What if our Worship Music was as Multifaceted as the God we Worship? (Part 3)

One of my pet peeves as a Christian and as a pastor is that even though we serve and love and worship and trust a God Who is interesting, inventive, and unique, our worship music could hardly ever be described with those same adjectives.

There are three main areas that I find especially saddening given the God we worship. First, we looked at The Lack of Variety in Themes and Subjects. Last post we talked about The Dearth of Poetic Genres in Christian Worship Music. This time we will cover the absence of diversity of musical styles in Christian worship. 

What is the number one joke (that's funny only 'cause it's true) people tell about Christian worship music? It's actually the same as the number one reason I've heard people give for not enjoying listening to Christian music. 

...  "It all sounds the same."

True that. Ok, fine, to be fair there are some exceptions...there are...right? 

Average answer: "uh...there's...uh...yeah, well, just 'cause I can't think of any right now, doesn't mean they don't exist." True. but the fact that many people would face such a difficulty illustrates the problem. 

I know that Chris Tomlin and Hillsong do sound different, but they do in the same way that I thought Justin Bieber was Taylor Swift singing the first time I heard him on the radio. See, just like Bieber and Swift are both essentially pop music, Tomlin and Stanfill are both CCM. They may have some slight differences, but they both belong to the same musical style. 

If we are honest for the most part on Sunday mornings, in many if not most churches in the U.S., we only worship God from within one musical style. Ok, for some the one musical style is "Hymns" while for others it is "CCM," and perhaps for others it is "gospel." But the fact remains that despite the fact that we worship the God Who invented artistic expression including music, and Who radiates His multifaceted nature in the colors of love, justice, wrath, gentleness, power, patience, creativity, and sovereignty, we worship our God in the same musical style week in and week out. 

I'm not suggesting that God is bored (although if we are, perhaps He is too), more like He is being under-worshiped. You see the nature of musical styles is that they typically allow for/generate a limited set of emotive responses, and usually cohere with a limited set of subjects and poetic expressions. 

For example, one style of music is blues, one which brings up and allows for the expression of sorrow, disappointment, and loss. It is given to talking about those subjects, and lends itself to laments. Rap on the other hand allows for the expression of anger, frustration, and even pride (often as a means of pointing out difficulties faced and overcome). This takes the form of boasting, confrontation, and declaration of the way things are. The form is also given to covering a lot of content quickly and memorably. Screamo, for contrast, tends to allow for super angsty, angry, or depressed subject matter, expressed in the form of wailing or screaming, venting raw emotions. 

Yet, doesn't God deserve us to worship Him in loss, in frustration, and in raw unbridled emotions?  Doesn't He deserve to be worshiped for all that He is and does? Doesn't He deserved to be worshiped in a variety of poetic forms? Doesn't He own and deserve all the musical styles to be actively used in giving Him glory through our interacting through them with Him? That's my biggest issue. Our Multifaceted and Totally Awesome God, the Holy Trinity, is being under-worshiped.

The thing is that while we might not always think of different musical styles being that important, the truth is that the absence of different musical styles in Christian worship music may have lots of unintended consequences. It may be one of the big-picture reasons that Christian worship music lacks all kinds of subject matter and many poetic forms. And those lacks may have other connected unintended consequences. 

The lack of musical genres may be one of the reasons that people in many churches feel a deficiency in their worship experience. They need to "have the blues", they need to confront terrible realities, they need to vent their deep emotions to God, but the music styles they are being offered by their worship leaders is to some degree holding them back from engaging with God on the levels they need to. Their personal spiritual growth is being held back. 

Another possible result in the contemporary American church is an overly simplistic understanding of faith in God. In other words, maybe our music is what is reinforcing the patterns of flawed thinking that many people have about God, prayer, and faith. 

And maybe what the researches call "moralistic therapeutic deism" is not merely coming poor sermons, poor discipleship, poor parenting, and poor perspectives coming from the non-Christian world, maybe it is also coming from poor worship. 

It is my hope through this short series that Christians will feel free to worship God about all subjects, in all poetic forms, with all musical styles, so that they can grow in their relationship with God personally, and so that collectively as churches and the Church we will give God the worship He deserves.

Please engage through the comments or share this post with someone who you think would have some good input in the discussion. 

Short Poem: Christus Victor

Light from the Tome.
Life from the Tomb.
Hell cowers.

This poem is a modified haiku structure. It'd be great if you'd share your thoughts or your own poetic expressions in the comments.

What if our Worship Music was as Multifaceted as the God we Worship? (Part 2)

One of my pet peeves as a Christian and as a pastor is that even though we serve and love and worship and trust a God Who is interesting, inventive, and unique, our worship music could hardly ever be called by those same adjectives.

