We’re going to talk about Jesus and worship in this post, and I’m going to stake out a position that questions whether we are anywhere near the right path in regard to one critical area.
One of the fundamentals of this exploration is the idea that Jesus was intentional in what he was doing with his followers, and that in exploring the intentional things Jesus did to transform his disciples we’ll find the answers to lots of our own questions about what it means to be a Christian.
Jesus didn’t walk up to Peter, James or John and go through the Evangelism Explosion presentation. He never asked them to pray to receive him as their Lord and Savior.
No. Jesus announced that the Kingdom of God was near. (Mark 1:14-15) He invited men to follow him and be made into Kingdom agents. (Mark 1:17) Based on John’s Gospel’s account, it appears that Jesus’ original followers were following him as a candidate for messiah, so designated by John the Baptist. Their frequent interactions with Jesus indicated that they were eventually convinced that Jesus was messiah and would follow the “script” of becoming the King/deliverer of Israel.
What was actually happening was an intentional, three year process- a word you’ll be hearing a lot- of becoming disciples. Much of what the disciples needed to know wasn’t available to them until after Jesus’ death, resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, but the disciple shaping process went on throughout Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the Gospels.
In looking at Jesus’ intentional actions of “disciple-making,” we need to be clear that the central revelation about the Kingdom of God, Jesus’ mission and purpose were only available in the light of the cross/resurrection. But Jesus’ time with his disciples was not a waste. Everything he did was intentionally designed so that when they were given complete understanding/sight (Mark 8: 22-26) they would know how to begin to live and operate as Jesus-shaped followers.
The cross, resurrection and arrival of the Holy Spirit are the critical center of the discipleship process, but the intentional ministry of Jesus to and with his disciples provides much of the raw material we need to examine to answer questions about what does it mean to be a disciple.
If we don’t understand this, then several things happen:
We will start promoting the epistles over the Gospels.
We will reduce discipleship to believing in Jesus.
We will become pragmatists, doing whatever “works” in our culture to reach the ends we’ve chosen as “Christian.”
We will adopt extraneous ways of hearing and seeing Jesus’ ministry that will make his teachings and actions increasingly meaningless and unimportant.
Spectator, entertainment-oriented, consumer oriented Christianity will replace the like and call of the Kingdom of God.
We will begin distorting scripture so that it adapts to our truncated, reduced version of the Gospel.
In a future posts, I’ll be taking a look at the content of the processes Jesus used to shape his disciples.
For now, here’s the short list (so far. Revisions likely):
1. Rituals and Traditions (Relating to a larger story)
2. Missional Worldview (The Gospel of the Kingdom of God)
3. Relationships
4. Commands and Teaching (Actions)
5. Commands and Teaching (Character qualities)
6. Jesus’ example
7. The Work of God the Holy Spirit
Now, here’s today’s kicker.
I don’t think anything like today’s music dominated evangelical worship service is remotely on Jesus’ menu for creating disciples. I think we’ve badly missed the boat on that one and the kind of disciples the American church is producing shows that we’re producing passive consumers of church culture, not Kingdom agents living out their faith in the Gospel of the King.
Now, what we’ll experience at this point in our flight is the turbulence caused by that moment when bunches of you say “Yes, but….” at the same time.
You have a musically dominated worship model because it is congruent with church growth and makes a mot of other things possible, right? And the music is good, and people are truly worshiping God. Right? Everyone is happier. Right?
Of course, I won’t argue with you. I’m just going to tell you what you already know: When Jesus was incarnate on earth, he didn’t produce disciples by large group musical events or music dominated worship. If he showed up today and looked most evangelical churches as outposts of his movement, he’d ask why we are spending so much time getting high on tunes.
Every piece of evidence we have is that Jesus participated in music as an aspect of worship pretty much like any first century observant Jewish person. He didn’t say anything opposing music, and I wouldn’t suggest he opposes what evangelicals are doing per se.
Now don’t hate on me. I’m just telling you that if you spent three years with Jesus, went through the passion, the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, you wouldn’t have said, “It’s really important that we sing songs for a couple of hours a week. That’s how we’ll produce the disciples Jesus commanded us to make.”
The Jesus shaped material for the evangelical music fetish isn’t there. It’s just not. The theological foundation for human beings as artistic creatures, and for the use of music in worship is there, but nothing like the contemporary evangelical approach to musical worship is coming out of the ministry of Jesus.
It’s not in the Gospels. It’s not in the epistles. It’s not in Paul or Acts. It’s not in the later New testament. There’s one passage- one- in Colossians that shows the use of music as ministry within the church to Christians.
Now if this new blog is going to be helpful for you, realize I’m not going to tell you what to do, and I’m not going to tell you I have all the answers.
I’m just going to tell you that I am not surprised that we don’t have Jesus shaped churches, Christians or movements when we ignore Jesus to the extent that most of evangelicalism is determined to ignore this.
You can have music that honors God and you can have music that contributes to the processes of discipleship. But you cannot have a Jesus shaped discipleship process that depends on music to the extent evangelicals are determined to do.
How did Jesus make worship (and any of the parts of worship) an influence on the spiritual formation of his followers? How did corporate worship, which we now focus on with the majority of our time, resources and efforts as Christians, fit into Jesus’ process of creating a Kingdom movement?
Trust me, we’re going to look at a lot more than just music. We’re going to put the Jesus-shaped paradigm to work on everything I can get my hands on, starting with the whole idea of institutional, denominational Christianity itself.
Jesus Shaped isn’t Consumer Shaped. Print the t-shirt.
