At the heart of a vibrant church is a people characterized by vibrant worship
Today, we talk about the second answer that I came to when trying to figure out why there was a marked disparity between the services I led and the accounts of worship in scripture.
As I was thinking about this week's posting, I felt that I should mention this week that all my thoughts and ideas are exactly that. I speak out of my personal experience and what I have found to be true in my journey as a worship leader and facilitator... Wrestle (if that is what you do) with what I have to say, think about it, discuss it, but also arrive at your God-guided and inspired truth for your journey as a worshipper. My hope is that as we all seek for God's best for Woodvale, we shall arrive at the same place because we serve a God that wants to reveal his will to us for our lives and for our church.
Ok...
So my discussions with lots of people and my own reading led me to another revelation as to why it seemed like scripture offered one thing and yet our experiences seemed to tell a different story. It can be simply encapsulated by the phrase "Worship is a lifestyle". If you have been a Christian as long as I have or even longer, I am sure that you have heard this phrase tossed quite a bit. "Worship is a lifestyle", "worship is a lifestyle", "worship is...
The problem with overly used and recycled christianese catch phrases is that the truth that they so succinctly encapsulated at one point is lost and all that is left is the phrase minus the truth that we set out to find.
Now that the rant is over, let me further unpack what worship as a lifestyle means to me.
It starts with realizing that all creation - that includes you - exists for God's pleasure and that your whole purpose on this earth is to bring him glory. Just as an amazing painting brings glory to the painter, if our lives are patterned after what God wants and we allow his transforming power to refine us into what he wants, our lives become wonderful masterpieces that bring glory to God. This means that our worship breaks beyond the constraints of the Sunday worship services and reaches far beyond into our jobs, homes, and every other aspect of our lives.
I am a firm believer that God cannot be mocked and so if our lives do not "worship", our corporate act of worship is shallow and empty because our lives contradict the words that we sing or speak.
Romans 1: 20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature— have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made
Sometimes finding worship within yourself is a next-to-impossible task and so it helps to look at God's creation around us (people, animals, plants, etc...) as a source of inspiration for your worship. Sometimes worship can flow out of us (perhaps it should do so more often) out of our recognition of God's hand at work in his creation...
I used to go to an annual christian camp in Uganda at the most beautiful and picturesque place that I have ever been to. Every morning as the sun rose over the calm waters of Lake Victoria, without a doubt, there would be one or several people so amazed by the sight that they would burst into a discordant version of "great is thy faithfulness". Every year, every morning, every camp without fail! I always laughed at it when it happened, but I think that it was one of those situations where worship ceases to be about navel gazing and becomes about creation inspiring us to worship God.
Another small story...
My Dad used to occasionally drag us to one of the most boring (it's boring in my memory because I was turned away from God) fellowships ever. Most times, instead of having a preacher or teacher, the greatest chunk of time was spent giving testimonies about what God had done in peoples lives. I particularly remember one fellowship where a moving testimony was given and almost after every account of God's hand at work, the whole group (with the exception of skeptical me) burst into a song of praise. I've often looked back at that point in time and wished that the church would find inspiration to worship corporately based on the account of what God is doing in somebody's life in spite of the personal circumstances that one may be going through.
This worship as a lifestyle - a life that brings glory to God, and worship that is birthed out of God's work in creation then becomes a weekly, monthly, or annual journey that has it's peaks when we gather together to worship corporately. Last week's reference to the psalms of ascent is a beautiful illustration of this journey. David's worship was not confined to the temple, but was a part of his daily journey. It comes as no surprise therefore, that lifestyle of worship birthed some of the most meaningful songs of worship that the world has ever seen.
I do not know whether I have shared this with you guys before... forgive the repetition if I have. I think of every service as a part of the journey of worship that people are on (whether they realize it or not) before they get into the service and after they have left. However, I cannot take people on a journey into the presence of God if I have not walked that journey on my own.
