We had an evangelist preach along this line and a point he made was that our life is similar to a lantern. He illustrated this with two lanterns, one very clean and the other very dirty. Christ is “the light” and our life is the glass. Sin is the soot in our life that prevents the light from shining out. We have to work each day to keep the glass clean.

With this I agree wholeheartedly.

With the rest? Well . . .
I was nodding my head in hearty agreement most places, then found myself shaking it disappointedly in others. You can probably figure out which is which.

Much of this is great.

But why did you throw in a dig at Hillsongs? A minor point, but this is one place where you named names. Whatever a church does, it should be reverent and theocentric. Church is not a HillSong concert.

You are implying that Hillsongs is not reverent and theocentric. Never having actually been to a Hillsongs service I don’t know whether you have a point or not.

My point is this – I’ve seen churches driven down, or stagnated, because members of the church (often the “pillars” of the church) are not willing to go to a new land where God is leading them. Something makes them uncomfortable – so it can’t be good.

Of course we need to be unwilling to go somewhere where God isn’t leading. It’s a question of discernment – I am out of my comfort zone all the time in the ministry I work in – doesn’t mean the ministry isn’t good and Godly. It means I don’t like change.

I brought this up to ask: have you ever been in a worship service where you wanted to fall flat on your face in worship, or scream, or yell, or clap? I’m not what you’d call a charismatic – I’m your normal, average, run o’ the mill southern baptist. But I’ve felt that way before, and at times I’ve felt that way to a Hillsongs song. Connected to my God, loving Him, free in Him.

I just think you have to be careful “lumping”. I am harping, I know, but people thought David wasn’t reverent enough. People thought Peter was bad for breaking the dietary laws. People thought the disciples were ungodly for “harvesting” wheat on Saturday. People thought Jesus was ungodly for eating with sinners.

I never, ever want to be one of the people who thought that.

Actually, Jared, I’d love it if you would elaborate on what you disagreed with and why.

why did you throw in a dig at Hillsongs?

No particular reasons, but Hillsongs just bugs me. I’ve never been to a Hillsongs concert, but I do have a CD that includes many live Hillsongs recordings. I’ve removed those songs from my playlist because it just drives me nuts.

I’ve had the worship experiences you describe while singing things ranging from Rock of Ages to some contemporary songs. Listening to some contemporary Christian music also brings my heart close to God sometimes.

All I really meant, in addition to my dig at Hillsong, was that our corporate worship ought to generally be orderly and dignifed (1 Cor 14) rather than disorderly and overly emotional. I’ve observed just how trivially easy it is to emotionally manipulate an audience into a fake sense of worship – I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. If we’re all shouting and leaping one minute, then collapsed in tears on the floor the next minute, and that’s something that’s going on every single Sunday, well, I suspect it’s something other than genuine Biblical worship going on. Worship should be done with dignity and order.

I’ll take out the dig at Hillsong.

people thought David wasn’t reverent enough. People thought Peter was bad for breaking the dietary laws. People thought the disciples were ungodly for “harvesting” wheat on Saturday. People thought Jesus was ungodly for eating with sinners. I never, ever want to be one of the people who thought that.

All of these things are true and relevant, but you know that’s one of those generic responses that you could use on anybody for saying almost anything critical about anybody or anything. We wouldn’t want to be judgmental of Benny Hinn, now would we? You see my point.

If I’m wrong, then I can be rebuked and corrected scripturally instead of with vague hints that deep down I’m just a mean old Pharisee.

Those last few sentences probably came out more strongly than I meant them to.

I never meant to imply that you are a mean old Pharisee. In fact, after I wrote my take I thought about it – I should clarify: I never want to be one of those people criticizing something that God is doing because it makes me uncomfortable or “I don’t like it”. But I don’t want to be mindless either :-) It’s all about spiritual discernment and wisdom. It’s all about being able to recognize what God is doing, even if it makes me uncomfortable.

I agree with you about the potential for manufacturing an emotional state of false worship. It’s something I’m deeply concerned about, actually – people can be more in love with “The Worship Experience” than they are in love with God.

