Essentials in Worship Values

for the Essentials In Worship Values Certificate Course with Dan Wilt

“Why we lead worship, and who we lead worship for tells us much about how we lead worship.” [1]

Everything in life has the potential to become an act of worship, a response to God’s love for us. In the “gathered worship experience…our great desire and goal is to nurture a people who, through the vehicle of songs, prayers, liturgies, teaching and more, understand how to respond to God from a yielded heart” [2] that will extend beyond the gathered experience into their daily lives. “We create atmospheres that lead people to welcome the Spirit of God to change their lives, their motives, their choices. We open up languages of prayer for those who come, that in turn have the potential to open them up to God.” [3]

Connecting people to God is my passion. I love doing it through worship, art, prayer…over coffee, dinner, or on a walk. But worship is my primary “vehicle” to lead people to God. There is just something about a group of 2 or 3 or 300 come together…the “we” aspect that transforms a very personal experience into a community experience where we as individuals connect to God in an activity we do together.

When we meet, the expression of worship that lends itself most to community is song. Brian Doerksen says, “Why (do) we sing songs in the first place? We do it because it is something we can do together. There are probably other things that we could do to express our love and our worship to God that would be, in one sense, just as valid. But they’re not easy for us to do together.”[4]

But leading worship isn’t just about a set list or the people I sing/play with or the venue where I lead. The most critical substance of leading worship is the values from which I lead. In Essentials in Worship Values, Dan Wilt describes five foundational values that give structure to the worship experience God is calling me to facilitate within my local body. Having these at the center shapes the sound of worship that creates the atmosphere where we can be vulnerable and known to God.

Intimacy

“Intimacy happens when one heart chooses to make itself vulnerable to another, choosing self-offering above self-protection; self disclosure above self-protection.” [5] God is inviting us to a deep relationship with Him, one where He does not protect Himself from us and wants us to be open and vulnerable to Him. It is a “posture, a positioning, of one heart toward another.”

I must value intimacy with the Lord in my private life so that I might lead others to engage deeply with Him through the songs. I need to allow time and space for this to happen, not rushing through the moments when the Spirit is moving on each heart.

Integrity

“Integrity in worship means that we are a consistent people – we don’t just sing what we believe, we sing what we already live.” [6] The way I lead or create or express worship has integrity if it flows from who I am in private. I become a parasite on the people I’m leading if I lead without integrity, taking my identity from them, from how they view me, from their praise and/or rejection. Leading needs to come out of the overflow of my life lived out before God.

Accessibility

Accessibility means creating access point(s) that facilitate people meeting with God. Often times this will mean laying down personal preferences so that I might “facilitate the communication between human beings and God.” [7] “We are playing and creating so that the congregation might find a clear way to lay down the burdens they walked in with at the feet of Jesus, and to meet with Him in worship through the vehicle of the music that we make.

We want our community to engage with God’s story on every level, and to enter intimately into that story as those pursued by a welcoming, accessible God.” [8] We stay aware of who it is that we are leading into worship and ask God how He can best make Himself known to them through our worship.

Cultural Relevance

Cultural relevance does not mean cultural accommodation. [9] Rather, it is leading the way to a connection with God that fits within the context of the culture where I lead. “[It] is the art of creating atmospheres that are authentic to our reality, style, age and goals that build a welcoming and engaging bridge for those who may not be able to build a bridge for themselves.” [10] I trust God to reveal the way to lead that removes barriers and reveals the truth of who He is within the culture.

Kingdom Expectation

Kingdom expectation is expecting God to be the same yesterday, today and forever; to expect Him to reveal Himself in the space that He has helped and led us to create. Jesus’ life was an example of bringing the future Kingdom reality into the present. He declared the Kingdom come and taught His disciple to pray for God’s will on earth as it is in Heaven.

In Heaven, worship is a multi-sensory, living, breathing, exciting, awe-inspiring continual event. We are His “holy, viral carriers of the Kingdom of heaven, reflecting the future day when ‘all things will be made new.’” [11]

God has told us to expect Him to “show up” for us. The way He comes is often a mystery, but in embracing the mystery of who He is along with the revelation of His heart, we experience more of His Kingdom truth in our lives that transforms us further into the people He has called us to be. To not expect Him to come is an “affront to what [He] has offered.” [12] We must lead from a place of belief, trust and Kingdom expectation where God’s presence is expected to manifest in our midst.

As I move into this next season of the formation of who God has called me to be, I desire above all else to stay deep. These core values of intimacy, integrity, accessibility, cultural relevance, and Kingdom expectation keep me centered on the One I am leading others to and demand that I expect God to empower me to do the hard work required for the great privilege of leading His people into a deeper encounter and relationship with Him…

An encounter that will, hopefully, leave them hungering for more of Him and desiring to meet with Him, not just in our corporate worship times, but during the week, as well, where they can continue to experience a connection with Him.