There are three main areas that I find especially saddening given the God we worship. Last we looked at the first, The Lack of Variety in Themes and Subjects. This week we will also talk about the dearth of poetic genres in Christian worship music, while next week we will cover the lack of musical styles in Christian worship. 

You've been there before. You're in church. The band is playing. They are playing a song. It's a good song. But it's not the song you want to be singing. No, I'm not talking about a cover for the newest Hillsong hit. I'm talking about that time when you are there and you want to be singing your heart out to God about something going on in your life, but you can't. Not because you don't know what you want to say. Not because you don't feel like singing. But because the praise team is playing a song of worshipful celebration, and you want to sing a song asking God to actually show up. Or maybe you're singing a song about love and forgiveness, but you want God to bring your enemy to shame. 

Some people will tell you the problem is probably with you: "You are too depressed or too angry to worship God." But while for sure sometimes you are the problem, what if the problem this time is not a lack of faith or a lack of forgiveness, but the lack of a song of desperation in your praise team's repertoire, or the lack of a song of justice on the lips of  your brothers and sisters? 

Last week we discussed how our worship music as Christians tends to lack many prominent themes of Scriptural worship, in terms of what is said/sung about God. This may or may not be related to the problem we're looking at today. Someone could suggest that it is precisely because Christian worship music lacks certain themes and subjects, that it also lacks certain poetic forms or genres. While I suspect there is at least some correspondence between the two, I think it is also the case that the problem sometimes with our worship music is that we really only have one kind of worship music: praise music. 

The problem is that the Bible has way more kinds of worship music than just praise music. That means that the longing in your soul to sing something else in a moment of pain or oppression may not be your lack of maturity as a Christian, but the mark of the Holy Spirit working in your soul to express yourself honestly in His presence. 

Jesus is famous for saying in John 4.23, "But the time is coming, and now is that time, when genuine worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, and in fact the Father is looking for those kind of people worshiping Him." But gives us two questions: 1) How can we worship in the Spirit, if we don't allow for the Spirit to express Himself however He wants? and 2) How can we worship in truth, if our hearts are not able to express in worship what truly is in them? 

This is not just a question of content or theme, because in fact you can sing about the same themes if very different ways. For example, I can praise God for the love that He always gives me, or I can ask God to reveal  His love to me, or even I can humbly remind God that because He loves me, He is committed to keeping His promises to me. 

The point is the Bible gives us a lot of kinds of poetic genres to use in worship, or in other words God wants us to be able to praise Him in worship (Psalm 150) as much as He wants us to be able to cry out in pain (Ps. 88) and desperation in worship (Ps. 22) as much as He wants us to reflect on the nature of the world (Ps. 1) as much as He wants us to cry out for justice/vengeance (Ps. 137) as much as He wants us to repent of our sins in worship (Ps. 51) as much as He wants us to beg for the needs that we have in worship (Ps. 86) as much as He wants us to celebrate Who He is and what He has done (Ps. 136) as much as He wants us to claim the promises He has given us in worship (Ps. 50). 

The book of psalms has many examples of all those poetic forms of songs. Sometimes a praise song is not want the community or an individual needs, sometimes we need to beg for God to avenge the wrongs done to us, other times we need to lament the wait of Christ's return or intervention into our problems. 

So don't be afraid to look for worship music that allows you to express all you need and want to God, and don't be afraid to demand it (humbly) from your church leadership, since they owe it to God and to you to open up the beautiful bounty of God's given forms of worship music, as much as they owe it to God and to you to worship God in all His Multifacetedness. 

What if our Worship Music was as Multifaceted as the God We Worship? (Part 1)

One of my pet peeves as a Christian and as a pastor is that even though we serve and love and worship and trust a God Who is interesting, inventive, and unique, our worship music could hardly ever be called by those same adjectives.

There are three main areas that I find especially saddening given the God we worship. Today we look at the first, over the next couple weeks, we will also talk about the dearth of poetic and musical genres in Christian worship.

First, unless we are singing about God's love, we Christians in the West seem to not know anything to sing about. Ok, so we also sing about His holiness and sometimes our commitment to Him. That's good, but we are still missing out on worshiping God for His other important attributes. But what could they be? How about His wrath? His Truth? His Creativity?  His Triunity? 

Someone just choked on their coffee and destroyed their keyboard--"HIS WRATH!?! Why would anyone ever praise Him for getting angry? Anger is bad. It isn't nice. I thought God was nice. I don't like thinking about when God doesn't act nice like good people should." 

