3 funny (or odd) things about that:

1. Most hymns aren’t really “hymns.” Hymns in a musical sense have no chorus, but a lot of “hymns” do.
2. The Bible speaks about singing a new song, and I don’t think we should take that too literally but it is a helpful reminder that even the best things in life become meaningless when done over and over without purpose.
3. Everyone’s “hymns of the faith” list is different.

In my years of doing youth worship in high school all the way to today I’ve ran into many people who think songs written long ago have better theology than those written today.

Considering I’m a relatively young guy, I find that opinion to be a shot against my generation which, as a whole, isn’t hymn crazy. But I also don’t think it is true.

I’ve talked before about horrible lyrics in today’s praise and worship music, but I there is plenty around that is rooted in Scripture and has a richness to it. I ran across a song by a newer artist named John Mark McMillan this past week that I think is a great example of this this richness. It was a song he set out to write in the style of a hymn (though it does have a chorus, so like “How Great Thou Art” it isn’t really a hymn).

I’ve often found hymns to be written with a confusing language to those lacking in some theological or Biblical training. And this song (“Death In His Grave”) has enough of that to need explanation after a listen through. Some people call that a Biblical/theological richness, others just call it confusing. Here’s the chorus (check out the whole song lyrics here):

On Friday a thief
On Sunday a King
Laid down in grief
But awoke holding keys
Of Hell on that day
The first born of the slain
The Man Jesus Christ
Laid death in his grave

(watch the video here)

I guess my whole point is this:

It is Jesus we are after in our churches. At least I hope so. Plenty of the songs being written today draw us closer to Jesus through lyrics, just as much as hymns do. Hymns are not Canon. Neither are contemporary worship songs.

It is not the songs we should care about, it is the God we sing about in the songs that matters.

The concert was everything I had hoped for. The venue was awful, but it was great to be surrounded by the hipsters of Portland and to worship with them. If I learned nothing else, I learned that while some hipsters might only love their bikes, many others love Jesus despite what people might say.

John Mark wrote one of the most popular worship songs of the past 5 years. Almost every worship album produced over the past 2 years has included the song he wrote 8 years ago (“How He Loves”). I’ve found the song interesting while leading it for different groups. I can tell that many adults find the song a little bit raw (think “sloppy wet kiss”). It doesn’t roll off the tongue as pretty as other modern worship songs, but as I’ve led it for students they have totally gotten into it.

Another new song of his reminds of the same thing. I would describe it as a raw and honest song and it doesn’t feel like your typical worship song yet I heard hundreds of people praising God to it at the concert. Here is the song named Skeleton Bones (come here to watch video):

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this song and How He Loves. Even though they don’t fit the normal mold for how worship songs are written today, do you think they work for singing in church?

Here’s the lyrics to the song (his Johnny Cash southern accent makes it hard to understand at parts):

Peel back our ribs again
and stand inside of our chest.
We just wanna’ love you
We just wanna’ love you

Peel back the veil of time
And let us see You with our naked eyes
We just wanna love you
We just wanna love you

Skeleton bones stand at the sound of eternity
On the lips of the found
And gravestones roll
To the rhythm of the sound of you
Skeleton bones stand at the sound of eternity
On the lips of the found
So separate those doors
And let the son of resurrection in.

Oh let us adore the
Son of Glory drenched in love
Open up your gates before him
Crown Him, stand Him up

We want your blood to flow inside our body
We want your wind inside our lungs
We just wanna love you
We just wanna love you

But we’re starting to see a shift based on new technology. This is coming to a church near you very soon and it is clearly the future of worship in musical form:

Come here to watch if you can’t see the video

Yes, I love technology.

Spend an entire day at a church and you get to see a lot of interesting things:

• Some people stare at you blankly for 20 minutes in a row.
• While others raise their hands and sing the entire time.
• And still others sit staring at the floor crying.

