In Deuteronomy 31- 32 we read about the final days of Moses’ life and how God would have him pass his leadership but also how he would deliver a parting revelation to the people of Israel. It’s all too popular for Christian songwriters to explain every song with the phrase “God gave me this song“, but this is one of the few cases in scripture where this can be said. God gives Moses a song to write for the people of Israel, for His glory and for the benefit of His people. In this blog series we’ll look at 5 lessons learned through the story of the Song of Moses. In Part 1 we looked at how worship songs are a response to God’s revelation to us. In Part 2 we discussed confrontative worship and in Part 3 we discussed knowing our churches inclination to idolatry.

Unforgotten in the mouths of our children

The song of Moses is sandwiched in scripture with a couple statements about the impact of this worship song to the children(literal) of Israel. First as God gives his directive to Moses in the middle of Deuteronomy 31:21:

[21] And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.” (Deuteronomy 31:21 ESV)

Then after Moses writes and recites the song to the people he clarifies the importance of the worship song:

[45] And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, [46] he said to them, “Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 32:45-46 ESV)

So we see clearly that a very important purpose of this song is to deliver lasting theological clarity and purpose upon the children of Israel. This worship song was meant to confront Israel, turn their hearts back to God, and for this song of repentance and redeemed worship to be instructed to the kids to the point where they’d never forget it.

I love that the point of instruction for the father’s from God isn’t to have the kids watch them live in response to truth. No God has already bluntly revealed their own wicked hearts and inclination to false worship, instead God has them teach God’s truth to their kids. So both father’s and children are aligning themselves to God’s truth, the only true barometer of righteousness. With that in mind there’s 2 points I’d like to focus on:

1. The value of song in teaching our kids theology

It’s been said many times in many different ways that song has a tremendous impact on teaching and framing our theology. I don’t think there’s any denying that and depending on your background it may be that the only thing you know about God is what you remember singing. Whether or not that’s a good thing is another discussion, but the truth is that’s reality and we can’t ignore it. My Dad was a pastor for many years, all through my youth. I can’t remember many of his sermons but I remember almost every song we sung. What I knew of the gospel as a boy predominantly came from what we were singing, song is and was instrumental in my growth in the gospel.

The Song of Moses shows us that song is a gift from God, intended to glorify Him and teach us about Him. Thank the Lord for song but what an incredibly heavy responsibility it is and the church needs worship leaders that aren’t afraid of carrying it. Too often I hear worship leaders shirking that responsibility and excusing bad teaching in song through some belief that it’s just some kind of “musical venting”. Just something they “felt” a responsibility to release but somehow “felt” no responsibility to consider what it communicates about God. I love creative worship songs sung from different perspectives in different contexts, that’s awesome. But know that ultimately you are teaching something about God and it’s either truth and God glorifying, or a lie and destructive. We’re accountable for that worship leaders.

2. Look at me vs. look at Him

The way we live as parents is a huge influence on our children, but the way we use that influence is what needs to be considered. I’d much rather use my influence as a father to continually point my kids to Christ, his accomplishment and the work of the Holy Spirit instead of hoping my influence and works somehow regenerate their hearts. Now I’m not trying to shirk my responsibility as a father to mirror Christ to my kids. It’s absolutely vital we mirror Christ to our children, but we also must teach them about Jesus, pray for them to know Him, sing songs with our kids that teach them the truth about Jesus and make sure we are mirroring our own need of Jesus to our kids.

We can’t just drag our kids to church and hope that through some form of osmosis they are made into the likeness of Christ. A godly environment is important but it’s not enough, godly influences are important but they aren’t enough, Jesus is enough, Jesus is what needs to be taught and aligned to. And if we as parents mirror that truth to our kids, then we’re doing as God commanded Moses, for parent and child to look to God, worship Him and be changed by Him.

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.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a set list post. I thought they were getting a bit monotonous and dry, so I needed a break. I’ve been hearing from folks(inside our church) that they really want to know more about the songs we play so I’m gonna get back to posting the set lists here.

This Sunday was such a beautiful display of God’s goodness and providence. God brought together things that made it seem like we had a lot of things planned well ahead that we didn’t. Pastor Aaron taught on regeneration and gospel freedom as part of our series on Galatians and it just wrecked the place. I was talking with a few people after service and it’s so wonderful to hear a common work being done in the church’s heart. I love when the body is moving together. This series has matured us in the gospel as a body so much and I’m so thankful for it.

