Worship & Theology, post 5: This thing is worse than Swine Flu!

So having set the table, its time to dig into the steak.

Our services of worship have gone down hill. If we were to point fingers, and I don't intend to; we could point to Finney and Darby, but I won't. Suffice it to say that what passes as worship music today is failing.

And it is not that it is not good music. In fact the opposite is the case. Never have more people been in the full employment (or support) of the church in the area of music.

There are more professional and professional caliber musicians serving the church with less theological music being written. We have substituted musical excellence for excellent music.

What I mean by that is that we have sacrificed content for style. Our music is good. It is popular. There is little difference between U2 and some of our more popular worship groups. That is no slam on U2, it is a compliment.

The problem is that we have focused so hard on the style and attracting people to worship that we have abandoned that which is just outside our range of vision, God.

A few weeks ago, everyone was scarred that the half of the world's population was going to die of Swine Flu. Surgical masks in hand, people braved mass-transit. Armed with super-mega-antibiotics people took to the streets hoping not to be victimized by this pig-faced killer. But it was a lot of hype and not a lot of fall out. It was more bacon and less epidemic and apocalypse. Am I guilty of the same thing? Am I making a pandemic out of a minor issue? Is this Swine Flu or simply a strain of Flu called H1N1?

Lets take a look. The following are the top songs from the Christian section of iTunes by downloads. The first is "God in Me" by Mary Mary. Here are the lyrics:


- Mary Mary Lyrics

Seriously, I can't make this up. But lets be fair the next song was by famous worship leader David Crowder. It's called How He Loves.



Lyrics | David Crowder Lyrics | How He Loves Lyrics

This is much better, but there is still some significant problems. Did you catch the line about heaven meeting earth like a sloppy wet kiss. I'm sorry, is this the transcendent God of the universe or Brad Pitt in a romantic comedy?

The third most downloaded song is Matthew West's "The Motions":



Lyrics | Matthew West Lyrics | The Motions Lyrics

OK. At this point I need to stop.

I don't want to sound negative and like everything is awful and bad. I am not trying to say that everything that doesn't meet my select standard of theology fails.

What I do want to point out is the extreme lack of any kind of theology whatsoever. It is not as if I object to these songs out of my theological vantage point. They have no theological vantage point.

It is also not that I object to these songs because they sound too much like God is my girlfriend. There is theological justification of that style of worship as made clear in the book of Song of Songs.

Here is the point that I am making, and to be pointed that I am putting to you Rich: The music behind these songs is relatively good. The problem is theological. We have to abandon notions of musical excellence until we can recapture the transcendence and a healthy dose of the immanence of God.


We have sacrificed our theology on the altar of music.


Links to the conversation thus far:

1 2 3 4

Wal-Mart is Killing the Church

Let me start by pointing out that Rich Van Voorst has posted the latest blog in our series on Worship and Theology over at his blog. This post is number 4. We will begin numbering our post so you can follow the flow better.

Ok, to my thoughts:

Wal-Mart killing the church. There, I said it.

Ok, So I don’t mean that Sam Walton is out to destroy Christianity. I am pretty sure he isn’t.



What I mean is the philosophy that drives Wal-Mart is bleeding into our concept of church in ways that are disconcerting.

When you go to Wal-Mart you are confronted with a dizzying array of choices. What kind of orange soda does my mother-in-law want? Shasta? Sunkist? Orange Crush? Fanta? Sam’s Choice? Nehi? Barrilitos? Even worse, what if she wants carbonated orange drink that isn’t soda; the choices increase exponentially.

So there I stand in the aisle dedicated to soda, reeling at my choices.

But I am not that worried. If I pick the wrong one and she wants another, though it will be a pain, all I have to is go back and get the right one.

We can have anything we want custom made. I presided over a weeding a few years ago where the bride and groom had M&M’s made with their names on them. How cool is that!

Unfortunately we have brought this mentality to church. Our commitment only runs as deep as the given churches commitment to make us happy. If anything changes that we don’t like, we quit and go somewhere that fits our needs.

If they serve Matza bread at communion, we leave for the Church of the Leavened Bread. If they don’t cater to our needs we find someone who will. This is what has created 27,647 distinct IRS recognized church divisions in the United states.

You could go to a different denomination once a day, everyday from the day you were born and would not finish visiting them all until you were 75!