See you next time.
[...] transitioning from deconstructing evangelicalism to building a Jesus Shaped Spirituality. His post, The Intentional Jesus Visits Your 40 Minute Worship Music Set, is like a cool breeze on a sweltering-hot day. I’ve done a cut-and-paste job on a couple of [...]
Great read. Thanks. All my churchgoing friends and family think I am somehow a heretic for not really enjoying a good “worship service”. Keep ‘em coming.
But the t-shirt would be a concession to the consumer-shaped church :-) so on second thought perhaps we can do without it …
I’m looking forward to this journey.
Wow Michael…what a great way to start off this series.
I really agree with you, even though I am a worship leader. The way that we have turned most “successful” churches into a really bad rock concert a few times a week in the name of Jesus doesn’t line up. You threw us back to the Gospels and into the radical nature of discipleship that was so subversive it got someone killed.
In the past years my church ministry has also been as worship leader and this has been a change of focus that i desperately want to get across to those that show up on Sunday mornings. But I’m struggling with how to make the right changes. Thanks for this post.
Michael, Long time reader at internetmonk.com – looking forward to JSS – first time commenter. I was saying – singing – ‘Amen’ to your comments about the music. I shared them with my wife and she agreed generally, though she did point out that sometimes music, like poetry and parables can speak to a part of us that prose and proclamation can’t touch. After reflecting on that a moment or two, I wonder if there are elements to the ‘worship set’, if truly intent upon worship rather than entertainment, that can genuinely speak to us and for us. It occurs to me that some of what we sing can serve the same purposes that chants have served in many traditions throughout the church’s history. Be careful about suggesting to evangelical churches that they are chanting! Some of the better contemporary music has much in common with the better hymnody from our traditions. I agree with you generally about the narcissistic nature of a lot of these ‘worship sets’, but let’s keep the baby in the bath water until we can sort out whether or not he can faithfully sing. One last thing, while I like your approach (absolutely necessary) to filtering spirituality through what we know of Jesus in Scripture, we have to be extremely careful when we argue from silence. Keep up the good work. I thank God for what you are doing. It has certainly begun to be used by God to reshape my spirituality.
We’re going to be learning a lot about three words in regard to JSS:
1) Connection: What is the connection to Jesus?
2) Imitation: How do we (and should we) imitate Jesus?
3) Application: How do we apply Jesus’ teaching/example or process to the contemporary culture we are part of?
I’ll stop there, but hopefully you’ll see that we want to connect music to Jesus, imitate Jesus as our teacher and example, but also apply what Jesus is showing us in a different setting.
I’ll be writing later that this is what the epistles do.
Hi there! I’ve read IM for the past few months and I’m moving over here with you. I read Allen Mitsuo Wakabayashi’s “Kingdom Come: How Jesus Wants to Change the World” a year ago and it changed my life. Our pastor read the book and just completed a sermon series going back to Jesus and the gospels to determine, What is the Kingdom? Are we missing it? Why doesn’t the Bible ever say, “become a Christian so you can go to heaven when you die”? And now I read your blog and much of what you have to say resonates with that book.
I’d be shocked if you haven’t read it just because you are circling his themes… but if you haven’t, it is a MUST read. I haven’t been reading your blog long enough to know if you’ve mentioned it already.
If it’s possible to do so, I agree with you 110%. I spent two years working alongside another youth pastor who was obsessed with worship. He insisted (as the person who led the worship) that we start each youth service with some quick announcements then the music would begin. He would not allow there to be any time constraints, because we had to wait till the kids had moved across some magical line (determined my him) to the place of “real worship”. There were nights when that’s all we did. Repetative, syrupy, love songs to Jesus. He made me nuts. I rebelled. And was from that point on assumed to be less spiritual because of it.
I’ve been reading the IM blog for a couple of weeks now, and have been truly challenged by some of your thoughts. I think you and I may have a little in common. We’re about the same age; I’m an educator, and a Southern Baptist. My heart’s desire is to be a devoted follower of Jesus. I’m beginning to take another look at some of the teachings of my church. Recently, I’ve been doing a personal study on what the early church fathers believed about baptism. I was quite surprised to learn that most believed a person had to be baptized to be saved. I was also rather shocked to learn that Luther, “Father of the Reformation,” also taught “baptismal regeneration.” I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter. Keep up the good work, Bro.!
Really looking forward to these posts. I have always been suspicious of Christian music. I gave a Sunday morning speech one time about creepy “Jesus is My Boyfriend Songs.”
Why I’m suspicious of Christian worship music:
– Most pop Christian music sucks
– Most pop Christian music has some reference to fondling Jesus “hold me close, let your love surround me…”
– Most pop Christian music has all the nuance and depth of the O’Reilly factor
– Most pop Christian music is mass produced by some giant corporation that knows it has a ready made, captive audience
Michael,
I really enjoyed your post on worship. All too often I think we get lost in our personal preferences–as far as worship style and worship music are concerned.
You post was a great reminder, thanks!
Archangel
http://archangelsblog.wordpress.com
I am in a church of about 1,400. On staff as an Associate. We too have come to the conclusion that nothing we do is the way Jesus would do it.
We are now in the process of discovering how He would do it and changing. This is especially profound when you consider that we are pentecostal or charismatic in doctrine. Normally, when you spring from this movement in Christianity, you feel as if you have the market cornered in God.
Truth is, without change, the church as we know it in America is dying. I believe it is time we dropped our denominational mantras and found out who the real Jesus is.
