Worship Leader questions "trendy" music
Mar 18, 2017 16:17:42 GMT -6
Post by Todd on Mar 18, 2017 16:17:42 GMT -6
I took this from a Pastoral presence on the internet who some of you might know. It is not my point to question his ministry or his credentials. But I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to point out the shortcomings of his response to a letter he received (or at least responded to) just yesterday, (3/17/17). It is a lengthy response, and I will not quote the whole article, but want to indicate how quickly things can go wrong when we do not follow sound procedures in seeking to formulate a “Christian” answer. I will quote only the first few paragraphs as an illustration of what I am “on about.”
Jeremy’s Question: “Dear Pastor John, I have served for the past seven years as a ‘worship leader.’ Something I’ve had trouble reconciling is how worshiping God turned into singing trendy praise songs in a community setting. Does it derive from the Levites and appointed leaders in the Old Testament? I have a hard time finding something relatable in the New Testament. In fact, one of the Scriptures that I find most denotes what worship is comes from Romans 12 where Paul tells the church in Rome that worship is giving of one’s self completely to God. Long question short, what brings us the corporate musical worship that inhabits almost every church today?”
Part of Pastor John’s Response: “Let’s just overlook the use of the word trendy, because I doubt that is really what he is asking. I don’t think he expects to find in the Bible a justification for trendy. I think his question really is: Why do we sing for a half an hour in worship services all over the world? Why do we do it that way?
So, let me try to go at that and see what I can do. I would define worship as anything we do which gives expression to the supreme, all-satisfying worth of God. That is worship, which would include both offering my body to be burned in martyrdom (1 Corinthians 13:3), because I am showing how precious Christ is to me, that I am willing to give up my life for him. And it would include my singing, my heartily offering up my voice and my heart in church as I sing, because I am giving expression to his worth as I sing a God-exalting song.
What makes them both worship is the experience of the heart which treasures God above all things. That is the essence of worship: the experience of the heart. Jesus says your heart is far from you [sic]. You worship me with your lips (Matthew 15:8–9). This is a zero worship. So, the essence of worship is a heart that treasures God above all things. The universe was created so that human beings would do everything we do and use everything we have to display the supreme worth of God. And in an ideal world all is, thus, worship.
Now, how does it come about that today most evangelical services around the world, at least the parts I have been to and that I look at online, have an extended time of singing at the front-end and preaching at the back-end? Here is my best effort to give an account for this. When you compare — this is the most important thing I am going to say; this is a little observation here — when you compare the Old Testament and the New Testament, something startling emerges with regard to worship. In the Old Testament, there is an extremely detailed set of guidelines for how everything should be done in relationship to the tabernacle and the sacrifices and the way people come to God. In the New Testament, those details are almost completely lacking. I am tempted to say completely lacking. There is no way anybody could construct a normative worship service from what we have in the New Testament. Lots of people think they can, but I don’t think so. There is more tradition going on there than they realize.”
My hasty analysis: 1. What Pastor John is missing. First of all, the original question had to do with “singing trendy praise songs,” a topic he immediately abandons in his answer. The man with the question, Jeremy, is not only a ‘worship leader,’ he is deliberately making a distinction between “praise” and “worship” when he shows that his ministry ought to involve something else, something more consistent with the definition of worship found in Romans 12 (never mind that this is not worship either, but service). The problem Jeremy is having is precisely the trouble I have, that of “reconciling” today’s “trendy” music with the New Testament notion of worship. Alas, the whole question is based upon a distinction the Pastor quickly and emphatically brushes aside.
Indeed, the first words of the respondent are “Let’s just overlook the use of the word trendy, because I doubt that is really what he is asking. I don’t think he expects to find in the Bible a justification for trendy.”
Might I be so bold as to suggest that this is exactly what Jeremy is asking? And the implication that we will not find justification for being trendy in the New Testament is precisely his point.