We have got to commit to a church and believe that we are a part of that body. If we believe that the Bible is true, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that people to not join churches at random. They are created to be specific part of a body at a specific time. They are not created to endlessly seek what makes them happy.

It is not always easy, but we are created for a specific church and that church needs us, and we need them.

Worship and Theology: Boundaries and Fences; Staffs and Clefs (3)

As we embark on this conversation, it may be helpful to be clear and narrow in our scope. When anyone brings up the topic of worship, hackles go up and some people immediately take a defensive position. Rich and I want this discussion to be specific rather than vague.



Scotty Smith, a Presbyterian pastor from Tennessee, spoke at a workshop at the Gospel Coalition Confrence this past April. He was careful to distinguish between “services of worship” and “worship services”. This was a helpful distinction, but still lacks a bit of clarity. For the purpose of these blogs and this one in particular, let us set the terms Services of Worship and Worshipful services. Services of Worship are the time we spend on Sunday morning gathered together with our local bodies to express our Worship to the Covenant Lord. Worshipful service is any good and profitable thing we do which brings glory to that same Lord. These themes flow from the pages of scripture from start to finish.

While in Eden our forefathers experienced both services of worship (when they walked with God in the cool of the day) and worshipful services as they carried out the commands of the Cultural Mandate (sometimes called the Covenant of Eden or Covenant of works). They were not simply prohibited from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they were positively commanded to be fruitful and multiply and push the borders of the garden outwards (Gen 1:28-30).

Later as redemptive history moved on, we find Moses and the people of Israel at the foot of the mountain. Here they are given the Ten Commandments by Charlton Heston. These Ten Commandments deal essentially with services of worship and worshipful service. The first four commands instruct Israel in her behavior towards God (or her services of worship). The next six commands deal with the way the people are to treat one another in everything from sexuality to business. Here God is dealing with their worshipful services.

Later still, Christ meets a Samaritan woman by a well. After a lengthy discussion she tries to bait him into declaring one place of services of worship illegitimate and another approved. Jesus masterfully navigates this complex and culturally loaded issue and declares that a time is coming where worshipers will offer services of worship all over the world and offer them in “Spirit and Truth”.

Paul and the writer of Hebrews pick these themes up as well. Paul speaks of our worshipful services in Romans when he calls us to present our bodies as living sacrifices. The author of Hebrews weaves the tow themes together seamlessly. He speaks of the excellencies of coming to heavenly Jerusalem as opposed to Sinai then urges us to offer acceptable services of worship. (Hebrews 12:18-29) He then launches into a treatment of our worshipful service, tying them together in chapter 13:15-16.

The scriptures even give us a peak into the world that is to come. Revelation continues the dance between services of worship with worship service, giving us pictures of both celestial services of worship and new earthly worshipful service.

So where does that leave us, to be more specific, where does this leave this series of blogs. Rich and I will be focusing on services of worship. We both understand the importance and biblical significance of worshipful services, but are not seeking to address it here. We want to deal with those specific activities that are practiced on Sunday mornings, the world over. The Church has put an emphasis on these since the earliest times. From the Hebrews author urging members not to neglect coming together, to the significance of the mass in the middle ages to the importance the reformers put on the Sunday service to the very models of ministry taught and used today, Sunday morning services of worship are a centerpiece to modern Christianity and we are seeking to address what goes on in them.

(This post is part of an on going series. You can find the previous posts here and here.)

New Blog Series: Theology and Worship Music (1)

As many of you may know, one of my closest friends is Rich Van Voorst. Rich has been an incredible friend to me since we met nearly 5 years ago. Rich is a Jazz composer and talented Saxophonist. He holds two masters degrees from USF (in Composition and Jazz preformance). On top of this he has an excellent mind for theology. He has often been my sparring partner on a number of theological issues. He reads and thinks through a ton of material.

Rich and I share a passion for our Reformed heritage and a desire to see our churches (both local and global) live out the mantra of the reformation, "Soli Deo Gloria". We both would like to turn our hearts toward improving the quality of worship on our communities.

That being said, we come from different vantage points. Over the next few weeks,we will be corresponding over our blogs. I will be taking the premise, Worship is first theology and second, music. Rich will be taking the position, Worship is equally theology and music.

We understand there is a lot of nuance in worship discussions and we are limiting ourselves to the idea of corporate, Sunday morning worship; specifically music.

