I can’t tell you how much the below Driscoll clip resonated with me. I’ve seen up close the destruction that in sues from this idolatrous seeking of some great past experience, some great moment in the church where God moved in a powerful way. The church and it’s leaders become fixated on how to get it back and completely reject what God is doing presently. I’ve seen it close, been part of it, and it’s devastating to a church’s health.

Sometimes the church experiences a tremendous hurt, maybe a leader being removed or caught out in sin, and instead of faithfully walking through God’s restoration in the body, there’s a detachment and this constant day dreaming of what used to be. I’ve see that up close too, and it’s devastating. Worship leaders, make sure you aren’t chasing experiences, for the benefit of yourself and your body…don’t do it.

Creflo and Kenny makin the hard sell.

[via FAIL blog]

This past Sunday I was actually preaching instead of leading worship. Our pastor was in Kuwait and I picked up preaching duties, teaching out of Colossians 3:18 , not an easy task. I was really blessed to be able to do that for Life Connection Church, really it was an honor and I pray that God’s will was accomplished. For the rest of the info you can just watch the video wrap up…

Sunday Wrap Up (01/10/10) from Our Rising Sound on Vimeo.

On Dec 12th our church we busy taking pictures of local families for Help Portrait. When I say local, I mean local local, as in families that live in the surrounding blocks. Our church has really felt convicted that we haven’t poured into the immediately surrounding community. The community we are in is a pretty rough one, a lot of broken families, drug abuse, prostitution. We’ve always felt like we were planted here for a purpose, but recently that purpose has become more concrete and we’ve started to act on it.

So the same day Help Portrait was in full swing a local company donated 15 kids bikes to us, a total surprise and huge blessing. My pastor and I started brainstorming ideas on what to do and we thought, “why not just walk through our neighborhood on Christmas day and hand these out to kids?” Wasn’t a typical church outreach plan, or typical for us either. We weren’t going to invite them to a service and make them wait to the end, or give them away to all the kids in our church. Though we love our kids too, we thought we’d demonstrate it to them differently.

We felt a greater blessing for our kids would be for them to come with us and help us give them away. So on Christmas Day a handful of families loaded the bikes into a truck and we took the caravan through the neighborhood. We met a lot of the families in the neighborhood and they greeted us with tearful thank you’s and the kids were overjoyed. About 10 minutes into it word had spread quickly and kids were running out to greet us.

It was truly one of the most amazing experiences I’ve been apart of, we were so blessed and thankful to be able to do it and share in the lives with the families around us. We really look forward to doing this every year, but also doing a lot more on a regular basis with these families. We are actively praying about where God would lead us and where and how he’d have us serve our local community. Thank you to everyone who took part in this, it truly was special.

This has been a big week for many reasons, all of which I’ll blog about. But one of the simpler ones to blog about is my church‘s entrance into full Acts 29 membership. The A29 blog just published an article introducing us to the network. I’m really excited to be joining the network, there are so many pastors, worship leaders and friends here that I respect.

As far as worship music goes, we do things differently than most A29 churches I know. That’s fine for us and I don’t expect any issues with that. A29 is a pretty diverse organization with a lot of different kinds of churches. We are a Reformed-Charismatic church, reformed in theology, non-cessationist, holy spirit believing, gift empowered body of believers that sing our guts out to loud, thumping, worship music. We are a creative bunch, that use lots of video, “concert” lighting, text messaging Q&A, twitter to organize our home groups, podcasting, vodcasting, live loops…  We’re in downtown Phoenix, in a rough neighborhood that frequently has police helicopters circling our building during night meetings. My point is we aren’t your grandparent’s reformed church.

But then again…we are complementarian, we are firm believers of sola scriptura, we love Piper, Chandler, Driscoll, Keller and many of us are 4.5 point calvanists. (Not a typo, that’s 4 and a half) We practice church discipline, are introducing formal membership, preach the cross relentlessly and by that I mean the rugged cross, penal substitutionary atonement, propitiation and expiation.

We’re a crazy bunch of misfits for sure, but we have deep conviction about what we do and who we are in Christ. We’re excited to team up with the group of A29 churches here in Phoenix and share the gospel with the lost and hurting. I pray this opens new doors for our church and that we’re able to reach more people for Christ.

I mean it…literally. I know playing songs your congregation doesn’t want to hear sounds like a horrible idea and flies in the face of many years of your contemporary worship training, but I don’t know when our job became more about pleasing man instead of Jesus. Now before you get all huffy, let me explain.

First, I don’t mean purposefully playing songs that your congregation doesn’t like stylistically. Although if people only worship Jesus when they hear a Chris Tomlin song then I’d say you have really big worship and idolatry issues to tackle and then maybe purposefully *not* playing Chris Tomlin is a good idea.

