Some denominations and churches make room for formal membership in the local body, and others do not. I’ve wrestled myself with whether church membership is a biblical practice or whether it’s merely a human invention which may be good, but not necessary. In the church context in which I’m a pastor, we have our fair share of members, but we also have not a small amount of folks who, for a variety of reasons, regularly attend, are quite involved in … Read More
An Important Dialogue About Worship Music
This has been floating around in many of the online circles I run in. It’s a very, very good dialogue between three guys who I admire for thinking theologically and pastorally about worship–Kevin Twit, Mike Cosper, and Isaac Wardell.
Here are some of my takeaways:
- On the topic of songs and “singability” of modern musical idioms:
- It is often said that a lot of “contemporary” music is unsingable…too many flourishes, too many pop-vocal-isms. People say that about U2’s music–too high, too irregular. And yet, for many reasons, you attend a U2 concert and you find thousands of people joining in songs, where many people who would normally say “I’m not a singer” or “I can’t sing” find themselves singing away. There is something profound about this observation.
What is Biblical Worship?
The Difficulty of “Biblical Worship” Discussions
I’ve been in conversation with some trusted friends over the issue of “biblical worship” and how many people (including us) toss that phrase around, often meaning very different things. The concern is that people use the Bible to talk about worship without admitting that we approach the Text with different methodologies in place that color what we pull out of it. When well-meaning Bible thinkers exegete Scripture and come out with defenses for quite different worship practices, we need to pause and ask the meta-questions about how we’re approaching the text, which texts we’re approaching, and why some texts are informative to the topic while others are not.
A Great New Online Resource Hub for Worship Leaders
Since its inception, the Gospel Coalition has served as a “third space” for folks of various denominational ties to come together to celebrate what we hold in common—the gospel. However, it’s more than just another attempt at common-ground ecumenism, which has often ended up in such a watered down unity that it barely tastes anything like historic, orthodox Christianity. No, it’s not that the non-essentials are unimportant. It’s that the full, robust gospel is of great, preeminent importance, and it is therefore worth our best attempts at prizing it in all our conversations about life, faith, and ministry.
When the Holy Spirit Breaks Open the Worship Service (Or, the Surprise of Super Bowl Sunday at Cherry Creek)
Just in case you were mistaken, this isn’t a worship service. It’s a football game.Quite at the last minute yesterday, I felt nothing less than a strong compulsion from the Holy Spirit to urge our congregation to do something in worship quite foreign to us. Many moons ago, I posted on physical expressiveness in worship with what I’ve found to be a very compelling argument.
More and More are Returning to Tradition
In case you haven’t seen the 2007 US News article, “A Return to Tradition,” it’s worth a read. It corroborates a lot of what this blog has been saying over its short life-span. Retrieval and recovery is something that evangelicals are becoming more and more interested in, but it’s not limited to evangelicals. Check out the article.
Recent Discussions on the State of Christian Music in the West
As of late, there have been some very important reflections on the state of Christian music (whatever you think of the phrase, I’m using it as shorthand). Two weeks ago, I had a face-to-face discussion with a man who’s been in the industry for quite some time, working for some pretty influential major labels. For an industry-insider, he was surprisingly blunt about the industry, sharing a lot of critique centering around basically two realities (which many people have pointed out): … Read More