My new friend Ron Man directs the Worship Resources Dept. of the Greater European Mission, offering a free monthly online digest, a great group of links, some superb articles and other resources.
During some correspondence, I asked Ron the same question I've been asking others: What is the most surprising thing you've learned about worship?
Ron answered,
The most surprising things I've learned about worship came from two paradigm-exploding books (for me at least):
1. The opening lines of Piper's Let the Nations Be Glad: "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't." Those thoughts (and his expanded exposition of them in that book) transformed the way I thought about missions, about worship . . . indeed, about God.
2. The fact Jesus Christ is the true Leader of our worship; that only He (not a Christian artist, not a worship leader, not even worship itself) can lead us into God's presence; that our worship is acceptable and pleasing to God, not because of its own quality, but because we come in Christ, who always offers a perfect offering of praise to the Father; that we need to repent of trying to do worship in our own strength (what Torrance called our "Unitarian" tendency in worship). These thoughts came from James Torrance's Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace, and was expanded on in both Reggie's and my books.
