Tag Archives: music ministry

General, Worship

Albums 8 & 9

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Continuing the “10 albums that influenced your musical taste” thing I got from my wife and daughter.

As I jot down the backstories associated with this pair of albums, I realize they aren’t probably going to connect with anyone but church folk… but that’s a risk I’ll have to take.

I grew up in church and learned to play a number of 80s & early 90s “church songs” – hymns, praise choruses, and occasional hits in the Contemporary Christian Music genre. A lot of that was to entertain or bless my parents and friends of the family.

Some of it was because our Associate Pastor was a phenomenal pianist who I’m told played backup keys for some high-profile names in the 60s and 70s before coming to Jesus. (I’m trying to find proof of this, but you don’t often see “backup keyboardist” listed anywhere.) Regardless, it was always a treat to see Pastor Bob get rockin’ on the baby grand, and I wanted to learn to be at least half as good as him.

But imitating someone’s style isn’t the same as pouring out your heart in a song. While I prayed a prayer at a young age and professed faith in Christ all my life, I went through an all-too-typical teenage back-and-forth of commitment and complacency or even apathy about my faith.

After joining the Air Force in late ’94, I went through almost two years of training before I got to my first duty station in September ’96. By then I had gotten myself into trouble with a combination of more credit card debt than I knew how to handle, and less responsibility or attention to detail on the job than the Air Force expected of its members. Everything seemed to be falling apart, and at what felt like the bottom, I turned back to God.

Basically, I admitted that if I was going to do this “believe in Jesus” thing, it had to be real or else what was the point?

There was a little church off base that welcomed me in even though I was smoking in the parking lot. They seemed to care more about me than about telling me off for how messed up I was.

When I said I wanted to go there again, the acquaintance who gave me a ride said, “I don’t go there often, but I know someone who goes every week, and she lives in the dorm next to yours.”

I met a lovely young lady named Jami that day who offered to give me a ride to church each week… and later allowed me to talk through a lot of the stuff I had to deal with in my heart in order to grow up (at least a little). She also happened to be one of maybe two or three sincere Christians I knew at the time who felt like peers, so we talked a lot about scripture and spiritual growth. Soon after, as we spent more and more time together, we decided to officially call it “dating,” and a few months after that, I asked her to marry me.

Jami had some albums by this guy, Dennis Jernigan, who sang songs that felt more honest and deep than a simple “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it” that we might sing in the congregation at church.

Jernigan is also a pianist, and something of a psalmist. He is prolific in his songwriting, and the subjects aren’t all the happy Christian music you might expect Ned Flanders to listen to.

All the Jernigan albums are great if you care for this kind of music and message, but this album, Break My Heart O God, particularly changed my musical tastes.

A friend of mine from my new church asked me to accompany him on “You Are My All In All,” which he wanted to sing as a farewell to the congregation before he moved back to the States. I was happy to play, but as we practiced in private, I also sang along.

“Dave,” he said, “you should totally sing too. We could harmonize. It would be great.”

I was convinced my voice was best left unheard, so I resisted at first, but eventually I agreed. That invitation and encouragement led to me joining up with the worship team, not just to play keys but to sing–and eventually to leadership positions and paying positions in music.

If I had to pick one album that represented the shift in both my heart and my musical taste toward incorporating praise and worship, it is “Break My Heart O God.”

However, not long after joining up with the team, the worship director introduced us to some new songs and a couple of albums that came out from some obscure Christian group with a website called WorshipTogether. Seemed like a bunch of (relatively) edgy stuff from churches and musicians in the UK.

There were these folks I hadn’t heard of before, like Matt Redman, Martin Smith and Delirious?, Stuart Townend, Tim Hughes… eventually David Crowder and Chris Tomlin, among so many others.

This music felt different than the book full of short praise choruses from labels like Integrity’s Hosanna! or Maranatha. And while Hillsong was taking over so much of that market share with what I thought was also good music and meaningful worship, all of this stuff being imported from the UK seemed like where it was at.

