Find You In the Seeking

Love this song. Love this group!  'Oh How I Need You.'  by All Sons & Daughters:

HT: Dane Ortlund 

A Missional Solution to the Worship Wars

Has your church been through the "worship wars?" You know, controversies over music styles and service order, usually generational in nature. Here's a concept - Making those decisions based on mission not consumerism. From Ed Stetzer:

...After a few years of "worship wars," many churches decided to create multiple services based primarily on worship styles or worship preferences. As a result, the "Traditional Service," which normally had the backing of the older members (often with those who gave most of the financial support to the church), got the coveted 11:00 AM time slot, while the younger members (with little children) had to drag themselves and their half-dressed, unfed kids to church by 8:00 AM or earlier in some cases.

Over time, this changed and many now have the traditional service early, as it did (generally) experience the growth of a contemporary.

Often times, this was not a change flowing from a missional strategy, but rather one dictated by the consumeristic mindset of the church—we have to keep the customers happy. And, the problem is that it has often proven impossible for us to constantly feed our own preferences and have any appetite left to help the actual needs of those outside the satisfied family.

So, let me start by saying that a church should not be blackmailed into adding worship services by anyone in the congregation. I am not OK with older members saying, "Listen, we want this music and we pay all the bills. We'll let you go have your contemporary service, but we want you to pander to us." Nor am I OK with all the young people saying, "You know, I'm tired of those hymns; we want something cool and hip. If not, we're leaving." Preference pandering only further engrains consumerism in the church.Often times, this was not a change flowing from a missional strategy, but rather one dictated by the consumeristic mindset of the church—we have to keep the customers happy. And, the problem is that it has often proven impossible for us to constantly feed our own preferences and have any appetite left to help the actual needs of those outside the satisfied family...
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.....The wrong question to ask is "What type of music do I like?" That's finding satisfaction in the style and not the Savior.

The right question, the right starting point, is to ask, "What form of music would best suit our context?"

And, if that takes more than one expression, that's OK....

Much more at the link.

Singing The Stubborn Song

Love this! -"Our Holy, Stubborn Song" by Gloria Furman at the Desiring God site:

There’s something stubborn about singing praise to God.

We live in a fallen world. Things are not as they ought to be. How can our mouths be filled with praise in the midst of so much darkness?

Yet we sing.

We sing because we once followed the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), but now the King has died for us and delivered us from the present evil age (Galatians 1:4).

We sing because “we know that we are from God,” even though “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).

We sing because our King chose us out of the world (John 15:19), and his grace is “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12).

Paul and Silas were beaten for their faith and thrown in jail. And there, in the darkness, they sang (Acts 16:25). Then a great earthquake shook the jail like a great bass drum reverberates through sound waves and shakes your heart.

The foundations of the church building may not shake when you sing, but the battle cry of love ripples through eternity and is heard by an unseen audience.

Overflowing Hearts

As someone who can hardly carry a tune in a bucket, it helps me to remember what our associate pastor often says about our congregational singing. In his Sydney accent he says, “We’re singing to God, yes, but we are also singing truth to each other.”

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

We are a people stubbornly fixed on the things that are unseen. The world sees affliction as evidence that our God is silent or absent. The prince of the power of the air imagines that he is gaining ground that belongs to Christ. But we hold fast to what God’s word says,

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17–18)

C. S. Lewis once described the Church as “through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners” (Screwtape Letters).

Keith Getty and Stuart Townend called the church, “An army bold whose battle cry is ‘Love!’ / Reaching out to those in darkness” (O Church Arise).

Singing Loud

Maybe Buddy the Elf was on to something when he said, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.”

We are spreading the news that death will be swallowed up forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth, for the Lᴏʀᴅ has spoken (Isaiah 25:8). The mouth of the Lᴏʀᴅ has spoken it, and we sing it loud for all to hear.

Terrible as an army with banners, we’re a singing people on our way to the city that is to come (Hebrews 13:14).

May others hear our holy, stubborn song and join along.

A Danger for Worship Leaders

I read a very good article this week by Zack Hicks, worship leader at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (Where Tullian Tchividjian pastors). The title is A Reason to Be Suspicious of Worship Bands.

Hicks begins by quoting a passage from a book from the mid-1960's by Jean-Jacques von Allmen about misuse of choirs in public worship. He points out that everything said in that passage about choirs is very relevant today if you substitute "worship band" for choir.

...You and I live in a cultural age where the faithful are "increasingly reluctant to commit themselves to liturgical life," where worship is ever in danger of becoming a commodity of branded consumer goods. The warning von Allmen gives here is that what we do "up there on stage," whether we're a choir or a worship band, can contribute to and encourage the passivity toward which many folks are already inclined to lean. "I just want to soak in the great music." "Man, she has a great voice!" "Wow, that was a ripping electric solo!"

As worship leaders, we must tune ourselves to become hyper-sensitive to anything that discourages the active participation of the people of God in the songs, prayers, and actions of the worship service, and sometimes the performancism of it all--whether lit-stage, rock-band-led or organ-and-choir-led--can be a major deterrent. Von Allmen exposes what's at stake. To put it directly, we put ourselves in the place of Jesus, the only mediator between God and humanity (1 Tim 2:5). That's what von Allmen was getting at when he said that those up front can unknowingly become the "vicarious representative" of worship for the people....

Read it all at the link.

A Measure of Praise

Those brilliant folks at Apple just keep on inventing cool stuff....

From: The Sacred Sandwich