A people characterized by vibrant worship are not a people for whom worship is confined to the church building walls and restricted to a 20-minute time slot on Sunday morning or Sunday evening. Vibrant worshippers are better described as people that are living a life that first and foremost brings glory to God, and secondly embark on a journey of worship that is inspired by what God is doing in their personal lives and in creation around them.
A people that walk the journey of an authentic and growing relationship with God that brings him glory learn to grow in their expectation of what God can do and this energizes the times of corporate worship. Therefore for us as facilitators and leaders of worship, before we even stand before the congregation and attempt to engage them in a journey into the presence of God, we must first ask whether worship is a central part of our lifestyle before anything else. If it is not, we are wasting time trying to take people on a journey that we ourselves have never been on and do not have the roadmap for.
I am glad to be a part of what God is doing here at woodvale... even more pumped about the fact that all around me I see people that have a passion to connect people with God. Let us therefore spur each other on further in our understanding of worship as a lifestyle and go deeper than we have ever been before as individuals and as a church in our journey of worship.
Have a great week!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Vibrant worship - Vibrant church (Part 1)
At the heart of a vibrant church is a people characterized by vibrant worship.
I have found that almost every single mention of worship in scripture is coupled with an incredibly spectacular encounter with God. I challenge you to walk through scripture… you will come to the same observation. All sorts of people in all sorts of places worshipped, saw the hand of God move and had encounters with his power and presence that to the church in this day and age could very well seem like complete mythology.
The more I read these stories and heard about God’s move in communities all around the world today, the more I found that I was forced to ask the following questions:
Why was it that our worship services were so devoid of the evidence and corporate experience of God’s presence?
What did they know that we do not know or that we know only in part?
Through discussions with friends and through reading of scripture, I came across some interesting answers
The first one is that a relationship with God builds your love for him – your passion for him as we talked about last week - and your expectancy in worship. This great expectancy at what he is going to do germinates vibrancy in our individual and corporate worship.
I hope that for all of you reading this, it is obvious that experiencing God through worship has to be prefaced by a relationship with him and we have access to the father through his son Jesus – John 14. No one comes to the father except through me… Jesus says
Talking about vibrant worship and passion for Jesus before talking about a relationship with him is like putting the cart before the horse, because love blossoms through the growth of relationship.
Therefore, the better you know somebody, the more you know what to expect from him or her. I have found this to be true through reading scripture and through my own personal walk with God… and because our God is a wonderfully creative, adventurous and all powerful father, it only makes sense that spending time in his presence is something of great wonder and mystery. Encountering this wonder and mystery enables us to approach his presence with expectation and takes a dull and uninformed expression of worship to a place of passion, expectancy and vibrancy.
I find an interesting example of this expectation and passion for God in some of the psalms of ascent that David wrote in particular Psalm 120 – 122. David starts with a cry of distress in psalm 120, but his distress is transformed to a song of anticipation in psalm 121, and then the full expression of the expectation comes out in psalm 122. Why is the psalmist glad so soon after expressing his distress? I believe that the reason for this is that his relationship with God was at such a place of intimacy that there was more than just casual anticipation, but a real eagerness to meet with God because he understood that God was in control of every situation whether he was in distress or not. This fueled his worship and praise. Is it any wonder that scripture later speaks about David as a man after his own heart?
In trying to get myself to be more psyched up about worship, I felt like I was being disingenuous if I was not finding my passion for God from what he had done in my life. I have come to discover that if I am lacking in the relationship department with Jesus, I have one of 2 options when I come to lead the congregation at Woodvale in corporate worship. Either I can pretend that all is well and ignore any conviction or condemnation, or more often than not, I fall into the dispassionate category because I know that standing before God and pretending that all is well is a mockery of him.
Hebrews 4: 12 - 13
The reason I believe that vibrant worship is at the heart of a vibrant church is because vibrant worship is something that cannot be faked. Passionate, unrestrained, uncontained worship is not something that you arrive at in ignorance over what the transforming power of God can do. You see, anybody that has come in contact with God and is walking in a growing relationship with him is a force to be reckoned with. The bible is FILLED with examples of this.
