The musicians at my church (Indelible Grace Church) are reading through a book called Worship Matters. Here’s my thoughts on Chapters 2 and 3.
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Two things really stood out to me in these chapters.
The first one was cautioning us not to make idols that we won’t even be aware of. The book says “My life was one extended attempt to draw attention to my gifts, my abilities, and my efforts. But it wasn’t working. I wasn’t getting the praise I craved, and that was affecting my soul. I increasingly struggled with feelings of anxiety, fear, and confusion. I felt like my life was about to fall apart.” I think this can be so true for those who do very “visible” ministry stuff, like leading songs, presiding, etc. We can rely entirely on people’s feedback to base our image of ourselves upon (not to say feedback is a bad thing, but we should not base our self-worth on it). Regardless of whether this feedback is highly positive or negative, both can get us into trouble with idolatry. Either we get very positive feedback, which we use to puff up our pride, or very negative feedback, which we use to create doubt and fear within ourselves. As a musician, I know this is a very easy trap to fall into. What sets us free from this is the gospel.
As the book says, “I was striving to gain the approval of those whose approval was of no eternal significance. I’d failed to see that the only approval that matters-God’s-is impossible to earn but is offered as a gift through the gospel. And it was the gospel that set me free. Gary had been right. I’d felt hopeless, but not hopeless enough. I knew Jesus died on the cross to save sinners from God’s wrath, enduring in our place the punishment we deserved. I understood that I couldn’t save myself. I just didn’t think of myself as a very great sinner. Which meant I didn’t need a very great Savior. When I sought glory for myself, praise for my accomplishments, and credit for my growth, I wasn’t depending on a Savior-I was searching for an audience.” This is so true. I don’t know if I can even add on anything to this. God has been moving me to see the depths of my sin, and the more I see it, the greater I know the gospel is. What we need is experiential knowledge of the gospel, not just head knowledge.
The second thing is something that God has totally been convicting my heart of. The Bible tells us to worship God in truth, and we need to know who God is in order to do that. The book says that “When we’re dodgy about our theology, we’re really saying we want our own Jesus. But our worship isn’t based on people’s personal opinions, ideas, or best guesses about Jesus. Nor should we base our understanding of him on anyone’s individual experiences. He has a name, a particular history, and a specifically revealed body of teaching. God has theology; will we sharpen our own biblical understanding to find out what it is? Will we worship the Son of God, the Redeemer, the second person of the Trinity, the Alpha and Omega, our High Priest, sanctifier, and intercessor and seek to understand what all this means?” I totally agree. I’m glad IGC doesn’t only sing hecka shallow songs which only say that we love Jesus and he’s awesome. Of course those two things are true, but when we sing songs which go deeper into who God is and why he’s awesome, and what Jesus has done, then I feel that it helps people connect the dots as to why we are lifting up praise.
Tying these two points together, the book says that “My prayer for myself and every worship leader is that we’ll become as familiar with the Word of Truth as we are with our instruments. Hopefully even more so. If we do, there’s a strong possibility people are going to walk away from our meetings more amazed by our God than by our music. And that will be a very good thing.” This gets me really excited. When our hearts are in the right place, we want our congregation to glorify God when they worship, and we won’t be asking them to focus on our musicianship/skills/etc. Instead, we’ll want them to see the truth that God has revealed, and be amazed by it. That is awesome.
