A brief theology of worship leadership

Worship is the debt being paid back to God for the atonement of our sin (His sacrifice of sending his Son to redeem us once and for all on the cross). This is not just a song sung in a worship service, instead, Romans 12 paints a picture far bigger than that and states that we are to “give [y]our entire bodies to God, letting them be a living and holy sacrifice“ (1) It is our response both personal and corporate to God for who He is, and for what He has done, expressed in and by the things we say, and the way we live. (2)

We worship a God who is Creator. In Genesis He creates man in the imago Dei (image of God) and makes mankind the chosen creation to mirror himself. (3) God is the creator, and He made us sub-creators. We take what He has created first, and we manipulate it to create our own expressions of creativity. We create from a palette placed into our hands by God first. (4) Music is an expression and outworking of this creativity. A worship song is a story-telling document which is put expressively to music in an effort to gather people together in a shared way of creatively learning and expressing that story.

The Kingdom is established by having the king ruling there (Kingdom literally means, ”King’s“ ”Domain“). (5) Worship draws our attention to God, and to who He is as the Creator, King, Saviour and Trinity. It also draws us to his agenda of justice, spirituality, relationship and beauty. (6) Worship teaches us and creates in us a lifestyle that is continually permeating with these echoes of God, making us Kingdom extenders as we go about our lives as living sacrifices to God and mirroring who He is to this broken world.

The first hurdle to overcome as a worship leader is tapping into the bigger picture. One can easily get trapped into thinking that our worship set of five songs on a Sunday is the ”worship time“, dividing the rest of the week into a time that isn’t. Worship is a lifestyle, so we should be encouraging those we lead into that lifestyle - one that is rich in understanding of who God is, what He has done, what He is doing and what He will do. We can not lead this if we have not gone there ourselves. (7)

We worship a God who has created us as his image bearers, as creative people. Artistic creativity should be used to show people glimpses of what this lifestyle of sacrifice should look like, but the music itself should not take over our focus and become the main thing we aim at. Our worship (lifestyle) should richly and continually be centred (aligned) on God, and our leading should be mirroring that weither - weither it is with artistic creativity or through normal day-to-day tasks.

(1) Romans 12:1 NLT

(2) Louie Giglio, Worship - That thing we do DVD, Session 4

(3) Genesis 1:26-27

(4) Dan Wilt, The nature of the human being, p4

(5) Bill Johnson, When Heaven Invades Earth

(6) N.T. Wright,  Simply Christian

(7) Dr. Peter Davids, The importance of scripture study for modern worship leaders

A document worth responding to.

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

A document is interesting because once it is created, it is then up to the reader to valuate it's importance and weither to pay attention to it or not. The document doesn't have a say in it.

The Treaty of Waitangi, the Bible, a note on the kitchen bench, an article in the paper, a book by C.S. Lewis or a blog by me...they are all documents that are powerless unless engaged with. They all have importance, but only if used. In some weird fashion, the document itself won't change the world, but the response of the reader may.

This week I had to write an overview "document"of all the things I have been learning over the last few weeks of my course, and in doing so have now produced something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since finishing it. But, it is my response to this that will make the change. I can map out what the job is at hand, what the nature of a human being is and what lies ahead - but will I respond to it? Will I commit to the process of letting it change the way I go about doing my day-to-day tasks?

A contemporary worship song - in essence, a creative theological document to music - can pull at my heart strings, tugg at my emotions, and can lead me to sing all sorts of words. I can say the grandest promises to God during the moment, but have I engaged with what I am singing? Have I actually realised what I just said? What the consequences of my words are? (It's also interesting to note how many songs are just plagarised out of the ultimate document, the living word, the Bible.)

It is my response to this document put to an easy to sing, catchy and quite likeable tune that could change wether a poor person eats tomorrow.

It is my response in the car listening to Ryan Delmore's "Break me heart with your love" as to weither I am going to forgive that person I have had the falling out with - and do something about it.

It is my response to telling the Lord that I will go where-ever He sends me, and then actually listening to Him about where that is.

(This one is going to be left un finished as I ponder more on responses to documents.)

Christian worldview overview underview sideview...

God is a person (1) who has been in relationship and conversation with us since the beginning of His creation spree. In one of these discussions which has been jotted down, God reveals His name to Moses, calling himself "The I AM”. (2) Short words, huge meaning. God is Trinity; Father, Spirit and Son, and through these three “personalities” has engaged with the creation He created after himself. He has engaged as the Creator of all, the King of all and the Saviour of all. (3)

Human beings are God’s image bearers, made in the image of God, for doing the works of God. Paul calls us “citizens of heaven”. (4) We are the extenders of His Kingdom, even though we are fully human here on earth, we live a parallel life as citizens of Heaven, extending and increasing the dominion of God’s rule on this earth. We are invited to take our story and live it within God’s greater story, with Him as the director and us as the actors.

