8 Marks of Authentic Worship

How shall we formulate a biblical definition of worship for our time?

A bewildering array of definitions has already been proposed in the ever-expanding literature on the topic. Neither the First [the Old] nor the New Testament tried to capture the concept with a single word. We may characterize constituent parts of worship as mystery, celebration, life, dialogue, offering, or eschatological fulfillment, but to define biblical worship is to confine it.

At best we may try to describe the phenomena.

Pagan worship focuses on corporate and individual cultic efforts seeking to mollify the gods and secure their blessing. Today many Christians’ understanding of worship differs little from that of pagans, except perhaps that God is singular and the forms of worship come from traditions more or less rooted in the Scriptures. Largely divorced from life, such worship represents a pattern of religious activities driven by a deep-seated sense of obligation to God and a concern to win His favor. But this understanding is unbiblical; it separates worship from daily life and compartmentalizes human existence into the sacred and the secular.

To account for the dimensions of worship reflected in the Scriptures, we need a much more comprehensive explanation. In simplest terms, worship is ‘the human response to God.’ However, to reflect the complexity of the biblical picture, I propose the following:

True worship involves reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign in response to His gracious revelation of Himself and in accord with His will.

This is not so much a definition of worship as a description of the phenomena. Let me lay the groundwork with some brief commentary.

FIRST, THE SCRIPTURES CALL FOR WORSHIP THAT IS TRUE AS OPPOSED TO FALSE.

Everyone worships. The problem is that not everyone worships truly.

Those who direct their worship to gods other than the God revealed in Scripture or who worship the living God in ways contrary to His revealed will worship falsely. Whether we interpret obedience ‘before YHWH’ in everyday conduct cultically or ethically (Deut. 6:25), to walk before Him in truth and faithfulness with our whole heart, mind, and being (1 Kings 2:4) demands integrity: consistency between confession and practice and consistency between what God seeks and what we present.

SECOND, TRUE WORSHIP INVOLVES REVERENT AWE.

Is It Sunday Yet?

Is it Sunday yet?  The Lord's Day should be the best day of the week.  By the grace of God, for my family it certainly is.

This coming Sunday we prayerfully anticipate another morning of vibrant Christian fellowship.  Spirit-filled praise.  Edifying, and sometimes humorous and/or tearful, conversations.  And focused expository listening.

The believers that make up Lake Country Bible Church are full of Christian joy and hope.  Our founding pastor worked hard to ensure that this fellowship was Word-centered; without losing our identity of also being a loving family of believers.  Pastor Sal believed that the Lord's Church is to be known for its commitment to Christ-like love (John 13), absolute truth/sound doctrine (1 Tim. 3:15; Jude 3; Eph. 4:11-16), and "good deeds" (Heb. 10:24-25; Eph. 2:10).  It's both/and rather than either/or.

During the 9 AM Sunday School hour our children/teens will be in stage of life focused classes.  Our wonderful teachers will highlight biblical truth using Answers in Genesis material.  One of our elders (Dave) will lead the adults in prayer and then continue his excellent series through Galatians.

At 10:15 AM the entire congregation will come together for our corporate worship service:

1) We will sing a number of praise songs and hymns (Col. 3:16; "Jesus Shall Reign;" "10,000 Reasons;" "His Mercy is More;" "Before the Throne of God Above;" and "By Faith.")

Please Do Not Reimagine Worship

"Recently I observed an advertisement for a bank and it was a commercial that talked about how their new design was “banking reimagined.” It was not the typical banking atmosphere. It was complete with a coffee shop, modern seating, and appeared to be more of a lounge than a bank. It is very common within evangelical circles to hear people talking about how they have reimagined church or reimagined worship. This typically means they have redesigned it for a modern audience with a fresh new look or purpose. It would do us well to remember that God doesn’t need our imagination to repackage worship. He has given us everything we need in the Scriptures in order to detail they way in which God should be approached in worship.

