The Gift of Congregational Singing

Article: The Encouragement of Congregational Singing by Dustin J Coleman (original source here)

One of the great gifts that God has given His church is the gift of congregational singing. I often come to our worship gathering discouraged – discouraged with my failures, my anxieties, and my weakness. What a gift the gathered church is to a discouraged soul! Every week we come in from our different lives and gather to, among other things, sing the glory and power of the gospel.

This hit home for me at a recent worship gathering of our church. As I sang the songs and thought about the people who were singing around me, my heart was invigorated with the joy of the victory of the gospel.

I saw a woman many of us affectionately call “Grandma Kay.” Kay is in her 90s and suffers from several debilitating weaknesses that come along with being of advanced age. She seems weaker with each passing week and I know the day of her passing is not far away. And yet here she is, sitting (because she can’t stand) and singing with us:

And on that day when my strength is failing

The end draws near and my time has come

Still my soul will sing Your praise unending

Ten thousand years and then forevermore!

This is a victory cry! Throughout the winding years of decades, neither old age nor the pains of impending death have been able to rob Grandma Kay of her joy. Neither life nor death has been able to separate her from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And then I see Mary, a single, divorced woman in her mid-50s. She often jokes that Christ had to wear gloves when He reached out to save her, so deep was the filth of her debauchery. Her voice joins all of ours as we sing:

O perfect redemption! The purchase of blood

To every believer the promise of God

The vilest offender who truly believes

That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.

This is a victory cry! Her voice joins the chorus that proclaims that there is no depth of muck and sin that the depth of Christ’s grace and mercy is not deeper still. Sin’s grip is no match when God decides to wrest His children free.

And then I see Ryan, a young single man in our congregation. Ryan is coming out of a very difficult past, a past of drug addiction, alcohol, and sexual sin. But, praise God, he is fighting! He is fighting but there are days of failure. But here he is, standing in the row behind me, as we sing these words:

Christ the sure and steady anchor

While the tempest rages on

When temptation claims the battle

And it seems the night has won

Deeper still then goes the anchor

Though I justly stand accused

I will hold fast to the anchor

It shall never be removed.

This is a victory cry! Sin has won so long in his life and it drove him deeper and deeper into despair. But now he meets those failures with faith, clinging to Christ, trusting in His justifying death, and longing for the light of day to conquer the night.

And I see Eva. Eva immigrated to the United States from India, where her daughters still live. She works the third shift at 7 Eleven so that she can send money back home. Even amidst the spiritual darkness of India, gospel light found her. I see her standing, with eyes closed and hands open toward the sky singing:

Let every kindred, every tribe

On this terrestrial ball

To Him all majesty ascribe

And crown Him Lord of all!

This is a victory cry! Satan is bound and he no longer holds the nations captive in ignorance and sin. The gospel is going forward and Christ is ransoming people for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Eva is a ringing cry that Satan is beaten and Christ’s great kingdom shall reign on earth.

I hear these people singing and I am reminded of the victory and power of the gospel. There is no weakness, no stain of sin, no power of temptation, no spiritual darkness that can ever conquer the power of God working in the lives of His people. Their voices remind me of the freedom and victory and joy of God’s people. The melody of their hearts tunes my troubled soul to the song of God’s triumph.

And in their singing, I am helped and my soul is lifted to God. May we remember the treasured gift of singing that God has given His people!

7 Things I Love About Liturgical Protestant Worship

Article by Silverio Gonzalez, husband, father, and staff writer at Core Christianity. He earned his B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his Master of Divinity from Westminster Seminary California. (original source here)

Sometimes the idea of “formal worship” scares people. I hope to make that less scary. The Protestant traditions include Anglicanism, Lutheranism, the Reformed, and Presbyterianism. Although these traditions have important differences, they reflect important similarities in the way they worship. I could feel more or less at home in any of these traditions. A liturgy is an order of worship in which God gives grace in the gospel and we respond in faith, hope, and love.

1. I love that liturgical Protestant worship is shaped by the Gospel.
Common in Protestant liturgies is a movement from the law of God and our repentance to the Gospel. The Gospel announces our forgiveness and justification. A good liturgy is evangelical in the best sense in that it helps move the congregation through the ordinary patterns of the Christian life. I constantly feel the weight of the week’s sins lifted as I confess my sins in a prayer together with the congregation. Then I hear the pastor preach the gospel, telling me again that my sins are forgiven because of Christ alone.

