Ready to Surrender

As a Christian and as a pastor, worship is important to me. How we worship, why we worship, when we worship, the ways we worship, and what/who we worship are all important to me. Yet, so often these things are not important to the others I am talking to. Often times when talking about worship with pastors and leaders the conversation is reduced to "How many were there?" and "How moved were they?"

When I talk about the need for a renewed worship, people respond with discussions of transitioning from "traditional music" (hymnal) to "contemporary music" (everything published after the hymnal). Or I hear statements like I did a couple of weeks ago with a group of pastors, when one pastor stated publicly, "I actually quit going to worship for a period of time before becoming a pastor. I mean, I understood why we worshiped but I just didn't have anything in common with the church people. But now that we have a "cowboy church" I just feel such a great sense of unity."

Advent Worship Music

Joseph beat me to the punch on my usual Thursday post! Ya snooze, ya lose, I guess (plus, he's 5 hours ahead of us in the UK!).  In the interest of consistency, I'm double-dipping a bit - this is a revision of a note I posted on facebook a week or two ago.  Many churches - especially those that use primarily contemporary worship music - struggle to know what to sing in congregational worship during the Advent season.

From my totally subjective perspective,** here is a list of 13 contemporary/popular worship songs that aren't traditional Christmas/Advent songs - they're mostly songs that are sung throughout the year - but that I think are particularly appropriate during the season of Advent (and brief annotations as to why)...and I leave it to you to let me know what I've left off, or what I am mistaken to include...Perhaps this list helps, or at least provokes some discussion and other (better!) ideas...

• Here I am to Worship - "light of the world, you stepped down into darkness...humbly you came to the earth you created / all for love's sake became poor" - skip the bridge during Advent, though ("...to see my sin upon that cross") - or maybe all the time...it just doesn't fit the rest of the song, thematically, as someone recently pointed out to me.
• Hosanna (Praise is Rising) - I think Palm Sunday songs are great for Advent. When we cry "Hosanna!" we are saying, literally "God save us!"
• Mighty to Save - "everyone needs...a Savior / the hope of nations...author of salvation" - I don't even mind changing "we're singing for the glory of the RISEN King" to "NEWBORN King" during Advent/Christmas...but that's your call. (That it's #1 on the CCLI charts might or might not speak to its merit, in your opinion...)
• Love Came Down - awesome new song by Brian Johnson - can be played acoustically (like we did today) or as a rock song. "Love came down and rescued me / Love came down and let me free."

Protestant Crucifix

A few years ago I came across a term that I had never heard before. A 17th century Protestant writer, Daniel Brevint, described the communion table as a 'Protestant Crucifix'. It made me think a lot about the words we use when we describe what we do at the Eucharistic Table. The writer sought to provoke the reader to think of the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist.

In response to this theme of sacrifice and the altar as the Protestant Crucifix, Charles Wesley penned the following hymn:

Would the Saviour of mankind
Without His people die?
No, to Him we all are join'd
As more than standers by.
Freely as the Victim came
To the altar of His cross,
We attend the slaughter'd Lamb,
And suffer for His cause.

Advent and Christmas practices

Two more Sundays to Advent 1. In anticipation of this time of anticipation, I wanted to get some ideas about singing during the Advent season.

Advent and Christmas have been high-jacked by consumer culture. The shops are already being transformed into Christmas shopping Meccas, the shoppers are receiving leaflets in the mail advertising Black Friday, and the children are being bombarded with toy advertisements during Dora the Explorer and the Backyardigans. Once the shopping commences, the shoppers are enveloped with Christmas songs, 'I'll be home for Christmas', 'I'm dreaming of a White Christmas', even 'Joy to the World'.

"Holiness...our watchword and SONG..."?

This morning my dad and I drove the hour or so from Xenia, Ohio, where I serve as worship pastor of a mid-sized Nazarene church, to Circleville, Ohio. The purpose of this pilgrimage (and my father's trip from Tennessee to Ohio) was the Holiness Summit being held on the campus of Ohio Christian University. I don't have much time to offer a full-fledged review of the proceedings, but something occurred to me that I thought we might bat around while this summit is still in progress. (Who knows, I might end up with several posts out of this thing!)

The few hundred of us gathered, having been led in singing by Nazarene evangelist Gary Bond, were then exhorted, first by Louie Bustle and then by Stan Toler. The theme, of course, was the importance of the message of holiness. As I listened to what was said - and perhaps even more significantly, as I observed those around me - I began to sense that the impulse underlying this summit (and the other one to be held out west in September) was all deriving from a complex of concerns that might be summed up in a statement something like this one: Our doctrinal distinctive of holiness/entire sanctification is becoming increasingly obscured and is in danger of being lost altogether - we must become passionate once again about proclaiming the message of holiness in no vague or uncertain terms.