Hi there. First time reader…. therefore, first time commenter. I work as a worship leader in a anabaptist-roots-turned-evangelical church. Despite the likely hit to my personal job security, I am very interested in the conversation you’ve started here, and look forward to reading further.
Everyone take a breath for a second and let me make a few points:
1) I don’t think sermons are the primary process for disciple-making with Jesus either. Or Bible studies. Or Whatnot.
2) Music has been part of the Christian expression of connection to God through Jesus Christ for as long as we have a record. In the early Church. In the New Testament. In the Judaism that produced Jesus.
3) I’m not talking about your problems with your worship leader’s resemblance to a bad American Idol wannabe.
4) I’m talking about two things:
a. If I am seeking to make my discipleship Jesus-shaped, how much role does ANYTHING have in it? (Art, education, mysticism, psychology, prayer, and so on.
b. When I utilize music (or anything else) what is my basis for evaluating what I am doing, both going in and afterward?
I LOVE MY WORSHIP LEADERS…and one reason is I know their heart is to say “what does Jesus want from me in this role?” and “Come Holy Spirit; Do what we can never do!”
A bit late on this one, but it seems to me that the “one” text you referenced really does have something to say about this.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” – Colossians 3:16
Here we have music for the purpose of “teaching and admonishing one another.” In the context of Paul’s letter to the Colossians the purpose of our singing is to help one another put off some things that aren’t Jesus-shaped and put on some things that are Jesus shaped – love, humility, compassion, etc.
I’ve never seen music work like this in any “service of worship” I’ve lead or participated in.
Perhaps part of the problem too is our misunderstanding of worship. Maybe Romans 12:1-2 helps in this regard.
Wow, I’ve just quoted Paul twice while discussing Jesus-shaped spirituality. Hmmm…
Michael,
Not directly to your point, but I wonder if one issue is that the Sunday morning gathering is seen as the primary expression of the Evangelical church – for worship, disciple-making, teaching, etc. In other words, if we spent more time being the church outside the 4 walls of the building then the “worship” time on Sunday morning wouldn’t loom as large as it does. It would be a relatively small part of what we’re doing.
This doesn’t negate your point evaluating everything as it contributes to a Jesus-shaped discipleship. Just think of it as more of an addendum.
Michael-
Would you seek to differentiate between the idea of “Jesus shaped worship”, and proper expressions of Trinitarian Worship. Do you think the two go hand in hand or are there differences that would make the two in-compatible?
I really like the new blog and the thoughts that are coming from it. We should do lunch when you are in Wilmore later this summer.
I think you have two legitimate starting points, but I’d like to make the case that Jesus Shaped worship, while being Trinitarian, would make a conscious effort to honor the specific teaching of Jesus on worship.
I especially think of his explicit teachings on prayer, public piety and simplicity.
I obviously am for Trinitarian worship, but I think you can start at the right place and do a lot of good things and wind up a long, long way from anything Jesus did or would conceivably do.
I think this particularly pertains to the “public spectacle” aspect of worship, and to the use of technology, facilities, money, etc.
Allright, let me rant at you a little bit.
I am serving Jesus primarily right now by being the father of four small children, all under the age of three! (Two of them are twins.) If my wife and I are successful in this mission, then at a minimum my wife and I will have doubled the impact of the next generation of our family within the church. Of course, along the way we hope that we serve God in productive ways that please Him and that our children as they come to adulthood and come to faith in Jesus also serve God in productive ways that please Him.
I’m not going to claim I have any sort of monopoly of understanding what Jesus wants. But I do understand that now that I have a wife and four children, being a good husband and father is very, very near the top of His list of priorities for me. There are lots of ways in which I can be serving God, but behaving in a Godly way toward my wife trumps just about all of them, and raising my children in the way they should go (God’s way) trumps pretty much everything but that.
Within that framework, right now a lot of the other priorities have to go way down. I still need to put a lot into my job: if a man doesn’t provide for those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. But right now I’m not out trying to evangelise door to door, I’m not trying to read every great Christian writing from the last two centuries, I’m not directly working with any church departments, etc., etc., etc. You may think most of those things are unimportant or undesirable for a Jesus-shaped Christian, anyway. :) But regardless, I’m sure you’d agree that I’ve got to work on forming more Christlike character within myself and within my children.
Let me tell you something: sitting through a one hour church service is sometimes the hardest part of my week. I haven’t heard the entirety of more than about two sermons in the last three years. I can’t carry a notebook to church any more to take notes. If I had a notebook, I couldn’t take the notes any more; my kids are too busy snatching the pencil out of my hand, scribbling on the hymnal, and ripping the page I was trying to write on. My mind doesn’t just wander during prayer … it has to be actively and alertly watching and training my children. When we observe communion my wife and I are lucky if we’re even sitting together, as often by then one or both of us has had to take one or more children out.
But there’s one thing I can do: I can sing.
While I’m changing a filthy diaper, I can sing. While I’m extracting baby boy #1’s fingers from baby boy #2’s teeth, I can sing. Whether I’m in the auditorium or out, I can sing.
If those songs are high-quality, well-written, spiritually substantive hymns, then they are actively working to build my character, the character of my children, and even the character of the Christians around me.
Singing is the ONE part of the assembly that currently is most profitable for a harried parent of young children like me.