2. I love that liturgical Protestant worship has specific prayers as part of the service.
In Protestant orders of worship, there is usually a prayer of adoration, a prayer of confession of sin, a pastoral prayer for the needs of the congregation, and a prayer of thanksgiving. Sometimes some of these prayers are expressed in song; other times the entire congregation reads a written prayer. The pastor leads the congregation in these prayers that reflect our unity. Through public prayer, we bear one another’s burdens. When I hear my pastor pray for me, I feel his love for the congregation, and me in particular.

3. I love that liturgical Protestant worship includes lots of Scripture reading throughout the service.
Usually there are readings from the Old and New Testaments, Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels. Sometimes the Psalms are sung. Protestant liturgies include a variety of arrangements and a number of Scripture readings. Hearing so much Scripture read in church is like being washed in God’s Word.

4. I love that liturgical Protestant worship includes the pastor preaching both the law and the gospel from the Bible.
A good sermon doesn’t just tell me about what happened in the past. A good sermon helps me to understand my life as a part of God’s story. A good sermon focuses on what Jesus did—and is doing—to save sinners like me. A good sermon shows me why Jesus had to die. A good sermon shows me how to respond in faith, hope, and love. Protestants preach God’s word of law to humble my proud heart and God’s gospel to show me my savior and remind me how God has promised to work in my life to save me from sin’s penalty and power.

5. I love that liturgical Protestant worship recites creeds.
If you have never been in a church that recites a creed like the Apostles’ Creed, then this is a great reason to visit. When we recite this creed, we recite something that reflects the basics of our faith. The pastor asks, “Congregation, what do you believe?” and we respond with, “I believe in God the Father Almighty….” We confess our common faith together. In this act we connect to the church past, present, and future. We are expressing the one faith that all Christians have sought to maintain for generations.

6. I love that liturgical Protestant worship sings old and new songs.
I love singing old songs, because they remind me of the different cultures and time periods in which God worked. I love singing new songs, because they remind me that the faith is still living, that Christianity is still vibrant today, and that God is still working. Singing new and old songs reminds me that God has promised to gather the nations as his people (Ps. 86:9).

7. I love that liturgical Protestant worship expresses a range of emotions.
Like the Psalms, Protestants know how to mourn, how to praise, how to ask God for our needs, and how to give thanks for what he has already given. When I come to church, I’m not forced to be happy or sad, but I get to express that weird mixture so common to Christians: joy and sorrow, praise and lament, and repentance and faith. I love that I get to express the way I actually feel, and am helped to express the ways I should feel, as I am taught to express the entire range of emotions that are part of the ordinary Christian life.

The Genesis and Future of Worship

Article by Jonathan Gibson (original source here)

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions.” — John Piper

The story of human history is a story of worship. In Eden, God called his son Adam to worship him alone as Father and King—by not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. At Sinai, God called his son Israel to worship him alone as Father and King—by not putting other gods before him. In Jerusalem, God called his son David (and David’s sons) to worship him alone as Father and King—by walking before him in faithfulness with all their heart.

But Adam, Israel, David, and his sons all rejected God’s call to worship. They chose to worship created things instead of the Creator. In each case, they were led astray by women: Adam through Eve, Israel through marrying foreign women, Solomon through his many wives. The Old Testament develops in such a way that we are left hoping for a son of God who will be devoted to one woman whom he will lead in pure worship of the one God. And that expectation is met in Jesus Christ—the last Adam, the true Israel, David’s greater son.

Perfect Worship
At Jesus’s baptism the Father affirmed him as his beloved Son, with whom he was well pleased. But that affirmation had never truly been tested.

So the Spirit drove the Son into the wilderness. The ancient serpent, Satan himself, was allowed to test him to see what was in his heart—to see if he’d continue worshiping God as Father and King.

