The preacher, himself already deeply stirred to the roots of his own being by the text, will give people a chance to respond to his message often in silent prayer as each person is brought by the Holy Spirit to an appropriate obedience. John Stott
-The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching,
Robinson and Larsen, Zondervan
Currently in our culture, there is an abundance of spirituality (ad nauseum) but sadly a woeful, colossal, neglect and famine of truth. Spirituality today has become the SuperWalmart of religious preferences where you can go anywhere in the store and pretty much get what you want at a good price…and get more of it, too! Honestly, I prefer the regular, non-industrial sized Wal-Mart (my favorite store btw). I get lost in the Super Wal-Mart, frustrated seeing so much of everything when all I want is a little of something. I get easily seduced into wanting what I don’t need that sometimes I behave like the sailors in Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, who were ordered to stuff wax into their ears so they wouldn’t lose their reason or lives to ruin by listening to the immediately pleasing but ultimately fatal song of the Sirens. Their leader, Odysseus, almost went insane by allowing himself to be lashed to the ship’s mast, ‘wax-less’, so he could experience their seductive serenade.
In the religious world, there has been a seductive serenade sung for centuries and is still on the top 40’s charts of pop religion. It’s the whole notion that truly enlightened thinkers abandon the archaic and faulty presuppositions of Christ as presented in the Bible, and instead to evolve to the more sophisticated view that Jesus, although special, was no more special than Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Krishna and Oprah! For many proponents in this elite group of patrons, Jesus Christ holds a prestigious, nigh unto egalitarian status among a pantheon of religious leaders whose teachings are all pretty much the same and accomplish for mankind results that are also pretty much the same.
Aside from the fact that any serious reader of these leaders’ philosophies and teachings will discover startling contrasts that make it fundamentally impossible for them to be on the same dais, as a born again believer in Christ, I cannot ignore the startling truths and principles of Scripture, particularly, the following:
Colossians 1:18-19 (ESV) And he [Jesus] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
He is preeminent in everything! “Preeminence” means supreme in authority, priority, and superiority. “Everything” means everything! How does one reconcile that One who is supreme can also be equal to one who is not? In America, we pride ourselves on the ideal that all men are created equal and that is indeed true, but that cannot apply to One who claimed and has been acclaimed as One who is, in His very essence, “uncreated”? That’s a whole different category that can in no way be seen as similar to anything else on any aisle or shelf in the religious SuperWalmart! Theologians refer to Jesus having an “infinite qualitiative distinction” to any other religious figure.
Crude example. It’s ludicrous to tell me that having $2 is the same as having $2 million. If I went into a Dollar Store to spend $2, I walk out with 2 items. If I go into that same store with $2 million, I walk out with everything in that store including the racks, shelves, plastic bags, windows, roof and foundation! The lesson: what you come out of the store with is determined by how much you go into the store with! Jesus Christ cannot be and must never be put on the same shelf, in the same aisle or anywhere in the same store as all the others! His own claims and the claims of Scripture make that impossible. He is supremely preeminent with infinite transcendence. It is to our great ruin and His great displeasure for us to consider Him in any way less.
The quality of our worship is related to how we are affected by the reality of Jesus as exclusive in His divine supremacy or supreme divinity. Since the kind of worship God is after is that which is done in spirit and truth (John 4:24), to see Jesus as anything less than He is or as anything equal to other religious figures is to be disqualified from the kind of worship worthy of God. We must come into the arena of worship with the conviction of the true character of Christ as revealed from His lips and affirmed among the pages of Scripture. True worship cannot happen where Jesus is not truly revered as Supreme Lord. Consider the words of the startling prophecy of what Christ would be considered:
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. -Isaiah 9:6 (ESV)
Look carefully at the titles the ancient prophet foretold Jesus would be called! Among the title, He will be called, Mighty God and the Everlasting Father! To that I can legitimately and rightly exclaim, Oh, My God! Such a One can never be lumped into a club of even the best of humanity and considered equal.
Let me be clear. This is not a militant, hyper-protective, imperialistic diatribe intending to whip up the Christian masses into a wild-eyed, angry collection of religiously intolerant conquistadors seeking to “Take America Back!” (Hardly anyone reads my stuff anyway!) On the contrary, my hope is to affect as I have been affected and to call true professing Christ-followers to celebrate the supreme foundations of our faith in the trans-human, God-incarnate, Jesus, and then to move about in the world with absolute gentleness and respect for others but with resolute intolerance for mixing the foundations of our faith with any other religious haz-mat. It’s a call to purity in our faith and charity to those who don’t hold to our views.
I have already confessed the ways I treat Jesus as less than God. (It wasn’t the first; it won’t be the last!). Right now I am so grateful for a profound sense of awe for a greater regard for Christ in response to His Word to us. May you find that same reverence in response to Him, far above my feeble words!
In the 1967 Oscar winner, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” anglo parents (played by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn) believing themselves to be progressive, are thrown a major curve ball when their daughter (played by Katherine Houghton) brings home her African American fiance (played by Sidney Poitier). What makes it such an intelligent comedy is to watch these white sub-urbanites stumble over themselves and the reality that they were not as progressive as they thought as they attempt to make their future son-in-law feel welcome in their home and in their family.
