Thoughts on worship

Moving on from the past, present & future worldview that I wrote last week, these are my thoughts on biblical worship:

What is worship?

To worship is to come before God in humility and reverence [1], recognising His ultimate authority and power. In this place of submission, our worship is also expressed in service [2]; our lives laid down as sacrifices to Him. We are to live lives full of love, goodness, wisdom and creativity – all to the end of learning to rule and reign with the living Christ [3]. In choosing to make human beings in His image [4], God crafted us to reflect His nature, back to Himself and to the world He created – given the capacity to love Him because He first loved us

I Lay It All Down (Essentials Blue Fall 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Another first for me: my first web video clip:

Pdf of words & chords:I Lay It All Down

This is my response to the Essentials Blue course. We’ve touched on some incredibly deep theology over the past few weeks. The aspects of God’s personality that we’ve looked at – God as creator, God as King, God as Trinity & God as Saviour – have really expanded my vision for who I personally worship and for how I want to express that in my own worship times as well as when I lead others.

Beautiful Questions (Essentials Blue Fall 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 I was thinking about how Jesus engaged with contemporary culture, where the most current questions of the human spirit were both heard and listened to, and then met with the even more beautiful questions of faith.

It reminded me of a passage by Tom Wright based on the Beatitudes, at the beginning of Matthew 5. In this, he responds to each of Jesus’ statements by questioning how we can make them a reality.

A past, present & future worldview (Essentials Blue Fall 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

Here is a brief reflection on some of the theological ideas related to God’s nature, His purpose in the world, and the role of human beings that I’ve been studying over the last few weeks on the Essentials Blue course:

God is the original and complete source of creation, justice, community and salvation. In choosing to make human beings in His image, [1] God crafted us to reflect His nature, back to Himself and to the world He created. All creation responds to God in worship but, as His image bearers, He has instilled in us innate beauty and value [2] and the understanding of why He is worthy to be praised. [3]

Belong, behave, believe (Essentials Blue Fall 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

I read a passage by Dan Wilt this week, on the Nature of the Human Being. In it he described the early Celtic Christians’ approach to community: they welcomed people into their family by offering them the chance of Belonging, Behaving, and Believing – in that order, which is the important bit.

They received newcomers gladly into their community and understood that ‘years of friendship with (them) and the presence of the Holy Spirit opened the way for real change’ in how they behaved. The end result of this process would hopefully be that they came to believe in the God whose holy Spirit was woven into their relationships and actions.

Fully Human 2 (Essentials Blue Essay)

In part of her response to the question of what does it mean to be a human being, Cindy Rethmeier wrote: “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melodies in our hearts to God (Ephesians 5:19) connects us to him and to each other and makes us more fully alive”.

The idea that we grow towards Him and towards one another as we worship together really resonates with me.

Fully Human (Essentials Blue Essay)

Fully Human – What Does It Mean To Be A Human Being? Begin to define what it means to be human. In a sense, we’re exploring who it is that we lead into worship.

What does it mean to be a creative being?

Jewish tradition speaks of a God that is continuously creating the world, continuously speaking the words ‘Let there be light’, as if God were to turn His attention away from the universe for a moment, it would all disappear. [1] God is not distant from the world. ‘Not even a blade of grass moves without God as its mover.’ [2] This is reflected in our drive to create new things, to restore the old. We imitate our maker as we seek to create that which reflects our personality.

Is yellow square or round? (Essentials Blue Fall 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

I have been thinking a lot this week about how I approach leading worship in my local church. There are so many different, wonderful ideas about theology and practical issues that I feel our congregation need to address. I’m struggling with the balance between responding to how we want to express our worship from our current situation and perception of who He is; and yet also recognising that our theology needs to grow and our understanding can be challenged through the songs we sing.

The Nature of God 2 (Essentials Blue Essay)

Again I found another essay response by Rob Byrne inspiring, this time to the questions on the Nature of God.

He used this great image of our church providing ‘anchor points to our culture’. It reminded me of where NT Wright wrote about what the church can be:

“…a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope, of friends and family and justice and new life.

The Nature of God (Essentials Blue essay)

Part A: How has your understanding of the theological phrase, the “Kingdom of God” been challenged/shaped by this section of Simply Christian?
Part B: What particular theological idea (within one of the four theological ideas on the Nature of God presented in Dan’s material) do you believe has the most importance for the next 10-20 years of worship leadership? Why?

Part A: Throughout this passage, NT Wright uses the phrase “the place where heaven and earth meet.” I realised that I have viewed this relationship between “God’s space and our space” in a similar way to a Venn diagram; where it’s only in the overlap of the two circles that God meets us, leaving me with the subconscious assumption that there are areas where God cannot reach us, and vice versa.

For NT Wright, the two spaces exist alongside each other: “they overlap and interlock in a number of different ways”

Liminal Spaces – blurring the edges between God and us (Essentials Blue Fall 08)

For: The Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

When discussing our role as worship leaders, Dan Wilt used the term ‘Liminal Spaces’ to describe what we attempt to provide as we lead others into worship.

This term describes a threshold place and brought to mind the Celtic phrase “time between times” – which describes dusk; the twilight of the day; where day is ending and night is beginning. It represents a time where the edges are blurred between beginnings and endings, time and space, death and life.

Echoes 2 (Essentials Blue essay)

I was struck by a comment in an essay response by Rob Byrne to the question about echoes. When talking about songs that reflect the echo of Relationship, he said that “there are almost no songs used in corporate worship dealing with our one-anotherness, with loving each other”.

My first thought was “but we don’t need to sing about it, we experience that echo as we join together in worship”. But then I thought that, like so many other things we try to express through our worship, if we don’t reinforce it with the words we sing then they can sometimes be overlooked. If we take Relationship for granted in this way, maybe we’ll end up in a room full of people singing in their own worship-bubble, completely unaware of their church family stood beside them.

Echoes (Essentials Blue essay)

Wright opens our course with ideas related to the four echoes of God in the world (the celebration of creation, the longing for justice, the magnetism of relationships and the hunger for spiritual reality). Which of these echoes most deeply resonates with you as evidence of God’s reality, and how does that particular echo reflect what you believe to be the biblically expressed personality of God?

I was drawn to the longing for spirituality, for the “hidden springs” that NT Wright speaks of. This is echoed when we end a worship song and the air feels thick and heavy with His presence. As we wait on Him it can produce the “deep sense of inner peace and happiness” that Wright describes. We respond on an emotional level, but with the sense that there is something concrete, something ‘other’ that has created this space.

A start – essentially

This is my first post to a blog.

Following this will be my posts in response to Essentials Blue, an online worship theology course I am studying through the Institute of Contemporary & Emerging Worship Studies.

I guess I’ll find my feet as I go along…