It would be easy to judge who is less spiritual in this group, but I bet the Holy Spirit works in deeper ways than we can come to know or understand.

I, far too often, judge the “success” of a worship set on external reactions, yet I also know that much of what the Holy Spirit is doing is more than meets the eye.

I imagine that some worship leaders need that reminder today.

I’m not a great songwriter so I rely on those I believe God has given a gift of writing songs for the church.

I thought I’d share some of the songs we’ve been introducing to our youth and adults in some cases over the past 3 months (if you can’t see the videos below, come here to watch them):

• We Cry Out from Kim Walker and Jesus Culture:

• Rise and Sing by Steve Fee (link to the audio of the song, no good video available)
• Awakening by Chris Tomlin (introducing it this weekend and at the high school retreat in 2 weeks)
• Glory to God Forever by Steve Fee (being led by Steve with this song was a special moment for me):
• Desert Song by Brooke Fraser (just introduced it this weekend, I’m not sold on it, we’ll see if it catches on):

So now that you’ve seen and heard some of the newer songs we’ve been doing at my church, I’d love to hear some of that songs that have been connecting at your church.

Let’s hear it.

After so many of you had strong opinions from my post yesterday, I thought we would flip the subject. I thought what Darin said was spot on, in that, there are a lot of great lyrics being written today. Something about our fallen bodies makes us focus on the negative too much sometimes.

So I’d love to have you share a song that has been written recently or that your church is singing that you believe reflects a strong Biblical theology.

I’ll share a couple that come to mind for me. Oh You Bring is a song by Hillsong United that I absolutely love. Sure Hillsong has better musical songs, but the lyrics of the verses are powerful to me:

Oh you bring hope to the hopeless
And light to those in the darkness
And death to life, now I’m alive

Oh you give peace to the restless
And joy to homes that are broken
I see you now, in you I’m found

And you open the door for me
And you lay down your life to set me free
All that I am will serve you Lord

I love this progression from speaking about what God does (brings death to life), to remembering his sacrifice (laid down his life to set us free), to a call for us to respond (serving him).

This song isn’t nearly as new as the previous one, but Here I Am to Worship by Tim Hughes (I can say that God truly used this song to change my life) has powerful lyrics to me. Especially the second verse which says:

King of all days,
Oh so highly exalted Glorious in heaven above.
Humbly you came to the earth you created.
All for love’s sake became poor.

The focus is clearly on the incarnation here and it should prompt us to respond in personal worship towards God.

Now it’s your turn. Take some time to think through the newer songs that connect you to God with a strong understanding of theology and the Bible.

What comes to mind?

Do you ever think about what you sing in church? Sometimes it is hard to do so. Songs have a lot of lyrics and usually (at least for me) you have to sing a song a number of times before the meaning of the lyrics truly sinks in.

Jay and I had a short conversation yesterday about the lyrics in a Hillsong song “You’ll Come.” Here is the chorus of that song:

You’ll come
Let Your glory fall as You respond to us
Spirit rain
Flood into our thirsty hearts again
You’ll come

The lyrics are what I’ll call interesting: the idea of God’s glory falling as he responds to us. I would say a proper understanding of our relationship to God would be us responding to his glory, not the other way around. I don’t know that I would call this bad theology, but definitely a little confusing for sure.

There is also a popular song in many churches (including mine) “Song of Hope” by Robbie Seay. Here are the chorus lyrics:

I will sing a song of hope
Sing along
God of heaven come down
Heaven come down
Just to know that You are near is enough
God of heaven come down, heaven come down

Is it really enough for us to know that God is near? And what does it mean that we are singing about our hope of God being near when the Holy Spirit is within those who have faith in Christ? Again, I’m not saying this is a completely wrong theology, but I would describe this one as curious.

And lastly, the one that has bugged me for a long time: Come Now is the Time to Worship (chorus):

One day every tongue will confess You are God.
One day every knee will bow.
Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly choose you now.