I wonder that this still happens to some degree in our planning of worship services. Part of my problem with the “worship wars” is how it seemed to fixate on individual styles and preferences while missing the greater priority of the need for all people to connect with God in significant ways. I have been in some planning sessions where it was obvious that the service being planned was for those who planned it! The ideas they came up with were certainly progressive but irrelevant to those coming. There seemed to be little intent to engage the whole room, but merely that part of the room that looked more like…me!
For those of you who have been or are worship leaders, does it at all bother you that a good number of people may leave our services with their toes tapped and hands clapped, but their unhearts untouched by and souls unreleased to God? Their hands clapped and voices sung, but their souls uninspired? Their appreciation for art improved but their appreciation for The Master Artist ignored? Yeah…I know I can be harsh at times, but honestly, I believe that much of what goes on in our worship services may be a presumption of divine affirmation when we may have failed to serve our people from the very onset of planning.
One the disciplines of responsible preacher/teachers of Scripture is to “exegete” a passage which means to ‘read-out’ of it. In other words, it prevents one from reading into a passage their own personal presuppositions and inclinations. To exegete Scripture is encounter it from the perspective of the Author, His authorized biographers, and then through the lenses of the original audience who first heard or read it. This must be done long before we draw our own personal and contemporary conclusions.
What if we did that with our weekend worship crowd. (What’s even easier about this, is that it is rare that the crowd will change drastically from week week so one good ‘exegesis’ could apply to several months (or maybe even years) of worship planning.) Do you know “Who’s Coming to Dinner”?
Sometimes we can be guilty of leading people where we want to go rather than where they need to go. I would challenge you to consider taking time with your worship team and answering these questions to get a feel for who is in your crowd and then asking the harder question, “Is our worship format meeting them where they or are we possibly expecting them to meet us where we are?”
Hey…ya caint serve ’em if’n ya don’t luv ’em and ya caint luv ’em if’n ya don’t know ’em! (Or something like that!)
The following applies specifically to elders and pastors, but provides applications for worship leaders as well.
1 To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2 Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers–not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; 1 Peter 5:1-2
I have asked worship leader candidates what they consider to be a successful worship experience. In other words, what are the dynamics of a worship service that you led that you would say was “a win”?
Now I realize that such a question may not be at all fair since the One, True, Judge of our worship is God and God alone. Giving supreme priority to that as the foundation and inspiration for all we do as worship leaders and worshipers, I do believe that in our roles as “worship pastors or leaders” it is important, indeed, vital that we have some parameters that guide our leadership. Specifically I believe we should prepare and execute our worship with an end in mind. The word or action that I think best captures that portrait of success is “response”. May I go even farther to say that “meaningful response to God” characterizes true, authentic worship in the corporate setting.
I offer the distinction because many will think that merely because congregants sing, applause, clap their hands and stamp their feet (in rhythm, no less!), that we have achieved the response we were after. Being in church as long as I have (since I was a zygote), I know how easy it is to fake response. So let me go on record: it is impossible for any human being to judge the quality of another person’s response to God, let alone a congregation without some external, demonstrable act (like singing, applause, clapping, “Amen”-ing, altar response etc. I think the best we can do as leaders is to prepare our worship service with an Isaiah 6:1-8 intention. We must do what we can to give people the chance to encounter the awesome wonder of the Living God, clear the way for them to respond to Him in ways we may not see and leave the validation of this to God.
In addition to the ways I have mentioned, consider these other forms of response:
That’s just a few but here’s the question that can be a catalyst for the creative planning process: what would we need to do in our worship services to help create an atmosphere of response to these deep sensings? How must we as worship leaders, following the lead of the Spirit, serve our congregations in a way that can inspire their greater affections to and for God? What elements in our worship services need to be provided that can facilitate time for people to move from passivity to activity in their engaging the Great God of their hearts and Shepherd of their souls? How must we guard this sacred moment to make sure that nothing distracts our people from the God who desires us to know Him best when we are still?
Worship from the perspective of the worship leader is never merely about what he or she offers God, or offers the congregation. It is about how they serve to help the congregation offer their best to the One who has already given His best to us…and still does! We must be diligent and vigilant to examine our worship leadership motives and practices and purify them of those things that get in the way of the Groom being intimate with His collective Bride.
Consider that when most people come to church, they really don’t need our music, our new song and lyrics, our video clips, testimonies, choral arrangements, offertories, or even, dare I say it, our thoughts on the Word of God. They desperately need God! And they desperately need to know they have been set free to respond to the God who has already revealed Himself. Heaven waits in earnest for the Bride to respond with devotion to the Groom. Hell fears it!
Everything we do as leaders must be dedicated not to giving people our offerings but empowering them to give God theirs. After all, worship is exclusively and completely what God made us for. It is in our response to Him that life regains transcendent significance and where God truly has our hearts as we aim our lives for His heart.
May He give us the grace under His leadership to help His people respond to Him with intimate love, humble submission, childlike wonder and complete devotion.
"Imprinted" on Worship 