Going into overdrive with these posts here...I'll make this a quick one though.
A few weeks ago when I was leading worship in church we were singing Before the Throne of God Above. I asked our powerpoint guy to put up the original words instead of the new updated ones. You know, 'graven on His hands' instead of 'written', 'bid me thence depart' instead of 'force me to depart' and all that caper. This led to a debate with a team member as to whether we should update songs lyrics and the Aaronic blessing etc.
I always like to strike a balance when planning a service between modern songs and older tunes/hymns, and this isn't for any congregational reasons (keeping the peace between younger and older members), it is because of the lyrics. First of all, as Graham and I were discussing recently, the words of hymns like Before the Throne are incredibly deep and powerful. They paint pictures with a descriptive quality that is largely absent in modern contemporary worship. For example, 'graven on His hands' is a far more striking image that 'written ion His hands'. Graven is a permanent mark, carved forever leaving a scar, whereas as to write something is temporary or removable. It sits in harmony with the pain and sacrifice that was made for us. This is true of many hymns. Not that I don't think there is a place for simpler expressions of worship; one of my favourite modern worship songs is David Crowder's 'Rain Down' which contains only fifteen words. I love that worship is deeper than lyrics and so much can be expressed without relying on language the way everything else in our life does, but there is certainly much to be said for the way hymns move us by their words.
The other reason behind a wide range of songs is that we worship a God who is outside of time. The God who we will worship this Sunday morning is the same God who met with Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. He remains unchanging, and I like that our congregational worship can reflect this through the words we sing. Older language speaks of a time that has past, yet the words that were written then speak of the same God we now serve. I think by modernizing everything we can lose this aspect of God from our services.
Give me thees, thous and thys any day :)
Monday, 14 May 2012
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
A Continuation...
Okay, following on from the post I put up a couple of days ago. Our prayer cell met up last night and we spent a little time on the subject of worship, and some more thoughts are brewing which lead on nicely from the last ones.
A while ago I had a chat with someone who questioned me as to the amount church has moved forwards over the last number of years. Now, this is an interesting question. In my time at Orangefield things immediately seem to have moved on in a huge way. I have been there for twenty-four years, taken part in the leading of worship for eleven years and been leading worship for about six years. Jump back with me to the turn of the millenium...
There is a set team of musicians who lead every service, along with a praise group (choir) of around twenty-five singers. The songs we sing are from the Presbyterian hymn book with some additions from the Mission Praise collection. These books are found in the pew in front of you and most of them are simply led by piano/organ and voices.
Now we move forward through time and things begin to change. We jump from one set group to four different worship teams, people happily sign up to take part in the leading of the congregational worship. Each team is bursting with eleven or twelve participants. We move into our new building where instead of hymn books or acetate sheets we have powerpoint and cameras on screens the whole way through the service. We have a hugely updated repertoire of music, with filing cabinets full of modern worship songs including the latest tunes from the CCM charts. Our worship on a Sunday is louder, more energetic and freer than ever before.
Things have come a long way, right?
Well, I'm beginning to wonder if our attitude of worship has come the same distance that our exterior aesthetic has. All of these changes, while important and exciting, are much more to do with the way our worship looks and sounds than to do with the heart behind it. And it begs the question, if that is all that changes then is it worth anything? Don't get me wrong, I think steps are being taken. We are starting to include times of corporate prayer and lead in a more personally focused way; things which would not have been present in the past and which encourage a greater focus upon God during our time gathered together. But this small step forward is miles from where we could be.
When you lead from the front of the church you spend a great deal of time looking out at people during the worship. Sadly, like every church, there are people you see whose minds are totally elsewhere. They don't sing, they don't get involved, they stand up and sit down when they are told and stare blankly ahead the entire time. That is a separate issue down to the individual needing to make the effort to come to church prepared. However, you also see people who are genuine worshipers. You can easily tell when someone is singing the songs not just as words but from their heart. They understand what they are proclaiming, and they are honest as they proclaim it. This is wonderful, but it is scratching the surface of what worship should be. By this I mean that it is all one-way. They pour out their praise to God and make a joyous noise, but absolutely no time is given to allowing God to respond and meet with His people. As soon as the last chorus is sung we are to sit down and something else in our programme immediately starts up. Instead of a time where we meet with God, we write Him a letter and don't bother with the reply.
This strikes me as the major change we need to make but have not yet pushed for.
A while ago I had a chat with someone who questioned me as to the amount church has moved forwards over the last number of years. Now, this is an interesting question. In my time at Orangefield things immediately seem to have moved on in a huge way. I have been there for twenty-four years, taken part in the leading of worship for eleven years and been leading worship for about six years. Jump back with me to the turn of the millenium...
There is a set team of musicians who lead every service, along with a praise group (choir) of around twenty-five singers. The songs we sing are from the Presbyterian hymn book with some additions from the Mission Praise collection. These books are found in the pew in front of you and most of them are simply led by piano/organ and voices.
Now we move forward through time and things begin to change. We jump from one set group to four different worship teams, people happily sign up to take part in the leading of the congregational worship. Each team is bursting with eleven or twelve participants. We move into our new building where instead of hymn books or acetate sheets we have powerpoint and cameras on screens the whole way through the service. We have a hugely updated repertoire of music, with filing cabinets full of modern worship songs including the latest tunes from the CCM charts. Our worship on a Sunday is louder, more energetic and freer than ever before.
Things have come a long way, right?