And as we sang "The Cleansing Wave" (Phoebe Palmer, 1871?), I had a thought that I've had before, but became even more pressing in this context - and I pose it to you as a question: What is the relationship between our holiness preaching and our holiness hymnody? I'm not necessarily asking that we vote on which is more important, although I do believe that how we sing our faith is at least as important, has at least as much shaping influence upon our spirituality, our theology, our conception of God (etc), as the faith as we receive it in the preached word.

To put the question a bit differently, I guess what I'm left wondering is this: Can we revitalize the message of holiness in preaching alone, or does this task demand also a re(dis)covery of holiness songs, or indeed the creation of new holiness songs? I just don't see how the average CCM hit that's soaring to the top of the CCLI charts reinforces the message of holiness that has historically been so central to our tradition - in fact, I see many a song that would contradict this message (were the message being proclaimed). I have yet to discover any contemporary songwriters or composers of church music who give any indication of sharing our theological perspective, which makes it difficult. We (I!) should really be writing this stuff ourselves, for our purposes, but in practice, it's a whole lot easier to just sing the latest Chris Tomlin song than take the effort of creating something new. I hope I'm not confusing the issue, but I guess I remain unconvinced that the real problem is what we're preaching - in fact, I still hear holiness being preached from the pupit. What I don't hear is us singing it very often, if at all.

Hymn-of-the-Month (x2): March Madness edition

A long time ago, I proposed to do a Hymn-of-the-Month each month, with a sacramental theme naturally, and really wanted to get others involved in the process of choosing a hymn to highlight. However, after one measly effort, I let it drop, much to my embarrassment - odd, too, since this is an easy way to toss up a new post without major time investment.
So anyway, here's an effort to revive the Hymn-of-the-Month. To welcome back feature that was never even given the chance to become a feature, you get a 2-for-1 deal because it's March, the month of my birth, and my first-born's birth as well (any day now)! If you've got a good hymn, "sacramental" or otherwise - or anything, for that matter: reviews of books, albums, liturgies, worship services you've attended, etc - that you'd like to share in a future month, by all means, post it. "The more, the merrier" around here.
And to be clear, this is in no way to be confused with the "March Gladness" promotional that has recently been brought to my attention. [gags self]
The common theme of "(un)veiling" struck me when considering these two eucharistic hymns: that Christ is somehow simultaneously both concealed and revealed, both hidden and known, in the Church's celebration of the Supper. Rather than go too far with my own exposition of these two texts - and inevitably get caught up in questions about whether it is Christ in the bread and wine, or Christ in the ecclesial, liturgical performance, etc (the correct answer, by the way, is both) - I'll shut-up and let Saints Thomas and Wesley speak for themselves to provoke and inspire you as they might.

Thee we adore, O hidden Savior, thee,
Who in thy sacrament dost deign to be;
Both flesh and spirit at thy presence fail,
Yet here thy presence we devoutly hail.

O blest memorial of our dying Lord,
Who living bread to men doth here afford!
O may our souls for ever feed on thee,
And thou, O Christ, for ever precious be.

Fountain of goodness, Jesus, Lord and God,
Cleanse us, unclean, with thy most cleansing blood;
Increase our faith and love, that we may know
The hope and peace which from thy presence flow.

O Christ, whom now beneath a veil we see,
May what we thirst for soon our portion be,
To gaze on thee unveiled, and see thy face,
The vision of thy glory and thy grace.
St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century); translated by James Woodford (1852)
Meter: 10 10 10 10
Music: Plainsong, Mode v (Adoro te, devote) (Solemnes)
* * * * *

Author of life divine, who hast a table spread,
Furnished with mystic wine and everlasting bread,
Preserve the life thyself hast given,
And feed and train us up for heaven.

Our needy souls sustain with fresh supplies of love,
Till all thy life we gain, and all thy fullness prove,
And, strengthened by thy perfect grace,
Behold without a veil thy face.
John (or Charles?) Wesley (1745)
Meter: 66 66 88
Music: Author of Life (John Stainer, 1875)

Oh, and while we're on the topic of sacred music, as I type this I'm listening to the new Wilco album (due out in May - please don't ask how I came into possession of it...), and it is really good. So's the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible, which begs for theological engagement.