This one is for my friend Tim Simmonds who likes to bang on about music and worship in the church.
“Clement of Alexandria is the earliest Christian writer to discuss what kind of music is appropriate for Christian use. He directs that it should not be the kind associated with erotic dance music; the melodies should avoid chromatic intervals and should be austere.”
There you have it Tim, no Lady GaGa.
As pants the hart for cooling streams/ When heated in the chase;/ S0 longs my soul, O God for thee/And thy refreshing grace
For thee, my God, the living God,/ My thirsty soul doth pine;/ O when shall I behold thy face,/ Thou Majesty divine?
My thirsty soul doth pine. Really? I’m not sure that’s always how I’d describe my soul. Sometimes Pre-occupied, tired and distracted suit it better. Sometimes self-sufficient, prideful or lazy would be better matches.
Perhaps the worst of all tragedies is to die of thirst but never realise that readily available water would save you. My soul dies for lack of water, for lack of the presence of God. Yet sometimes I don’t realise this is happening. Which is why regular time with God is so crucial and a battle that I must engage in.
Lord save me, wake me up to the state of my soul and then quench my thirst with your streams of living water.
Worship
In every session the worship has been wonderful. The people have danced, shouted, knelt, responded with rapt attention to Jesus. The songs and music have been a great mix of anceint past, recent past and present writing, the focus unrelentingly, unashamedly on Jesus. The times of sung worship have been water to my soul. Wonderful.
Preaching
Bones Malaba, Stef Liston and Terry Virgo were our speakers today. Reaching nations, childlike seeking after God and being a Word and Spirit movement were our subjects. All solid stuff. I wondered why we needed reminding that we were a Word & Spirit movement (like that’s news!) but then loads of people poured forward to be baptised in the Spirit for the first time, so that shut me up.
End of day score: Main Sessions: 3 v Old Testament Characters: 2 (Jonah, David)
Friendship
This has been a great blessing today. I spent time with a friend I met at Newday 3 years ago and we caught up. He’s moved his family to Manchester to be involved in church there, brilliant and he was such an encouragement to me. And he made a suggestion that stood out above everything else I heard, for me to take home, think about and apply in church. Good stuff.
It’s been a good day.
For those of you interested there’s plenty of blogging on TOAM going on this year, more it seems than last year. Head over to Newfrontiers Bloggers to see the full list. Apparently Adrian Warnock says he is the ‘official’ blogger, no idea what that means but he has a good round up of the day as does my friend Dave Matthias. Tweets on Twitter here
“I was reflecting recently on the fact that the word frugal doesn’t appear in any worship song ever. I have been thinking about how I can rectify this lamentable situation with a new song of my own.I’ve got most of the lyrics for the first section worked out. It goes to the tune of Paul Oakley’s classic song “I want to be holy”:
I want be frugal, I want be prudent
I want to spend my cash the way you want me to
I want be solvent, not living on credit
I want to be content with what you’ve given meI want to be debt-free, not walking in worry
I want to give away what you have given meI want to be much more generous
I want to be more like you
Keep helping me give more freelyfeel free to suggest additional lines if you know the tune”
So if you can add to this or write a better song of simplicity then send them in and we’ll publish them.
It’s been bugging me. A lot. I mean I finished reading the book ages ago and I’m still bugged and irritated. It’s got under my skin and to mix my metaphors I now need to get it off my chest. I mean honestly.
Craig Groeschel is the pastor of megachurch, LifeChurch.tv – it’s all very cool in a church 2.0 kind of way. They have 12 locations who all via satellite share in the same worship and listen to the same sermon. On their website they tell you when the next ‘experience’ is. Anyway they want to give people great worship experiences. Oh Really.
I don’t know if anyone has told LifeChurch.tv this but there’s only one person who is supposed to experience really great worship and that’s God. Because don’t forget people, it’s WORSHIP. Adoration, devotion, the passionate heartfelt expressing of love to God. It’s not about me, it’s not whether I enjoy it or not, it’s not even about the standard of the music or the quality of the singing. You can have all that but if it’s not about God then He won’t be satisfied and neither will we.
I don’t get to experience great worship but I do get the chance to do something that God can’t do – Worship. There isn’t anyone for God to worship because God is the only deserving recipient of worship in the universe. So God can only receive worship, I on the other hand have the awesome privilege of offering worship. Sometimes however, my worship isn’t great. Unconfessed sin can stop my worship being great, laziness, distractions, selfishness, tiredness – they can all make my offering half hearted and mediocre.
The worship leaders job is not to entertain me and not to give me a great experience but to draw me gently or with force into the realisation that at this moment God wants my worship and my eyes need to be drawn to Him, my life needs to be offered, my hands need to be lifted and my knees need to sink to the ground, my heart needs to be surrendered. The worship leader needs to call me to stir myself from my sinful stupor and to give God great worship.
So God should experience great worship and I should participate in giving great worship, fortunately God is gracious and as we meet him, He meets us. As I exalt him, my heart is lifted, my spirit renewed, my vision cleared, my soul restored and if that happens I’ll leave feeling encouraged, inspired, stirred, cleansed – I’ll ‘feel’ like whata great time.
If that’s what LifeChurch mean by worship experiences, brilliant I’m all for it. If they mean a professional band, some great drama and cool lighting and sound. I’ll not trade up for that. Better music does not equal better worship. Don’t get me wrong, being led off tune is no joy, but let’s not get those two things mixed up.
Rant over. I feel better now.
You’ll see the list from the Josh Harris link made it on to my powerpoint presentation. It’s interesting how helpful people have found it to have something to visualise, helps them stay with the theme.
As a side note the themes I major on in this blog cropped up a few times. Encouraging.
I believe Jesus when he said 'life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions'. I believe he offers something better. This blog is mostly about that search.
I'm also a husband, a father, church planter, keen runner, reader, and motorcyclist. These and a few other things make guest appearances from time to time.
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