Cross-Centered Books

Below is a quote from a blog I'll be reading with every new post. Please, do your soul a favor and put C.J. Mahaney's blog on your Favorites or Bookmarks list or your RSS feeder.

"We awaken each day with a tendency to forget that which is most important: the gospel."

Worship: A Clue to the Meaning of Life

I haven't listened to this 2-part address, but I always appreciate what Ravi Zacharias has to say. And I'm sure his thoughts on worship will be biblically sound and personally challenging. Go to Worship: A Clue to the Meaning of Life to listen.

The host of this download is blog.worship.com.

If you want a treasure chest of teaching on worship, go to worship.com's mp3 download page. You will find the likes of some heavy hitters in the areas of modern worship: The White Horse Inn, Sovereign Grace Ministries (Bob Kauflin, C.J. Mahaney, Joshua Harris), John Piper, Keith Getty, R.C. Sproul, et al.) Drop by and start downloading!

Peace,
~ w

Every Promise - Stuart Townend

If you found any resonance with my last post, and you happen to be a fan of Stuart Townend's music too, you will surely like this song - Every Promise - written by Townend in 2005, but recently re-recorded. It sounds like it is being performed on the Grand Ole Opry stage. But Stuart's Irish baritone voice completely smashes that image.

Anyway, the lyrics are quite good. (What else would you expect from the lyricist of songs like In Christ Alone, How Deep the Father's Love For Us?)

"Every Promise of Your Word"
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music

From the breaking of the dawn to the setting of the sun,
I will stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
Words of power, strong to save, that will never pass away,
I will stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
For Your covenant is sure,
And on this I am secure—
I can stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.

When I stumble and I sin, condemnation pressing in,
I will stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
You are faithful to forgive that in freedom I might live,
So I stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
Guilt to innocence restored,
You remember sins no more—
So I'll stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.

When I'm faced with anguished choice, I will listen for Your voice,
And I'll stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
Through this dark and troubled land
You will guide me with Your hand
As I stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
And You've promised to complete
Ev'ry work begun in me—
So I'll stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.

Hope that lifts me from despair, love that casts out ev'ry fear,
As I stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
Not forsaken, not alone, for the Comforter has come,
And I stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.
Grace sufficient, grace for me,
Grace for all who will believe—
We will stand on ev'ry promise of Your Word.

About the song, Kieth Getty says,

Every Promise of your word is a song that reminds us of the rich promises in God's word which are more than sufficient for our every circumstance.

This can be used as a congregational song or as an answer and response, where the congregation simply sing - 'and I stand on every promise of Your word'

Blessings!
~ w

NPR Music: Musician Ricky Skaggs

I admit it. I love bluegrass music. It's in my blood. My uncle Bobby has been in a bluegrass band for as long as I can remember. Also tucked away in a deep part of my heart are emotions that are evoked only by traditional, southern Gospel music. Where these styles of music meet is an important intersection in my musical journey. When I was just a boy, my parents took me to see Ricky Skaggs. I love Ricky's amazing talent - his voice and mandolin picking (er, "pick'n" I should say). But I especially love his humility. You can pick up on both of these qualities as you listen to NPR Music: Musician Ricky Skaggs.

What Is Surprising About Worship - Brandon Wells

There's one friend I talk to a number of times almost every day about anything and everything life throws at us. He is a funny but godly guy, a fellow worship leader, and a soul-friend who pastors my heart continually. Through him God has shown me the kind of sweet fellowship a man is meant to have with a friend. This prophet, sage, and friend is Brandon Wells, and below you'll find his thoughtful answer to the question I threw out recently: What is the most surprising thing you've learned about worship?

The most surprising thing that I've learned about worship is that the edification of people and the glorification of Christ are not at odds. I don't have to make a choice in my worship planning between the two. If I seek Christ's glorification then the people will be edified. Conversely, if I seek what is best for the people then Christ will be glorified. Those who are familiar with the works of King David, Augustine, Pascal, Edwards, Piper, and the like, have come to know this well.

John Jackson, "I Could Run Away" - Video

My buddy John Jackson is a wonderful guy and an excellent musician/worship leader. He sent me this video of him, and I was blessed by it. I thought I'd pass on the blessing!



I looked at some other videos he did, and thought it was interesting how he did "Holy Is the Lord". Check it out!

A visitor blogs about his visit to my church

I found out today that Cameron Dahl, Pastor of Music and Worship at First Baptist Church of Maryville, Tennessee blogged about his experience of worshiping at our church last Summer. When my buddy Gabe told me about it, I just cringed. Was it a "bad" Sunday? Was I even there or was I on vacation? What did he think??

Fortunately, Dahl's words were tempered with grace. Thanks be to God. He had some sweet things to say.