In the mean time, check our Rich's blog at http://www.richvanvoorst.com/

Sermon on the Shrewd Manager

Yesterday I had the privileged to preach for the first time since I have served at Surfside Presbyterian Church. We have been studying an excellent small group study called "Modern Parables" and the sermons have been following the same passages. As fate would have it, the passage that fell to me was the most difficult. I was assigned the parable of the Shrewd Manager.

This text is by far the most difficult sermon I have ever preached. The text was extremely difficult to fully wrap my head around and therefore, difficult to communicate. I would like to share a few thoughts before sharing the link to the sermon.

> This text is part of the same encounter with the Pharisees that began in ch. 15.

> This story is tied very closely to the story of the Prodigal Sons

> Though verses 10-13 are related, they are not a part of the parable. Instead they are a complex poem contrasting Mammon and the Kingdom.

> There are as many opinions on what this text means as there are commentators.

> I do disagree with the narrow application of this parable simply to finances.

So there are some of the complexities of this passage. Feel free to comment below.

Idolatry and the Aloft Hotel

This week I have the privilege of being in Chicago for the Gospel Coalition Conference. It has been amazing. Yesterday I heard messages by Tim Keller, John Piper, Phillip Ryken, and Mark Driscoll. Far and away the one that struck me the most was Keller. Keller did a fairly typical "Keller-esque" message on idolatry of the heart. He artfully identified and tore down numerous God's that we as Christians bow down to.

This was an interesting contrast with the hotel we are staying at. The hotel is called "Aloft", but should, perhaps, be called "Aloof". I am grateful for the church providing a hotel near the conference center and grateful that I am staying here. Nevertheless the attention to detail in the hotel is astounding. The entire hotel seems to have been designed, decorated and furnished by Ikea.

Cool lamps

Cool staircases

Cool color schemes that bounce alternately from stark solids to vivid patterns.

Even the music in the elevator music is cool.

In fact the elevator is a great microcosm of the hotel as a whole. The elevator is brush finished stainless steel from top to bottom and from a crown near the ceiling, a soft and beautiful blue lights seeps out. Then from some unscene (sic) speakers, a barrage of hip European sounding techno lurches out.

I walked in the hotel and (at least in my mind) made a motion like a 5th grader. I pumped my fist and elbow by my side and said in a loud whisper, "Yessssssssss". Again, this is all going on in my head. I love cool. A lot. A whole lot.

In fact, I worship cool. I kneel at the altar of pop culture and drink deep of the swill-y Kool-aide.

God help us, because I have a feeling, I am not alone.

New Tape Letter #2

After much delay, here is the second Screwtape Letter:

Dearest Wormwood,
Well done young one! You have fanned the flame of fanaticism into a full-blown wild fire! Before you get too pleased with yourself, however, we must now carefully direct this passion. The best course of action at this point is to direct your patient into a strong sense of escapism.
We all know that the Maker created these beings much differently than he created us. We, Wormwood, are celestial beings meant for the heavens. They are not. In fact, they were created for the hideous blue-green ball they call earth. If, using fanaticism and poor end-times theology, we can move the attention from this world to the world to come, we have won no small victory!
Perhaps a bit more specifics here may help you in your quest. I have noticed from your correspondence that your subject continues to paint. By focusing his attention on escaping from this world to another, his painting will take one of two directions. It will either devolve into an over-romanticised myopic of a past that never really existed ( a sort of Rockwell-Redux), or he will abandon the painting entirely. Either one of these is acceptable.
The first option is in vogue in many circles of the enemies followers. They have so trivialized art and aesthetics that they have created mountains of what we demons call, Jesus Junk. It is an incredible sight, they have created stores that are wall to wall with this hackneyed, trite art. We have successfully eradicated true beauty in the church since the 1800’s. It has been a beautiful time. Long ago, when you were still cleaning the smokestacks of hell, we had to fight against imaginations inflamed with the beauty of creation and the stories of scripture and history. The music of the enemy had the potential, along with their architecture, to transport the average churchman to another plain. We, by introducing this eschatology of escapism, have bled the church of this. We invented a phrase, “Polishing the Brass on the Titanic”. It has worked wonders in dissuading followers of the way from creating beauty and art.
Above all, just remember the idea is to pull his focus from this world and keep it on endless study on misinterpretations of the world to come. If you can keep him convinced that the future is a spiritual world, disconnected and disembodied from the physical, we will be just fine. Tell Nefarii I send my regards.

Smirking in anticipation of Demise,
Your Uncle, Newtape