The Archbishop of Canterbury (William Temple) in the 1440s described the purpose and functionality of worship. He said, “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” In other words, while we are impacted, changed, and beneficiaries as a result of worship—we must view worship as primarily centered upon God.

The primary audience for our worship is God himself. It’s not the congregation, because the congregation is called by God to engage as participants in worship. It’s not the seeker who is coming looking for God, for that person doesn’t truly exist. The true seeker is God himself. Therefore, in our weekly worship as a gathered church—our worship is offered up to God since he alone is the primary audience. Therefore, that means that we must take our worship of God seriously.

The Public Reading of Scripture: A Biblical, Historical, and a Necessary Practice

“Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching” (1 Tim 4:13).

When we listen to the reading of Scripture, it is as if the Lord is present among us. For all the talk of “incarnational” ministry today, there is no higher privilege than to hear the Incarnate Word declared through the promise and fulfillment of the written Word as we gather for worship. The beginning of theology, exposition, and worship is the sustained public reading of God’s Word in the Church.

Thus, reading the Word of God becomes the very core of worship, affording each hearer an opportunity for ongoing, personal encounter with the divine. In essence, Scripture is God’s voice incarnate for the church in all ages (Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Worship, 220).

I grew up in a tradition that cherished the Bible as God’s inspired Word and rightly upheld inerrancy in its institutions and churches. Yet, it was rare to hear the Word of God read at any length from the pulpit of the church in which I was raised. This is an enduring reminder of the dichotomy that often exists between theoria and praxis. Too many evangelical churches are full (numerically) in the pews but empty in the pulpit because little attention is given to the actual words of the Bible. It is accurate to say “one of the striking things about evangelical corporate worship in our times is the evident paucity of Scripture” (Terry L. Johnson and J. Ligon Duncan III, “Reading and Praying the Bible in Corporate Worship,” 140).

Reading the Bible as we gather for worship is foundational to our ongoing personal and congregational reformation.

Music and Worship Are Not Synonyms: Why I Am Not a Worship Leader

We are blessed to have like-minded, faithful, and gifted believers serving and leading our music and worship ministry at LCBC.  The following article by minister of music Dan Kreider provides a lot of food for thought.  "I lead the music ministry at my church. My role as a musician has several facets. I plan—and arrange, if needed—the music we use. I lead weekly rehearsals for the singers and instrumentalists. Under the guidance of the elders, I set the ideological and philosophical direction of the music ministry as a whole and share that vision with everyone who serves with me. And on Sunday, our weekly preparation culminates in two morning services and one evening service. I lead the music itself, either from the piano or directing from the podium, usually with my voice, and (hopefully) always by modeling the visible exertion of hearty participation. And I lead the congregation through the flow of the planned musical elements, making brief comments or reading Scripture passages that build them up in their faith.

But I’m not a worship leader. Why? Because that’s the wrong title for my role, for two reasons.

1. Music and worship aren’t synonyms.
Worship is a misunderstood term in our contemporary context. At one level, a word means what the collective culture decides it will mean, and definitions can certainly change over time. But it’s a relatively recent trend to refer to music as “worship.” And though the new definition seems fairly universal at this point, its evolution has created a conflict with its previous meaning from Scripture.

What is worship? To answer merely with a simplistic definition such as “ascribing worth” would be an etymological cop-out. One might as well be asked to describe a rainbow in a single word. Here’s a brief distillation of several thoughts that, taken together, should provide enough clarity to address the original statement.

William Temple defines worship this way: “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose” (from Readings in St. John’s Gospel). This is poetic and certainly true, but David Petersen’s definition is even more expressly rooted in Scripture itself: “Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with Him on the terms that He proposes and in the way that He alone makes possible” (from Engaging with God).

Shepherding the Flock During the Week: Sermon Study Packets

When you visit the dentist they always send you home with what?  A tooth brush, tooth paste, and floss (hint, hint).  I have yet to find a dentist who will come to my home each week to brush my teeth.  Oh  the nerve. :)  Our weekly sermon packets at LCBC are intended, in some ways, to function as a spiritual dental kits.