1 Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Values, 4.
2 ibid, 4.
3 ibid, 5.
4 ibid, 5.
5 ibid, 7.
6 ibid, 8.
7 ibid, 12.
8 ibid, 12.
9 Dan Wilt, The Value of Cultural Relevance.
10 Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Values, 15.
11 ibid, 18.
12 ibid, 18.

Surprised by Hope - Part 2

for the Essentials Blue In Worship Theology Certificate Course with Dan Wilt

(see Part 1 here)

With the issue of the resurrection settled once again in my mind, Wright moves to why a good understanding of Easter is important. Easter is not “Jesus is raised; therefore there is life after death.” Easter announces that “Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun – and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his Kingdom come on earth as in heaven.” [1]

This gives life so much more purpose than waiting and watching for death to come or the end of the world to arrive so that I might go to Heaven. I have a job to do, and the resurrection means that “nothing done in the Lord, in the power of the Spirit, in the present time will be wasted in God’s future.”[2] It brings meaning to everything I do in His name.

The Enlightenment and the Renaissance say that “history is accelerating towards a wonderful goal…[and] we will become what we have the potential to be by education and hard work.” [3] Platonic Dualism that says the physical is evil, the body is a tomb to escape. But Christianity says that the new creation was birthed through the resurrection of Jesus and it is only through the work on the cross that redemption occurs.

Early Christians didn’t believe in progress nor in deterioration of the world with a goal to escape it. “They believed that God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter”[4] and that they were to be His instruments for that work. They, along with all of creation, had a forward look to the future in God.

“It looks as though God intends to flood the universe with himself, as though the universe, the entire cosmos, was designed as a receptacle for his love…it is designed to be filled, flooded, drenched in God…”[5] Creation is not yet complete and is waiting for that day when all the forces of rebellion have been vanquished and creation is completely free to respond to the love of the Creator.

In Revelation, joining of Heaven and Earth is not the separation of the world from God, but the right joining of God with creation in a redeemed relationship. Erroneous end-times theology says that this world is doomed for destruction and Christians will be rescued out of it. Judgment is mistakenly seen as vengeful. In reality it is that “God…in the end, [will] put it all to rights, straighten it out, producing not just a sigh of relief all around but shouting for joy from the trees and the fields, the seas and the floods. “[6]

The settling happening deep within me is an echo of that sigh that all of creation will breathe on the last days. It’s the recognition that this process, this journey that I am on is all part of God’s straightening-out plan that He’s called me to be a part of. The resurrection is not all about me and my redemption, although it certainly is a part of it. My ultimate destiny is not the ultimate question. Israel thought that how they were going to be rescued by God was the ultimate purpose of God. But what God was really acting on was how He was/is going to rescue the world through Israel and rescue Israel in the process. Asking instead what my part is in God’s rescue mission of the world puts me in a position for being rescued in the process of the world being rescued. [7]

Jesus was doing in the present what He was promising in the future, giving people the opportunity to experience redemption in the present so that they might enjoy the renewal process leading into the future, becoming co-laborers with Him in this renewal, re-creation, redemptive process. “The point of the resurrection…is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die…What you do in the present – by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself – will last into God’s future…They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.”[8]

Thus, my whole life, every act of worship must be reordered around the resurrection. “…our present space, time, and matter are all subject not to rejection but to redemption.”[9] I must look at my world with new lenses because of the resurrection. It infuses hope into every situation because God is at work right here and right now through His agents (you and me empowered by His Spirit) to redeem the whole of creation. This world is passing away in the sense that the old is gone and the new is here. It is not awaiting destruction but rather redemption and that work began at the cross and was birthed at the resurrection.

While some days it may feel like my world is sliding into greater and greater chaos and disarray, the truth in light of the resurrection is that it is being redeemed bit by bit through the power of the redemptive work of Jesus. My hope that was being whittled away by the worries and cares of this world so needed an infusion of the Truth that came via N.T. Wright and Surprised by Hope. There will still be days of struggle. There will probably still be days when I find my hope in need of refreshing. But now I stand stronger, wiser, more firmly convinced of Whom I have believed, of the reality of His resurrection, and of the wonderful, redeeming move of God that has been sweeping the planet since the day Jesus rose from the dead.

Glory, halleluiah. What a Savior! I have been surprised by Hope.


[1] Ibid, 56.
[2] Ibid, 26.
[3] Ibid, 81,85.
[4] Ibid, 93.
[5] Ibid, 102.
[6] Ibid, 121.
[7] Ibid, 185.
[8] Ibid, 192-193.
[9] Ibid, 264.