Where Adam, Israel, and David (and his sons) all failed, God’s final Son succeeded. Where the first Adam remained silent and bowed before the serpent, the last Adam rebuked the serpent and refused to bow: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (Matt. 4:10; cf. Deut. 6:13). Where Israel and David (and his sons) promised they’d worship God with heart and soul and mind and strength, but didn’t, Jesus as the true Israel and David’s greater son worshiped wholeheartedly: “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17; cf. Ps. 69:9). Jesus was no idolater; he was no hypocrite. God finally had a Son who worshiped him alone.

Now all the Son needed was a bride.

This is why God’s Son left heaven: to woo for himself a bride who would worship the Father. We see glimpses of this in Jesus’s ministry. At a well in Samaria, Jesus met a woman—one who hadn’t able to find the right kind of husband all her life—and called her to worship the Father in spirit and truth. But such a woman was not fit for such worship—she first needed to be cleansed, along with all who would become part of Jesus’s bride.

Jesus died to present the church to himself “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, so that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:25–26). He then rose and ascended and sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high. He became a minister of worship (Heb. 8:1–2), so that the worship of his bride might be acceptable to his Father.

Future Worship
Around the world today, God’s Spirit—through God’s people—is calling sinners to renounce idolatrous worship and join the bride of God’s Son. One day, the bride’s evangelism will cease, but her worship will not. In the new heavens and new earth, an innumerable multiethnic multitude will declare, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (Rev. 7:10).

On that day, the bride will be ready, the marriage will commence, and the processional hymn will begin:

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the omnipotent reigns. (Rev. 19:6)

Worship: Evangelical or Reformed?

Article by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey (original source here)

One of the challenges of being Reformed in America is to figure out the relationship between what is evangelical and what is Reformed. Protestantism in America is dominated by the mainline Protestants, the evangelicals, and the charismatics. After these dominant groups, other major players would include the confessional Lutherans. But where do the Reformed fit in, particularly in relation to the evangelicals, with whom historically we have been most closely linked?

Some observers argue that the confessional Reformed are a subgroup in the broader evangelical movement. Certainly over the centuries in America, the Reformed have often allied themselves with the evangelicals, have shared much in common with the evangelicals, and have often tried to refrain from criticizing the evangelical movement. But are we Reformed really evangelical?

One area in which the differences between evangelical and Reformed can be examined is the matter of worship. At first glance, we may see more similarities than differences. The orders of worship in Reformed and evangelical churches can be almost identical. Certainly, both kinds of churches sing songs, read Scripture, pray, preach, and administer baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But do these similarities reflect only formal agreement, or do they represent a common understanding of the meaning and function of these liturgical acts in worship?

If we look closely, I believe that we will see the substantive differences between evangelicals and Reformed on worship. That difference is clear on two central issues: first, the understanding of the presence of God in the service; and second, the understanding of the ministerial office in worship.

The Presence of God in Worship

The presence of God in worship may seem a strange issue to raise. Do we not both believe that God is present with his people in worship? Indeed we do! But how is God present, and how is he active in our worship?

It seems to me that for evangelicalism, God is present in worship basically to listen. He is not far away; rather, he is intimately and lovingly present to observe and hear the worship of his people. He listens to their praise and their prayers. He sees their obedient observance of the sacraments. He hears their testimonies and sharing. He attends to the teaching of his Word, listening to be sure that the teaching is faithful and accurate.

The effect of this sense of evangelical worship is that the stress is on the horizontal dimension of worship. The sense of warm, personal fellowship, and participation among believers at worship is crucial. Anything that increases a sense of involvement, especially on the level of emotions, is likely to be approved. The service must be inspiring and reviving, and then God will observe and be pleased.

The Reformed faith has a fundamentally different understanding of the presence of God. God is indeed present to hear. He listens to the praise and prayers of his people. But he is also present to speak. God is not only present as an observer; he is an active participant. He speaks in the Word and in the sacraments. As Reformed Christians, we do not believe that he speaks directly and immediately to us in the church. God uses means to speak. But he speaks truly and really to us through the means that he has appointed for his church. In the ministry of the Word—as it is properly preached and ministered in salutation and benediction—it is truly God who speaks. As the Second Helvetic Confession rightly says, “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.”

God is also actively present and speaking in the sacraments, according to the Reformed understanding. The sacraments are much more about him than about us. He speaks through them the reality of the presence of Jesus to bless his people as he confirms his gospel truth and promises through them.