I feel like it’d be useless if it looked like a rock concert, and I don’t know what the “music ministry” of most contemporary Protestant churches even looks like, so maybe we’re not talking about the same thing. But I want the worship my chuch engages in now to become more music dominated. It needs to. We need to pitch some songs that are spiritual junk food. But we need to spend more time in song, and meet to engage in it more frequently. What I’m talking about may not look like what Protestant churches mean when they say “music ministry”; it might look a lot more like something Orthodox or Catholic. It might look a lot more like a Protestant worship service from one or three hundred years ago. It would DEFINITELY look a lot like Jesus and His disciples singing a hymn after the first Lord’s Supper, and like the church speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as commanded MULTIPLE times (not merely once — I have no clue where you came up with that count) in the New Testament.
If what you’re saying is “our current Protestant music worship is failing and is worse than useless because it doesn’t look like what Jesus and His apostles did,” then I can probably go along with that. If you’re saying “We should sing a lot less and spend more time in longer discussions about Scripture and in prayer when we are together because after all, hymns really weren’t that important in the ministry of Jesus and in the New Testament,” then I think you are dead, dead wrong.
jdavidb:
Thanks for your contribution.
I didn’t make any recommendations for more or less music at your church.
I said that Jesus didn’t use much resembling the evangelical approach to church music in the process of discipleship formation.
Your accusation that I am advocating long discussions, etc. is your own point, not mine. You’ve gone well past the topic, and the angry personal, accusatory tone of your comment really should have disqualified it from being posted.
I came up with once, because once is how many times the command is in the New Testament.
Don’t try to continue this discussion by further angry caricatures of me. I won’t post it. Calm down, and I will.
Sorry you’re upset.
MS
Michael, I think you’re seeing “caricatures of you” where what I’m seeing is “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Sorry if I’m not representing you accurately — I assure you it’s because of incompetence, not because of malice. It’s a little hard when I’ve watched people act to systematically destroy the good things that exist in church music for the last decade or so.
“Once in the New Testament” ignores Ephesians, not to mention the examples of Christ and His apostles.
I said I was going to rant, but I apologize, because somehow I came off as angrier than I actually was. Defensive is a better word for what I was feeling. I’m sorry that that looked like anger, or worse, malice.
Please provide me the Jesus quote commanding singing.
Most critical scholars believe Ephesians and Colossians are editions of the same letter to differing churches, but go ahead and count two.
I said that Jesus didn’t use much resembling the evangelical approach to church music in the process of discipleship formation.
So here’s where we may have a lot of misunderstanding, simply because I don’t know what you mean by “the evangelical approach to church music.”
Do you mean the rock concert approach? I’ve never really been a part of a church that does that, although I’ve been a part of churches with factions that wished we’d look more like that.
Do you mean an approach that looks like the Protestant singing of hymns in the 1800’s?
Do you mean something that looks like the worship of the Orthodox and Catholics? Or Jews?
What is it, exactly, that you are saying Jesus didn’t use? Since we are not members of the same church, since I have no idea what music at your church sounds like, we don’t have a common enough frame of reference for me to understand what you’re saying.
Sure I can just go read the Bible and see what Jesus did do with music, and what the apostles made of that. But then, to be honest, I get something that doesn’t strike me as being radically different from the way music looks in my own church, presently, other than the fact that I doubt they wasted a lot of time with some of the spiritual junk food songs. Now it may be that it doesn’t look different because it wasn’t significantly different … or it may be that I’ve got something severely wrong with my vision, something you could clear up. That’s why I’m pressing you for more information about what you’re saying.
So … what’s wrong, if anything, with the way I’m currently making the singing of hymns one of the most important parts of my contact with other Christians when we’re together, and longing for more? Is what I’m talking about what you mean when you refer to a “music dominated evangelical worship service”? Are you referring to something that’s existed for 20 years, or something that’s been in formation for 400? Or something that’s been an increasing problem for the last thousand?
I haven’t said anything is wrong with you or your church or any musical style.
Evangelicals tend to meet for an hour a week in worship, in a building, and devote roughly half of that time to the use of music.
They apparently beleive- no matter what the style- that this is an important aspect of being a Christian.
I believe the Bible gives a basis for artistic expression and the use of music in worship, but I don’t believe Jesus used music as a significant way to form disciples. I’m sure he enjoyed music in his culture, in the synagogue and at the temple. I don’t believe the movement he started in Galilee used music to produce disciples or to demonstrate the Kingdom of God.
Please don’t assign me the role of critic of your musical taste or opinions.
peace
MS
Well, Ephesians and Colossians, be they one letter or two, were written by an apostle. One who said “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” And since Jesus commanded that “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me,” those commands from the apostles are in fact commands from God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, issued through those apostles. We also receive a commandment to sing praises under some circumstances through Jesus’s brother James in James 5:13. James is also called an apostle, although I’m not sure if that is in the same sense as the others with that title or not. Either way, he was a prophet to the early church, inspired by the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus.
And then there’s the very example of Jesus Himself, singing hymns at an appropriate time (after the Lord’s Supper) with His disciples. Since we are commanded to be imitating Jesus, there is something to imitate.
Is singing the be all and end all of the Lord’s commandments? Of course not. :) But neither would it be correct to say “Jesus never commanded it.” He did command it, through His apostles, and through His own example.
Last try:
i said Jesus didn’t use music to produce disciples the way evangeliicals typically use it.
That’s all. Not responding to this straw man argument again.
I haven’t said anything is wrong with you or your church or any musical style.
I’m not taking what you’re saying anywhere nearly that personal. :) But up till this point I still haven’t been all that clear on what you were actually saying. I couldn’t know for sure what you were criticizing. So I couldn’t tell if it affected me or not. :) And there seemed to be some value to what you were saying, so that’s why I’ve been responding so much and trying to get you to communicate more.
