Historic Faith in Timely Forms

I have mused over this concept for a few years now. Ever since I helped out with a church plant wanting to launch a “liturgical” service, this has been a persistent question.

It seems that most of the questions or pushback I have encountered on matters pertaining to worship have to do with what I would call “historical expressions” of worship, not the fundamentals of worship. When we launched the liturgical service, most people assumed this meant that we would be abandoning the projector screens in favor of a printed bulletin.

My question to them was always, “Why?”

What difference would it make if we read a Confession of Sin, or the Nicene Creed, from a stapled collection of papers we hold, or off a screen that’s on the wall in front of us?

Is it the appearance of a video screen and projector that gets in the way of anchoring the “spiritual act of worship” in a corporate setting to our historic Christian faith?

Why should we favor a technology with a born on date of the 15th century (printing press) over one with a 20th century date (video projector)?

The fundamentals of what we do in worship is the same, but it’s the forms that we often get hung up over.

Across continents and centuries, the Christian church gathers to worship a holy and gracious God, who calls us to worship, confronts us with our sin, assures us of His grace and forgiveness in Christ, forms us into a community being fashioned by the preaching and receiving of His word (sermon and sacrament), and then unleashing us back into the world to be His people, in His world, for His glory. These are the fundamentals of any worship service. This is the liturgy.

As I think through my own personal take and philosophy on this, here’s what I’ve come to a conclusion about:

As a church, we want to be anchored to the rich history and tradition of the Christian faith without being overly-fixed to any one instance of it’s historical expression.

In other words, a “hymn” is not preferable to a “praise chorus” simply by the date of origin, but by it’s theological content and artistic expression. Hymnals (songs bound in books) are no better than projection screens by virtue of their antiquity, as both are relatively modern technologies (one being born in the 15th century vs. the 20th).

The question I want us to ask and wrestle with as a church is, “How can we celebrate and join in the historic nature and fundamentals of the Christian faith, without being limited to any particular, historic expression or form, of the Christian faith?”

What happens when prayer requests and acceptable sins go beneath the socially recognized surface?

Stained glass at St John the Baptist’s Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales. Illustrates Jesus’ description of himself “I am the Good Shepherd” (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). This version of the image shows the detail of his face. The memorial window is also captioned: “To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of William Wright. Died 6th November, 1932. Aged 70 Yrs.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wonder what would happen in my life, and the life of those in the church, if we really believed that God knows everything about us and our sins, and still loved us enough to send His Son to die for those sins? And what if He really did love us enough after that to also send us His Spirit to be free to struggle with those sins, and gave us the gift of community to help us bear up under that struggle without having to fake, hide or pretend we’re anything other than redeemed men and women?

Saw this posing by a friend on Facebook (HT: Jeff Kerr) and thought it worth re-posting here for further discussion:

In a discussion elsewhere on the interwebs, I saw this statement. I think this gets directly to the heart of why most Christians in most contexts are afraid of confessing anything beyond “disorganization” and the like:

“I visited a Mom’s Bible study at a friend’s church years ago. When it was time for prayer requests, all the other moms said, “better time management” and “get organized”. This was met with understanding clucks and nods from the other moms. When it was my turn I said, “I yell at my kids.” I got a lecture about how wrong and damaging yelling was and how concerned the leader was that I would start “hurting my kids.” There was a moralistic lecture because there was no possibility of repentence and forgiveness.

Here’s what I’ve thought since then: Since grace is so cheap these days, our sin isn’t allowed to be very bad. That leads to confessing things like disorganization. Jesus’ blood can cover that one. But REALLY bad things? There’s no cure for them, so let’s not bring them up.”

via (5) In a discussion….

» The Affection of Christ Alone Keller Quotes

» The Affection of Christ Alone Keller Quotes.

This is a great one from Tim Keller.  Enjoy!

Thoughts on Worship

“Welcome, one and all to this mornings worship at _____________ church.  We’re so glad you’re here.”