Human beings screwed things up though. The cute Sunday-school-learned Bible story of Adam and Eve is actually one of the hardest lessons to learn as a human being. This is where we took our image-bearing life and trampled it into the ground in an effort to become the one who is greater than bearing image to. Sin entered the world, but God puts a rescue plan into action.

“So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us.” (5) The Son came on a rescue mission, (6) and while He was here, he modelled what a normal Christian lifestyle was to be; one of miracles, signs and wonders, one that was counter-culutural and radical. He restored to us what we had ruined, by dying a criminals death on the cross and over-coming the grave after three days. Jesus became the lamb to end all sacrifices, and became the keys for us to access the Kingdom.

The Kingdom is exactly what the word means; the “King’s” “domain”. It is the places where God’s ruler-ship as King is restored. (7) God has acted as Saviour by sending Jesus as the keys to the kingdom, where sin can be forgotten and a life which is eternal can be begun. But the point of that life is not to just get to heaven when we die, but to live this life taking on the model set by Christ and living as a citizen of heaven now, living as a new creation in Christ (8) and carrying on the extension of the Kingdom revolution.

In regards to how this will all finish up? I will leave this to Mr N.T. Wright... “The God in whom we believe is the creator of the world, and he will one day put this world to rights. That solid belief is the bedrock of al Christian faith. god is not going to abloish the universe of space, time and matter; he is going to renew it, to restore it and to fill it with new joy and purpose and delight, to take from it all that has corrupted it.” (9)

Until then, I’m just going to do my part by living as a new creation, loving Jesus and extending the Kingdom.

(1) Williams and Brown, Who is this God we worship?
(2) Exodus 3:14
(3) Wilt, The nature of a human being
(4) Philippians 2:27 and 3:20
(5) John 1:14
(6) Wright, Simply Christian 
(7) Johnson, When Heaven invades earth
(8) and (9) Wright, The road to new creation

Working with what we already have

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

Last Thursday, the under-25 year old “men” of the church, took on the over-25 men in a game of indoor soccer. I am a bit of an active-challenged person at the moment, and the game took my body by surprise. In protest, my body responded with a huge blister/callus thing on the sole of my right foot.

During our camp this weekend, I was playing some more soccer and noticed something flapping around in my sock. I removed my shoes and socks to find a large piece of skin, which was about the size of a matchbox. (Sorry about how gross this all kind of is...)

The weird thing is this; upon holding that piece of skin and looking at it, the Holy Spirit used it as an opportunity and I found myself looking at it in awe, saying “No human hand has ever been able to make this stuff.”

I looked down at my other foot which still had my shoe on it. My shoe was made of materials that man had manipulated to create various kinds of leathers and rubbers.

My clothes were made of different kinds of cottons, again, just a material that man has made by taking a cotton plant and spinning it into yarn or thread. Again, just manipulating something that already exists.

In my hand, I held a piece of skin. Something that mankind has never and I even boldly write - will never - be able to make out of thin air.

Skin, cows, tree sap and cotton plants all have something in common... We didn’t make them. He, the Creator, did.

Dan Wilt puts it pretty good in this quote “Our wildest creations as human beings, with all due respect to the great scientists of this world, have always begun with something that God already created. We have yet to make our own dust out of which to make a human being. We have yet to create a new colour, a new air to breathe or a new building block of life. We work with what is, and we manipulate what is in order to discover, explore and rejoice in the world for which we are made.”

I feel privileged and humbled to be where I sit in the order of things. I'm not the creator, but I have the privilege to be able to manipulate to create from what He has created first.

Songs for the present reality (ICEWS, e*b 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

This week's pondering has been right at home for me. I love the Kingdom and I love the lifestyle it calls out of us, and incredible change when we respond. And to put my two favourite things together- the Kingdom and worship, is like putting Cadbury's chocolate sauce all over a bowl of Cadbury's Top-Deck ice-cream, and then covering it with chunks of Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate... 

One major pondering I have had was this: Is our worship lining up with the "heaven when we die" thinking, or more towards the "the Kingdom is here and now, the rescue mission has been complete!" kind of thing. I can see now, I need diagrams to make my point:

"I'll fly away, oh Glory, I'll fly away. When I die, hallelujah by and by, I'll fly away." To me, this song is expressing and declaring a thinking which leaves the church stagnant, which leaves it just buying time and which leaves it not functioning in power, but rather complacency and apathy. The thinking is that "the Kingdom" is the heaven we go to when we die. It leaves us just waiting, just biding our time till we pass from this world into the "golden palace in the sky". We live our lives the best we can, we die and we go to heaven if we have done a good enough job. 

Not something I would sign-up for, that's for sure. But this on the other hand... 

Paul writes that we are "citizens of heaven" and that we live as "ambassadors". When the rescue mission took place, when Jesus came and was sacrificed on the cross and was resurrected from the grave he did not just grant us eternal life. He gave us the keys to the Kingdom, he handed over authority to do what He did as the Word who became flesh. 

He called us to walk as citizens of the Kingdom, walking our story at the same time as the Kingdom around us, drawing from it with the authority we have been given to do so. 