The effect of this understanding of Reformed worship is that the stress is on the vertical dimension of worship. The horizontal dimension is not absent, but the focus is not on warm feelings and sharing. Rather, it is on the community as a unit meeting their God. Our primary fellowship with one another is in the unified activities of speaking to God in song and prayer and of listening together as God speaks to us. The vertical orientation of our worship service insures that God is the focus of our worship. The first importance of any act of worship is not its value for the inspiration of the people, but its faithfulness to God’s revelation of his will for worship. We must meet with God only in ways that please him. The awe and joy that is ours in coming into the presence of the living God to hear him speak is what shapes and energizes our worship service.

The Ministerial Office in Worship

The difference between the Reformed faith and evangelicalism on the presence of God in worship is closely tied to their differences on the ministerial office in worship. For evangelicalism, the ministers seem to be seen as talented and educated members of the congregation, called by God to leadership in planning and teaching. The ministers use their talents to facilitate the worship of the congregation and instruct the people. The ministers are not seen as speaking distinctively for God or having a special authority from God. Rather, their authority resides only in the reliability of their teaching, which would be true for any member of the congregation.

The effect of this evangelical view of office is to create a very democratic character to worship, in which the participation of many members of the congregation in leading the service is a good thing. The more who can share, the better. The many gifts that God has given to members of the congregation should be used for mutual edification. Again, the horizontal dimension of worship has prevailed.

The Reformed view of ministerial office is quite different. The minister is called by God through the congregation to lead worship by the authority of his office. He is examined and set apart to represent the congregation before God and to represent God before the congregation. In the great dialogue of worship, he speaks the Word of God to the people and he speaks the words of the people to God, except in those instances when the congregation as a whole raises its voice in unison to God. We who are Reformed do not embrace this arrangement because we are antidemocratic or because we believe that the minister is the only gifted member of the congregation. We follow this pattern because we believe that it is biblical and the divinely appointed pattern of worship.

The effect of this view of office is to reinforce the sense of meeting with God in a reverent and official way. It also insures that those who lead public worship have been called and authorized for that work by God. The Reformed are rightly suspicious of untrained and unauthorized members of the congregation giving longer or shorter messages to the congregation. In worship we gather to hear God, not the opinions of members. The vertical dimension of worship remains central.

Conclusion

The contrast that I have drawn between evangelical and Reformed worship no doubt ought to be nuanced in many ways. I have certainly tried to make my points by painting with a very broad brush. Yet the basic analysis, I believe, is correct.

One great difficulty that we Reformed folk have in thinking about worship is that our worship in many places has unwittingly been accommodated to evangelical ways. If we are to appreciate our Reformed heritage in worship and, equally importantly, if we are to communicate its importance, character, and power to others, we must understand the distinctive character of our worship.

Our purpose in making this contrast so pointed is not to demean evangelicals. They are indeed our brethren and our friends. But we do have real differences with them. If Reformed worship is not to become as extinct as the dinosaurs, we as Reformed people must come to a clear understanding of it and an eager commitment to it. In order to do that, we must see not just formal similarities, but more importantly the profound theological differences that distinguish evangelical worship from Reformed worship.

Reforming the Church Service

Article by Michael S. Horton (original source here)

“Liturgy.” It sounds like “allergy,” and that’s perfect, because many Christians today have an allergy for liturgy. Actually, the idea’s very basic: certain things should always be done in a worship service, other things shouldn’t. And you need some set of criteria–a rationale, for what’s in and what’s not.

Every church has a liturgy. In the Bible churches and Baptist fellowships of my youth, the liturgy was pretty much the same Sunday to Sunday, and even fairly standard from church to church. You knew what to expect and had a pretty good idea of when to sit, stand, and reach for your hymnal or wallet.

During my teen years, though, I spent some time in charismatic circles. Here, we used to ridicule the Baptists as “traditionalists” who stifled the Spirit by the church bulletin. Imagine what we thought of Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans! Goodness, they were really “dead traditionalists.” And “dead” didn’t refer to the doctrine, because it didn’t matter whether a church was liberal or conservative. It could have been the most orthodox church in town, but if its style was not youthful and lively, it was “dead,” plain and simple. Doctrine didn’t decide death or life, the liturgy decided it. Isn’t that ironic, that in our charismatic circles we were willing to divide churches over liturgy just as surely as we thought others had done! We were just as caught up in liturgy, by demanding a particular youth-oriented, guitar-strumming, hand-waving, informal style, that we ended up defining life and death in churches by our particular liturgical definitions.