I could be wrong but this comes off as very Universalist to me (meaning that everyone is saved). If I read it with no other influences, I think it says everyone will believe in God and the earlier you decide to believe, the greater the reward in heaven.

My point in this isn’t to point out how I have a perfect understanding of theology or that my interpretation of songs lyrics is correct. Rather, I want us to think about the songs we sing and assess their message before we allow them to become anthems that our congregations sing on Sunday.

The power of lyrics and music should not be understated and I would hope we could rightly reflect God in them.

I’m not advocating for every church to stop singing songs that might have confusing lyrics but we should be spending time processing what a song says.

How important are the lyrics of worship songs to you?

(Part Two)

I watch The Bachelor.

There I said it.

Yes I know, it is a wretched show that no God fearing person should watch, but Rose gets sucked into it every season and so we watch it together.

This is the first season I actually know someone on the show. She got the “first impression rose” on the show Monday night. Her name is Tenley. This has nothing to do with today’s post…it’s just weird that I know someone on there.

The show, to me, is mostly a joke because only one couple has stayed together since the show began almost 10 years ago. You have better odds of staying with someone by getting engaged to someone on the street.

The show and the premise of setting 2 people up for life is majorly flawed.

I say this because the entire thing is a competition. This week’s episode someone was more excited about getting a rose than they were about getting to know Jake (this season’s bachelor). Therein lies the problem. When a relationship is more about winning a game than about fostering a healthy relationship it is destined to fail.

—

Sometimes I think worship at our churches can be a bit like this. We fall in love with a song, a sound, a moment. Much like the ladies fall in love with a rose and not the man. Songs, sounds, moments: these aren’t bad things, but when it becomes more about those things than the God that those things are about, we have a problem.

Why is it that hands go up high in the air during the chorus of a ballad? Certainly raising our hands in worship is a valid way to respond to God in worship, but if it becomes a response to the song rather than God, we’re losing our way.

My worry is that worship today is more about spirit than truth. It is more about rhyming than it is about theology.

Has worship become more about the moment than the God?

I recently wrote a paper for class on this and am currently navigating this in my job as well. This weekend we have a Christmas concert at my church and we have several people involved who are not believers.

A couple days ago I twittered this: Anyone have an opinion about whether non-Christians should be involved in church services (i.e. playing in the band)?

I got a ton of responses, but here were some of my favorites:

• Jennifer Hudson: How can you LEAD worship if YOU aren’t worshiping? Every member of a “worship band” is a worship leader in my opinion.
• Kyle Campos: I don’t know another leading position in the church we consider putting non-christians in. Strikes me as odd.
• Brett Aljets: We’ve had several, kind of a philosophy if you will. Seen God really work in and through that ministry.

Here are some thoughts of my own:

It is fairly obvious that non-Christians are not able to truly worship God without having been made alive in Christ through the Spirit’s work in their life. But, I do not think that should have an effect on whether or not someone can be a part of leading Christian believers in a time of worship.

A distinction must be made here between leading a congregation and facilitating a time of worship. A worship leader uses teaching and personal examples to draw the congregation into a time of worship, while a member of the worship team is playing a song or songs that create this time. The only position that should be off-limits completely from non-Christians is the leading aspect of worship times in church gatherings (read worship leader, as opposed to band member). I say this mostly because of the language the Bible uses when it refers to church leaders (which worship leaders definitely are) and the need for them to be leading lives worthy of their calling (Eph. 4:1-3).

As Christians, we use many things that were not created for the purpose of worship (Psalm 150), in our worship of God. How then is a non-Christian being involved that much different? I can think of few better ways of introducing a musician to Christ than by allowing them to be involved in playing the music that a congregation will use to worship.

At worst, having a non-Christian being involved with a worship team and leading a congregation in song is inauthentic. At best, it just might save a musician for eternity.