In the next paragraph, the respondent says “let me try to go at that and see what I can do. I would define worship as anything we do which gives expression to the supreme, all-satisfying worth of God.” So not only is he not going to answer the original question, he is going to answer the question he wants to answer. The problem becomes immediately worsened when he says “I would define,” instead of “the Bible indicates,” He further confuses the issue by offering a definition not of worship, but of love, saying that worship includes both “offering my body to be burned” (I Corinthians 13:3), and “offering up my voice and my heart in church,” as examples of worship.
But neither of these activities can be called worship. The first is part of Paul’s definition of Love, not worship. Indeed, the word worship does not occur but one time in I Corinthians (at 14:25), and that in a context of forbidding the speaking of tongues in the church service. The second item is instructively ambiguous and vague. It may include worship, but it does not define it, for it may also include praise, or thanksgiving, neither of which is, worship. It is instructive in the exact same sense that we shall see is the case with the word worship in the Old Testament. We may not be able to define what current theology is, but we can clearly see what it does. Today’s theologian is one who can throw a topic into the soup pot, stir it around, and ladle out a bowlful of any flavor he desires. By this method, worship can be seen as love, as praise, as joy, or as anything else one may wish.
Pastor John says “That is, the essence of worship: the experience of the heart.” But if this were true, the experience of the heart might as easily turn anger into worship. For who can deny that anger is an experience of the heart? The whole problem with this theological soup is that it has gone into the pot as an expression of the heart, and come out as the experience of the heart. The analogy to soup is proved appropriate when, at the end of the paragraph the respondent claims that “in an ideal world all is, thus, worship." This simply will not do.
2. Proper beginning: The point can be properly addressed by what the respondent claims a few lines later. He notes that “when you compare the Old Testament and the New Testament, something startling emerges with regard to worship.” He then goes on to itemize several things from the Old Testament that are not worship either, but part of the Hebraic cultus. But the observation is quite helpful. Because when, as he notes, “Jesus says your heart is far from you [sic]. You worship me with your lips (Matthew 15:8–9),” he comes close to the right way to find the answer. For Jesus did look at the heart of the matter, and He did show that outward signs may not always reveal the inward status of the person. His Sermon on the Mount takes this procedure to great lengths. Indeed, the reason the religious of His day hated Jesus was that he was peeling back the cover of their true character; and they did not like it any more than today’s “religious” people do.
Yet Jesus was never at a point where He would discount, or ignore the Old Testament. Indeed his teaching sought to “get at the heart of” of what God taught in the Old Testament.
So we are not wrong to find out in the Old Testament what worship was, or what it did, and then to abstract its essence, or “the heart of the matter.” When we look up the word worship (“present tense”), in the concordance, we find that it is used 55 times in the Old Testament. Most of these are either commands to worship, or statements showing the intent to worship. So we are not informed as to the essential nature of worship by the occurrence of the word in the present tense. However, if we look at the word worshiped (“past tense”), we are told what men actually did when they worshiped, i.e., what constituted worship. In almost every case, the word is translated by, (or sometimes with) the expression "bowed down." There are 39 occurrences of the word in the past tense in the Old Testament. Every one of these words, “past tense” and “present tense” alike, come from the Hebrew word that literally means to “bow down with face to the ground,” This is the posture of submission, of supplication, of admission to the superiority of the person being worshiped, or to the will of the one being worshiped. Worship is humble and subservient. It is not praise. Praise, in the Christian setting, may be better explained as the ways in which the object of worship is superior to the suppliant, while worship is the suppliant’s humble acknowledgment of the fact that the object of worship is indeed superior to the suppliant. In this way, worship may logically lead to praise, without blurring the lines between them. So when we consult the Greek Lexicon, we are not at all surprised to find that the Hebrew word sometimes translated as "worship" literally means "to bow down."