Evangelicals tend to meet for an hour a week in worship, in a building, and devote roughly half of that time to the use of music.
They apparently beleive- no matter what the style- that this is an important aspect of being a Christian.
Well, I’m happy to pitch the building. But since Jesus had apostles who seemed to think singing and assemblies were important, I’m pretty sure they are important, somehow. That doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing.
Again, I’m still not clear on if you’re critiquing something that’s been in Evangelicalism for a few centuries or merely decades. Protestant Christians have been having hour long (or longer) church meetings for centuries and church buildings predate Protestantism. :)
I don’t believe Jesus used music as a significant way to form disciples.
You know, I see Jesus as the author of the Psalms. Maybe I’m taking a broader perspective than you, but I really do differ with you here.
I don’t believe the movement he started in Galilee used music to produce disciples or to demonstrate the Kingdom of God.
It would seem that the early movement didn’t use music to convert people. But those followers left on earth after His ascension seem definitely to have been using music to build up existing disciples. Would you disagree with me on that?
Please don’t assign me the role of critic of your musical taste or opinions.
I definitely haven’t been.
Last try:
By the way, I’ve been at least one post behind you in responding most of the time here, so please bear with me and realize that at each point while I’m commenting I may not have seen everything you’d posted. In the post you’re responding to when you made this “last try,” I hadn’t yet seen the comment you repeated. I didn’t respond to the comment until seconds ago, in my comment just before this one.
That’s all. Not responding to this straw man argument again.
Now it seems to be you who is angry. I’m sorry if I started this out on the wrong tone. :( But you seem really impatient and nasty about something that I think is me simply not understanding what you have to say. I really wanted to gain more understanding about what you have to say. I’m not really trying to debate, although I did sort of have the expectation you might be interested in my perspective even if I differed from you. I’m put off and a little wounded that you seem to be so impatient and nasty when I’m just pressing you for more clarification. If you don’t want to spend time with me clarifying, I can perfectly understand that. But please don’t think I’m intentionally sitting here trying to waste your time or repeat straw man arguments. If there’s a problem, it’s because I’m not understanding you, not because I’m not trying nor because I’m trying to heckle or otherwise be malicious.
Sorry if I’ve offended. :( The times I’ve gotten a chance to read your blog before have been useful to me, but I’ve never been a regular reader nor a commenter. I’ve basically walked in and out in the middle of the conversation, and I’m probably wearing quite a different set of lenses than you are, so my understanding is probably way deficient in ways I could rectify if someone would beat me over the head with the right links. But I’m an incompetent buffoon who’s misunderstanding, not a jerk who’s trying to fight. Please forgive me.
I’m confused again … I just said I hadn’t seen a certain quote at a point when I had.
My point being … I’m just trying to have an exchange of ideas, things are confusing enough as it is, and you seem really impatient about it.
jdavidb:
First of all I’m sorry you feel “wounded.” You might want to consider some of your assumptions about blogs, because not everyone wants to have long comment interrogations. I rarely get involved in comments. I assume people can read the post.
Second, you’ve taken this discussion into a bunch of issues that I didn’t address, but which you want “clarified.” I can’t take responsibility for all the directions you run with a post. Confine yourself to what I said, and particularly note the entire first half of the post of introductory. I only deal with the particulars about music at the end of the post.
Third and Finally: We can connect anything to Jesus if our rule is “I can quote a scripture from an apostle.” I’ve played that game for years and I am not playing it any more.
Jesus singing a hymn after passover means he was part of his culture. It doesn’t mean I need three praise bands, a $300,000 sound system and 40 minutes of corporate “worship” to do what Jesus did. Yes, Paul said use music to edify and James said sing and the Psalms are musical and I WASN’T DENYING THE EXISTENCE OF ART OR MUSIC IN CULTURE.
I was saying- for the ? time now- that Jesus was intentional in his purposes and actions. Therefore the fact that he didn’t use music in his ministry any more than his culture used music in general puts the evangelical emphasis on music in some question. I said that Jesus did not use music to create disciples. He participated in music as a first century Jew. I assume if he were around today he would appreciate music, but I have no reason he would approve of the massive amount of significance, money, time and resources we put into music in evangelicalism.
I enjoy music. I sing. I have bands at my worship services. But I don’t believe Jesus significantly used music to form disciples.
If you have further questions, keep them short. I’m leaving for several hours.
MS
Good googley moogley, Michael! You’ve responded 153 times to one blogger talking about worship music, but I can’t get one simple response about baptism. Whassup with that? How in the world am I supposed to be Jesus-shaped if I’m not sure I’m correctly following His teachings? If you’d rather not respond, I’d be glad to hear from anyone who’d like to share. Believe me, I’m not looking for a fight or even a discussion, for that matter. I’m just interested in the views of others.
Big “V”
Were you baptized in the “Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”? If so, then you are following teachings of Jesus. And baptism isn’t even necessary for salvation, just look at Dismas (the repentent thief on the cross) He wasn’t baptized.
I believe that it helps, especially when followed up with teaching, prayer and community
Big V
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your question, but I don’t respond to a lot of questions, and I particularly don’t go after those that will bring thousands of other Christians down on me, i.e. baptism, Lord’s Supper, true church.
That being said:
1) Jesus didn’t baptize
2) He commanded his disciples to do so.
3) The baptism of John seems to be the best template for what Jesus understood baptism to mean.
