Defining Worship Leadership

If worship can be defined as seeing God and being stirred to interact with and respond to Him, then worship leadership should be filled with efforts to:




- Consistently create environments of interaction with God

- Accurately depict the character and beauty of God

- Honestly stir the affections of others for God, and

- Graciously encourage appropriate responses to God

Thoughts?

Marvelous Grace of Our Loving Lord

I thought the whole "my grace is sufficient" thing was a way out of the pain inflicted by the thorn. Like, "If you'll focus on my grace, then the thorn won't hurt as bad. Just be positive." I know God has a better command of English grammar than that, but he also has a better grasp on grace than that, so let's not quibble. I experienced true weakness yesterday.

When I was completely weak,

• God's grace alone was sufficient to keep me from being destroyed by my own unworthiness.
• God's grace alone kept me from the condemnation that was my rightful my wage.
• God's grace alone kept me from my damnable pride.
• God's grace alone kept me from despair.

If not for my weakness, I would not likely have been truly cognizant of any of these saving graces, though they preexisted my sinful condition. It took my weakness to reveal the power of Christ in me. Therefore, I boast gladly in my weakness.

Soli Deo Gloria

Jesus Ninja

Sometimes Christian small groups take on an element known as "accountability." A typical session will go something like this:

Accountee: "Hold me accountable, brother. I just keep on coveting Bill's car."

Accountant: "Come 'on, brosef. It's about time you kicked this habit like a Jesus Ninja. You can't keep coming back week after week with that amateur act. You gotsta move on. I'll be prayin' fer ya."

Accountee: "Thanks bro. I do need prayer..."

Oh, the camaraderie. Oh, the man-love. Oh the terrible theology...

But they're confessing their sins one to another, right? Yep. And isn't there supposed to be accountability within the body? Yep. And should we rebuke and encourage our brothers, spurring them on toward love and good deeds, right? Yep. But here are some helpful distinctions that should keep you from walking away from your group time like it was a visit with your parole officer(s):

1.) We are not accountable TO one another. We are accountable FOR one another. Check out the whole "your brother's blood cries out" episode and the Noaic covenant. Each man is accountable not only for himself, but also for his brother. So instead of taking confessions like a disinterested and anonymous cleric, we're going to be up into each other's business. His problem is your problem. Kill it dead.

2.) Changing behaviors does not a disciple make. Transformation is not a rearranging of parts. You are not Optimus Prime. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. If your brother is continuing in a particular sin, it is because he is believing a particular lie. Identify the false doctrine and kill it with truth. Kill it dead.

3.) Don't forget that we are justified by our faith and not our behavior. We're not attacking our sin so that we can stand before God as perfect saints. We are attacking our sin because we already stand before God as perfect saints. Sin is not becoming a son of God. It is beneath us and it precludes our mission. Kill it dead.

As Close as the East is to the West

It has been said that Micah 6:8 sums up the message of the minor prophets:

"He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?"

It is indeed a great summation of the voices crying out in the near-eastern desert, but I would contend that it also encapsulates western thought quite nicely, and furthermore that the best of the west might help us to better understand this theological feast of the east.

Three imperatives are presented here: 1.) to do justice, 2.) to love kindness, and 3.) to walk humbly with God. I, like Augustine, do not believe it a stretch to see God's wisdom revealed through certain pagan men's honest (albeit blind) pursuit of the ideal, and therefore I have unapologetically assigned these actions to Greek counterparts: ethos, pathos, and logos.

"Do justice." Ethos: the "oughtness" of things, is characterized by the heart (will). The pursuit of justice and deconstruction of injustice is to be the daily activity of a Godly person. Unlike Kant's morality, ethics is not duty-based. Aristotle, like David, knew that the actions of an ethical man flow from his heart. The justice we do flows from who we are, not who we would like to become if we could only do enough justice. We are sons of God, the Just: therefore we do justice. This is goodness in the fullest degree.

"Love kindness." Pathos: the passion of things, is characterized by the gut (desire). The literal translation for this lovingkindness in Colossians 3 is "bowels of mercy" It's an intense and almost uncontrollable desire; an unquenchable thirst for something: in this case, for the Hebrew "hessid." Hessid is mercy of the deepest unction: reconciling the broken, redeeming the fallen, upholding the frail and celebrating the weak. In the Western world, bourgeois art was characterized by the beauty of raw desire. Taken at its purest, we can see in Bernini's "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa" the rapturous encounter of a fallen woman with her passionate lover of a God. A lover who kindly pursues His unworthy beloved even to his own death: this is beauty to the fullest degree.

"Walk humbly with your God." Logos: the reason of things, is characterized by the mind (thought). As two sides of a coin, humility captures the essence of truth. C.S. Lewis, the great synthesizer of western ideas, stated that "humility is not thinking less of oneself, but thinking of oneself less." Man could do with a lot less thinking of himself, this is for certain. The conflict of human history in its entirety can be attributed to man's unwillingness to lay himself aside. But the profundity of our arrogance is far outweighed by the profundity of God's humility. St. Paul reminds us that we owe our eucatastrophe to the ultimate humility of Jesus Christ, who, being in his very nature God, though it not a position to be obtained, but instead humbled Himself, even to death on a cross. The cross is truth to the fullest degree.*

I find myself wondering whether I'm stretching or not when I make these arguments, but it sure is good exercise. I hope my thoughts are a help to those who read them and are utterly forgettable to those who might be hindered by them.

*Paul also tells us that the cross is foolishness to the Greeks, but even John uses the Logos as the subject of his gospel. We can quibble on this one if you'd like; I think I could be swayed by some good rhetoric.