In a nutshell, this is why my blog is titled "not just a ticket to heaven", we are not on a quest to live as nicely as we can before heading off to the clouds, we are called to live, to sing, to create and to worship as citizens of heaven NOW. 

We walk double lives, we are beings of earth, but we are carrying a Kingdom passport. 

The Kingdom and the King

This is my answer to this week's question for my Essentials*Blue worship theology and worldview course. Thought I would post it here for you to have a glance at. The question is based out of reading section two of N.T. Wright's book, Simply Christian and watching a great bit of media by Dan Wilt entitled The Nature of God...

Upon reading this section of the book, I found myself leaning back, putting my hands through my hair, widening my eyes and sighing out heavily. “This thing is just so BIG” I thought to myself. And it is because of that intense “bigness”, I am feeling passionate, excited and thriving on every time the “Kingdom” pops up in our discussions.

Let me ground something here. I love the “Kingdom theology”. I have studied it, I have poured myself into trying to live a Kingdom lifestyle for years now and if you get me into a cafe for a coffee, we won’t leave without me at least once talking to you passionately about something to do with “the Kingdom”.

And I think that is what has challenged me, yet again. (When will you learn Dan?!) The Kingdom is a huge topic. It is not something we just read in a few pages of a book, or listen to a Wimber teaching, or pray a few prayers and we have then mastered. The history, the characters, the positioning, the timing, the attitudes, the blessings, the war, the outcomes, the struggles, the faith... and so-on and so-on... It is a life pursuit that lies before us. 

“Seek first the Kingdom” Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, and I see why. When we let other things become first, the Kingdom isn’t anymore. And when the Kingdom story isn’t in the front of our thinking and manifesting in our actions, we start thinking about other things which aren’t so important and send us down a side-track of time-wasting, people-pleasing or ego-feeding instead.

As for the four theological ideas on the Nature of God, I immediately struggle and debate which I would isolate as the one to use. But after biting the clicker-bit off my pen and procrastinating and changing over my vinyl I was listening to, I am reminded of how when the word “Kingdom” is broken down, it means the “King’s domain”. 

It would be impossible to raise up a strong Kingdom-influenced church without worshipping the King, learning about the King, and declaring who the King is in our worship. 

The Worship Artisan title reflection (ICEWS, e*b08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology course with Dan Wilt.

A person making coffee in Italy takes about four years before they earn the title of a "coffee barrista." Four years of falling in love with the coffee, of learning how it works, growing more and more passionate about their coffee.

Here in New Zealand, a place far less passionate about coffee than Italy, a kid can walk into a cafe and get a job for the weekends, and call themselves a coffee barrista after being just shown how to use the machine. The result unfortunately, is really bad coffees. But they are carrying and representing a title that is meant to be earned and honoured.

It's a similar situation in worship circles; we call ourselves "worship leaders" when we have actually only been shown how to sing some songs and perhaps pray some prayers and read some scripture out, but unfortunately, this is not doing the title any justice.

A title which is new to my ears, "The worship artisan", is an incredible title to sit and ponder upon. It paints a far greater picture of what a worship leader is and what responsibilities they carry. It paints a picture of a passionate person, who is in love with their God-given craft, who grows and extends their craft, putting in the hard work. It paints a picture of someone who is excited about worship's past, present and future. It paints a picture of someone who is excited about the bigger story, and the role that they play in it.

It's time we call a "coffee barrista" a coffee barrista when they are one.

Buildings of theology. (ICEWS, e*b 08)

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology course with Dan Wilt.

A thought I have not been able to shake has come from a testimony story that Dan Wilt shares in his video "The Rise of the Worship Artisan". Dan is sharing about his memories of going to church as a boy and talks about the beauty of the stained glass windows, and the story they tell.

I recently attended a worship conference called Noise, which was held in The Holy Trinity Cathedral here in Auckland, New Zealand. I had never been there before, nor had I ever attended this conference. This conference has only just moved to this amazing venue this year, and in past years had been held in a stadium type venue.

I was having a meal with one of the members of my worship team during the conference and asked them what was the main difference between the conference of earlier years and this year's one, and her reply was "The venue is amazing."

I immediately saw what she was saying. It is the peaceful serenity, the beauty of the architecture and art, and the presence of something that can not be found in just an any old stadium. It is only found in a place that has been built, grown, journeyed and moved through time with a goal in mind that I had completely missed until that meal. I knew that building was there to glorify God,  but I had missed what that entailed: to lift people's gazes to the heavens, to teach people theology, to show them the story, to paint a bigger picture for them. 

"Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord!" is how the Psalms sign out. Let me, a human who has had life breathed into me by the Creator, with every breath, with every thing I do while I still have a heartbeat, praise the One who first breathed into me. Whether it be the common default, and sometimes melancholic of singing, or whether it be in the lesser recognised, the more subtle praise, by creating with my hands, or by looking with my eyes, or listening with my ears.