Ok, well for us in the west, we have believed a lie abundant in our culture that all expressions of anger are bad. Sure, many are, but not all. On top of that, if anyone has a right to get angry at the world, I'm guessing it's the One Who created it to be good and now is watching fill with more and more evil. Make no mistake. Our God gets ticked. Angry. Enraged even. Throughout the Old and New Testaments this has been something that God's people have celebrated, just read Revelation 6, Revelation 11.16-19, or Exodus 15.1-21. 

His Truth and His creativity, subjects of such grand importance one would think that they captured more of our attention given Isaiah 44.6-20 on God's Truth/Reality and Psalms 19 and 139 on His creativity and reality. Not to mention His Triunity, which distinguishes Him from all other so-called gods. 

This subject has come up to my attention again and again throughout my years in ministry. It is pressing in upon me again right now because I am preaching through the book of revelation, which is not really about the love of God. Yet, I want the songs we worship with to resonate with the passage we will be listening to and meditating on. For the past couple of weeks, and for the next couple God's wrath will be the main focus of the passages, so I have looked all over for a song that celebrates God's righteous anger and praises Christ for His coming ruthless victory over all those who oppose Him. I have found this song, written by the worship team at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville. It's called Warrior. FYI the Warrior is Jesus. Please enjoy it. Please leave a comment on your favorite line in the song (or least favorite, if you want to be that person). 

The Pros and Cons of Gay Marriage

***This is a series on gay marriage. This is the first of two posts. This one aims to reorient the discussion and our perspectives on the SCOTUS decision. The second is an honest appraisal of the pros and cons of the decision.***

The Pros and Cons will be release in the next couple days, please check back then.

God's Perspective on the Supreme Court Decision in favor of Gay-Marriage

***This is a series on gay marriage. This is the first of two posts. This one aims to reorient the discussion and our perspectives on the SCOTUS decision. The second is an honest appraisal of the pros and cons of the decision. I would especially welcome comments and discussion in the comments section below.*** 

_______________________________________________

“You want gay marriage that much? OK, you can have it.” –God.

Surely that is the response of celebration of many people who have long been fighting for what various groups have called “gay-marriage” or “marriage equality.” They have been crying foul in society and I am sure many to God for what they have perceived as a great injustice. And with the recent decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, they feel like God has given them what they wanted. They feel a sense that justice has prevailed.

But others have been vigorously been fighting for a different vision of marriage, one in which the only participants are one man and one woman, Christians and non-Christians alike. Their vision has come in direct conflict with the version of it espoused by the other group. They hear the claim of the pro-“gay marriage” advocates that justice has prevailed, that God has said “If you want gay marriage that much, you can have it.,” and they grieve and bristle at the suggestion that God has given the pro-“gay-marriage” advocates exactly what they wanted.

But the question is: Who is right? Did justice prevail? Did God give gay marriage to the United States?

The answer I want to give you, the answer I think the Bible demands, is…

Yes…but not in the ways you expect. The truth is justice did prevail and God did give gay marriage to those who wanted it so badly. But the significance of those statements is not what you’d expect.

Justice?!! Some of you reading this, just had a heart attack. Is the CPR finished? Ok good, let’s pick up where we left off. God did give justice, but maybe not the justice you expect. Let’s read Romans 1.18-32 (or you can skip ahead to where I highlight the relevant parts).

¹⁸You see, God’s anger is being revealed from heaven on all human irreverence and unrighteousness by humans who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹because what is knowable about God is clear among them, because God made it clear to them. ²⁰You see, His invisible attributes have been being observed from the creation of the world understood by what was made, including His eternal power and Godness, the result being that they are without excuse, ²¹because although they knew God, they didn’t glorify Him as God or thank Him, instead, they made themselves empty-headed and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Claiming to be wise, they were made stupid. ²³And they exchanged the glory of the Immortal God for the likeness of image of mortal humans and birds and four-footed creatures and serpents. ²⁴Therefore, God gave them over with the desires of their hearts to impurity resulting in dishonoring their bodies with one another, ²⁵who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator—Who is praised forever, amen! ²⁶Because of this, God gave them over to dishonorable passions, you see, even their women exchanged the natural sexual act for the unnatural, ²⁷and similarly even the men, by abandoning the natural sexual act with a women, blazed in their lust for one another: men with men, producing shame and receiving in themselves consequences, which had to come from their delusion. ²⁸And just as they did not approve of knowing God, God gave them over to an unapproved mind, to do the things that are not right ²⁹being completely filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, badness, full of envy, murder, conflict, deception, meanspiritedness, gossipers, ³⁰slanderers, God-haters, violent, arrogant, bragging, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, ³¹thoughtless, unfaithful, callous, uncompassionate, ³²who, although they know the just verdict of God that people who practice these kinds of things are worthy of death, not only do these things, but also they celebrate those who practice them.