But, again, that’s where discernment comes in. Words like “reverent and dignified” mean a LOT of different things to a LOT of different people. To some people reading this it means only hymns should be played. To others it means that nothing but organ should be played (although I believe there was a time when even the organ was considered a sinful twist to worship as well). To me reverent and dignified refers to the reverence and dignity we ascribe to God, and leaves the style of worship a lot more wide-open. I’ve been in churches where the song time was about as safe from any actual worship as you could get ;-) I went to a church like this for a long time and – God bless them! – lots of great things happened to me there, and God still worked and moved. But when we had to leave that city and move to our current home we visited a church in our neighborhood (the one we go to now) and I sat in the chair in tears during the worship time. Not that it was anything fantastic at all – it was just people sitting and singing. But they were singing the song “As The Deer” and – besides the fact that I’d hardly ever sang anything but a hymn in church – this great, relatively contemporary praise song that’s straight out of scripture just connected me to God.

In that church where I had come from, I once asked the music minister why we couldn’t do some praise and worship songs now and then. Why was it only always hymns? He said he had no choice – there were older couples in the church that would make his life miserable if he tried to change the style of music (he said it a lot nicer than that, of course). When I’m 60 I pray I will NEVER have that kind of spirit of threat toward my music minister just because he wants to do something out of my comfort zone.

I’m babbling a bit, but let me continue. I’ve talked to my wife before about this – there are some physical acts that are definitely biblical as forms of worship that just don’t do it for me – one is clapping. Whenever I hear someone say “Give a clap offering to the Lord” I cringe – when I clap it just doesn’t make me “feel” like I’m worshipping. Slapping my hands together just doesn’t say “God – I love You!” But just because it makes me uncomfortable to clap doesn’t mean that to others that isn’t an act of worship. It was certainly employed as an act of worship in the Psalms.

One act of worship (that I believe is biblical)that I have engaged in at times (hopefully quietly and reverently – I generally go back to the back of the room for this one) is lying on my face before God. It’s definitely a relatively rare occurrence for me (or really anyone else that I know) but there have been times recently – in July at our junior high camp – when I was hitting the floor, crying out to God in repentance and desperation (quietly, of course – I’m not about grabbing attention :-) – now, in some churches a dorky looking guy whose pushing forty who decided to lie down in the back of the sanctuary while a song was being played might be looked at askance. This is one of those cases where I hope I wouldn’t be the one doing the askance-ish looking

Other forms of worship don’t appear to have much Biblical basis at all (“Holy laughter”, for instance). Yes, we need to be discerning. I remember really enjoying the moment a few years back at a Dennis Jernigan concert at some church I wasn’t familiar with when he told the audience to please put away their tambourines :-) – not that I’m anti-tambourine, but they were playing them on EVERY song, even the slow ones. And – wow – none of these people had the spiritual gift of keeping a beat. :-)

The one thing about Hillsongs I have noticed on the few times I’ve seen them on TV is how good looking everyone is – from the singers to the band to the pastors. I’ve wondered if they don’t screen out the less attractive people :-)

I like substantive worship music too, but I think oftentimes people forget the worshipper’s heart is more important than his words (not that the latter doesn’t flow from the former, but hopefully you know what I mean).

And while we’re at it, I think there’s a great and wondrous theology in “yeah, yeah, yeah — Jesus loves me.”
I don’t know if this is a real song or just your invented parody of what you think modern worship sounds like, but I like:
a) The triple repetition of the “Yeah” is a common biblical construct meant to imply completeness. Think of other repeated phrases like “verily, verily” and “truly, truly.”
b) That Jesus loves me is an incredible theological truth! A perfect and holy God deigning to love an imperfect and unholy creature as myself? Pretty huge, IMHO.

So actually — “Yes, Yes, Yes! Jesus loves me!”

Things don’t have to be stated complexly to communicate precious truths.

It’s equally incredible that I can love Jesus, since — as a sinful and unholy creature — the only way I would even want to love Him is if He loved me first and put His love in me.
What a miracle, too, that I love Jesus!