The music was accompanied by a mix of electric guitar, bass, drums, violin, harp and organ. It was very nice. Again, I will be using a few of the songs that I learned this morning!

But he was not without critique. (Thanks be to God!)

This morning, while people were cordial, the greeting process ... was lacking.

He goes on:

...the flow of the service seems interrupted in the middle with announcements.

The last thing Cameron brought up was our Communion service, and how a visitor must feel when they don't know the dance:

We concluded the service with communion. It went well, but for a time I was uncomfortable because I did not know how they were going to do it. ... I was struck by how a visitor knows what to do.

I appreciate Cameron's intentionality to get out and see what other churches are doing in worship in order that he might find a better way to do worship at his own church (which seemed to be his purpose). What humility. May we all learn to learn from each other in this strange and difficult time in the life of Christ's Church.

Emotions in Worship

A couple of years ago I wrote about worship and spiritual health. Re-reading it today was helpful, not because of things I said, but because of what better, more godly men have said. I'm posting it again for my own sake, but I hope it helps you too.

How's your spiritual health? Let me ask it another way, How are your emotions?

I confess I am by nature devastatingly melancholic – gloomy, sad, forlorn, despondent and pessimistic. I am also prone to a fierce temper, full of wrath and judgment, anger, rage and fury. Thankfully, and through a lifestyle of repentance, God is sanctifying me from one level of glory to another and my temper and melancholic weaknesses are being left in the wake.

Jonathan Edwards believed emotion (what he called affection) always involves both the intellect and the will. He said emotions are acts of the will. They are 'the more lively and intense actions of the soul's inclinations and will.' The will and the emotions are not seperate. 'Our emotions differ from casual acts of choice only in their energy and vividness,' Edwards says.

Edwards' audience consisted of those who either 1) dismissed the events of the First Great Awakening as mindless hysteria, and 2) those who believed any thing that occurred in the revival meetings – no matter how strange or wild - was of God. Edwards was seeking to restore the balance between the mind and the heart. Between intellect and emotion. He wanted to maintain worship that was in Spirit and in Truth.

As John Piper has said,
Truth without emotion produces dead orthodoxy and a church full (or half-full) of artificial admirers (like people who write generic anniversary cards for a living). On the other hand, emotion without truth produces empty frenzy and cultivates shallow people who refuse the discipline of rigorous thought. But true worship comes from people who are deeply emotional and who love deep and sound doctrine. Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship.

What Is Surprising About Worship - Matt Casada

My friend Matt Casada is responsible for directing the Rejoice! Worship Ministries at my church. Below is his response to my recent question, What is the most surprising thing you've learned about worship?

I keep coming back to how surprising it is that God not only allows sinful, messed up people to worship Him, but desires our worship in and through everything we think, say, or do. And with that, He chooses to meet us where we are...

'What joy, what peace, has come to us.
What hope, what help, what love.'
(Stuart Townend, When Love Came Down to Earth)

Martin Luther King, Jr. - Free at Last speech

What is Surprising about Worship - Mike Kennebrew

My buddy, worship leader/singer-songwriter Mike Kennebrew joined the conversation on what is surprising about worship:

Sadly, i've learned how tainted it can become when you are paid to do it.

Obviously, that's not true worship, but more of worship leading as a profession.

What is Surprising about Worship - Marc Ivey

My friend, gospel music soloist Marc Ivey responds to my question, What is the most surprising thing you've learned about worship?

The most surprising thing that I have learned from worship is how intimate it can be when you are walking closely with the Lord. How healing it is when you are hurting, how ineffective it is when you can't focus on the Lord. (when its just a song and dance) How miraculous it is in the midst of a storm. Worship in my opinion is a lifestyle. Its obedience to the gospel, and the act of worship is a total reflection of your heart.

What is Surprising about Worship - John Frame

I recently asked a few friends, What is the most surprising thing you've learned about worship?

My professor John Frame answered:

I guess the main thing is the discrepancy between 1 Cor. 14 (the only extended passage on post-resurrection worship) and the prevailing theories and practices of worship.

Worship Leader Training Center

I have proposed to my music staff and worship band a couple of conference options this year (WorshipGod08, Transforming Culture). There is no doubt that these are good for a number of reasons:

• you get away from the rut of your routine together
• you experience worship in another environment together
• you receive and can critique the same teaching together
• you eat, sleep, travel, decide, pray, etc together

It's a great idea to get away for those reasons. Hopefully you come back a stronger team. However, if you don't have the time or money to hop on a plane, rent a hotel, and buy 4 days worth of food, and you still want to gain the training you may receive at a conference, go HERE.