These are the words you may here at any given church on a Sunday morning.  For the most part we are so used to hearing them in connection with church that we simply let them glaze over our minds as we begin a church service.  I would be willing to bet that most of us tend to think more in terms of “going to church” than we do “going to worship”.  But worship is the activity of the church, and not a mere add-on to the church.

So, what is worship?

We usually evaluate and critique worship in light of our personal preferences or emotional responses to the stimuli that is worship.  But we rarely if ever consider worship to be a verb – something that we do!  It is more something to be consumed and critiqued than actively engaged with our full participation.

Why?  Where does this come from?

It seems that our worship expressions and expectations are conditioned more by our culture than on Scripture and more influenced by TV and media than truth and tradition.

That’s a loaded word – tradition – but it is a viable aspect of our worship.  No matter where you stand on any spectrum, you come to anything with a “tradition”  – a story that has led you up to this point.

Some people come from a formal church tradition such as Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, where worship reflected a strong stand on history, usually at the neglect and expense of innovation.  I would call this “traditionalism” – where everything we do is based on the way we’ve done things in the past, rather than careful reflection on the historic applications in light of contemporary audiences.

There are others of us who come to church and worship with no formal background, yet, we find ourselves shaped by suspicion of any and all authority structures (e.g. “traditionalism”). Our tradition is “skepticism”, and the burden of proof lies on everyone else to convince us that what is being said, taught, instructed or done is really “true” and the way it should be, and that I should do anything about it.

Both ends of this spectrum represent a fallacy to worship.  In both instances, worship is something that is done for me, rather than something that is done for God, and subsequently our benefit.

If worship is to be truly biblical, faithful to the tradition of the Bible and rooted in history to Christ’s church, and engaging His church in the world today, then it must be, what one author calls, “a royal ‘waste’ of time,”[1] where God is both the subject and the object of our worship, where we spend ourselves in the splendor of our great creator and covenant keeping King, and where we delight our selves in, and subject our emotions to, the full-hearted devotion to His Son that His Spirit enables.

Worship then is the engagement of our whole being in faithful service as the right response to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is after all what Paul the apostle says after making perhaps his greatest theological understanding of God and the gospel in Romans 1-11

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)

What does God-centered worship mean and what are its implications?

Put simply, worship that is God-centered is worship that revolves around and proceeds from God, not any human ingenuity, program, paradigm or plan.  It keeps and maintains that the highest end and the compelling reason to worship is God Himself – responding to who He is and what He has done.

So what then are the implications of God-centered worship?  I think Marva Dawn, in her

A Royal Waste of Time by Marva Dawn

book A Royal “Waste” of Time has several insights in the following quote I have found helpful in thinking along these lines; she writes:

I think our churches need to do much deeper thinking about what it means to worship God, what it means to nurture and to live the life of faith, what it means to be a Christian community that offers alternatives to the world, and how we can best reach out to our neighbors with the gospel and in service to them.  In order to do all that we have to stop asking which style of music to use and ask instead what will help us keep God at the center.[2]

God-centered worship has then the following implications:

1. God honoring
2. Character developing
3. Alternative-community forming
4. Mission equipping
5. Kingdom extending

These are implications rather then characteristics[3].  What I mean is that when our worship of God has Him as the subject and object, when He is the center of our worship, it will honor God in His worthiness and glory over the world, develop our character as His people following after Jesus in the world, form our corporate life into an alternate community within the world, equip us for our mission to participate in God’s saving, restoring gospel work to the world, and extend His reign and rule throughout the world.

These are the results we should see and expect when we have God as the center of our worship.

---

[1] Marva Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; 1999).

[2] Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time, 152.

[3] Characteristics of worship, as I see them are: God-Directed, Christ-Centered, Spirit-Enabled, Christian-Oriented, Seeker-Sensible.

Sometimes God seems to be killing us

“Something is safe for us to maintain in our lives only if it has really stopped being an idol.  That can happen only when we are truly willing to live without it, when we truly say from the heart: ‘Because I have God, I can live without you.’…Sometimes God seems to be killing us when he’s actually saving us.”

– Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods:The Empty Promises of Money, Sex and Power,  and the Only Hope that Matters

 

Below, you’ll find a short video of Keller explaining why he wrote the book in the first place.  Enjoy!

Best Christmas Album

My pick for the best Christmas album is hands down, Jennifer Daniels’ A Thrill of Hope.

If you have never heard of Jennifer Daniels before, you’re missing out. She packs all of her songs with hints of the beauty of what could be with the emotional integrity to deal with things as they are. This Christmas EP is no exception.

Do yourself a favor, click on the link, download the album from Amazon MP3. You won’t regret it.

Worship Reflection 3 – Liturgical and Contemporary

Traditional Faithfulness or Contemporary Relevance.  Which is better for the church?

This is an interesting question.  It is also a false dichotomy.  It assumes that worship cannot be both.  I argue that it in fact should be both.  I argue this because we are in danger of the sin of self-righteous elitism if we pit one over against the other.

Worship that is pleasing to God is worship that is rooted and growing out of the church’s historic and catholic  roots, yet situated in its present contemporary context and sensible in the culture the church finds herself.  Below I highlight eight presuppositions – eight principles – that provide a foundation for the process of designing a liturgical worship service in a 21st century expression of the church.

1.    Liturgical does not mean Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, or any other formal denominationally set form of corporate worship.  Its broader than any of these individually.

2.    Liturgical does not mean “Traditional”. It incorporates traditional elements, but cannot be defined or explained simply by referring to traditional aspects of corporate worship.  Every element was at some point contemporary – so to stick too closely to any one tradition is it succumb to traditionalism, not biblical faithfulness in a cultural context.

3.    Liturgical does not mean any one certain “style” of music and lyrics. This can actually be sin on either side of the spectrum.  If we opt for only “old words” to “old tunes”, or the converse, “new words” to “new tunes”, we practice idolatry in the form of cultural elitism.  There is much validity to critique of much contemporary music – especially that which passes for contemporary worship songs of praise; but the answer is not to go to “old lyrics/tunes” exclusively, but to labor to find, perhaps even write, new songs that convey the same ancient truth the church has historically sung.

4.    Liturgical means, “work of the people” (literal translation). This means that liturgical worship is best explained and described as God’s people responding to God’s initiation.  For some there is close connection to “covenant renewal” occurring every week within corporate worship.  At the least, liturgical worship is a corporate re-enactment and engagement with the drama of redemption, incorporating the dual movements of God’s initiation and provision and His people’s response and praise.
5.    Liturgical worship is rooted in history and connected in catholicity. When we say “history”, we need to include the history conveyed in the Bible as well as church history.  The church stands in a line that extends all the way back to Adam in the garden.  The people of God have existed since this time and have carried on through to today.  So we look across this spectrum, not just at any one distinct point.  It also branches out to include all the saints – those who profess and live under Christ’s lordship – spread out over the world and across time.  There may be particular expressions, but the church is a universal body, which incorporates with in it all the biblically based, God-honoring, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered churches of the world.
6.    Liturgical worship includes the 21st century church. This links back to the premise that it is more than “traditionalism”, but it needs to be emphasized more clearly.  To say that the church is rooted in history is not the same thing as saying that the church only looks backwards in history for its credible expressions.  The church exists along a continuum of history of which its current setting and cultural context is a part.  We therefore need to labor to learn from the historical applications of worship and incorporate them into our current setting.
7.    Liturgical worship does not mean “technology free”. To say that one prefers worship that is void of technological impediments is to assume that the church has preferred to avoid technological advances.  If that were the case, what’s the point in forgoing an overhead projector screen for the use of paper bulletins, pamphlets or even hymnals – all of which are products of the technological advances of the 16th century printing press?  By making hard claims that we don’t need certain technologies, yet adopting others, is a misnomer, and needs to be carefully articulated as to what it is we are aiming to accomplish and why.  The church has always used technology, and therefore, we shouldn’t be hesitant to use the technology available to us, as long as it best serves the purposes of our corporate worship together.
8.    Liturgical worship is corporate worship that takes the shape of gospel re-enactment. This means that the basic structure of the corporate worship service is one of God’s call to worship, man’s dilemma of sin and God’s assurance of deliverance and pardon, God speaks to man through the grace of His word, and man’s response to God’s gracious initiation.  To say it another way, corporate worship should follow the drama of redemption – Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation.

