I just finished N.T. Wright’s “Surprised by Hope”.  It’s a book about heaven and the future, but he touches on a very wide variety of subjects, including worship.  I don’t have the book here in front of me, so forgive my paraphrasing -  He writes that some Christians have looked down on traditional liturgical worship as “professional” worship – requiring a great deal of special training such as what vestments to wear on what occasions, how many times to swing the thurible, knowing what a thurible is, knowing how to spell thurible, etc. They view contemporary worship as simple and pure.  And yet, the contemporary worship leader needs to know contemporary music, powerpoint, sound systems, lighting, etc.  We’ve just exchanged one form of professionalism with another.  Then I got my weekly Robert Webber quote in my email this morning:

“Congregations . . . should recognize the difficulty of leading contemporary worship. One cannot simply pick up a guitar, assemble contemporary instruments, pick out the right songs, and expect it to go well. Worship leading requires certain skills, a good grasp of how to accomplish the transitions from one phase to another, an ability to make the right connecting comments between songs, a strong bond with the congregation, and a heart in tune with the Spirit.

Robert Webber, Worship Old and New: A Biblical, Historical, and Practical Introduction, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2004), 160.

I agree that leading worship is a craft that requires a great deal of skill to do well.  I think we can romanticize it, along with perhaps preaching, and think that it ought to be easy – just get up there and worship – but it is a discipline to learn all of these skills.  Reading Webber’s quote encouraged me this morning.  It’s not easy because it isn’t supposed to be easy!

Good news!  “This is Worship” is the first single off the album.  CHRI has picked it up and is putting it into rotation!  Tune in to hear it or listen for it on the internet!

Check out this guitar!

Reminds me of this.

Still here at worship school and we’re talking about the relationship between worship and culture.  It turns out the Lutheran World Federation already figured this out in Nairobi back in 1996.  They were nice enough to publish a statement called “The Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture“. It makes four profound statements about this relationship:

1. Worship is trans-cultural.
2. Worship is contextual.
3. Worship is counter-cultural.
4. Worship is cross-cultural.

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?  Reading the Nairobi statement clarified a lot of thoughts that had been swimming around in my head on this subject.  Your homework is to read it for yourself!

More tomorrow…

I nearly missed my plane because I was so involved in the previous blog post.

I’m waiting in the Detroit Airport for the my connecting flight to Jacksonville. I’m off to IWS for my final course in the masters program there. Here are my random thoughts as I travel:

• The woman I sat next to on the flight from Syracuse to Detroit apologized profusely for the aroma of her Doritos. I couldn’t smell Doritos. But it was nice that she apologized anyway…
• The Detroit Airport does not have any of those white and red ball caps that the Red Wings wore after they clinched the Cup in Game 6. I was willing to part with up to $30 for one of those caps. I bet if the Tigers won the series the place would be swimming in world series ball caps
• It’s been an hour here now and I’ve memorized the “Due to heightened security…” announcement that comes over the PA every 3 minutes.
• I’ll be take a course entitled “Worship in a Transcultural World”. I expect that I’ll learn a lot, since I don’t know anything at all about Transcultural worship. My own thoughts on the subject can be summed up by “It doesn’t work” – too simple perhaps… but any time I’ve been in say a bilingual service it’s been really difficult to get beyond the stilted translations and truly engage in worship. Perhaps “It doesn’t work” is too harsh. “It’s really hard to make it work” might be more true. In any case it will be interesting to explore the role of culture in worship and the effect of globalization on Christianity.
• There’s a bird flying around the terminal – I should be able to think of something profound to say about that… but nothing is coming to me.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll post more thoughts throughout the week until the final day when I shall pronounce a definitive summary statement upon the subject of Worship in a Transcultural World.

Or not.

Here’s another article I wrote about how the song “Jesus Only” was written:

On Nov. 1 2005 I was attending my Alliance New Workers retreat at camp Iawah, near Ottawa. I’d been almost a year on the job as the worship pastor at Cedarview Alliance Church after 10 years as an engineer in the telecommunications industry. Dr. Arnold Cook was speaking on the ethos of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. I was deeply stirred by Dr. Cook, especially as he spoke about the fourfold gospel. In my notebook I have a little sketch of the cross, the laver, the pitcher and crown, and next to that the words “Song Idea”, underlined twice. Whenever something stirs me I want to sing about it.

As I listened to Dr. Cook speak I was deeply impressed that our people need to know this message. Even though I had been attending an Alliance church for over 10 years I had very little understanding of the fourfold gospel. I knew that each of the four objects depicted in the logo stood for the fourfold gospel, but until I began studying for accreditation I though the lave was a wine glass and had something to do with communion.

After the session I went up to my room and sat on my bunk with my guitar and very quickly I had an idea for the chorus of the song. I jotted it down with the intention of working on composing four verses (one for each of the “folds”). Later that week as I sat down to continue working on the song I recalled that A.B. Simpson himself was a composer of hymns. I wondered if perhaps the founder himself had written a hymn. I checked the hymnal beside my desk and found “Jesus Only”. The lyrics were exactly what I was looking for. Then I played the melody. Let us say that Simpson’s way of uniting lyric with melody is idiosyncratic and leave it at that. I decided to abandon the original melody and adapt Simpson’s lyrics to the melody I had created.This exercise helped me to understand that the songs we sing are incredibly powerful in shaping our theology and spirituality. It is crucial that the songs we sing reflect the values and theology of the Alliance. I challenge our songwriters and worship leaders to create songs that stress Alliance values such as missions and the deeper life. Look at the themes of Simpson’s hymns and find fresh ways to express them. One of the most rewarding things for me is to hear people of all generations singing the message of the fourfold gospel together. May we be blessed with a new wave of worship songs that help us to define what it means to be truly Alliance.