Well, I'm beginning to wonder if our attitude of worship has come the same distance that our exterior aesthetic has. All of these changes, while important and exciting, are much more to do with the way our worship looks and sounds than to do with the heart behind it. And it begs the question, if that is all that changes then is it worth anything? Don't get me wrong, I think steps are being taken. We are starting to include times of corporate prayer and lead in a more personally focused way; things which would not have been present in the past and which encourage a greater focus upon God during our time gathered together. But this small step forward is miles from where we could be.
When you lead from the front of the church you spend a great deal of time looking out at people during the worship. Sadly, like every church, there are people you see whose minds are totally elsewhere. They don't sing, they don't get involved, they stand up and sit down when they are told and stare blankly ahead the entire time. That is a separate issue down to the individual needing to make the effort to come to church prepared. However, you also see people who are genuine worshipers. You can easily tell when someone is singing the songs not just as words but from their heart. They understand what they are proclaiming, and they are honest as they proclaim it. This is wonderful, but it is scratching the surface of what worship should be. By this I mean that it is all one-way. They pour out their praise to God and make a joyous noise, but absolutely no time is given to allowing God to respond and meet with His people. As soon as the last chorus is sung we are to sit down and something else in our programme immediately starts up. Instead of a time where we meet with God, we write Him a letter and don't bother with the reply.
This strikes me as the major change we need to make but have not yet pushed for.
Sunday, 6 May 2012
Yet more worship stuff...
So there's no real singular point to this post, I'm just kind of pouring out a load of stuff that's been in my head over the last wee while and seeing if anyone has any thoughts on it.
Something which has been on my mind quite a bit of late is the issue of how we can gather an entire congregation of people into an attitude of worship. One thing which I find a bit bothersome in my church is the rigid structure most of our services are cumbered with. We would rarely have more than two songs in a row, things are dotted with short prayers, offerings and other such bits and pieces and rather than a smooth flow it always seems very compartmentalised to me. The main reason for this is that I feel much more at home when there is half an hour or so devoted to praise, when you can get lost in it and have time to do business with God. Now, on the other hand there are people in my church who can't stand that. I've heard people say that their focus wanders if we spend too much time on one thing, or that they don't like standing for such a length of time.
For example, a few months ago I led a service slightly differently, in that we didn't pick or practise the songs beforehand. We just began to play and had an extended time of praise where we just played the songs as they came. Now, after this service several people approached myself or other members of the team and said that they had loved it, while others said they felt no sense of worship at all. Fairly polarized results!
So if a church service is meant to be a body of people coming together to worship God with one voice, what do we do? How do we get past the physical things that we like or dislike?
At the risk of sounding like a naive hippy, if we are truly in an attitude of worship, intent on focusing upon only God, then these things should be in the background. The songs we sing and the way we play them shouldn't be a decisive issue on whether or not we will feel able to worship.
After that unplanned service one of the things mentioned was that people struggled to worship because the words were not coming up on the screen fast enough (obviously because there was no list of songs). My immediate reaction to this was to ask why we are okay with the fact that people are rendered unable to worship if they are not given some words on a screen to sing? But in actual fact nothing hinders my own attitude of worship more than when people lead a song differently to the way I know it. If the tune is tweaked slightly or a different word used it totally jolts me out of any form of worship. We all have comforts in our churches which have become crutches.
It seems incredibly clear to me that we must get to a point where we are able to meet with God without relying on computers, tuners and fancy resources. People all over the world rejoice in the name of God with their voices alone as this is all they have. We have been blessed with much more but we must get out of the habit of relying on them, making them the primary element of our worship.
But how do we get there? What is the first step toward letting go of earthly things and allowing God a central place in our service?
Something which has been on my mind quite a bit of late is the issue of how we can gather an entire congregation of people into an attitude of worship. One thing which I find a bit bothersome in my church is the rigid structure most of our services are cumbered with. We would rarely have more than two songs in a row, things are dotted with short prayers, offerings and other such bits and pieces and rather than a smooth flow it always seems very compartmentalised to me. The main reason for this is that I feel much more at home when there is half an hour or so devoted to praise, when you can get lost in it and have time to do business with God. Now, on the other hand there are people in my church who can't stand that. I've heard people say that their focus wanders if we spend too much time on one thing, or that they don't like standing for such a length of time.
For example, a few months ago I led a service slightly differently, in that we didn't pick or practise the songs beforehand. We just began to play and had an extended time of praise where we just played the songs as they came. Now, after this service several people approached myself or other members of the team and said that they had loved it, while others said they felt no sense of worship at all. Fairly polarized results!
So if a church service is meant to be a body of people coming together to worship God with one voice, what do we do? How do we get past the physical things that we like or dislike?
At the risk of sounding like a naive hippy, if we are truly in an attitude of worship, intent on focusing upon only God, then these things should be in the background. The songs we sing and the way we play them shouldn't be a decisive issue on whether or not we will feel able to worship.
After that unplanned service one of the things mentioned was that people struggled to worship because the words were not coming up on the screen fast enough (obviously because there was no list of songs). My immediate reaction to this was to ask why we are okay with the fact that people are rendered unable to worship if they are not given some words on a screen to sing? But in actual fact nothing hinders my own attitude of worship more than when people lead a song differently to the way I know it. If the tune is tweaked slightly or a different word used it totally jolts me out of any form of worship. We all have comforts in our churches which have become crutches.
It seems incredibly clear to me that we must get to a point where we are able to meet with God without relying on computers, tuners and fancy resources. People all over the world rejoice in the name of God with their voices alone as this is all they have. We have been blessed with much more but we must get out of the habit of relying on them, making them the primary element of our worship.
But how do we get there? What is the first step toward letting go of earthly things and allowing God a central place in our service?
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