I am further persuaded that the expression of vibrant worship has to start with the people that God has gifted and positioned to be participants in leading his people in worship. This means that EVERYBODY on the worship team – production, singers, instrumentalists – have to be walking in this before we can expect that the church will experience it as we do. In my first few postings on this blog, I mentioned to you all that the picture of worship at Woodvale is a giant mirror to the picture of worship on the worship team. If our desire is to see a vibrant church, we must become a people of vibrant worship… and this has to be spearheaded by the team that facilitates worship on a week-by-week basis.
This week, I invite you all to a season of examining the area of vibrant worship and the foundation of it all – your relationship with Jesus. If you are in a place of stagnation and therefore unable to find your passion for Jesus, please be honest with somebody in your small group or on the team and pray about it. I believe that victory in this area starts with being honest about your walk with God and sharing it with somebody that can stand with you and pray you back into a healthy relationship with your savior and creator.
Next week we shall talk about another answer that I came to when examining the disparity between examples of worship in scripture and what we see in our contemporary setting.
I have found that almost every single mention of worship in scripture is coupled with an incredibly spectacular encounter with God. I challenge you to walk through scripture… you will come to the same observation. All sorts of people in all sorts of places worshipped, saw the hand of God move and had encounters with his power and presence that to the church in this day and age could very well seem like complete mythology.
The more I read these stories and heard about God’s move in communities all around the world today, the more I found that I was forced to ask the following questions:
Why was it that our worship services were so devoid of the evidence and corporate experience of God’s presence?
What did they know that we do not know or that we know only in part?
Through discussions with friends and through reading of scripture, I came across some interesting answers
The first one is that a relationship with God builds your love for him – your passion for him as we talked about last week - and your expectancy in worship. This great expectancy at what he is going to do germinates vibrancy in our individual and corporate worship.
I hope that for all of you reading this, it is obvious that experiencing God through worship has to be prefaced by a relationship with him and we have access to the father through his son Jesus – John 14. No one comes to the father except through me… Jesus says
Talking about vibrant worship and passion for Jesus before talking about a relationship with him is like putting the cart before the horse, because love blossoms through the growth of relationship.
Therefore, the better you know somebody, the more you know what to expect from him or her. I have found this to be true through reading scripture and through my own personal walk with God… and because our God is a wonderfully creative, adventurous and all powerful father, it only makes sense that spending time in his presence is something of great wonder and mystery. Encountering this wonder and mystery enables us to approach his presence with expectation and takes a dull and uninformed expression of worship to a place of passion, expectancy and vibrancy.
I find an interesting example of this expectation and passion for God in some of the psalms of ascent that David wrote in particular Psalm 120 – 122. David starts with a cry of distress in psalm 120, but his distress is transformed to a song of anticipation in psalm 121, and then the full expression of the expectation comes out in psalm 122. Why is the psalmist glad so soon after expressing his distress? I believe that the reason for this is that his relationship with God was at such a place of intimacy that there was more than just casual anticipation, but a real eagerness to meet with God because he understood that God was in control of every situation whether he was in distress or not. This fueled his worship and praise. Is it any wonder that scripture later speaks about David as a man after his own heart?
In trying to get myself to be more psyched up about worship, I felt like I was being disingenuous if I was not finding my passion for God from what he had done in my life. I have come to discover that if I am lacking in the relationship department with Jesus, I have one of 2 options when I come to lead the congregation at Woodvale in corporate worship. Either I can pretend that all is well and ignore any conviction or condemnation, or more often than not, I fall into the dispassionate category because I know that standing before God and pretending that all is well is a mockery of him.