(Maybe I should make a Cutting Edge joke here, since that album from Delirious? is almost a tie for deserving the ninth slot. Anyone still reading probably does get that reference.)

This makes me think of one of the best periods of music ministry that I’ve experienced. We would jam out a worship set for almost an hour, listen to the pastor preach for about an hour, and then close with a song… which often turned into another half hour or hour of people just wanting to worship and praise God through singing, dancing, clapping, or just bowing there before the altar.

Not everything about that time was perfect, but it set the bar for what I think of as solid, spontaneous, Spirit-filled worship with a sense of the presence of God… and that’s a place I’ve been returning to as often as possible since.

Scripture commentary, Worship

What Worship is Not

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How does something hardly mentioned in the accounts of the New Testament church become a driving force that dominates roughly half of the average church gathering, and determines, for many, whether or not a church feels good or right for them?

Let’s talk about “worship.”

Our chapel praise & worship team had an after-practice discussion on worship and scripture – the first of many, hopefully. We minister in a military chapel, so there is a lot of overturn and change of leadership. The worship leader and I have only been serving for a year now, and while Bible studies were on our “to do” list, unfortunately, life and distractions got in the way.

Our worship leader asked me if I’d be willing to share to get a conversation started. I was happy to do so, and thought, “Since this is our very first one as a team, what’s the most fundamental thing to me about worship and what we do?”

Despite my opening question, there are lots of scriptures that we use to define the importance of music ministry and praise — great stories from the Old Testament such as the musicians leading the army and the enemies destroying one another in confusion; teachings on the Tabernacle of David and how that might apply to us today; all the excellent verses in Psalms; New Testament moments like when Paul and Silas are praising in prison and an earthquake throws the cell doors wide; even instructions suggesting everyone should come to church with a psalm, hymn, or spiritual song so that the body might be edified.

What to choose?

What came to mind wasn’t what I expected.

“What worship is not.”

I felt compelled to look at verses about worship… how the Bible defines it, and how we often use the term today. I’m convinced that the two are very different, or at least that we should be more careful about what we mean when we say “worship.”

There’s the oft-quoted reminder that worship comes from Old English weorthscipe, which is basically “worth-ship,” the quality of being valuable or precious. It’s an expression of how much someone or something is worth to us.  

In other words, true worship costs something.

When I look at scripture and consider the life we’re called to lead, how much of what God instructs us is singing and playing music? In epistle after epistle, Paul writes a letter to churches or leaders where he lays out some theology – some truth about what God has done and what that means – followed by practical instructions for living a life of worship. So little of those instructions are about the “worship” we cherish and esteem so highly.

Paul tells us that offering ourselves as living sacrifices is our “spiritual service of worship” (Rom 12:1). Jesus tells us that “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me” (John 14:21). John later reminds us that the expression of love for God is our obedience (1 John 5:3).

Singing is conspicuously absent.

Imagine if your spouse said, “Honey, I need your help. Can you please do the dishes so I can use them to cook?” Would you express love and the worth of your spouse by singing to them?

I would always do the dishes out of love for you…
I would even take the trash out to the dumpster, too…
I would pick up all the laundry ’round our home… 
This is my love for you, my love for you alone.

Or maybe just do the thing that’s been asked of you. 

If there was a pie chart for what we’re called to do to live the Christian life, singing and playing music is going to be a pretty small slice among the many more practical responsibilities of ministering to the needs of others. If we took all of the commands of Christ and Paul and others in the Bible and tried to map out what’s covered, our current idea of worship as deeply emotional singing to God isn’t going to be big on that list.

If you cooked a worship pie using the Bible’s recipe, it wouldn’t taste like music.

When handling God’s Word, there are two important terms for how we approach and interpret the text:

Exegesis is the process of getting the intended meaning from the text – reading comprehension, informed by context, scholarship, other scripture, lexical aids, and the like. “What does this mean? What did it mean to its audience?”

