — music, drama, visual arts, interpretive movement and preaching — are all ways of reframing the Word of God; each is someone’s interpretation, extrapolation or explanation of the Scriptures.Some of these forms are inherently affective; others are more intellectual. Nevertheless, each of them takes the Word and repackages it for (hopefully) better understanding, internalization and application. Nowhere in Scripture are we told that any of these forms of worship is more important than another.
At the root of all of these forms, whether they consist of the Pure Word or the Interpreted Word, is the Word. The Word of God, not the ways we package the Word, is central to worship. This has tremendous ramifications for those who plan corporate worship. We must ensure that everything we include in a service is founded on solid, biblically-based theology. If any element is theologically weak, it is better left out of the service altogether.
Beginning around the 1960s and 1970s (these dates are admittedly arguable), Christian music began to abdicate its role as a conduit of biblical theology. Songs began to espouse shallow and often inaccurate images of God. Following this trend closely was the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) movement which sought to provide Christian-based music in an entertainment setting as an alternative to other worldly forms of entertainment. While CCM has filled a niche in modern Christianity, those who plan worship began to use music produced by CCM artists as material for worship, a role it was never intended to play and for which it was and is inadequate. Within the last decade, however, a few song-writers have recognized this error and have begun to write theologically-rich material, often using as their lyrics direct quotations from or faithful adaptations of Scripture.
Doctrinally-rich music in the twenty-first century includes music by Sovereign Grace Ministries, Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, each of whom has resisted the temptation to which their predecessors so easily succumbed (and to which many of their contemporaries are guilty of falling), namely writing music that has little to no theological content and is written more for affective expression than intellectual understanding. While Sovereign Grace, Getty and Townend are not the only sources of well-written music, their music is consistently Christ-centered and worthy of consideration for use in corporate worship.
Leaders of worship, both pastors and musicians, have been called to a glorious but weighty task: to point the people of God to the Son of God, through Whom we have unfettered access to the Holy of Holies. The material we include in corporate worship is crucial to the success of our goal. If the material does not point to Christ, we will have failed in our calling. Therefore, we must always carefully examine the material we include in corporate worship to ensure it is theologically rich and accurate. In other words, if any component of worship does not “preach†it does not belong in worship.
Let me make a few disclaimers now:
1) I am NOT directing the content of this post to any individual or group of individuals. I have not had a recent disagreement with anyone on this topic, so this isn’t an attempt to get the last word in a passive-aggressive way.
2) I am NOT saying in this post that preaching is unimportant and/or unnecessary. On the contrary, I am attemtping to set preaching and all other aspects of worship in their proper place, that is as a servant to the Word. To say that I advocate removing preaching from corporate worship services is inaccurate. To say that I am elevating music or any other form of worship above preaching is also a misrepresentation of what I have tried to put forth in this article.
3) I AM saying that whatever is included in corporate worship, whether it is music or drama or preaching, must be grounded in Scripture.
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1 Haddon W. Robinson, Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages, 18.
2 Aaron Menikoff, ”The Preacher and the Text: What Is the Goal of the Message?” [introduction], ( 9Marks, 2006).
A call to worship
Many church services begin with a “call to worship.”
Here are the comments of a worship leader on this topic.
In one sense, we’re telling people to focus all their energies on declaring, magnifying, and savoring the riches of God in Christ through song, prayer, and the Word. But Harold Best makes this insightful observation, in his book, Music Through the Eyes of Faith:
There can only be one call to worship, and this comes at conversion, when in complete repentance we admit to worshiping falsely, trapped by the inversion and enslaved to false gods before whom we have been dying sacrifices. This call to true worship comes but once, not every Sunday, in spite of the repeated calls to worship that begin most liturgies and orders of worship. These should not be labeled calls to worship but calls to continuation of worship. We do not go to church to worship, but, already at worship, we join our brothers and sisters in continuing those actions that should have been going on privately, [as families], or even corporately all week long. (p.147)
My goal as a worship leader is not simply to magnify God at the moment, but to inspire worshipers to spread the sweet aroma of the Savior’s glory in the church and beyond through their everyday words, actions, and choices.
So how do we help people see that worship is more than a meeting? One way is to reference ways other than singing that we can bring praise to God. Serving, giving, and evangelizing, to name a few, are all acts of worship that take place outside a Sunday gathering. Often, at the end of a time of singing, I’ll ask God to help us remember every day the realities we’ve been proclaiming. We might also draw attention to the fact that God doesn’t change when we’re in the midst of challenging times. While acknowledging the struggles, problems, and weaknesses we all deal with, we must remind ourselves that God is a very present help in time of trouble. (Ps. 46:1) God is just as worthy of worship when our car breaks down as He is when we meet on Sunday morning.
We can also choose songs that talk about the moment-by-moment worship in daily life to which God calls us. The hymn “Take My Life” is one example that comes to mind. Finally, those who lead on Sundays can refer to other parts of the meeting as worship. “Let’s continue our worship through our tithes and offerings.” “Let’s prepare our hearts to worship God as we hear His Word proclaimed.” Comments like these help people realize that every act can be done for the glory of God. David Peterson comments:
Church meetings should not be regarded simply as a means to an end — a preparation for worship and witness in everyday life — but as “the focus-point of that whole wider worship which is the continually repeated self-surrender of the Christian in obedience of life.” Engaging with God, p.220
Sundays are not an escape from the world, but an affirmation of our faith and an encouragement to maintain our confidence in Jesus in the midst of an unbelieving world. For God is worthy of worship not only when we gather, but at every moment of time, by every creature in creation, for all eternity. That mindset should be the goal not only of our corporate worship leading, but of our entire lives.