Hebrews 4: 12 - 13
The reason I believe that vibrant worship is at the heart of a vibrant church is because vibrant worship is something that cannot be faked. Passionate, unrestrained, uncontained worship is not something that you arrive at in ignorance over what the transforming power of God can do. You see, anybody that has come in contact with God and is walking in a growing relationship with him is a force to be reckoned with. The bible is FILLED with examples of this.
I am further persuaded that the expression of vibrant worship has to start with the people that God has gifted and positioned to be participants in leading his people in worship. This means that EVERYBODY on the worship team – production, singers, instrumentalists – have to be walking in this before we can expect that the church will experience it as we do. In my first few postings on this blog, I mentioned to you all that the picture of worship at Woodvale is a giant mirror to the picture of worship on the worship team. If our desire is to see a vibrant church, we must become a people of vibrant worship… and this has to be spearheaded by the team that facilitates worship on a week-by-week basis.
This week, I invite you all to a season of examining the area of vibrant worship and the foundation of it all – your relationship with Jesus. If you are in a place of stagnation and therefore unable to find your passion for Jesus, please be honest with somebody in your small group or on the team and pray about it. I believe that victory in this area starts with being honest about your walk with God and sharing it with somebody that can stand with you and pray you back into a healthy relationship with your savior and creator.
Next week we shall talk about another answer that I came to when examining the disparity between examples of worship in scripture and what we see in our contemporary setting.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Passionately following Jesus
When I started writing this entry on passionately following Jesus, I did not know that Denis Ignatius was going to speak so well about the subject of passion over this past week's sunday night service before I wrote down my thoughts. It was just something that I was thinking about on my own and decided to share with the people that read this blog. If you are able to, please request through the church office a copy of last sunday night's message because he spoke really well about the subject of passionately following Jesus.
He stole my thunder (heh!) but for those of you that were not there, perhaps this blog shall give you an interesting starting point to think about the whole issue of passionately following Jesus...
--------------------------------------------------------
Anybody that moves to Ottawa soon begins to realize that because we are a city that is supposed to embody the culture of tolerance and inclusiveness (great values that in my opinion are now being distorted), it is extremely difficult to get anybody fired up about anything.
As a pastor and facilitator of worship, I have found that it is near impossible to get people fired up and passionate about something as polarizing as Christianity because you quickly get categorized as intolerant, fanatical or fundamentalist. It is sad, but it is true that in the church - that is supposed to be a living, breathing representation of the kingdom of God on this earth - it is unbelievably difficult to get people fired up about the person that they theoretically credit for every blessing in their lives.
Some church leaders were having a discussion one day that I happened to be a part of and one of them asked me what I thought about the word "passion" and the notion that the church is supposed to lead people to Jesus and to create passionate followers of him. I think that my answer took them by surprise...
My answer was that the church has forgotten what passion looks like. In my opinion, in the 21st century passion is best displayed by the group of men that crashed planes into the world trade center and the pentagon. Obviously what they did was a horrible, HORRIBLE act, but their dedication to their cause and their passion about it is undeniable.
As Christians, Jesus does not call us to crash planes into buildings... thankfully... but his call to his disciples and all that he spoke to when he walked this earth was not a call to a wishy-washy faith, but to a radically different lifestyle and set of beliefs that the world has continually rejected since he walked this planet as a man.
Our passion for him comes out of our relationship with him. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus and see him at work in our lives, we are inspired to share what he is doing in our lives with those around us. I think that this goes hand-in-hand with what I blogged about last week.
I have a bit of an unusual response to my weekly dose of telemarketing. Instead of hanging up on the telemarketer, I usually spend some time trying to determine whether they truly believe in what they are selling or not. I'm not very successful in getting an answer most of the time, but once, there was a guy who candidly let me know that the tone of his voice was the telling factor. If he was selling something he was passionate about, he would sound more animated than his monotonous, pre-rehearsed speech. He went on to tell me that in his office, many of them were selling products that they are not eligible for, or that they do not believe will transform your life the way they claimed they will.