What brought about the weekly sermon study guides?  When I started my new ministry over a year ago established members graciously shared that they had grown accustom to Pastor Sal’s PowerPoint presentation that went along with his sermons.  Some of these members explained that it would help them acclimate to the new Senior Pastor’s style of preaching if I provided a listener handouts or utilized PowerPoint.  As a new minister you attempt to do what you can to make transitions like this as easy as you can on the existing flock (by God's grace it's been a nearly seamless transition).  Hence the four page weekly sermon packets.

Why invest time each week putting together such lengthy packets and why do we encourage each of you to spend at least one morning or evening reviewing your sermon notes via this packet? We do so to help with these five things: 1) Comprehension, 2) Clarification, 3) Application, 4) Shepherding care, and 5) Praise and Adoration.

1) Comprehension- I want to help the listener follow along as the sermon is being preached. One can’t grasp everything- but I prayerfully desire that my flock will process as much as they can and that they'll understand the key points of the inspired Text.  The meaning of Scripture is the Scripture.  It's why 2 Timothy 2:15 is such an important verse.  If you get the authorial intent wrong you are more likely to offer up the wrong application.  This ties right in with reason number two- clarification.

Hymns For Every Congregation

Classic and Modern Hymns of Praise and Worship

Dr. Duncan wrote a helpful post recently titled, "Hymns For Every Congregation."  Below is an abridged copy of this helpful article.  How many of these classic and modern hymns do you know and sing?

"A pastor friend of mine contacted me this week and asked if I had written an article on my “top twenty” hymns. The reason he asked me for this is that he pastors a church that has not been using much in the way of traditional hymnody for a number of years, and they are now trying to introduce more hymns into their congregational singing. He wanted a good list of hymns for them to use as they try to reincorporate hymns into the diet of their Sunday worship services.

His question got me thinking: what hymns would I recommend to any and every pastor and church for regular usage. I jotted down some ideas and sent them off to him, and I’ve been reflecting on a “must know” list of hymns ever since.

Before I offer a preliminary list, let me make just a few qualifications.

I have not aimed here at producing a list of hymns that cover the whole scope of biblical doctrine. I have tried to think of hymn and tune combinations that will help “win over” a congregation to the treasures of the church’s hymnody. Once the congregation comes to know and love some of these great traditional texts and tunes, then the pastor and musicians can began to expand the hymn repertoire of the congregation in order to cover more important biblical themes.

A quick note on resources: there are some outstanding online sources that should be well-known to pastors and others involved in choosing the hymnody and psalmody for Lord’s Day Worship Services. I list a few here. These sites have material on both traditional and contemporary hymnody

Cyber Hymnal http://www.hymntime.com/tch/

Doxology & Theology http://www.doxologyandtheology.com/

Hymnary.org https://hymnary.org/

Indelible Grace Music http://www.igracemusic.com/

Matt Merker Music https://www.mattmerkermusic.com/

Music for the Church of God http://www.cgmusic.org/

Sovereign Grace Music https://sovereigngracemusic.org/

Part of the reason that I’ve chosen these hymns below is that they still “work” in contemporary English-speaking American Protestant congregations, with their traditional tunes (though some of them also have very good contemporary tunes now associated with them, and I recommend a number of these). I have been in multiple church and conference settings, in every part of the country (and all over the English-speaking world), in places where most of the material given to the congregation to sing is drawn from current popular Christian music, and whenever a hymn of the quality of the ones I am going to suggest below is sung, those congregations/conferences have invariably sung the hymn better than whatever else they had been singing. Which fascinates me. At multiple levels.

What If I Can't Sing?

What If I Can't Sing-  Article by Keith and Kristyn Getty.

"Sometimes we meet people who say, “I can’t sing”—as in, “The sound that comes out of my mouth when I try to sing is not what I was hoping for.”

