You have a tough job. You’ve been tasked with leading the congregation in song, choosing music that flows with the sermon to be preached and is actually enjoyable.
And everybody has an opinion on what “enjoyable” means.
Including me.
There are some songs that are just offensive to my taste. There are some songs that are just impossible for me to sing because I’m a guy and the key is just too high (and I can’t pull off the skinny jeans that could make it possible to hit those high notes). I don’t like songs that go on for seven minutes when they have six words.
And I don’t like Hillsong United.
Truthfully, I could go the rest of my days without ever hearing another one of their songs and die a happy man. Because honestly, I doubt we’ll be singing any of their material in Heaven—not even “Mighty to Save.”
That’s my taste—and it’s something I am trying to get over every time I hear one of their songs. My taste is not what’s important. What’s important is that our songs are pleasing to Christ and communicating truth about Him and praise to Him.
Song leaders, I have a request:
Challenge us when we sing.
I’m not saying that you need to start rocking the classic hymns. (Although you could. They communicate the truths of the gospel in a way that many modern songs simply don’t even come close.)
I’m not saying put Romans 8 to music, or write a song that goes through the doctrines of grace or advocates for the free will of man in salvation (if such is your theological position).
I’m asking you to make us think deeply when we sing. Make us think deeply about what we’re singing. Confront us with our sin.
A couple years back, Piper was asked, “what could unravel the gospel-centered movement?”
His answer was insightful: The disconnect between the majesty of God and the way we entertain ourselves.
“There’s an awakening to the majesty of God around the country, a filling of hearts with God-centered, Christ-exalted, Bible-saturated songs . . . a zeal for truth and biblical doctrine . . . and I’m concerned that there’s a disconnect between the big thoughts of God and how we live our daily lives.”
I’ve been thinking hard about this for the last few days. Am I inconsistent in how I entertain myself? Probably. Am I seeking to be more consistent? I hope so.
If anything is going to be offensive about how I live, I want it to be the gospel.
A few weeks ago, Dustin Neeley sat down with Mark Driscoll to talk about what encourages and concerns him about young Christian leaders. Here’s the video:
In the video, Driscoll points out a couple of things he finds encouraging:
A renewed desire for gospel-centered, Jesus-based, Bible saturated teaching
A renewed heart for having a good gospel witness in urban centers
A renewed interest in church planting
He also notes the following concerns, specifically in regard to what’s been called the Young, Restless & Reformed/New Calvinism:
Good Reformed, complementarian theology unaccompanied by a strong sense of Spirit-filled mission will lead to fundamentalism
New Calvinists being defined less by what they are for than what they’re against
A lack of certainty about the role of the person of the Holy Spirit
Neeley asks viewers to consider the following questions in light of these encouragements and concerns:
“Where do I fall on the spectrum he describes?” and “What changes do I need to make to become more balanced?”
I don’t know about you, but here’s where I fall:
I absolutely love Jesus, the Church and the Bible and want to consistently be a better witness to Christ in my city (although I fail constantly). However, when I look at those concerns listed above, there are a number of things that caught my attention—not necessarily because I’m guilty of them (constantly), but the propensity is there.
It’s easy to develop convictions about what you’re against, for example, in the name of discernment. It’s a lot harder to develop strongly held convictions about what you’re for.
And it’s even harder to strongly hold to your convictions with humility.
This is where I’m learning that an increasing dependence on the Holy Spirit to work in and through me—both to make me more like Christ and (where necessary) speak words of correction—is so essential.
When I’m not actively depending on the Holy Spirit to guide my words, thoughts and actions, it usually goes bad. I’ll say the right thing the wrong way or I’ll say the wrong thing altogether.
Becoming balanced means being immersed in the Word.
Becoming balanced means cultivating a consistent prayer life.
Becoming balanced means becoming dependent on the Holy Spirit.
It seems like everywhere you turn, people are asking the same question:
How do you work for justice without undermining evangelism?
Typically there are a couple of ways to answer the question. One camp suggests that we don’t need to evangelize until after the need has been met, if at all; that our focus should be eliminating extreme poverty or ending human trafficking. A cause is at the center instead of Christ.
The other tends to run to the opposite extreme, seeing any sort of social action as anathema to the Christian life.
Both extremes, obviously, are wrong. How, then, do you find a healthy, biblical middle-ground?