I planned to debut a new song by Gungor called “We Will Run” that’s been on deck for quite some time now. I wasn’t aware of the specific of the message but it became clear that this was indeed God’s timing for this song. It became an anthem for the day that supported so well what the Spirit was doing through the preaching. The lyrics to that song were just so spot on.

Create in me a clean heart, For I have turned away from You
Save us from our ways, Oh God, oh God, For we have turned our face from You
Lord have mercy

We will run to you, we will run to you
Turning from our sin we return to you
Father heal your world, make all things new, make all things new

Your Love and mercy build us, shape us
Break and then re-create us now
Lord have mercy

Oh, bring us back to You

We’ve also been opening our sets/services differently. Instead of the normal opening prayer and go into song 1, we’ve been opening up instrumentally and then having a puritan prayer read in concert with the instrumental. It’s not just a dry read over instrumentation but we try and build the tension and crescendo in concert with the prayer. We got the idea from a recent A29 pastors meeting and it’s been awesome! Here’s the full set list.

1. How I Live – Kyle Campos
2. The World Can’t Take it Away – Ryan Delmore
3. We Will Run – Gungor
4. Gloria 34 – Taylor Sorensen (loop available)
5. How He Loves – John Mark McMillan

In Deuteronomy 31- 32 we read about the final days of Moses’ life and how God would have him pass his leadership but also how he would deliver a parting revelation to the people of Israel. It’s all too popular for Christian songwriters to explain every song with the phrase “God gave me this song“, but this is one of the few cases in scripture where this can be said. God gives Moses a song to write for the people of Israel, for His glory and for the benefit of His people. In this blog series we’ll look at 5 lessons learned through the story of the Song of Moses. In Part 1 we looked at how worship songs are a response to God’s revelation to us. In Part 2 we discussed confrontative worship.

Know your church, know their inclination

In Deuteronomy 31:21 the Father reveals something incredible not just about his own nature(patience, mercy, love) but of ours as well.

“And when many evils and troubles have come upon them, this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring). For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give.” -Deuteronomy 31:21

Ouch! God is commanding Moses to write this song of intervention and confrontation because he knows their hearts, that not only do they worship other gods now, but their hearts are inclined to continue in idolatry. The Father’s heart for his people is laid bare. Despite his abundant mercy and goodness shown to the people of Israel, they’ll continue to give praise and thanks to other gods. God knows this about his people and out of a heart of mercy and love, he has Moses write a song that will identify and confront the inclination of His people and remind them of the truth of the only true God.

Moses as a worship leader has communed with God, received revelation and contextualized this song for this people. Moses appeals to their specific history(32:7-14), calls out their sin (32:15-18) and sings painful truth of God’s righteous anger (32:19-43). What makes that song so powerful is that it’s specifically convicting to that people because the language is directed right at them. Not a generalized people, with a generalized sinful attitude pointing to a generalized god in the sky. No it’s you people of Israel, committing idolatry and being called back to worship Yahweh. I think the global church suffers greatly from over-generalized, hyper-sanitized worship and this happens because of a few reasons in my view.

First, the momentum(NOT consensus) in modern worship and really with all gifts, is to emphasize its place and value in the global church at the expense of the local church. You get a lot of talented guys that hop from church to church and instead of submitting their gifting to the local church, they’d rather contribute their gifting to the global church. And now the gifting is pre-eminent and hell hath no fury like a worship leader scorn when his pastor/leader comes between him and his dreams of global reach and influence with his tunes. No I’m not blasting famous worship leaders, this isn’t a rant against CCM and no I don’t have any particular person(s) in mind. If you feel convicted great, if not, great. I have plenty of friends whom I love and support doing God’s work in the global church worship scene(not sure what to call it).

Second, we fear man tremendously and want as many people to like our songs as possible. We write for the masses and in doing so accomplish the seemingly impossible of writing for everyone but speaking to no one.

Third, worship leaders don’t commune with Jesus, minister to/pray with/serve along side their people as much as they think and their songwriting shows. Be part of your church body worship leaders, pray for them and with them. Be in community, love and serve your people. Only then can you see the idols, the struggles and the places where Jesus needs to be elevated where he’s been lowered.

Was that as tough to read as it was to write? Aye…

Next in series…Part 4: Generational worship

I’ve said previously on this blog that as a worship leader you are most likely the second most popular reason people leave the church, behind the pastor. You may be the first, depending on how lucky you are. I’ve also said that fact is the thing I dislike most about being a worship leader. It comes with the territory of being in ministry but it doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable.

