Biblical Worship

2008 June 12

by Tyler

Thursday is a day of breakout sessions at the arts conference. I come to you from lakeside at Willow The first session was led by Ross Parsley who is the worship pastor of New Life Christian Church in Colorado Springs. This is a church that has been made famous for housing the Desperation Band, it is Ted Haggard’s old church, and the church where the shooting of 2 girls during a Sunday morning gathering happened. So needless to say I was looking forward to hear from him. We do a lot of music by him at Sunset and he has been through so much in the last 18 months that I knew God was doing something special in him. So here is what he had to say on biblical worship.

God is the initiator, we are the responders. If we don’t see God as the initiator, we become performers and not worshipers.
Art is simply a tool to incite a worship response to a greater revelation of who Jesus is. Yet we are also called to be skillful stewards (Ps. 33:3, Matt. 25:14).
Look at where we spend our time in worship ministry:
- Skill
- Tradition
- Personality of the leader
- Musical style
- Organizational structure
- Ministry philosophy
Yet all of these things need to be rooted in Biblical principles. And we spend the least amount of time on biblical principles. If we do not teach biblical principles, all of those other things become what worship is.
Here is The Biblical Model:
- Revelation
- Transformation (it has to be more than emotional tugs; you don’t have to be perfect, you have to be surrendered)
- Illustration (Biblical worship is people who have been transformed telling their story)

This was convicting for me. I spent a large part of this past week preparing for the band workshop I ran on Sunday. It was focused on skill and style, and I had little focus on biblical principles. I wonder how I can lead the band into what Biblical worship truly. How can I allow our musicianship to grow while focusing more on him?

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http://brentinworship.com/blog brent(inWorship)

Good stuff. I’ve always enjoyed Parsley’s teaching. we do a bunch of the Desperation stuff as well. the church loves it and very Biblically sound.
http://ash-nits.blogspot.com ash

Where do I begin? Ross Parsley…that is a name I haven’t heard in a while. Bullet points…he loves bullets. =)

For the case of illistration, I agree. But when it comes to God initiating, and our responding, I only agree to a certain extent….you see, I think when God dances and sings over us (Zeph.3)and we reach back…it becomes “conversation.” I believe that it becomes the essence of exchange, back and forth, take and give (TAG- the NL youth) and a relationship is itself, the transformation, mostly on our end. IF this relationship with God is rooted in our hearts, then we can turn and have the same loving exchange with the people around us, by doing so…(Loving God, Love People)- we then are living a life of worship.

He is right in saying that art is simply a tool…and I believe that as your relationship w/ God grows and the relationship w/ your worship team grows, your “soul sessions,” will become more fruitful, collected and surrendered to God.

But don’t fret, Tyler, musician-ship IS important, b/c it’s up to you and your team to “set the mood,” ….

I’m glad you were able to get some golden nuggets from Ross…he’s a good guy.
http://www.journeytoorthodoxy.blogspot.com Nathan Lee Lewis

Biblical worship is liturgical coming out of the Jewish culture of the day. It has changed very little and is still practiced with very little deviation in the original church which still exists- The Orthodox Church. The modern worship in which you are involved has value, however, it is not not the fullness of the faith practiced by the undivided church for 2000 years. My journey includes many years as an evangelical worship leader. I invite you to view and comment on my journey back to the historic faith of our fathers. Your blog is top notch. Your heart after God comes through.