I’ve written about this a few times (hereand here for example), but over at the Gospel Coalition last week, they examined the issue by posing the question to a number of wise pastors and theologians. Here’s a look at their insights:
1. By doing evangelism. I know numerous groups that claim to be engaging in “holistic” ministry because they are helping the poor in Chicago or because they are digging wells in the Sahel, even though few if any of the workers have taken the time to explain to anyone who Jesus is and what he has done to reconcile us to God. Their ministry isn’t holistic; it’s halfistic, or quarteristic.
2. By being careful not to malign believers of an earlier generation. The popular buzz is that evangelicals before this generation focused all their energies on proclamation and little or nothing on deeds of mercy. Doubtless one can find sad examples of such reductionism, but the sweeping condescension toward our evangelical forbears is neither true nor kind…
3. By learning, with careful study of Scripture, just what the gospel is, becoming passionately excited about this gospel, and then distinguishing between the gospel and its entailments. The gospel is the good news of what God has done, especially in Christ Jesus, especially in his cross and resurrection; it is not what we do. Because it is news, it is to be proclaimed. But because it is powerful, it not only reconciles us to God, but transforms us, and that necessarily shapes our behavior, priorities, values, relationships with people, and much more. These are not optional extras for the extremely sanctified, but entailments of the gospel. To preach moral duty without the underlying power of the gospel is moralism that is both pathetic and powerless; to preach a watered-down gospel as that which tips us into the kingdom, to be followed by discipleship and deeds of mercy, is an anemic shadow of the robust gospel of the Bible; to preach the gospel and social justice as equivalent demands is to misunderstand how the Bible hangs together.
4. By truly loving people in Jesus’ name—our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all people, especially those of the household of faith. That necessarily includes the alleviation of suffering, both temporal and eternal. Christians interested in alleviating only eternal suffering implicitly deny the place of love here and now; Christians who [fail] to proclaim the Christ of the gospel of the kingdom while they treat . . . suffering here and now show themselves not really to believe all that the Bible says about fleeing the wrath to come. In the end, it is a practical atheism and a failure in love.
Back in September, Alistair Begg joined us at the Toronto Pastors’ Fellowship and shared the message, Preaching Between Two Worlds, from Ecclesiastes 12:
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.
The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Begg also engaged in an enlightening Q&A with Pastor Paul Martin.
Powerful messages for preachers and wannabe preachers in these videos.
Take some time to chew on them today as you go about your day.
At the time, we were going to a very big church that would probably be best characterized as seeker-sensitive in its ministry model. Top-notch band; comfortable setting; short topical messages; the works. Lots of people were coming, a new multi-million dollar facility was just being completed and there was a lot of excitement in the congregation.
But I was miserable.
There wasn’t anything going on that was bad per se, but… something was off.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” as they say.
Except in this case, it was me.
Every week, it was the same. I would pray that God would give me contentment. I would come, Bible open, ready to hear the message; I would listen, seeking to find that one thing that might be what I needed to hear… but there was nothing.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Eventually, I stopped caring.
And it didn’t matter if I went or not. Heck, sometimes the days when we called in “Bedside Baptist” (ie skipped) were the most fruitful for me. Not necessarily because I was spending huge amounts of time in private worship; I just wasn’t ticked off about something.
So yeah, I was done.
But I was wrong.
See, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to church anymore—it’s that I couldn’t be a part of the church I was attending anymore. Continue Reading…
In the above video, Pastors Mark Driscoll, Mark Dever and James MacDonald speak of the challenge of engaging in personal evangelism as pastors who spend a great deal of time with Christians. The dialogue is quite intriguing and well worth spending a few minutes watching.
After you’ve watched the video, consider the following questions:
Does the gospel need to be shared in the every sermon? If so, why? If not, why not?
Are you, whether you’re in vocational ministry or not, being proactive in seeking out non-Christians for the purpose of evangelism?
Ever since he announced that he was leaving his pastorate at Cornerstone Church in Simi, California, it seems everyone’s been wondering, “What the heck is going on with Francis Chan?”
In a conversation with Francis Chan and Joshua Harris, Mark Driscoll asks, “Everybody thinks you’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. You’ve got a good church going on and you hit the eject button and now you’re an international man of Fu Manchu mystery. What is going on? What are you thinking? And what’s going to happen to your church?”