Worship – is it only for the spiritually mature?
Some feel worship services are for only Christians — and for the more spiritual ones at that. So they have “seeker” services for the non-Christian and immature.
Consider these thought-provoking statements from Sally Mogenthaller in Worship Evangelism:
“Why would we want to deny unbelievers access to something that is as potentially life-changing, healing, and beneficial as an experience of true worship? If it is becasue that kind of worship is not happening at our church, we had better admit it and get to work.”
“If, however, the corporate worship in our congregation is an authentic, dynamic, supernatural event, making worship an in-house affair is like locking up the supermarket the day before Thanksgiving! …Worship is the most powerful tool we have for satisfying the hunger of famished, injured souls, for breaking down spiritul strongholds of pride and unbelief, and for ushering in the gift of true joy. How can we refuse it?
“Our whole culture, saved and unsaved, is starving for an extraordinary glimpse of God. Worship is not the only place where that can happen, but it is where one would expect it to happen.” p.84
Saved to Worship
A. W. Tozer
Give to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come before Him. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! –1 Chronicles 16:29
“There is nothing intrinsically wrong with signing a card. It can be a helpful thing so we know who has made inquiry.
But really, my brother or sister, we are brought to God and to faith and to salvation that we might worship and adore Him. We do not come to God that we might be automatic Christians, cookie-cutter Christians, Christians stamped out with a die.
God has provided His salvation that we might be, individually and personally, vibrant children of God, loving God with all our hearts and worshiping Him in the beauty of holiness. “
A. W. Tozer, Whatever Happened to Worship? p. 14
Serving One Another in Worship
by John M. Frame
[In Covenant 4:3 (Mar., 2001), 1-2.]
Tempted by Satan, Jesus quotes from Deut. 6:13, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only” (Matt. 4:10). Our worship is directed to one person only, the one, true God. In that sense, our worship is vertical, not horizontal. We come to the worship services to adore the true God alone, not anything or anyone in the creation.
So some have suggested that in worship we should be so full of thoughts about God that we should pay no attention to the other worshipers. But I think this is wrong. As we worship God, we come, not merely as individuals, but as a congregation, as the people of God. Worship should strengthen our love both to God and to our fellow believers. Scripture readings and sermons remind us regularly of how God’s grace in Christ motivates us to serve one another: “Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16).
Even in the very act of worship, God calls us to serve one another. Hymns, teaching, and other elements of worship “must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor. 14:26). In worship, God does call us to think of one another. We should see that the rich don’t get all the good seats (James 2:1-4). And at communion, we should make sure that no believer is excluded (1 Cor. 11:22-23).
Even at the first Lord’s Supper, the disciples had an argument over who was the greatest (Luke 22:24). Jesus replied that in his kingdom, the greatest is the one who serves others. He himself had served the bread and the wine, as he himself would perform the greatest possible service, the giving of his very life, for his people. Indeed (and this fact boggles the mind), even after Jesus returns in glory, when we partake of the great wedding feast that the Lord’s Supper foreshadows, he will be there as a servant: “he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at table, and will come and wait on them” (Luke 12:37).
So worship is not a time for us to cut ourselves off from one another in order to meditate on God as individuals. At worship, as everywhere else, God calls us to serve him by serving one another. It is a time to pray for one another’s needs. It is a time to look around and see that everybody has a seat, has the bread and wine. It is a time to welcome strangers and explain to them what is going on, to help them find bulletins, bathrooms, nursery facilities. In worship, what we do must be intelligible, so that it will build people up, not confuse them (1 Cor. 14:26). Indeed, even when unbelievers come to our services, they should know that “God is really among you” (1 Cor. 14:25).
So worship has a horizontal dimension, not only a vertical one. Our object of worship is exclusively vertical: our sovereign Father who dwells in heaven. But our concerns are both vertical and horizontal. For we do not worship our Father rightly unless we share his love for human beings made in his image. Jesus says, “by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
You Are What You Worship
“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882
“Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.”
Psalm 115:8 (on manmade gods)
All people worship. Everyone worships and everyone worships all the time. Our lives revolve around ascribing worth and value to things/people. The very fabric of which we are made is woven with this desire to worship.
The bible says that we were created specifically and “specially” (Psalm 139:14; Hebrews 2:7) to ascribe worth and value to the God who made us, giving Him glory above all else (read 1 Chronicles 29:10-13; Romans 11:36; Hebrews 2:10; 1 Peter 4:11; Revelation 4:11).
What happens when we don’t worship God?
We replace Him with something else. It is inescapable –our worship will be given and had. And built into this ineluctable worship “system of being” is the phenomenon that our worship will transform us into that which we glorify. (Any transformation, of course, relates to character not nature.)
Christ’s revelation in John 4 that worship is foremost an activity of the spirit is often misunderstood by those who want “credit” for worship but don’t want to actually “do” any worshiping of God. People with this mode of thinking often say things like “worship God in my own way.” In worshiping God, however, there is no way in getting around exchanging our “own way” for God’s ways.
In fact, true worship by nature is the antedote for spiritual dormancy especially as it relates to Jesus — real worship will not be anything if it is not eventually conspicuous! This is so precisely because worship is a non-stop activity of the heart. So Christ was not nullifying “physical” worship He was expanding, exposing and clarifying it!
If you don’t like who you are becoming; in your thoughts, in your attitudes, in your behaviors then look to see who or what sits on the throne of your thoughts and affections. What is it that most consumes your imaginations? Your job? Finances? Spouse? Children? You? Our imitation of Jesus is refined in the crucible of valuing Him supremely.