Perhaps this is you, and you can recall an awkward conversation as a child when you were asked to mouth the words, rather than sing them, or you were told that being a member of your school or church choir might not be the “best fit” for your gifts.  But if you can speak, you can sing. God designed you to sing and gave you everything you need to sing as well as he wants you to. He’s far less concerned with your tunefulness than your integrity. Christian singing begins with the heart, not the lips (Eph. 5:19).

He Treasures All Voices

When our young daughters sing together, the older is more confident than the middle one, who is in turn more fluent than the youngest. This may change as they all get older, but the point is this—to their parents’ ears, each voice isn’t only as important as the others; each is as treasured as the others.

When it comes to congregational singing your heavenly Father cares whether and what you sing, but he doesn’t mind how well you sing. While we may have choirs within our churches made up of voices who have expertise and ability, the congregation of a church is the ultimate choir, and it is without auditions—everyone can and should be in it.  The congregation of a church is the ultimate choir.

The beauty of such a congregational choir is that our voices and hearts are knit together in praise. It’s exhilarating to be part of a body of believers singing truth together.

Special Service on May 20th at Lake Country Bible Church

This Sunday at Lake Country Bible Church is an extra special day for three reasons:

1) We get to express our appreciation to our faithful Assistant Pastor Ray and his All-Star wife Ellen Rudzinski during our lunch fellowship. Pastor Ray is retiring which gives us a chance to say "thank you!" Ray has been an ideal Assistant Minister.  He is humble, dependable, godly, and gifted.

2) Our beloved founding Pastor Sal Massa and his awesome help-mate Elena Pilato Massa are back from India and will be sharing a special missionary update during the 9 am SS hour.  For 18 years the Lord used Sal and Elena to help establish a Word-driven Church in Lake Country, Wisconsin.  I am indebted to Sal for giving me the stewardship of leading this wonderful flock.  Pastor Sal will "bring the Book" during the 10:15 am worship service! It's going to be epic. 

3) Finally, Our new Assistant Pastor Kent Kolstad and his faithful wife Marie first official Sunday is May 20th. We are thrilled to have them join our church family and to use their gifts in order to help meet the many needs of our growing congregation.

As always, you won't want to miss Sunday worship at LCBC. Our worship songs this week have been selected by Pastor Ray.  See you soon!

Does Your Heart Run on Hype? The Emotional Power of Ordinary Sundays

Does Your Heart Run on Hype?
The Emotional Power of Ordinary Sundays by Matt Merker

"Have you ever felt like the odd one out at a church service, the only one who’s not 'feeling it;? Does it sometimes seem like everyone else is on the emotional mountaintop and you’ve been left behind in the valley?

For some time now, many churches have structured worship gatherings to heighten natural emotional stimulation. Dim the lights. Pick songs that tug the heartstrings, despite their thin context. Make sure the choir or band swells at just the right moment. Deliver the sermon to land with a poignant climax, a welling up of feeling that may not even necessitate the new birth.

All of this may be well-intended. But we will not find any evidence in Scripture that a marked emotional “high” is the normative experience for Christian worship. Will we be moved emotionally, and often? Yes. And hopefully with spiritual affections, not simply natural feelings. Can we depend on a weekly jolt of euphoria? I don’t think so.

In corporate worship we find something far better than a typical rush of feeling. Here are three reasons why we shouldn’t expect each Lord’s Day to produce an off-the-charts mountaintop experience, and why we can instead delight in the regular, ordinary, supernatural joy of engaging with God together.

Ordinary Means, Extraordinary God

First, God has ordained that churches worship him through ordinary means. The elements of a Christian service are quite plain: texts recited and preached; prayer; human voices singing out loud; bread and wine; the water of baptism. The churches of the New Testament didn’t model their worship primarily on the rich ceremonies of the temple, with its incense, sacrifices, and golden trappings. Rather, it seems that they adapted the simpler format of the Jewish synagogue meeting, where the focus was on hearing the word of the Lord (Worship: Reformed According to Scripture, 36).