So let me be the first to abstract a NT doctrine of worship. It is precisely the “heart of the matter” of that worship we find in the Old Testament. Then, lo and behold, we find that the word used in the New Testament also means "to bow down," and implies subservience. Perhaps worship does not need to involve the outward bowing down to the ground, but it absolutely must involve the concomitant attitude (the “heart of the matter") of humble submission with the implicit offer of “being of service.”
I will provide the web address for this discussion if anyone wants it. -Todd
Jeremy’s Question: “Dear Pastor John, I have served for the past seven years as a ‘worship leader.’ Something I’ve had trouble reconciling is how worshiping God turned into singing trendy praise songs in a community setting. Does it derive from the Levites and appointed leaders in the Old Testament? I have a hard time finding something relatable in the New Testament. In fact, one of the Scriptures that I find most denotes what worship is comes from Romans 12 where Paul tells the church in Rome that worship is giving of one’s self completely to God. Long question short, what brings us the corporate musical worship that inhabits almost every church today?”
Part of Pastor John’s Response: “Let’s just overlook the use of the word trendy, because I doubt that is really what he is asking. I don’t think he expects to find in the Bible a justification for trendy. I think his question really is: Why do we sing for a half an hour in worship services all over the world? Why do we do it that way?
So, let me try to go at that and see what I can do. I would define worship as anything we do which gives expression to the supreme, all-satisfying worth of God. That is worship, which would include both offering my body to be burned in martyrdom (1 Corinthians 13:3), because I am showing how precious Christ is to me, that I am willing to give up my life for him. And it would include my singing, my heartily offering up my voice and my heart in church as I sing, because I am giving expression to his worth as I sing a God-exalting song.
What makes them both worship is the experience of the heart which treasures God above all things. That is the essence of worship: the experience of the heart. Jesus says your heart is far from you [sic]. You worship me with your lips (Matthew 15:8–9). This is a zero worship. So, the essence of worship is a heart that treasures God above all things. The universe was created so that human beings would do everything we do and use everything we have to display the supreme worth of God. And in an ideal world all is, thus, worship.
Now, how does it come about that today most evangelical services around the world, at least the parts I have been to and that I look at online, have an extended time of singing at the front-end and preaching at the back-end? Here is my best effort to give an account for this. When you compare — this is the most important thing I am going to say; this is a little observation here — when you compare the Old Testament and the New Testament, something startling emerges with regard to worship. In the Old Testament, there is an extremely detailed set of guidelines for how everything should be done in relationship to the tabernacle and the sacrifices and the way people come to God. In the New Testament, those details are almost completely lacking. I am tempted to say completely lacking. There is no way anybody could construct a normative worship service from what we have in the New Testament. Lots of people think they can, but I don’t think so. There is more tradition going on there than they realize.”
My hasty analysis: 1. What Pastor John is missing. First of all, the original question had to do with “singing trendy praise songs,” a topic he immediately abandons in his answer. The man with the question, Jeremy, is not only a ‘worship leader,’ he is deliberately making a distinction between “praise” and “worship” when he shows that his ministry ought to involve something else, something more consistent with the definition of worship found in Romans 12 (never mind that this is not worship either, but service). The problem Jeremy is having is precisely the trouble I have, that of “reconciling” today’s “trendy” music with the New Testament notion of worship. Alas, the whole question is based upon a distinction the Pastor quickly and emphatically brushes aside.
Indeed, the first words of the respondent are “Let’s just overlook the use of the word trendy, because I doubt that is really what he is asking. I don’t think he expects to find in the Bible a justification for trendy.”
Might I be so bold as to suggest that this is exactly what Jeremy is asking? And the implication that we will not find justification for being trendy in the New Testament is precisely his point.
In the next paragraph, the respondent says “let me try to go at that and see what I can do. I would define worship as anything we do which gives expression to the supreme, all-satisfying worth of God.” So not only is he not going to answer the original question, he is going to answer the question he wants to answer. The problem becomes immediately worsened when he says “I would define,” instead of “the Bible indicates,” He further confuses the issue by offering a definition not of worship, but of love, saying that worship includes both “offering my body to be burned” (I Corinthians 13:3), and “offering up my voice and my heart in church,” as examples of worship.
