GYC 2007: Be

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Bruce Ashton - Heavenly Harmony: Soaring to New Musical Heights

J. Bruce Ashton

This Mystery Called Music

The Eleven O’Clock WHAT Hour?

What’s So Yucky About Hymns?

Five Names You Deserve to Know

The Crossroads of Church and Culture

Selling Worship or Selling-out Worship?

Gracious Father, we are up against big stuff.

We have a lot that we need to think about, and we need your wisdom to think about it, because our minds aren't big enough.

We pray that you will bless our thinking, that you will help us indeed to use our minds, and that you will establish our hearts in your love, in Jesus' name.

First part of the title I chose for this session is the title of a book by Pete Ward.

Pete Ward is a convinced promoter of charismatic movement in the Christian churches, particularly in the United Kingdom.

The very phrase selling worship strikes me as an oxymoron, or at very least a conundrum.

Well, the definition we used yesterday, which I think is 1 of the best I've found is worship is quote the proper response of all moral sentient beings to God Ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator God precisely because he is worthy delightfully so If that is worship, then I have not figured out how I can sell a response.

And it's much more difficult for me to figure out how I might buy 1.

In order for selling worship to mean anything at all, worship must be conceived as a commodity, something made into a thing.

And that cheapens our notion of worship before we ever get started.

The words subtitled for the book has something also of value to say.

Now that's a problem for those who say music is just morally neutral or irrelevant, doesn't really matter.

If that's true, then what we sing certainly isn't going to be changing the church much.

And if it has changed, has it changed at least in part as a result of what we sing?

Has what people are singing changed the Church?

I want to be careful to preserve what the writer meant, and I'm trying hard not to take things out of context, but I want to share with you 4 sentences from the introduction of his book.

The culture of selling has begun to influence the culture and practice of the church.

The shifting patterns in metaphor and imagery common in worship songs reveal a gradual theological development.

And not all developments are in a positive direction.

The observation that the theology of the church is being changed through the songs that we sing is very significant.

If we add to this the realization that the changing patterns in theology are related to the way the popular music markets and sells itself, Then some important and perhaps less than positive observations can begin to be made.

1 valuable approach to how our singing both influences and reflects Church belief is offered by Lionel A.D., who suggests that the content and purpose of hymns, individually, each hymn as you look at it, may be described as objective, subjective, or reflexive.

Objective hymns are doctrinal or narrative in a direct biblical sense.

They state some facet of truth about God in a straightforward and direct way.

They point us perhaps to some scriptural evidence regarding our maker and his worthiness, as seen in the way his influence controls our lives.

Subjective hymns introduce a strong mixture of the worshipper's personal experience.

They talk about how my life has been changed or how I have responded in commitment to God.

In general, these 2 categories are fairly parallel to the distinction we made yesterday between hymns and gospel songs.

Not totally so, but very close to the same thing.

The reflexive hymn, on the other hand, is a hymn about singing, or a hymn about worship, rather than about God, or about me.

Those with a great controversy understanding have a basis for responding to each of these 3 types of hymns.

Objective hymns present a strong theological content.

His actions in relation to the human family deserve to be kept alive and fresh in our minds as a touchstone by which we can evaluate our personal experience.

The Gospel song, which is definitely subjective, tends to focus on the response in the believer.

To whatever extent feelings are valid, and we'll go into that also.

If there are any warm fuzzies in our religion singing, they are here.

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses.

That's not telling Christ how good he is or how great he is.

That says I'll have a good time when I get there.

There's a place even for expressing my commitment.

I will follow thee, my Savior, wheresoever my lot may be.

But even here, there may be a certain amount of trouble afoot if we're not careful.

As Pete Ward puts it in this book, with contemporary songs, the desire to sing songs to God, rather than to sing songs about God, has tended toward a lack of interest in the traditional theological content of hymns, or even of the Psalms.

In some cases, the songs have very little, specifically gospel, content.

Instead, they speak about what is happening between the worshipper and God at that moment.

We forget to our own great peril the revealed truth is given so that we will have a touchstone by which to try the spirits.

Our experience is not adequate to show us how to try the spirits.

Not every spirit in the world, people, is loyal to Jehovah.

I think we sometimes have a hard time remembering that.

Revealed truth is given so that we will be able to try the spirits, whether they be of God.

And when, as we understand, the most driving passion ex-Lucifer has is to be worshipped, then we ought to be very careful and very certain that our experience with a spirit in worship is really in harmony with the divine revealed doctrinal word of God.

There's a sweet, sweet spirit in this place.

And I know that it's the Spirit of the Lord.

If you do not know by scriptural evidence, be pretty careful.

The reflexive song is a song about worship itself.

And Ward candidly expresses concern about the trend toward more reflexive lyrics and fewer theological lyrics.

There are 3 examples of reflexive songs which he reviews, All of which he says he personally likes and has used, so he's not picking on them because he thinks they're bad stuff.

Regarding the first 1, he says, "...if the chorus did not use the word Jesus, it would be hard to identify any specifically Christian content in the song.

In fact, the theological content relies on the worshipper filling in the gaps.

Further he says, charismatic worship has tended to focus on the work of the Spirit or of an ascended Lord.

In the reflexive hymn we are generally singing about a disembodied you.

And as I just said, there's more than 1 you there.

Regarding the third song he says, having quoted a line from the song that says, the heart of worship is all about you Jesus.

No, he said, very few of the songs are really all about Jesus.

In fact, many of the songs are not really all about Jesus at all.

Rather, they are all about the worshipper and the worshippers experience in worship.

In other words, the songs lay themselves open to the criticism that they have replaced the content of the Christian gospel with human experience.

Instead of worshipping Jesus, they give the impression that we are worshipping worship.

Series

Bruce Ashton - Heavenly Harmony: Soaring to New Musical Heights

Selling Worship or Selling-out Worship?

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Karl Tsatalbasidis ~ The 'Rock' and Worship: Music and Worship at the End of Time

Watch and Pray, or Dance and Play?

1h

GYC 2011 Seminar: Spiritual Leadership & Spiritual Worship

Practical Foundations for Worship and Spirituality, Part 2

46m

Dee Casper's Weekend

04 Worship Him Who Made

54m

In Harmony With God?- Music Overview

1h 10m

Music in Your Sphere: Max the Potential of Music in Ministry

2. The Power of One Song

1h

Plenary

Mountain, Molehill, and Mission

1h 3m

Plenary

As Was His Custom

48m

Seven Keys to Sabbath Delights

1h 54m

Bruce Ashton - My Way or God's Way: Defining Christian Worship

Selling Worship or Selling-out Worship?

48m

Plenary

Music in a Time of Spiritualism

1h 16m

Revelation Made Simple

18. Revelations Spiritual Revolution for a New Millennium

57m

Sound Doctrine