My main concern here is that we too often treat this issue as black and white and I don’t think we can because there is no direct Biblical mandate. Should a professing Christian who is living in sin be on the stage? If you say no, then don’t go to any church in America because that stage will be full of sinful people.

So we’ll let sinners, maybe even people who have committed “big” sins on stage, but we won’t let non-believers on stage? Is our biggest worry that someone from our church might see that heathen guitar player cussing in public or at a bar?

In the end I think using discernment and discretion is key. This doesn’t mean every non-Christian should be involved or that they should be allowed to stay involved consistently if they have no interest in what the church is about. But definitely, non-Christians should be able to play a role in our church gatherings. It may be the very way the Holy Spirit will use to draw them to the Father.

—

Despite my strong opinion on this, I hope we can have a conversation about this in the comments from both sides.

Where do you draw the line?

(Photo: Boaz Crawford)

This will be the last post in this series you can catch out the other posts if you want:

Part One // Part Two // Part Three

A Theology.

At this point it would be good to examine two different types of worship that James Torrance labels “Unitarian worship” and “Trinitarian worship.” At face value Unitarian worship is about worshiping God the Father and about us bringing a sacrifice to him. The problem with Unitarian worship comes when this question is posed: what, in and of ourselves, do we have to offer God that would be pleasing to him? The only answer is: nothing, absolutely nothing. Trinitarian worship is a bit more complex; through the power of the Holy Spirit we are connected with the Son in his worship of the Father. In his book, Experiencing the Trinity, Darrell Johnson offers the following:

“I am often asked to identify myself using one of the theological or ecclesiastical labels of our time. Am I Evangelical? Conservative? Reformed? Charismatic? If I must identify myself, I prefer the label ‘Christo-centric Trinitarian.’ For as I love and worship and obey Jesus Christ, I keep ending up at the feet of the Triune God. And then, all I want is all that the Father is, and wants to give me, and all that the Son is, and wants to give me, and all that the Spirit is, and wants to give me. What I want is to be alive in the intimacy at the center of the universe.”

This understanding of worship being an encounter with the Trinity has plenty of Biblical support, none bigger than in Ephesians 2:18, “For through him (Christ) we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”

As I think through my previous times of leading worship (we can discuss the validity of that title another time) my worship was often more Unitarian, or at best, semi-trinitarian. Neither of which provide a full understand of how we ought to worship God.

My times of singing and playing music and bringing the congregation into God’s presence often become about me isolating one part of the Trinity to focus on, and then I do my best to pull off a music set with excellence. All this is done with a heart that is pure, but I often become what Robb Redman would call, “a producer of the sacred.”

My focus on providing a sacrifice of excellence often trumps my reliance on the Spirit to connect me with the Son. If worship is truly not about us, then my focus on excellence has got in the way of a truly worshipful connection with God. If excellence, from a human standpoint, has a limited role in worship then it should also be said that our disagreements over style, song choice, and volume have absolutely no role either.

If worship is truly not about us, then it provides us with an opportunity to join in a subversive act. This subversion is the shift we need in today’s worship understanding. I love how Marva Dawn talks about this:

“The focus (during worship) was on us, instead of on God and what he reveals. Such worship fosters the basic perspective that faith depends on how well we notice God’s glory, rather than on the gift of God’s revelation that God’s grace enables us to receive.”

The pragmatic side of me looks at this idea of Trinitarian worship being a subversive act and I wonder how that plays out in our churches. I don’t think it changes much of what we specifically do during our weekend gatherings, but it does provide a context in which worship can truly be an interaction with Christ, to the Father, by the Spirit. In this context the song, the style, the volume, the clothes, the people on stage, .etc; none of it matters in the least.

This is the way it should be because worship is not about us it is about Him.

Thinking through a normal week of my job, this seems unattainable, but it sure would be wonderful. Today’s church needs this in a big way. The weird thing is that it isn’t anything they can do.

What is your theology of worship?