My Interview with Christ Hold Fast

Zac HicksWorship Theology & Thought4 Comments

I had a blast doing this interview with the insightful guys over at the Christ Hold Fast podcast. I’ve never had an interview quite like this where we were able to quickly dive into some deep, underserved themes. I do some explaining about how the Reformation’s insights about Law and Gospel play into worship, and some important observations are made about how that relates to some missing pieces in the current landscape of evangelical worship today.

Check out the episode, a little under 45 minutes, HERE.

4 Comments on “My Interview with Christ Hold Fast”

  1. Great interview, ended up being a great summary of your worship views! Turns out my Pastor is doing a sermon on Colossians 2:8-15, Victory in Christ, so I will be using your arrangement of "His Be the Victor's Name" for it as a solo/reflective piece 🙂

  2. Zac, I'm a worship leader/pastor in the PCA as well. Do you feel any push back from elders or pastors, maybe not at your church, when you say the worship leader is doing the work of a pastor?

    One time I mentioned that my role as worship leader has "pastoral aspects" to it and got some push back. However, my pastor is the bomb and we discussed it and are on the same page. I can't help but think that this idea will be met with resistance in our denomination… I think I respect the seriousness of the calling and role of pastor, but I think it's foolish to say that a worship leaders role isn't pastoral. Anyway, I could go on a rant but don't need to because I think you said it well and better than I could…

    I just write to say that I'm thankful someone in the PCA is leading a charge to simply recognize something that is obviously already true, and to call worship leaders to own up to that truth.
    It's something that I'm working on in me, that I would be heading in the direction of more pastoral and less trying to keep up with an industry… Its so easy for me to shirk something hard to do, or something "pastoral," if I think that I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. Surely that isn't what God would have me to do!

    Thanks

  3. Mike,

    Great question. I don't feel that pushback now, but I certainly did in the past in our PCA context. The PCA, in certain contexts, gets pretty stickler about who gets to be called "pastor." In one respect, I understand the concerns. It's a particular office that not everyone is called to, which should be affirmed by one's internal call and the church's external call. When the PCA hasn't had the opportunity to verify/authenticate that external call, they sometimes get a little concerned.

    However, the fact of the matter is: whether or not worship leaders are called pastors doesn't change the fact that EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM is fulfilling pastoral functions and actually pastoring the congregations they serve as they lead. At that point, then, it really just becomes an issue of semantics and nomenclature. The REALITY is that a worship leader IS a pastor, simply for the reason that people are being pastored by what they do. Should we call them something else? Maybe use a small "p"? I'm not sure. I'll leave that up to the local contexts. But, again, what seems crystal clear to me is that they're pastoring people, whether they know it or not. That's what I was trying to get at in this post:

    https://zachicks.com/blog/2014/8/11/worship-leader-ready-or-not-youre-a-pastor.html

    Keep up the faithful pastoring, Mike. 🙂

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