Reflections on Worship (Part 1) – What is worship?

This post will be part 1 of what will be a series of reflections on worship.  Writing helps me process my thoughts, and it is also helpful to hear and receive feedback.  So feel free to critique, question, suggest and agree with any of what follows.

What is worship?

We usually evaluate and critique worship in light of our personal preferences or emotional responses to the stimuli that is worship.  But we rarely if ever consider worship to be a verb – something that we do!  It is more something to be consumed and critiqued than actively engaged with our full participation.

Why?  Where does this come from?

It seems that our worship expressions and expectations are conditioned more by our culture than on Scripture and more influenced by TV and media than truth and tradition.

That’s a loaded word – tradition – but it is a viable aspect of our worship.  No matter where you stand on any spectrum, you come to anything with a “tradition”  – a story that has led you up to this point.

Some people come from a formal church tradition such as Presbyterianism, Methodism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, where worship reflected a strong stand on history, usually at the neglect and expense of innovation.  I would call this “traditionalism” – where everything we do is based on the way we’ve done things in the past, rather than careful reflection on the historic applications in light of contemporary audiences.

There are others of us who come to church and worship with no formal background, yet, we find ourselves shaped by suspicion of any and all authority structures (e.g. “traditionalism”). Our tradition is “skepticism”, and the burden of proof lies on everyone else to convince us that what is being said, taught, instructed or done is really “true” and the way it should be, and that I should do anything about it.

Both ends of this spectrum represent a fallacy to worship.  In both instances, worship is something that is done for me, rather than something that is done for God.

If worship is to be truly biblical, faithful to the tradition of the Bible and rooted in history to Christ’s church, and engaging His church in the world today, then it must be, what one author calls, “a royal ‘waste’ of time,” (Marva Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; 1999]), where God is both the subject and the object of our worship, where we spend ourselves in the splendor of our great creator and covenant keeping King, and where we delight our selves in, and subject our emotions to, the full-hearted devotion to His Son that His Spirit enables.

Worship then is the engagement of our whole being in faithful service to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Thoughts on Thursday: Prodigal Worship leads to Extravagant Care

This quote comes from Marva Dawn in her book, A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World. Here it is:

It may seem stange ot begin with observations concerning the fulture, but if we think about all that God is, we recognize the immesnity of his love for the world.  If by our worship we want to immerse our neighbors in the lavish splendor of God, then we must understand them more deeply than we often do.  Many of the bad decisions that are made about worship touch only the surface needs of our socitey and not hte hiden influences or powerful forces that make true worship both difficult and essential.

If we understand the genuine needs of our neighbors, we will see that the best gift we could offer them is our faithfulness in royally wasting our time in worship.  To be immersed in the prodigal splendor of God will lead us, in turn, to lavish extravagant care of the world.

Great Art and Transcendent Beauty

Sigur Ros – GlósóliThis is what music and art is supposed to do. Capture beauty and imagination in a way that transcends words (at least words we readily understand).After watching this, I can’t think of how to describe this song or this band. I admit, I teared up (a little). A friend mentioned this video to me last night and he expressed this question, “What would it be like for some of our corporate worship as the church to capture some of this same sense of awe, wonder, and beauty that Sigur Ros elicits with their music, and this video wonderfully captures?”I have not got the first clue how to answer that question…but I want to ponder it. Until then, enjoy, and listen to more Sigur Ros!