Our Health is in Our Hands We’re obsessed with fitness. I write this sitting in a coffee shop after working out, frantically exercising to try to keep the heart strong and the fat down. I chose granola instead of a muffin. Yay for me. If you want to be fit, you have more resources at your disposal than ever before—books, videos, online helps, diet plans. You can even rent a fitness expert to become your new BFF for a month … Read More
Two Popular Worship Song Words That Need to Be Taken Back by the Gospel
Yes, I used one of these pictures.Whenever I download a new mainstream worship record, I feel like I have to brace myself for two very well-worn words whose meaning and potency have been largely neutered by a deadly combination of overuse and de-contextualization. In recent years, as the gospel of Christ’s finished work on my behalf has come to mean more and more to me, my jealousy has intensified in desire to take back these two words that I feel … Read More
Do We Distract Ourselves in Worship to Avoid Honesty Before God?
Discovery of a Great Old Worship Book Well, I’ve already deviated from my planned reading list for 2014, but it’s been, so far, a blessed departure from the plans. The more I jam on the themes of the gospel’s relationship to worship, the more I am coming to believe that the psychological aspects of ourselves come to bear on how we approach worship. C. Fitzsimons Allison, a now elderly Episcopal priest, wrote a marvelous book on the intersection of the … Read More
True Worship from the Heart and How it Happens
Album art from Matt Jackson’s terrific record!Many worship leaders (including me) are vexed by the question, “How do I get my people to worship?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that question by fellow songleaders. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or read some speaker or writer on the topic. I was never fully satisfied with some of the answers I got. Often times they were pragmatic “tricks of the trade” like raising … Read More
The Reason for and Content of Worship (Psalm 102:19-22)
As one who not only leads worship but desires to teach my congregation and others about what worship is, I’m always on the lookout for ways to explain worship in a brief yet sweeping fashion, especially when the explanation is packaged in a nice, Scriptural summary. Isaiah 6:1-7 is my go-to passage to talk about Gospel-shaped worship. I use Psalm 95 when speaking of the balance in worship between celebration/joy and reverence/awe. And now Psalm 102 is in my tool … Read More
A Reason to Be Suspicious of Worship Bands
Jean-Jacques von Allmen was a Swiss Reformed theologian whose works on worship and liturgy were introduced to the world now almost a half a century ago. His Worship: Its Theology and Practice is still one of the most important worship books in my library (though it is now sadly hard to find), mostly because it feels like his keen observations and articulations have more bearing now even than when it was written back in the mid-1960s. This quote about choirs is … Read More
What Worship Curved In On Itself Looks Like
Thanks, Mockingbird A Latin Phrase Worth Knowing I’m a sucker for cool Latin phrases. Incurvatus in se, or “curved in on itself,” is one such phrase, possibly coined by Augustine and definitely expounded upon by Martin Luther. The Reformer wrote: Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather … Read More
How Church Planting is Changing the Face of Evangelical Worship
After a series of short hops as an intern, interim, or “seasonal” music leader in various churches in Hawaii and California, I landed my first more permanent role in an ecclesiastical school of hard knocks, otherwise known as a church plant. My first Sunday in Denver, Abby and I walked into the doors of the elementary school cafeteria where the small community of Rocky Mountain Presbyterian Church had been meeting for a little over a year. And we knew we … Read More
Worship as God’s Discomforting Eden
Eden, Texas…NOT the real EdenOne of the things that you’ll find in Robbie Castleman’s Story-Shaped Worship, which you will read in few other worship books these days, is a more robust way of looking at the Bible and its theology of worship. You especially don’t hear this kind of reflection on the Old Testament happening very often among New Testament Christians. Eden as a House of Worship Taking her cues from Peter Leithart,* Castleman encourages us to recognize how God’s design and … Read More
Worship Leaders as Kohathites: Called to Serve in Most Holy Things
Chalkboard Devotionals at Coral Ridge Every week, I gather our music/worship staff together for some team time. We devotionally reflect and process different aspects of what worship is and does, and as a new leader in a new context, I find this time invaluable for casting vision and shaping the sanctum sanctorum of Coral Ridge’s worship culture at large. It starts here. We recently threw up some chalkboard paint on a wall and bordered it with some leftover trim, and it’s … Read More