Worship Leader Magazine's Training Center has some free sessions for download, and a number of others for under $40. Some good things about this are:

• being able to listen at your own pace
• being able to press the magic rewind button
• being able to gather your team around a central computer or a network of computers or on site training
• saving lots of money
• having more people able to share the experience
  

Grace and Peace,
~ w

Learn from Darwin - We become what we behold

Every month I receive a letter from Desiring God Ministries offering a message on CD by John Piper for free or for whatever financial contribution I can make. I've only responded once for a CD, but every letter is rich and thoughtful. I'd encourage anyone to get on their mailing list.

Here are snippets taken from their July '07 letter:

Charles Darwin loved his scientific studies. They were his “chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life.” As a young man he made a half-hearted attempt to become a clergyman, but gave it up because beetles and plants and rock formations held far more fascination for him than theology. At age 22, he embarked on his famous five-year voyage aboard “The Beagle” and his career as a naturalist was established. He spent the rest of his life intensely observing things, reducing them to their component parts and theorizing where they came from and why they behaved as they did.
However, as the years passed something very sad happened to him. He described it near the end of his life in his autobiography:

Up to the age of 30 or beyond it, poetry of many kinds…gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare…. Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great, delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost any taste for pictures or music.… I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did.… My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.… The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

What a devastating loss. All that time in his laboratory abstracting theories from facts had conditioned his mind to analyze to such a degree that he could no longer enjoy beauty just for what it was. A symphony, a sunset, or a sonnet was not designed for Darwin to dissect but delight in. Too much dissection robbed him of delight.

We become what we behold. This is right from the Bible. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

This is the transformation that God intends for us: to grow, not decline, in our ability to enjoy glory. We are to fix our eyes on Jesus, the radiance of the glory of God (Heb. 1:2), and in doing so he will reveal increasing degrees of glory to us, which will then shape our thinking and train our affections.

Let’s learn from Darwin and heed God’s life-giving exhortations: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2) by “set[ting] your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth” (Colossians 3:2).

You can read the rest online.

Criticism

Christianity Today Magazine tries to help pastors through their Building Church Leaders website, where they added today the Making the Most of Criticism download.

The blurb for this download begins:

"Be careful what you say about pastors," my father once told me. "The Lord sees his servants as the apple of his eye." Those words have haunted me at various moments in my adult life. I often recollect them after my critical tongue has unjustly lashed out against a ministry or a leader. As a pastor once reminded me: "Words spoken—even when retracted—remain said." When we criticize or gossip about those whom God has called to lead, we risk attacking a person or a work that's close to his heart.

I encourage you to keep this in mind today, and pray for those who are quenching and grieving God's Spirit with their critical tongues. May God guard us all, and help us to live a life of repentance as we live our lives Coram Deo - before the face of God.

A word to worship leaders

Bob Kauflin in his recent post, Another Reason to Sing About the Cross, gives worship leaders a good reminder:

"We can ... be tempted to pick songs that make [worshipers] feel good over songs that are good for them. We can choose lyrics that fail to acknowledge the seriousness of our sin, the depths of our problem, or the greatness of the salvation we’ve received in Christ. We can also focus so much on managing the musical flow, establishing the right groove, and creating the right atmosphere, that we forget what will really set them free."

Give serious thought to what this means. In our pursuit to be relevant & missional, we must never leave the glory of the cross. We must never move beyond it - only deeper into it.

Bill Maher on Conan O'Brien

I would encourage anyone stumped by Bill Maher's comments on how you can't reconcile faith and science and how “you can’t be a rational person six days a week…and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you’re drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god. That doesn't make you a person of faith -- that makes you a schizophrenic” to pick up Leslie Newbigin's Gospel In a Pluralist Society.

Sting voted the world's worst songwriter | Metro.co.uk

Metro, "Britain's first urban national newspaper", recently posted that Sting is the world's worst songwriter. Having a few Sting/Police albums myself (and ignorantly enjoying them all these years!) got me wondering, who do you think is the best worship songwriter? (If you don't know the songwriter, what do you think are some of the best current worship songs?)

How To End The Worship Wars

Pastor Randy Gaumer of First Baptist Church, Perkasie, PA, may have finally done the impossible. In about a 90-frame PowerPoint presentation he brings one of the most succinct, Biblical, non-polemical, historically-based, and Spirit-filled teachings on how to think and feel about worship music in our milieu. I HIGHLY recommend anyone and everyone to click HERE to download and read through the presentation. (Get the audio HERE.)

It was obviously written not as a stand alone work, but to accompany a lesson. However, you can still profit greatly from working through the material.

May God grant us the kind of worship Pastor Gaumer describes and to be the kind of worshipers the Father is seeking.

Looking forward to a wonderful year of worship!