I’ve been ruined. For one of my classes I read and wrote about the criteria for choosing songs used in worship. One of those criteria considers whether a song (or “song set”) is “me-centered” or “God-centered.” The other day I was asked if there wasn’t room in church to sing a song about what God has done for me. It’s a very good question.
We live in a consumerist, materialist culture. Nearly every choice I make in a day centers on what I like or don’t like. Scrolling through my Facebook feed I decide every second whether or not I like a post enough to stop and read. Watching American Idol(or any other talent show) I judge what I like or don’t like. Every commercial, every song, every route I drive to work, every incoming phone call, every fast-food restaurant, I decide what I like or don’t like. This mindset is the reality and totality of our existence, like a fish surrounded with water. For ten thousand minutes every week, life is about “me.”
So when we walk through the doors of our church we are still in this mode of reference. We constantly judge the experience according to what I like or don’t like. The songs we sing, the volume of the music, the style of the preacher, the perfume of the person sitting next to me, the cute (or not so cute) child two rows back, the temperature, the comfort of the seats, and a hundred other things.
I contend that for the seventy-five minutes the church is gathered in one place (set against the ten thousand they spend not gathered), we must do everything in our power to set our attention on the only reality that truly matters. That reality is that that the God of inestimable excellence in glory, holiness, and love has invited us into his presence. He chooses to speak to us, he chooses to listen to us, he chooses us to be his people. In the words of John Jefferson Davis, “The ecclesia,the assembly of the living God, the true church, is that entity constituted by those people elected and called by God, assembled by his authority in his presence to experience and respond to his presence in the worship-event.”[1]
Notice the only defined human activities in the above statement are to assemble, experience, and respond. It’s not a response that rates the event or the environment. It is a response to the One who invited us into this event, the One who delights to interact with his chosen people. The only “rating” that should happen is to assess the worth of the One before whom we assemble. For seventy-five minutes we have the opportunity to focus our fickle attention on the God of inestimable excellence. We worship pastors must do all in our power to counter the ten-thousand minutes of self-centeredness, and have laser-like focus for these seventy-five minutes on our God.
Davis continues to examine what is the nature of an individual Christian. Once we are in Christ, we are no longer an “autonomous, individualistic self, but a trinitarian and ecclesial self.” [2]To put in plainer English, when we are saved we enter into the unique community of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Triune God inhabits us (John 14:16, 23). These words are spoken over us in our baptism. Baptism also ushers us into the body of Christ constituted in the church. While we remain individuals, we are now individuals in relation to Christ and his body. Think of a married couple: while they remain a man and woman, in their new condition of marriage they are one person. Same with the individual in Christ. He or she is indeed an individual, but now is identified in relation to the Triune God and the body of Christ, the church. So Paul can write, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
So back to the question of songs that focus on what God has done for me; are they the best songs to use in our 75 minutes together? Chew on the above thoughts and we’ll continue soon. Tell me what you think here.
[1]John Jefferson Davis, Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence(Downer’s Grove, IVP Academic, 2010), 62-63.
[2]Davis, Worship,71,
What you say, Bill, is so true! That’s why it’s just as important to take off the old self as we’re putting on the new. (Eph. 4:22-24). In today’s “reduced gospel”, we focus so much on our heart’s transformation by God’s grace (Ez. 36:26) that we forget the persistent effort is takes to unlearn everything that seemed so natural all of our lives.
Well stated. I think you hit the nail on the head, Bill. There is a time for corporate worship and there is a time for personal devotion. We don’t confuse our seventy-five minutes in corporate worship with the time we personally spend alone with Christ on a daily basis. However, we often carry over that personal God-and-me-ness from our daily devotions to our corporate worship time, the sole purpose of which is to praise and worship God for who He is and for what He has done for all humanity, not just me. We are the gathered Family of God. Self-focus devolves corporate worship into the Individual of God, only concerned with my own needs and how God can meet them . . . for me. You are right that we need “laser-like focus” on the God who is most worthy of praise. Let’s not let the rocks do our work for us!