As facilitators of worship we have to guard against being Jesus' dispassionate marketers because the congregation or people that we try to connect with him can see through our lack of passion and belief, and believe me, it is all downhill from there.
And now for some new age-ish quotes to end this week's blog.
“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”
- Earl Nightingale
"Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion"
- Hebbel
“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.”
- Unknown
He stole my thunder (heh!) but for those of you that were not there, perhaps this blog shall give you an interesting starting point to think about the whole issue of passionately following Jesus...
--------------------------------------------------------
Anybody that moves to Ottawa soon begins to realize that because we are a city that is supposed to embody the culture of tolerance and inclusiveness (great values that in my opinion are now being distorted), it is extremely difficult to get anybody fired up about anything.
As a pastor and facilitator of worship, I have found that it is near impossible to get people fired up and passionate about something as polarizing as Christianity because you quickly get categorized as intolerant, fanatical or fundamentalist. It is sad, but it is true that in the church - that is supposed to be a living, breathing representation of the kingdom of God on this earth - it is unbelievably difficult to get people fired up about the person that they theoretically credit for every blessing in their lives.
Some church leaders were having a discussion one day that I happened to be a part of and one of them asked me what I thought about the word "passion" and the notion that the church is supposed to lead people to Jesus and to create passionate followers of him. I think that my answer took them by surprise...
My answer was that the church has forgotten what passion looks like. In my opinion, in the 21st century passion is best displayed by the group of men that crashed planes into the world trade center and the pentagon. Obviously what they did was a horrible, HORRIBLE act, but their dedication to their cause and their passion about it is undeniable.
As Christians, Jesus does not call us to crash planes into buildings... thankfully... but his call to his disciples and all that he spoke to when he walked this earth was not a call to a wishy-washy faith, but to a radically different lifestyle and set of beliefs that the world has continually rejected since he walked this planet as a man.
Our passion for him comes out of our relationship with him. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus and see him at work in our lives, we are inspired to share what he is doing in our lives with those around us. I think that this goes hand-in-hand with what I blogged about last week.
I have a bit of an unusual response to my weekly dose of telemarketing. Instead of hanging up on the telemarketer, I usually spend some time trying to determine whether they truly believe in what they are selling or not. I'm not very successful in getting an answer most of the time, but once, there was a guy who candidly let me know that the tone of his voice was the telling factor. If he was selling something he was passionate about, he would sound more animated than his monotonous, pre-rehearsed speech. He went on to tell me that in his office, many of them were selling products that they are not eligible for, or that they do not believe will transform your life the way they claimed they will.
As facilitators of worship we have to guard against being Jesus' dispassionate marketers because the congregation or people that we try to connect with him can see through our lack of passion and belief, and believe me, it is all downhill from there.
And now for some new age-ish quotes to end this week's blog.
“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”
- Earl Nightingale
"Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion"
- Hebbel
“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.”
- Unknown
overflow of the Holy Spirit VS Abundance of experience
A friend of mine once challenged me about 2 things that at that time made for interesting spiritual and intellectual ruminating.
- He said that we should be careful that as worshippers we were engaging in ministry out of an overflow of God pouring into us and our deep relationship with him rather than from an abundance of experience.
- He also said that we should learn to tell the difference between a service that had a high because of musical excellence and a service that had a high point because of God's presence and power at work in his people.
At the time that he made these comments, we were on a worship team that somehow (please do not ask how) led worship at 3 morning services and one evening service. Because we played together a lot and because we were fairly good musicians, we were able to achieve really good sound (in our estimation) and over the 6 years that we did this, rack up sunday service experience that most people on worship teams elsewhere in the country and in the world would take years to accumulate.
I think that his challenge to us came out of an accurate observation about the fact that we had unknowingly (or even knowingly) come up with a formula for what worked at our church and with our congregation and all we had to do was hit the right buttons to see the "result" we were looking for.