Eisegesis is reading intended meaning into the text – reading with a bias or preconceived notion. “I want a verse that backs up what I’m saying, something that confirms what I already think is true. Oh, here’s one.”

I found the verse that says what I wanted a verse to say!
… More or less.

Sometimes this leads to well-meaning people sharing as fact or Gospel truth what they’ve heard from well-intentioned teachers, who themselves passed on what they were told by other folks who saw something in a verse or heard something profound and adopted it as a certainty. Then no one fact-checks the familiar teaching, because why would you? 

I’m not chucking spears at any of my fellow believers. We all get things wrong sometimes, and I’ve come up with some amazingly bad interpretations of Scripture. I am trying to chuck spears at some of the phrases and beliefs we accept in the church that aren’t readily apparent in the Bible which defines our faith. 

If we’re not careful, every verse that says anything about someone singing or praising will become a new “teaching on worship,” a new “revelation about the power of praise.” Very quickly, we end up with books and videos full of exposition on verses taken out of context, all feeding our understanding of the importance of new, fresh, anointed, powerful, expressive praise and worship music, much of which pushes us toward purchasing that new song or this new album from an industry of which there seems to be no end in sight.

Cynical, I know. Sorry.

However, the plain reading of scripture to me doesn’t give singing and music the central role in the Body that we do in the church today.

I love doing it, I love being a part of it, I love leading it, I love being in the congregation during it, I love everything about it… but I have to be honest that I just don’t see it at the forefront of what God’s Word calls us to do and be in our churches and our daily lives.

There are more important matters.

For me, getting on stage and playing the piano or singing a song is either an emotional stimulant or an emotional release. I can pour out my frustrations in “worship” and I benefit greatly from it. It’s definitely not some grand sacrifice I’m making, some selfless act worthy of commendation.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that God gives us a means of expressing our adoration and praise which is so fun and so powerfully moving. It’s just not the sacrificial, selfless lifestyle I see the Bible calling Christians to live out in the day-to-day.

I shared this with the team and my wife, and I got some very important feedback. For some people, getting on stage in front of people is really hard. Being in the spotlight when you want to shrink into the shadows is a challenge. Having to perform or speak through your fears is difficult. I respect that, and don’t want to make light of the effort those people make to serve God in music and song.

Similarly, some worship teams have far more obligation and responsibility. If you’re running the music ministry for a big church with multiple services and you’re wrangling all the moving parts and conflicting schedules, that’s work, no doubt about it. Giving that your best might be a selfless sacrifice, for sure. I don’t want to ignore that either.

My concern is more for this concept that worship – specifically singing and playing music – is the main thing, or one of the main things.

Who was a worship leader in the early church?

Ephesians 4:11 doesn’t read, “And He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and worship leaders…” yet that’s a prominent role in our churches, with a whole branch of biblical teaching developed around trying to glean every insight from scripture about the power of music and praise.

Are we receiving the intended meaning from the text, or are we reading meaning into passages, hoping to find what confirms our existing assumptions?

Why don’t we read about more worship leaders in the Bible? Should I have to go all the way back to Chenaniah of the Levites in 1 Chr 15 to find someone “in charge of the singing” in corporate worship?

Arguably, Satan is another “biblical worship leader” based on some interpretations of Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, but I’m not so sure scripture is clear on that. (Links to some interesting articles looking at what Scripture says, what it doesn’t, and what we might infer. Remember, exegesis is good; eisegesis is bad.)

What is the list of qualifications for a worship leader, if the office is so important? We have lists for overseers, deacons, pastors, teachers, and the like – practical instructions and standards for servant leaders who meet the practical needs of the Body.

Why doesn’t Paul give us a glimpse of what the worship leader’s role looks like? Did 100% of churches have that 100% correct, and so it wasn’t necessary in any of his letters? That would be a pretty amazing coincidence.

Again, I am not opposed to what we call worship music, and I’m sure I will continue using that term to describe it, whether out of habit, laziness, or convenience. I just got done playing some songs and singing with my wife, followed by looking into rapid paintings as expressions of worship as part of planning for an upcoming special Night of Worship gathering where all we plan to do is express our hearts to God, mostly through music and song. 