Secondly, I don’t think being a contrarian is a sign of leadership maturity. I’m not advocating simply doing the opposite of what other churches are doing, or constantly trying to throw off your congregation in worship simply because seeing them squirm makes you feel like you’re really doing God’s will.

Here’s what I am saying. As worshippers we are constantly battling idols taking the place of Jesus. Idols we’ve torn down will take new shape and present themselves as something new and more worthy and acceptable of worship. If anything takes our worship but Jesus it is idolatry, sin. Colossians 1:18 “And he[Jesus] is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Our congregations worship a lot of things over Christ and we have to expose idols in our worship, tear them down and place Jesus above them as our focus of worship.

Probably not too many of you have any problems with the above paragraph, but here’s where it gets messy…

For the families that worship their own comfort, rest and individualism by showing up 30 minutes late do you think they want to sing about how there is no rest outside of Christ, that even in our sleep we toil, or that they’ve forsaken the gathering because they worship their individuality and comfort? Show them by singing that we only enjoy peace and rest in Christ because of the bloody, violent, death of Christ on the cross and that now they’ve been saved to community, the body of Christ, to sacrifice, serve and worship together.

For the college kids that show up right on time because they love the music, but spent last night partying hard, indulging in their sinful passions, do you think they want to sing about how they are slaves to sin, deserving of death and that unless they get a new heart in Christ their posturing in worship, the jumping, the singing, the Hillsong “woa-oh” chants are worthless clatter. That they worship themselves and can’t atone for their sins by singing loudly. Show them by singing that Jesus is their propitiation, that they are dead in their sins, but that there is life in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. That if they truly encountered Christ they’ve be given a new heart, and that they’d no longer desire to live a life of sin.

For the religious church couple that just walked in dignified, that has no reason to get uncomfortable because they were “saved” at a youth camp at age 10 and baptized in the pool so their salvation is secure. Show them by singing the psalms that our hearts cry out, our soul thirsts for Jesus, that we fall at the feet of Jesus and cry “Hosanna”, and that if they don’t, don’t they know even the rocks, even the pews they comfortably sit in, would cry out for Jesus. That their dispassionate hearts show they worship their dignity, which all through scripture is shown to be folly.

Worship leaders, don’t make yourself a petty entertainer. Don’t seek to satisfy your congregation’s idols. Lead your congregation to worship the real Jesus, show them who Jesus is, what he has done and if they get that, they’ll see themselves for who they are, repent and become new creations in Christ. Sing the songs their flesh doesn’t want to hear, sing the songs that wreak havoc in their hearts. Our worship should be a dance of repentance, praise and honor. Worship leaders, seek to have Jesus preeminent in all things, all things.

What songs are you playing now that challenge the congregation and confront their idols? Do you even think about that when choosing songs?

My dear friend Mark Rohl took some incredible shots last week of Our Rising Sound leading worship at Life Connection Church this past Sunday and I wanted to share them with you. You’d be wise to hire Mark for any of your photography needs, hit em up on Facebook or Twitter.

Coming off a big Easter and all the work that went into it, I basically took a week off from working on new arrangements and loops. Well, that’s almost true, we did do a new arrangement of Phil Wickham’s “Messiah” but we just put that together in practice before service. So for the most part the set was filled with familiar stuff which I think was necessary for the congregation after a Easter full of new songs and big productions.

I’m still bummed out about how late people are to the service. Literally there was a handful of people at the beginning and then it filled up by the time worship was over. It really doesn’t sit well with me and it’s not an attitude we ever want to settle for in our church. I know almost every church has the same problem, but I think God made me especially irritable to that kind of laziness. Or maybe it’s my sin issue, probably a combo of both. Here’s the source of my frustration and Life Connection people I hope you are reading this cause I love ya, but let’s get our act together.

Corporate worship in the body of Christ is extremely important, it’s something to be valued, cherished, sacrificed for and given to for the benefit of the entire body, not ourselves, and ultimately for the glory of Christ. What each one of us does, each of our attitudes of worship impacts the entire body. I’m not trying to elevate corporate worship to an idolatrous place and minimize an entire life of worship in spirit and truth, but I’m also trying to make sure we don’t minimize the importance of corporate worship. Folks, sacrifice and give to the body, if it pains you to make it to service on time, that’s good! Set the alarm earlier and give of yourself for the benefit of this body and for the glory of Christ. I said it last week I’ll say it again. This irreverent spirit is us bowing at the foot of comfort instead of the foot of the cross. Pray on it, let’s get humble, sacrifice and get there on time.

• Rain Down – Delirious (loop not yet available)
• Dress Us Up – John Mark McMillan
• Gloria 34 - Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
• Where You Go I’ll Go – Brian and Jenn Johnson (loop available)
• Messiah – Phil Wickham

This post is part of Fred McKinnon’s Set List Sundays.