4) Jesus gave specific instructions about baptism: Public, crossing the boundary, Disciples, in the name of F,S,HS,
5) The teaching of the apostles seems to indicate the Jesus had more to say on this than is in the Gospels, and its there that the controversies begin.
6) I’m a traditional credobaptist. I have total respect for those who aren’t and would receive all baptisms in the name FSHS as true baptisms.
Anna A and Michael
Thanks so much for your input. I’m looking forward to reading more re: JSS as the new site develops. Although I’ve been a follower of Christ for almost 30 years, I think I’ve just recently begun to grasp the fact that it’s not about me; it’s ALL about Jesus!
Blessings to you…
To chime in on a different (but one that I think adds to the conversation) note. I just finished reading around 3000 pages on the origin on Christian worship for an independent study class and I think there is some information that may shed some light on the subject of music in worship.
While it is mentioned (matt 26:30,mk 24:26) that afterwards Jesus and the disciples sang a hymn, we really cannot use this as substantiating evidence for our song practice in modern worship. We also can’t look at Jewish worship practices in the time of Christ as the originating factor of Christian worship. The problem of going back to look at synagogue worship for beginnings of Christian practice is that synagogue worship wasn’t really standardized until 2nd/3rd century A.D. Dr. Paul Bradshaw, a liturgical historian at Notre Dame, has written a great deal on the idea.
While music was and continues to be a part of religious expression, the idea of congregational singing being a large part of a “church meeting” is simply not continuous throughout the history of the church. Early Church documents (Justin Martyr’s Apologies comes to mind first) outline basic Sunday services and while songs (usually the Psalms) are sung, the focus of the service is the Eucharist meal.
Our current fascination with worship through song is a recent development, and I think it as much a sociological issue as much as religious. Songs are a way to proclaim the truth regarding the Godhead-but often do we think of the correct pattern of our worship. We can only say these holy words to God because of our relationship with Jesus Christ. In the south we have something called the “good old boy network”, it is kinda of like being cool by association in high school. We can’t come utter these words to the high, holy God without admittance into the throne room by Jesus Christ. That alone should make us re-examine what we are saying in our worship when the church gathers together.
Quick comment to Big V. Two good sources for discussing various aspects of Baptism are a blog series by Darrell Pursiful at http://www.pursiful.com and a series of Papers and sermons by John Piper at http://www.desiringgod.org (Look under the topical index)
Michael,
I read your post several times to make sure that I understood where you were coming from. I would agree with you that music/worship does not have much at all to do with making disciples, and that Jesus focus on making disciples did seem to have any extraordinary use of music beyond what you would expect from a first century Jew.
Now here comes the “Yes, but…”
What is the end product of discipleship? To create God worshipers. As John Piper (I believe) once said, “Missions happens because worship doesn’t.” The reason we seek to evangelize, the reason we seek to do missions, the reason we seek to do discipleship, is because all over this world there are people who are not worshiping God.
When we get to heaven, if I am reading the book of Revelation correctly, we are going to be doing a whole lot of worshiping. I appreciate the fact on Sunday Morning that I can get a glimpse of what will be like.
Couple of final notes: Surely it was the focus on Christ that allowed Paul and Silas to pray and sign hymns to God until midnight after they had been stripped and beaten. (Acts 16)
One of the things that I like about current church worship is how many of the songs are focussed on worshiping God. Well over half of the current top 25 songs as listed by CCLI are directly about worshiping God. http://www.ccli.com/usa/LicenseHolder/Top25Lists.aspx
My final comment is for watchman146 (comment #11) Up here in Canada, “fondling” has very sexual overtones, sort of equivalent to “fore-play”. I hope you didn’t mean it in that way when you equated it with desiring to be close to Christ.
I erred with my last comment.
The blogger that has the nifty piece on baptism is Confessing Evangelical
Michael,
I apologize for not having followed the norm for comments on your blog. You are under no obligation to answer me, but if you feel like it, my short, simple question at this point is, when you say, “Evangelicals tend to meet for an hour a week in worship, in a building, and devote roughly half of that time to the use of music,” when you refer to what Evangelicals are doing … are you referring to a recent phenomenon (on the order of decades) or are you referring to something about the basic emphasis of Protestant worship as it has existed for centuries?
As I ask this, please know that my background is not a typical Evangelical church, so when you say “What Evangelicals tend to do,” I don’t actually have a clear picture on what you are saying.
Evangelicals for me are basically Spurgeon to Billy Graham to Rick Warren American conservative mainlines, Protestants and Charismatics, and those who’ve come after them.
Reminds me of when my husband and I took our children to see the Passion of the Christ. They were in high school at the time. My daughter’s very sarcastic response as we exited the theater: “Boy, that sure makes you want to sing some Happy Jesus CCM song, doesn’t it?” Thank God she got it!
In what way did Jesus continue to be present with the Church for centuries after his ascension? How much is He responsible for shaping the church as she developed in the Councils, etc?
Obviously that’s a big question that divides Christendom several different ways.
I’ll go ahead and show my cards BUT I’m not going to chase this into the comments as another discussion at this time.
1. Jesus guides his church by his Spirit. Acts, the epistles and Revelation are clear on that point.
2. I do not believe that Jesus founded an institution, but a movement. I’ll expound the difference some other time.
3. I believe Jesus installed leaders but those leaders are and always were fallible.
4. Christ’s guidance of his church does not include infallibility at any time or any point. (Be clear that my view of authority does NOT include infallibility on the human side. God’s sovereignty is infallible. The human cooperation/response to that is always imperfect, and God achieves his ends without infallibility/inerrancy being required.)