Once we realize that we all have a liturgy–a philosophy of worship and a general set of criteria by which we judge it, we can begin to ask ourselves and each other, what then is a biblical liturgy? If God is the one who must be pleased with our worship, then he should decide–not the youth, nor the older folks, nor the unchurched or the churched. It’s our job to find out how God wants to be worshipped. After all, he is the audience; it is he who must be pleased with our worship, for ultimately he is the Seeker to whom we must be sensitive (Jn. 4).

I remember, when I began attending Presbyterian and Reformed churches, how it was both foreign and familiar. My new theology told me that God was the center of attention, so seeing him held up in the service, from the call to worship to Word and Sacrament, to the Benediction, clicked for me. You see, before, I was attending Arminian churches whose human-centered theology shaped a human-centered liturgy. Endless autobiographies called “testimonies,” tacky religious floor-shows, an interminable altar call begging folks to let God have his way, and a centrally-located choir with colorful robes framed a sermon of schmooze calculated to please me and make me want to go through this thing again next week. Now, of course, not all of the churches nor all of the services I can recall were as goofy as I’m describing here, but you get the picture.

So, it’s not whether liturgy, but which liturgy. It’s not enough to say, “It should be old”; nor is it acceptable to judge it by how it appeals to the youth. What are the biblical criteria for judging our worship? That’s the only question.

So here I offer seven guidelines that you might find somewhat helpful in analyzing your worship. It may be something that you could take to your worship committee or pastor.

1. It must conform to Scripture by preaching Law and Gospel, along with sermon and sacraments. The sermon isn’t the only “preaching” of the morning. The entire service is worship and says a great deal about the church’s view of God, Christ, salvation, etc. Is there a regular confession of sin and announcement of pardon? This is not only an ancient requirement of the Christian churches; it is part of the apostolic worship, as you find it in Acts chapter 2, for instance, and in Paul’s letters.

2. It must link the individual to the larger church body and not only to the church here and now, but to Christ’s body throughout the world and throughout all ages. Is our worship uniquely American or determined by the “contemporary”? This isn’t just a question of style, but of doctrine. We worship with the “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12) and the Psalms are full of the recounting of God’s works with his people throughout history. We aren’t individualists who are seeking a “worship experience” that’s relevant to us, but baptized Christians who are in covenant with the “communion of saints” and “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church” (Apostle’s Creed).

3. It must be God-centered, not us-centered. God is the audience and we are the choir. Are the “professionals” up front the focus of attention? Are they entertaining us or are they leading us in corporately entertaining God? Where is the focus?

4. It must worship the correct God correctly. The first three of the 10 Commandments concern our correct worship of the only true God. God is more concerned with true worship than with anything else. Even our salvation is a means to that end of bringing praise and glory to God’s name. It isn’t enough to worship the true God according to our own fancy; he must be worshipped in his own way, as Aaron’s sons learned the hard way. When they wanted to offer an unauthorized fire in the temple, it was out of the best of motives, but God turned them to ash before Aaron himself. “Before man, I will show myself as holy,” God declared. We must not trifle with God in the matter of worship.

5. It must emphasize and undergird Word and Sacrament as the central foci of worship. Is “fellowship” more important than the sermon and Holy Communion in our church?

6. It must be useable. In other words, we have to instruct people in anything that is unfamiliar. One reason people will say, “It’s just rote repetition” of ancient liturgies is due to the laziness, apathy, or lack of awareness on the part of the minister in terms of explaining it all. We can’t assume that each new generation understands what’s going on.

7. It must communicate to contemporary men and women. The Reformation recovered congregational singing and participation. No longer left to the “professionals” (the choir, etc.), the entire congregation read the Scriptures in unison, prayed in unison, and sang in unison. But that meant that they had to have it in their own language, so the Reformation neither shirked its obligation to the past, nor to the present and the future.