Will the Sunday(s) After Easter be a Letdown? (It Doesn't Have To Be)

The following article by veteran music leader Bob Kauflin addresses an all too common experience and answers a really important question:  Will the Sunday(s) After Easter be a Letdown?  Enjoy.

"Many pastors, music leaders, and tech personnel are breathing a deep sigh of relief after this past weekend. After all the planning, strategizing, prayer, preparation, and practice, the Good Friday/Easter weekend service(s) finally happened. Everything came together and people were well served. The music was moving, the preaching powerful, and the effect exhilarating. And throughout the world, thousands of people were baptized and saved for the glory of God.

But you may be starting to wonder what you’re going to do next Sunday. Maybe you’re even asking yourself, “How do I keep this coming Sunday from being a major letdown?” The anxiety is already setting in.

Here are some reasons why we can be tempted to think next Sunday might not be quite as “amazing” as this past Sunday:

A) No doubt your church was like most in that you saw an increased number of unbelieving guests, visitors, and family members who think that Easter and Christmas are the only appropriate times to fulfill their religious obligation.

B) You probably don’t have as much in the budget for this coming Sunday as you did for Easter. That means you and others might not to put as much effort or thought into it.

C) The people in your church probably received daily reminders last week that Easter was coming. This coming Sunday will probably sneak up on them like it does every week. They might not prepare as much nor look forward to it so eagerly.

D) After the hyper-preparation leading up to Easter maybe you’re really looking forward to the opportunity to get back to normal. Some leaders won’t think as carefully nor intentionally about the cross and resurrection and will pick songs that people just enjoy.

Resurrection Sunday is Finally Here!!

Today we gather as redeemed sinners to celebrate, worship, and sing gospel tunes with words like this:

"Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried my sins far away. Rising, He justified freely forever. One day He’s coming-
Oh glorious day, oh glorious day
Glorious day, Oh, Glorious day!"

And- "Death cannot keep his prey— Jesus, my Savior!
He tore the bars away—Jesus my Lord!"
...Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

And- “See, what a morning, gloriously bright,
With the dawning of hope in Jerusalem;
Folded the grave-clothes, tomb filled with light,
As the angels announce, “Christ is risen!”
See God’s salvation plan,
Wrought in love, borne in pain, paid in sacrifice,
Fulfilled in Christ, the Man,
For He lives: Christ is risen from the dead!

EMBEZZLING GOD'S GLORY IN WORSHIP

Minister of music Bill Brandenstein posted a helpful article this week that I wanted to share with my faithful readers.

"The sensationalism of public 'worship' alarms me. For years, I’ve been concerned and humbled by what I hear as I stand before God’s people to lead music: the congregation’s voices magnifying God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although one biblical purpose for music is to edify and encourage one another, I find a healthy tension exists between facilitating praise, and feeling out of place while overhearing the God-directed, heaven-bound collective voice. It’s one thing, as an undeserving sinner permeated by my sin’s egregious blackness, to have Christ’s righteousness imputed to me and to be delivered into His kingdom of glorious light. As if that weren’t enough – and it’s way past “enough,” as if God’s grace would somehow be insufficient and less than wondrous if it stopped there – I am called to be not only Christ’s adopted son, but His ambassador! That is just outrageous and wonderful! And so I stand, His completely unqualified but gloriously equipped representative, encouraging the saints as we surround His throne with our adoration. My friends, what a miracle of divine grace this is! It is also, in a sense, eavesdropping. Being there in a Sunday service helping people sing is a place of both privilege and blissful discomfort while listening in on what is intended for God’s ears.

Meanwhile, pop culture has transformed much that is called “corporate worship” into a spectacle. Far too often now, public gatherings are a carefully manufactured music event driven by adrenaline and emotional manipulation, while seeking by any means necessary (artificial or otherwise) to craft it into The Ultimate Experience.

Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship

I was greatly blessed this summer to have a D. Min class with one of the most faithful Old Testament scholars in contemporary evangelicalism, Dr. Daniel Block.  I received so much helpful instruction from Dr. Block's lectures on Ruth and from his recent book on Worship (For the Glory of God), that I decided to highlight some of this material with my own congregation during our adult equipping hour.  The following is a review of Dr. Daniel I. Block's book on Recovering A Biblical Theology of Worship.  I encourage you to get a copy as a Christmas gift for your pastor(s) this year as well as read this book for yourself (Romans 11:36).

Daniel I. Block.  For the Glory of God:  Recovering A Biblical Theology of Worship.  Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014. Xix + 410 pp. (cloth) $34.99.

Over the past few decades “worship wars” have been fought in the American evangelical church.  Tragically, “Instead of worship uniting God's people, conflicts over worship have often divided them (2)." In response to this, much ink has been spilled in effort to help believers think biblically with regards to this important and sometimes explosive subject.  Into this crowded arena of ideas enters Daniel I. Block’s treatise on biblical worship. 

Over the course of seven decades, Block has witnessed God’s people at worship in many forms and styles around the world (xiii).  These experiences caused Block to ask a host of questions about the nature of true worship.  Such as, “what kinds of worship are appropriate?  More specifically what kinds of worship represent true worship of the one true and living God?” (xiii)  Block presents a scholarly work, inviting Christians of all stripes to recover a biblical theology of worship as we approach our Creator God with “reverential acts of submission and homage” (29).

"Ruining Our Witness" & "Worship that Displeases God": A Few Considerations.

For anyone who is regular reader of Elyse Fitzpatrick or Tullian Tchividjian I would highly encourage you to read Daniel I. Block's, "For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship." In it you will find helpful insights like this, "In chapter 3 we established that while the call to salvation is unconditional, the call to worship is conditional and subject to the spiritual and moral conditions of the worshiper."Just because we have experienced the grace of Christ in salvation does not mean that New Testament believers should be casual about worship (nor should we be nonchalant about our witness).

"For many, Sunday morning is just as hectic as any other day. By the time we arrive at the church, we are out of breath, our tempers are short, and we have scarcely had worship on our minds. But, blissfully, we imagine all we need to do is show up in church and God will be impressed. So we take pride in being in the services on Sunday morning, and if we are involved in various youth activities, in campus charities, or in Bible studies (midweek), we are obviously exceptionally spiritual. However, this scarcely fits the picture painted in Hebrew 10 and 12."

I believe hyper-grace advocates would heartily AMEN the second quote but I do not think the first quote would be posted in very many Twitter feeds.  As with most things, biblical balance is desperately needed in this area of theology/practice.  

So how can we elevate the free grace of justification without minimizing the various imperatives related to our progressive sanctification?  Or as Kevin DeYoung puts it, how can we glory in the indicatives while insisting on the imperatives?  How do we avoid the ditch of Legalism (Col. 2:16-17) without falling prey to hyper-grace Antinomianism?

In this vein, how do we balance New Testament warnings like 1 Peter 3:7 without becoming Pharisaic legalists? “You husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman; and grant her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered”

Why I Love to Study and Preach the Word of God

I love studying the Bible because as the glory of God is revealed in the pages of sacred Scripture it often sucks the oxygen out of my sanctified lungs leaving me prostrate in wonder, love, and praise. 

Studying through meals is not an uncommon experience for those who get to spend concentrated amounts of time with God in His Word. 

In this vein, it is not surprising then to read that Moses went forty days and nights without food or water while communing with the Bread of Heaven atop Mount Sinai!

In depth, expository study allows a redeemed sinner to experience mountaintop moments of doxology similar to what Handel recounted when writing his musical masterpiece, "Messiah."

It is said that "when Handel completed the 'Hallelujah Chorus' he exclaimed to his servant, 'I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.' Again and again his servants found him in tears as he put to paper an awesome phrase or a devout passage.  And then, after the last monumental Amen had been written, he confided to a physician, 'I think God has visited me.” The exaltation with which Messiah was created is found on every page of the score.'"