The more I thought about his challenge, the more I came to realize that it was addressing an issue that christians who are involved in ministry over long periods of time have the tendency to take for granted. This is the issue/area of a growing relationship with Jesus. I know that I have spoken about various aspects of it over the previous entries, but as people that find ourselves at the frontline in spiritual matters because we choose to engage in ministry, we have to be sure that our walk with God is right and that our ministry and warfare is not resting on the shaky foundation of experience, but on the solid rock of our relationship with Jesus.
I also found that in my life I had began to treat my time in service and ministry as a substitute for the time that I should have spent in personal relationship-building time with God. This is especially true for churches like the one to which we belong that maintain a very high number of activities and demand lots of time and commitment from their volunteers.
Time spent in ministry is not a substitute for time spent in your prayer closet or in your personal bible study...
God is also more concerned about your spiritual growth and relationship with him than he is about whether you are involved in ministry or not.
As the leader of the worship ministry at woodvale, I am working hard to promote excellence as a cornerstone value. However, even for myself, I have to remember that excellence without the infusion of the work of the Holy Spirit yields no lasting result. The result may be a great-sounding worship set, but because our mandate is to CONNECT PEOPLE WITH GOD, we fall way short of our primary objective. Obviously excellence is needed in what we do because God is not honored by the lack thereof, but it is not an end in itself and so I extend the challenge to us all about this.
Do you bring your gift of worship leading before the congregation and God himself based on your experience or on your music ability... or do you allow Jesus to inspire the gifts that he has given you to connect the people that you lead in worship to a God that wants to touch and transform his people?
- He said that we should be careful that as worshippers we were engaging in ministry out of an overflow of God pouring into us and our deep relationship with him rather than from an abundance of experience.
- He also said that we should learn to tell the difference between a service that had a high because of musical excellence and a service that had a high point because of God's presence and power at work in his people.
At the time that he made these comments, we were on a worship team that somehow (please do not ask how) led worship at 3 morning services and one evening service. Because we played together a lot and because we were fairly good musicians, we were able to achieve really good sound (in our estimation) and over the 6 years that we did this, rack up sunday service experience that most people on worship teams elsewhere in the country and in the world would take years to accumulate.
I think that his challenge to us came out of an accurate observation about the fact that we had unknowingly (or even knowingly) come up with a formula for what worked at our church and with our congregation and all we had to do was hit the right buttons to see the "result" we were looking for.
The more I thought about his challenge, the more I came to realize that it was addressing an issue that christians who are involved in ministry over long periods of time have the tendency to take for granted. This is the issue/area of a growing relationship with Jesus. I know that I have spoken about various aspects of it over the previous entries, but as people that find ourselves at the frontline in spiritual matters because we choose to engage in ministry, we have to be sure that our walk with God is right and that our ministry and warfare is not resting on the shaky foundation of experience, but on the solid rock of our relationship with Jesus.
I also found that in my life I had began to treat my time in service and ministry as a substitute for the time that I should have spent in personal relationship-building time with God. This is especially true for churches like the one to which we belong that maintain a very high number of activities and demand lots of time and commitment from their volunteers.
Time spent in ministry is not a substitute for time spent in your prayer closet or in your personal bible study...
God is also more concerned about your spiritual growth and relationship with him than he is about whether you are involved in ministry or not.
As the leader of the worship ministry at woodvale, I am working hard to promote excellence as a cornerstone value. However, even for myself, I have to remember that excellence without the infusion of the work of the Holy Spirit yields no lasting result. The result may be a great-sounding worship set, but because our mandate is to CONNECT PEOPLE WITH GOD, we fall way short of our primary objective. Obviously excellence is needed in what we do because God is not honored by the lack thereof, but it is not an end in itself and so I extend the challenge to us all about this.
Do you bring your gift of worship leading before the congregation and God himself based on your experience or on your music ability... or do you allow Jesus to inspire the gifts that he has given you to connect the people that you lead in worship to a God that wants to touch and transform his people?
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