5. Jesus is present with the church as he promised, and all that he promised his church is true, but no church and no denomination ever has perfectly contained all truth or all of God’s purposes.
6. The disciples of Jesus are the continuing paradigm for the work of Jesus through the church. God is faithful. The church, like Israel, is not. But God achieves his ends sovereignly.
7. Scripture is the authoritative expression of God’s written word, but it was produced by a sovereign God using a fallible process andn fallible humans.
Like I said, some other time.
On Councils: Fallible, human gatherings that got some things right and some things wrong.
[...] What Worship Isn’t 2 1/2 Following up on my previous post about worship music, the blogger formerly known as iMonk has posted on this subject on his new blog (click here). [...]
@eclecticchristian:
Slightly O.T. with regards to Michael’s post, but in response to your comment:
I believe that watchman146 (comment #11) probably is aware of the sexual connotations of “fondling”, and that this is precisely why he has used the term.
It is unfortunately true that a lot of contemporary praise music uses terms of intimacy with God that are dangerously close to terms used in a sexual context, and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
Many of these references express how a woman should feel towards her husband, sexually, and that makes it really difficult for most men to identify with these words. I know that there is language like that in Song of Solomon, which is commonly viewed as an allegory of Christ and the Church, but (a) it is the Church (corporatively) and not the individual believer (either male or female) who is the “Bride of Christ”, and (b) in our over-sexed culture such erotic imagery is a lot more problematic than it was in times when sex and sexual love were considered taboo subjects that you didn’t talk about publicly; and (c) no lectionary plan I know of reads SoS every Sunday, but we end up singing these songs almost every Sunday. Big difference.
Of course, a lot of people sing in church without thinking about what they are singing, which is probably why there hasn’t been a greater outcry about this.
But here we get back to part of what Michael is saying: the very fact that so much contemporary praise music is of the kind that it can only be sung without much thought is the reason we need to re-evaluate whether it really contributes to making disciples (or to a worship of God that involves the mind as well as the emotions).
On the subject of “today’s music dominated evangelical worship service” and the question what is meant by that, more specifically than “Spurgeon to Billy Graham to Rick Warren American conservative mainlines, Protestants and Charismatics, and those who’ve come after them”:
Spurgeon was not American, of course, and neither is this phenomenon. Evangelicals in Europe (and I would guess elsewhere, but have no first-hand knowledge) are very much like their American cousins in that regard, just like the pop music scene is internationally very similar.
What characterizes “today’s evangelical worship service” and deserves the qualifier “music dominated” is the blocks of 3-5 or more praise songs one or more times during the service; the fact that it almost always involves more or less sophisticated technology to pull it off (sound systems, projectors/beamers, multiple instruments) and the fact that instead of an organ in back of the church and perhaps a single song leader at the front we now frequently have an entire group of people in front, more or less performing in a manner very similar to a concert.
The classic worship service on the other hand had individual hymns and/or psalms interspersed throughout the service, rarely more than 3-5 of these in one service. Usually they had words which expressed biblical and theological ideas; thus while the music appealed to the emotions the words appealed to the intellect and reinforced what it was all about at that point in the service.
Another aspect of “today’s evangelical service” which leads me to question its usefulness is that it is expected to do everything: many people do not attend more than that one service, so it has to do what in the past was divided up among two or three weekly meetings (when my wife grew up in an evangelical church in the UK, they went to church on Sunday morning for the worship service and communion, on Sunday evening for the “preaching” (usually more evangelistic) and on Wednesday or Thursday night for prayer and bible study).
Of course some people still attend house groups and things like Alpha courses, but the majority of church members don’t, and pastors know this, so they try to make the Sunday morning service do much more than it can reasonably be expected to do.
So I agree with Michael that we need to re-evaluate this situation (and please note, everybody, he called for a re-evaluation, not for an abolition, even as he stated his own position.)
Well said, I tend to agree with you.
Wolf N. Paul,
I think you generally have described the evangelical services and of today and yesteryear quite well.
Now, having been a worship leader for 27 years (Yikes! Am I really getting that old!), I do have a few observations on some of your statements along with some thoughts of my own.
1. A good worship leader draws attention to Christ and not to himself/herself. (If it seems too much like a concert, then Pastors you should maybe be speaking to your worship leader about that.)
2. The Worship if at possible should fit the theme of day. (Sometimes this is difficult to do.) The lyrics of the songs should further thinking on the topic that is in place. If worship is not engaging the intellect on some level then you need to take a further look at which songs you are singing.
3. How much time is your worship leader taking in preparing worship. My experience has been that it takes close to the equivalent of one day to plan properly. (I will comment on this further on my own blog http://eclecticchristian.wordpress.com later this weekend to save space here.)
4. One problem that I have found in many churches I have visited is that people are engaged intellectually, but not with “heart, soul, mind, and strength”. In Hebrew, one of the most common words for praise is “YADAH”, which is derived from the word “YAD” which means hand. Yet hands are strangely absent in most of the worship that I have observed.
5. There are some really good songs that churches are singing today that have substantial lyrics, or are great anthems of praise. Again I would encourage you to visit http://www.ccli.com/usa/LicenseHolder/Top25Lists.aspx and google for the lyrics of some of the songs on the list. Most of them are really good songs!
6. Your comment that “It is unfortunately true that a lot of contemporary praise music uses terms of intimacy with God that are dangerously close to terms used in a sexual context” is a bit of a crock. Take the top 25 songs on CCLI. How many could be defined in that way? None. Of the six or seven hundred different songs that I have led in the past 27 years how many could be defined that way? I could go back through my books and check, but my guess is
three, five maybe. Certainly not ten. One percent does not sound like “a lot”.