I also think there are fine “lead worshipers” in the Christian community who put some thoughtful and careful teaching out there for all the rest of us wanting to be the next Matt Redman or Kim Walker-Smith. (They’d probably respond with a teaching about “Don’t try to be us. God doesn’t need another Kim Walker-Smith. He wants you.”)

It’s just that I know my heart well enough to catch how easily I choose to “serve” in a way that I enjoy, to “minister” in a way that comes easy, to “worship” in a way that costs me nothing and actually only benefits me. 

So what IS worship?

For me, a convicting display of worship was when I chatted with my friend, a talented singer and passionate lover of Jesus who can easily hold their own belting out a beautiful melody in front of any crowd, who can expertly follow the leading of the Spirit to know what’s the right thing to say or sing at the right time, who has every reason to be up front in the spotlight leading the congregation in praise… 

And instead, they said, “There’s no one running the children’s ministry. This is a need in the Body. This is important. I don’t feel gifted in this, I don’t feel a desire to do this–but I do feel like I need to step up and serve to meet this need.”

That looks to me like biblical worship. That’s a sacrifice.

I get up to play and sing, and I feel like the rich people tossing wads of cash into the collection in front of Jesus, acting like their loose change is something special.

I’m not saying I won’t keep playing or singing songs. I just want to make sure that I’m being honest about what I’m doing, and what I’m not. 

What do you think?

Are we too focused on music when we talk about worship? Have we let new songs and emotional moments overtake practical obedience in what it means to do church and live the Christian life?

Or am I missing something crucial in the way I’m looking at this? Is there some key aspect or benefit of the songs we sing and the way we express our hearts to God which I have neglected? 

Let me know in a comment, or share your thoughts on the matter. I certainly don’t have a lock on spiritual wisdom, and I’d love to hear what God has shown you. 

General, Tabletop RPG, Worship, Writing

Toward a New Normal

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To those who faithfully or even occasionally visit this page, thank you.

This is less a “Why I haven’t been posting” blog and more of an update on my personal life for those who value that sort of thing.

I’ve spent some time juggling and reevaluating where all my efforts are going, so I thought I should post an update to projects I’m involved in and commitments I am pursuing, as so much of my life is currently in flux. Most of these changes come from one primary cause:

In the next three months, I will retire from active duty in the United States Air Force after 24 years of service. 

All the chaos of the ever-changing flight schedule with my squadron won’t be a factor anymore. I’ll have a relative stability to my future planning that I haven’t known for a long time. My wife jokes that every appointment or get-together we plan has an asterisk next to it, with the caveat “unless the flight schedule changes.” That will be a thing of the past… and I don’t think I’ll miss that part at all.

We finally get to focus more on family matters. While I’ve had it pretty good as far as not having to deploy repeatedly for months or years, I’m excited to think I can be around more for the time and activities my wife and children desire.

Right now, I have a couple job opportunities that will enable me to continue supporting my military friends and squadron family in some capacity, which thrills me. I’ve seen our squadron crush a demanding and ever-changing mission even when we ramped up to more than double our usual workload. The number of operational sorties is never going to decrease, so any way that I can help keep some aspect of squadron life a little more together is exciting to me.

Meanwhile (and starting next week), I will be more involved in music ministry than I have been in the last ten years. While I love filling in and helping out at local church services or gatherings, I haven’t found a reliable, recurring need, until a month ago, when an opportunity dropped into my inbox out of the blue.

I’ll be performing every week as a contracted musician for the Contemporary Worship Service on Kadena, and while I’m excited and passionate about that, it comes with a learning curve as I learn to work with the Choir Director and look for ways to fulfill the chaplain’s vision for a service that is on a restricting schedule (sandwiched between Catholic masses).

I’m excited about this because having an upcoming worship service in mind on a regular basis usually keeps my attention and thoughts on grace and the Gospel more than the garbage and glitz that beckon from everywhere else in life.