Surprised by Hope - Part 1

for the Essentials Blue In Worship Theology Certificate Course with Dan Wilt

As the wife of an ex-Christian agnostic, there are days when my faith feels shaky, when I wonder (again) if there is any validity to my husband’s doubts, when I wonder if what I’ve chosen to believe is really true. Most days what anchors me is the experience of a relationship with Christ that has sustained me the better part of my life. But there are days when the intellectual arguments replay in my thoughts and doubts creep in.

Enter Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright. I wasn’t having “one of those days” when I started reading it, but as the words began to soak into my soul, I found myself settling somewhere deep inside. This particular season of life has been so crazy that I didn’t even notice the internal swirlings as needing to be settled. I hadn’t even had time to acknowledge their existence, much less analyze the source.

The reality is, though, that my hope had been waning, and I didn’t even know it.

N.T. Wright begins by asking: “First, what is the ultimate Christian hope. Second, what hope is there for change, rescue, transformation, new possibilities within the world in the present?”[1] What is this hope that fuels all we are to do as Christians? Answering these questions is a matter of “thinking straight about God and His purposes for the cosmos and about what God is doing right now, already as a part of those purposes.”[2]

Straight thinking. It really begins there. Having renewed thinking, getting the right thoughts about God and who He is is essential to a vibrant and healthy relationship with the Triune God. In this 2-part post I am going to explore some of the ideas put forth in Surprised by Hope that have helped to restore hope in my life.

My view of death and resurrection are key to sustaining straight thinking about God and His Kingdom. Is death an enemy or “welcome friend”?[3] According to Scripture, death is an enemy that was conquered at the cross. The Platonic view has invaded Christian thinking, however, causing us to devalue this present world, our physical bodies, and to think of them as somehow shabby or shameful. With this view, death is welcomed as an escape from this world.[4]

But is Heaven just a place we go to when we die? If so, then shouldn’t we welcome death so that we can go to heaven to be with God? Wright points out that such a view of heaven limits our understanding of God. Heaven is God’s Kingdom, and it’s not just somewhere we go when we die. Heaven is “the other, hidden dimension of our ordinary life…God’s dimension.”[5] It is His rule coming on earth as it is in Heaven.

So where does the ultimate Christian hope lie? While glorious and certainly wonderful, Heaven is not it. Our hope lies in the event of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ and the new creation that was birthed in that moment.

Not found in paganism, the idea of resurrection was unique to Jewish and later to Christian thought.[6] For the first-century Jew, however, resurrection was thought to be a sweeping event for all of God’s people that would bring God’s Kingdom here on earth as in Heaven. With Christianity, resurrection became two events: 1) Jesus – one person in the middle of history and 2) believers on the last day.[7]

For my husband, the resurrection is one of the key points of contention. Most agnostic literature around our house brings it into question and categorizes it as a tale told by the disciples in order to explain away an awkward situation: the death of Jesus, the supposed Messiah.

What is interesting to note is that the Jews did not ever anticipate a messiah who would die, much less one who would raise from the dead. When Jesus spoke of raising from the dead, it would have confused the disciples who were thinking of the resurrection as one event for all of God’s people, not one that their teacher would experience before them. “No Jew with any idea of how the language of messiahship worked could have possibly imagined, after his crucifixion, that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Lord’s anointed. But from very early on, as witnessed by what may be pre-Pauline fragments of early creedal belief, the Christians affirmed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, precisely because of his resurrection.”[8] (to be continued)

1 N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (New York: HarperCollins Press, 2008), 5.
2 Ibid, 5.
3 Ibid, 17.
4 Ibid, 26.
5 Ibid, 19.
6 Ibid, 42.
7 Ibid, 45.
8 Ibid, 47-48.

The New Song

for the Essentials In Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Singing is an important part of corporate worship. It’s easy to do together and when a song is familiar, everyone can join in.

There is another aspect to song termed in Scripture as the “new” song. We have been given a gift: “the capacity to respond to the present work of God with a heart song that is fresh, immediate, current, renewing and rebuilding – a song that is pleasing to the One we worship, and by extension is a strength to our souls.” [1] Most often we are a part of the corporate song, but the new song gives wings to what God is doing in this moment and allows a fresh response to His goodness and love in our lives. Most important of all, God must be the source of the new, fresh songs, not the culture.

For too long, now, culture has been given the reigns of creativity that once belonged to the Church. Instead of the Church leading in creativity in just about any arena, the culture has become the one to set the standard and to define what is popular and what is not.

As a worship leader, I have the opportunity to change the tide in small ways within the sphere of influence that the Lord gives me. Jesus “has moored His worship…in human civilization” [2], and we are asked to be vessels of His redemptive power at work within each of us to bring healing and wholeness to the culture, to the world around us. We don’t do this by mimicking culture; rather, we do it through catching God’s heart, delighting in who He is, and releasing the sound of the Lord to the earth through whatever gifts and talents He has placed within us.

1 Dan Wilt, "Exploring Our Roots: The Contemporary Worship Movement", Inside Worship.
2 ibid.