7. Bringing us back to the topic at hand. (Sort of.) Look at the CCLI list. These are biblical songs, often based directly on scripture, and almost all are focussed directly on Christ.
Michael Bell
I look at the “church service is my worship” scernario and have to say that all we have done is taken the Jewish synagogue and made that our “church”.
Everything about the synagogue is man-to-man – or what I call horizontal. Many “services” are 20 minutes of music, 10 minutes communion and public service announcements – and 30 minutes of some “expert” on the scriptures telling you how you should live your life. I’d have to say that if I had a choice between the music – or the fat man’s monolog – I would choose the music. At least I can participate in the music. All I can do during most monolog’s is marvel at how one-dimensional the person speaking really is (teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher …..) .
If you put “music” in the context of “synagogue”, it’ll never make sense as to its real purpose and function. King David was the one who “overdosed” on music – but he put it in the context of tabernacle or temple. 1 Chronicles 25 outlines exactly how he did this. 288 people, 24 teams of 12 people each taking a 1 hour time slot a day = 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It was mixed with praise, prophecy, prayer, petition …. How do I know this? Just read the Psalms – that’s where most of them were written.
Pray without ceasing, give thanks always, men ought always to pray. Some of these passages only make sense in the context of a people that are actively engaged in prayer (praise, worship, prophesy) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The context of music in David’s Tabernacle is temple – not synagogue. Really – if you want an accurate view of church – get rid of the synagogue. If you want an accurate view of music – put it in the context of a sold out people who are going after the Lord with their whole heart – not coming in to “consume” a church service – then going about their life without God for the rest of the week.
Actually, I would say most Evangelical worship services bear a closer relationship to the mosque than to the synagogue.
That’s funny Scott M – I heard the sermon on “obedience” so many times – I really thought I was in a mosque.
It’s funny in a lot of ways. I had been a member of an SBC church for more than a decade before a first discovered that many Baptists refer to themselves as “people of the book”. Of course, when you have both as pluralistic a background as I do and my interest in history, of course I knew that’s how muslims refer to themselves (and often, but not always, to Jews and Christians). And as far as I can tell, Baptists mean pretty much the same thing that muslims mean. It’s a different book, but the concepts pretty much line up. That’s when I really began to notice how, when you strip surface superficialities away, the evangelical worship service really does bear the closest resemblance to worship at a mosque than anything that matches with either historical Christianity or Judaism. I think the person who compared the worship service to a synagogue has some misconceptions about the nature and “feel” of synagogue worship. I think it’s easier to draw parallels between it and more ancient forms of Christian worship.
Jesus didn’t walk up to Peter, James or John and go through the Evangelism Explosion presentation.
Or go through the Four Spiritual Laws (TM)…
Or hand them a Chick Tract and go on to the next…
Or do a street-corner denunciation a la Brother Jed and Fred Phelps…
He never asked them to pray to receive him as their Lord and Savior.
Actually, the wording where I was (apparently having to be spoken word-for-word) was “Personal LORD and Savior”.
52 & 54 Scott M, 53 Jerry: I’ve noticed that when Christianity goes sour, it starts resembling Islam. The more sour it goes, the more “Christlamic” it becomes.
I won’t use yes, but language. And it probably won’t matter much as I have come in severely late on this conversation.
I’m a lead worshiper just trying to be shaped. Someone else may have already said this, and I may be wording this poorly, but the reason I have no difficulty using music in our modern evangelical service on Sunday morning is because we have been intentional about making certain that people understand that Sunday morning is not the place to make disciples. We’ve determined it is our opportunity to introduce people to Jesus and music, primarily because it moves people emotionally, is a key component in aiding to this introduction.
The song may include something about the character of God that encourages a believer to go and study deeper what that means, and that is a great by-product, but our intent is the introduction.
There is another intent not spoken and that is the deeper fellowship that believers share as they corporately partake in an emotional experience together. This is not discipleship per se, but one person expressing freely their love of Christ because a song moves them may press the heart of the timid to a place of freedom.
These are some initial thoughts as I’m still processing this challenging post. I hope that I have not completely misunderstood.
b/,
I can’t believe I actually made it through this thread to the last post! But after reading it, I can’t believe no one responded. Probaly no one knew quite where to start. You may not realize it, but you kind of walked into Wrigley Field wearing a White Sox (or Cardinals!) cap. We’re all baseball fans, but…
I think you’re talking about worship with an entirely different function. Of course Discipleship can’t be taught soley in a 1 hr Sunday service. But if I have people there in the pews, then I want to be teaching them about Jesus, and that is part of discipleship (ie. the root word means “teach”)
The scripture lessons teach about Jesus, as does the sermon, and I believe the music should be teaching about Jesus, as well. Not just songs that “glorify His name” but songs that identify who Jesus is, what He has done and continues to do for us.
Your frequent reference to the emotional power of music seems to come dangerously close to using music to emotionally manipulate – it may be for a good cause, but the Gospel never manipulates. If that music doesn’t clearly teach Jesus I’d have to question its use(with the exception of the use of a very few 1st Article “God” songs – I limit those to one, max. in a service.)
The forgiveness of sins spoken to me, the prayers shared in as we communicate with God, the encouragement given through God’s word as we learn to listen to Him speak to us there -these are all important ways that we are discipled through worship. Why would a church intentionally pass up on the opportunity to teach Jesus Discipleship in worship?