But what does that have to do with Justice? Well, it is really all about justice, God’s justice. The person being given justice in a positive sense in this passage is God. In a very real way, the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States is not about getting justice for humans deprived of justice, but God deprived of His.

But how does gay-marriage becoming the law of the land give God justice? Well, humans rebel, refusing to acknowledge Him as God of the universe, despite the amazing amount of proof in the world. God has been treated unfairly by humans, part of that rejection of Him as God involves humans duping themselves into idolatrous patterns of life, lifestyles that celebrate not the Glory of God, but the fading honor of creation.

But justice, how does gay marriage give God justice? Some of you reading this are thinking: God gets justice from this by humans embracing justice. But actually, the reverse is true.

God is getting justice from this decision not because humans are embracing justice, but because God is.

...???...

The answer is that God is getting justice because He is judging us. Make no mistake the most important judge in this Supreme Court decision was not the swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, but God, the Judge of the Universe. And while it may look at first that God has ruled in favor of those advocates of gay marriage the truth is far different.

You see, God, by giving the advocates of gay marriage what they want, was not saying “I am with you in your pursuit of a fuller embrace of a homosexual lifestyle.” Instead, He was saying “I am against you.”

But the judgment of God, as we see in Romans 1.18-32, often does not come in the form of fire from heaven or a holy war on earth, but the removal of His gracious restraint of our own human sinfulness. In the case of the recent Supreme Court decision, God was punishing the advocates of gay marriage by giving them what they want so much.

The truth is that sometimes the punishment for sin is not immediate destruction, but more sin. In a very real way, sin is a fate worse than death, because it destroys the soul.

But it is also a fate better than death, because it allows time for repentance. Although the recent passage of gay marriage is actually the judgment of God, it is also the opportunity from God for people to repent. Unfortunately, the curse of more sin, also pushes people further away from the God they need. Make no mistake, as gracious of a punishment as the passage of gay marriage is, it is still a punishment.

So, who is right? At the end of the day, it is the most important person: God.

Who has received justice? The One most deserving of justice: God.

What about advocates of “gay-marriage,” did they get what they want?

Yes and no. They got what they wanted, but what they have yet to realize is that what they have really received is the judgment of God.

What about the advocates of marriage, have they really lost? Yes and no.

They did lose their battle over the definition of marriage in this country, but they can now see not just the lack of support of human beings, but the full support of God, expressed not by siding against them, as it would be easy to initially think, but expressed by His siding with them, by giving the punishment of more sin. 

Recommended Reading in Theology

I was recently asked to compile a list of 5 theological works that are readable and theologically useful. The following list are 5 theological books that I think every Christian would benefit by reading, even if I don't agree with everything they may teach in every minute detail. But all of them are written by people passionate about the Gospel, and will be very useful.

1. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine by Wayne Grudem

This book is a must read for every Christian. It is clear, well-written, and does move from doctrine to application.
or if you are intimidated by its size, the condensed version Biblical Doctrine: Essential Teaches of the Christian Faith.

2. Center Church by Tim Keller

Even if you are not a church leader, this book is helpful for thinking about what the church is and how it should interact with the world. And since, last time I checked, you are part of the church and the world...yeah...uh...you might want to read it.

3. The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship by Robert Letham

I love the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and so should you. It is all about the God we worship. This book is so well written, thorough, and interesting that I have had it on my Amazon wishlist for years. Full disclosure, I've not read the whole thing, but it was so good that I actually want to at some point. If you know me, you also know that such a statement essentially means its a great book, because I hate reading.

4. Global Church Planting: Biblical Principles and Best Practices for Multiplication by Craig Ott and Gene Wilson

My friend is thinking of missions in the future, but the true is that all of us Christians are called to missions, whether God puts the focus of the mission either inside or outside of our default culture is the only question we must ask. That said, this is very helpful for planting churches, but also helping established churches become more effective in the mission of God. I have had Dr. Ott in class before and the man planted churches in Germany, so what he is talking about works no matter how hard or post-Christian the soil.

5. Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson

Please. Read. This. Your spiritual life will thrive more if you are able to avoid muffling God's voice with poor interpretation...also...this is a bit self-serving, because if you are better at reading and understanding the Bible, my job as a pastor will be easier. Haha. Yeah, so, while it is not strictly theological, it is helpful in constructing better theology.