Additionally, the band is full of amazing talents both on vocals and on their chosen instruments, so I’m eager to jam with old friends once more.

In the writing world, I have a number of friends who routinely ask me about Book Two of my fantasy novels, and I don’t want to keep letting them down. I also have a number of projects incubating in OneDrive files and Scrivener folders into which I would love to invest time and effort.

The local writing group has really become that critique group I always wanted, with a core group of four writers sharing chapters every other week.

NaNoWriMo 2018 is rapidly approaching, and that has been a fantastic experience for me every year I’ve done it. I will continue working as a Municipal Liaison for Japan – specifically Okinawa. While I don’t know how much of a chance I’ll have at cracking 50,000 words in the month of November, I will be able to facilitate and support regular meetings and ‘Come Write In’ events for those who can pour words onto the page.

Additionally, infrequent but recurring events like BlogBattle give me a chance to write something disconnected from bigger projects, so I’ll probably continue posting Grant & Teagan stories once a month at a minimum.

My experience with tabletop roleplaying games has shown me that it’s a wonderful opportunity to gather friends around a table for laughs, snacks, excitement, and fun. I’ve got a growing list of co-workers and friends who express interest in an ongoing campaign, but I have barely been able to keep the one group I’m running going.  On top of that, I have a few settings and two or three systems I really want to run. (BattleTech… D&D 5E Curse of Strahd… those 5E Lord of the Rings setting books…)

Once my schedule finds smooth air and level flight, I’m looking forward to arranging some gaming groups where I can commit to bringing my best to the table.

Maybe I can finally work out some opportunities to be a player as well. There’s nothing like being a Storyteller or Dungeon Master (or whatever your chosen system calls that role)… but it’s nice to be on the other side of the screen sometimes and react to the game without knowing what’s lurking beyond the next fork in the road.

In other words, all of this mess of conflicting interests and passions will still be simmering in the crock pot of my life, but the sliders for various activities and priorities are going to shift a lot in ways I don’t fully know just yet. All of this adds up to a lot of reasons to say, “No, sorry” to things I might otherwise enjoy or participate in, especially in the short-term.

I appreciate your thoughts, encouragement, friendship, prayers, and any other support you might offer during this period of instability.

Worship

Rich Mullins Was Aptly Named

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A few days ago (before I went on this short work trip away from home), my wife and I finally watched Ragamuffin – the life story of Rich Mullins’ ministry and struggles fitting in to the Christian music industry.

She pointed out that Rich Mullins’ name is appropriate: a guy who’s always mulling over the deep and rich things of God’s love, the practical expressions of it that get lost in religious structures and routines.

I know as a newly-recommitted Christian, Rich Mullins’ songs challenged me and pushed me to go farther and deeper in my faith, to be authentic and to think about what it really meant to pursue Christ.

For days since watching the film, I’ve had one of my favorites of his songs stuck in my head: If I Stand.

The chorus really captures a simple passion that it would all be about Him and not about me:

If I stand, let me stand on the promise that You will pull me through

And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You

If I sing, let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs

And if I weep, let it be as a man who is longing for his home.

In the verses, he points out how the “stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things.” As I write this, I just finished reading through Psalm 4, which includes the phrase, “How long will you love what is worthless?” (v.2)

I love a lot of arguably worthless pursuits. Or I’ll say I engage in a lot of pursuits of debatable value. I can make a case for the “good” that may come out of them. But it rings hollow.

Songs like “If I Stand” refocus me and get me centered back on Christ. But that’s just one of the awesome songs Rich wrote, just one topic on which it felt like he spoke and sang directly to my soul. So for a while I’m going to post a song a week, starting Wednesday, and briefly share my thoughts or why the song means so much to me.

Here’s If I Stand, recorded live. (I had to see him actually playing piano, because I don’t want to believe he can intentionally hit all those keys. He also makes a mistake in this, so you know he’s human.)