But neither of these activities can be called worship. The first is part of Paul’s definition of Love, not worship. Indeed, the word worship does not occur but one time in I Corinthians (at 14:25), and that in a context of forbidding the speaking of tongues in the church service. The second item is instructively ambiguous and vague. It may include worship, but it does not define it, for it may also include praise, or thanksgiving, neither of which is, worship. It is instructive in the exact same sense that we shall see is the case with the word worship in the Old Testament. We may not be able to define what current theology is, but we can clearly see what it does. Today’s theologian is one who can throw a topic into the soup pot, stir it around, and ladle out a bowlful of any flavor he desires. By this method, worship can be seen as love, as praise, as joy, or as anything else one may wish.
Pastor John says “That is, the essence of worship: the experience of the heart.” But if this were true, the experience of the heart might as easily turn anger into worship. For who can deny that anger is an experience of the heart? The whole problem with this theological soup is that it has gone into the pot as an expression of the heart, and come out as the experience of the heart. The analogy to soup is proved appropriate when, at the end of the paragraph the respondent claims that “in an ideal world all is, thus, worship." This simply will not do.
2. Proper beginning: The point can be properly addressed by what the respondent claims a few lines later. He notes that “when you compare the Old Testament and the New Testament, something startling emerges with regard to worship.” He then goes on to itemize several things from the Old Testament that are not worship either, but part of the Hebraic cultus. But the observation is quite helpful. Because when, as he notes, “Jesus says your heart is far from you [sic]. You worship me with your lips (Matthew 15:8–9),” he comes close to the right way to find the answer. For Jesus did look at the heart of the matter, and He did show that outward signs may not always reveal the inward status of the person. His Sermon on the Mount takes this procedure to great lengths. Indeed, the reason the religious of His day hated Jesus was that he was peeling back the cover of their true character; and they did not like it any more than today’s “religious” people do.
Yet Jesus was never at a point where He would discount, or ignore the Old Testament. Indeed his teaching sought to “get at the heart of” of what God taught in the Old Testament.
So we are not wrong to find out in the Old Testament what worship was, or what it did, and then to abstract its essence, or “the heart of the matter.” When we look up the word worship (“present tense”), in the concordance, we find that it is used 55 times in the Old Testament. Most of these are either commands to worship, or statements showing the intent to worship. So we are not informed as to the essential nature of worship by the occurrence of the word in the present tense. However, if we look at the word worshiped (“past tense”), we are told what men actually did when they worshiped, i.e., what constituted worship. In almost every case, the word is translated by, (or sometimes with) the expression "bowed down." There are 39 occurrences of the word in the past tense in the Old Testament. Every one of these words, “past tense” and “present tense” alike, come from the Hebrew word that literally means to “bow down with face to the ground,” This is the posture of submission, of supplication, of admission to the superiority of the person being worshiped, or to the will of the one being worshiped. Worship is humble and subservient. It is not praise. Praise, in the Christian setting, may be better explained as the ways in which the object of worship is superior to the suppliant, while worship is the suppliant’s humble acknowledgment of the fact that the object of worship is indeed superior to the suppliant. In this way, worship may logically lead to praise, without blurring the lines between them. So when we consult the Greek Lexicon, we are not at all surprised to find that the Hebrew word sometimes translated as "worship" literally means "to bow down."
So let me be the first to abstract a NT doctrine of worship. It is precisely the “heart of the matter” of that worship we find in the Old Testament. Then, lo and behold, we find that the word used in the New Testament also means "to bow down," and implies subservience. Perhaps worship does not need to involve the outward bowing down to the ground, but it absolutely must involve the concomitant attitude (the “heart of the matter") of humble submission with the implicit offer of “being of service.”
I will provide the web address for this discussion if anyone wants it. -Todd