My first experience in this was when I was leading worship at a Vineyard my dad pastored. I was probably only 15 at the time and I wore a hat backwards on this particular day(lame I know). The couple approached my father and relayed how offended they were that I’d were a hat in service and vowed never to return. 15 years later and hearing people leave because of me, my music, or my expression still hurts. I hate hearing it.

Now I’m an elder and worship pastor at a Reformed Charismatic church in the A29 network and I get to hear this from both sides. We are probably the most expressive in our worship of the A29 churches in Phoenix. Lots of hands lifted, tears, clapping, shouting, people on their knees, that kind of thing. We play long and loud worship sets with the lights down. So you’d think this would be fine for Charismatic types right? Well we sing about the cross a lot, we re-arrange hymns, we try and make sure everything is Christ centered and doctrinally sound. We don’t play Jesus is my boyfriend songs and we don’t let people run around crazy with banners and shouting in tongues. So for a lot of Charismatic types, they think we don’t “operate in our gifting” or that we stifle the gifts somehow.

Then the reformed guys that look us up on the A29 site come and see our club looking building, hear the really loud music, see the emotional expressiveness and they get uncomfortable really fast. We haven’t really had one of those A29 families stick in our church and it’s primarily due to me and the music. They love the preaching and teaching, they hear the gospel, but the music just pushes them to a level of uncomfortableness that they just can’t get past.

The temptation for me here is to grow callous and have a “this is the way it is, take it or leave it” attitude. And while I believe that is true to an extent(I’ll explain that below), I want my heart to be soft and my tactics malleable. In practice that means I am constantly evaluating why we do music the way we do, listening to the critique and searching scripture and praying for direction in how we worship musically. There is however some truth to this “being the way it is” and all I mean by that is, God has gifted me and our band in certain ways, gave us a conviction and sent us on mission. We didn’t arrive at that by taking a community poll, but rather by praying to Jesus and having him reveal it. So at some level, yes, this is who we are and I know it won’t appeal to everyone, maybe not even most. But I also know I and the church are still growing in many areas and we have a lot to learn. So when people leave and point to me, I want that to sting, I want to take it to Jesus and see if there’s anything I could have done differently or better.

Recently though a family visited who had found us through A29 and after meeting with the family the father said this to me(paraphrasing), “I loved that the gospel was preached and we felt at home right when we walked in, everyone was so kind. But honestly the worship made me very uncomfortable.” At this point I’m thinking, oh no, I know how this is going to end. But then he surprised me and said, “But I felt comfortable in my uncomfortableness, because it was all Christ centered. I want to thank you for pushing me out of my comfort zone.” To be honest I’ve never heard that kind of encouragement from traditional reformed that visit our church. I was so blessed and humbled by this family’s example of love for Jesus and the gospel that all they needed was for it to be Christ centered and they were comfortable amidst a musical style and degree of expressiveness that made them uncomfortable.

I pray that God would keep me humble and sensitive to His direction in how we worship musically. And that God would protect my heart from bitterness and pride when I hear critique or people leave the church because of me. Not easy or fun stuff, by I’m thankful for it.

Worship leaders, how are you effected and how do you process someone walking out the door with their finger pointed at you?

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?

I use about 30 songs in my regular rotation. This is probably on the low end for being the only worship band at our church. I would imagine most churches in a “praise band” setup would have a larger rotation, but I guess we’ll find out in this post. Our vision at LCC is to raise up multiple bands that have small rotations so we aren’t overlapping and if we are they are different arrangements. This results, hopefully, in a few things

1. Tighter set -  bands are playing fewer songs so they have more opportunity to experiment and perfect their arrangements.
2. Familiarity – Congregation gets to connect with songs better and have a chance at memorization so they spend less time staring at the lyrics and more time focusing on Jesus.
3. Freshness – when new songs come in, older songs are getting pruned instead of an ever growing rotation. This takes the pressure off the band for introducing new songs so they don’t feel like their work load gets larger and larger.

The last point is important because we want to keep bringing in new songs but typically it’s at the expense of an older song that just doesn’t seem to be relevant anymore. That’s not to say we don’t play any old songs, because we do. I’ll bring back older songs, hymns that bring diversity to the set and a freshness to the set as a whole.

So how many songs are in your rotation? And it would be great if you could describe in the comments what kind of worship band organization you use, praise band, multiple bands or something else.

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