Come Ye Sinners

I came across this song last week on Mars Hill's worship music website (Seattle - Mark Driscoll, not Rob Bell). I wondered who actually adapted this Joseph Hart hymn to a contemporary version and I've found recordings by Todd Agnew and Cambridge. I think I like Cambridge's version best, but Todd Agnew's version came out first, and his version is featured in this video.

This song and video really hit me in a big way after coming back from a retreat with our youth group. One of the messages we heard from the main speaker was from Luke 5:27-31, that we needed to stop avoiding the "sinners." Jesus said that "It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick...," and he risked his reputation on a regular basis to call "sinners to repentance."

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.

This verse should be taken to heart by those of us who have already been saved and can tend to get comfy only interacting with other believers. We can't expect people to get better before we are willing to associate with them. We can't expect that people will come up to us and ask "What must I do to be saved?" If we recognize that the world is trapped in darkness, then those of us with the light have to be willing to take the initiative and go into the darkness, bearing Christ's light. How else will we get the chance to share the Savior with them? This song is great to sing, but it is more important that we live it out, actually seeking opportunities to call "sinners" to come to the saviour.

Confession of a Nigerian Christian

This prayer of confession comes from The Oxford Book of Prayer, which despite containing prayers from false religions, has many wonderful Christian prayers that I have found to be a blessing. It's kind of humorous, but the metaphor is perfect for expressing the subtle way the enemy can get a foothold in our lives through sin.

"God in Heaven, you have helped my life to grow like a tree. Now something has happened. Satan, like a bird, has carried in pone of his choosing after another. Before I knew it he had built a dwelling place and was living in it. tonight, my father, I am throwing out both the bird and the nest."

Prayer of a Nigerian Christian

Lord help us all to throw out the bird and the nest. Amen.

Christian Music Cartoon

This is a really funny cartoon done by Joshua Harris back in 1996. I think it's still pretty true of much of the Christian music industry today. I wish it weren't. Click on the image to see it in a larger format.

Thanks to Rich at sounddoxology for the link to this.

Origins of Sunday Worship Might Not Be Pagan

Some of you know this about me already, but for some time now I've had issues with participating in "Christian holidays." The first problem is that none of these special days of worship were instituted by God, as opposed to the Old testament ones such as Passover or Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles). But if that were my only qualm, that would be insufficient because we see that even Jesus participated in Chanukah (see John 10), which is not a specifically God-ordained festival. The real struggle I continue to have with Christian holidays is their origins in pagan worship.

For example, Easter is directly related to the Babylonian spring time worship of their queen of heaven, Astarte (Isthar). The 40 days of Lent have strong similarities to the ancient fasting and mourning practices of the pagan Babylonians, Egyptians, and Mexican sun worshipers. Christmas was used as a substitute for the disgusting celebration of Saturnalia, though history shows us that many of the sinful practices were allowed to continue under the supposed new Christian celebration.

Here are a couple of links that provide more details on the pagan origins of Christian holidays. I don't agree with everything they say by any means, they simply provide some good historical and biblical references in regards to this topic.

Pagan-Holidays

Christmas_The Real Story

This concern about pagan origins has also been associated with Christians gathering to worship on Sundays. However, I was recently encouraged when I came across an article that argues against the idea that Sunday worship was another substitute for pagan practices. Click here for a chance to read the whole article. Here's my quick summary...

D.M. Canright, a seventh-day adventist minister researched this in the early 1900's, inquiring of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum in London, Harvard University, The Smithsonian and a few others. The compiled answers from each institution give a resounding "No" in answer to the question "Did Sunday worship come from paganism?" See some examples...

Question 1: Did the pagan Romans and Greeks ever

have any regular weekly day of rest from secular

work?

Answer: No.

Question 4: Did they have any special day of the

week when individuals went to the temples to pray

or make offerings?

Answer: No; both for Greeks and Romans the month

was the unit and not the week.

Question 5: As Sunday was sacred to the Sun, Monday

to the Moon, Saturday to Saturn, etc., were those

supposed deities worshipped on their own particular

days more than on any other days?

Answer: No; the old worship of the gods was disappearing

when the seven-day week came about. The

signifi cance of the deities’ names was astrological,

not religious, e.g.,

Question 10: Did the pagan reverence for Sunday

have anything to do in influencing Christians to

select that day as their rest day?

Answer: No; it can hardly be said that there

was any special reverence for Sunday in pagan

times (see answer to Number 5).

My conclusion is that there is not a strong argument against Sunday worship in the way that there is against Easter or Christmas, nor is there a strong biblical case in favor of the church meeting primarily on Sundays. There's some liberty there. That's helpful to me cause now I can just wrestle with the days that happen a couple times a year, and not the one that happens weekly :)

Ethnodology? Part 2

In part 1 of this post I shared from an article by Robin Harris (December issue of Worship Leader) which argued that our responses to music are learned, not intrinsic. Because of this, in regards to cross-cultural missions, we need to be sensitive to helping people worship God in their "heart music," instead of forcing a particular Western style on them and expecting that they'll adapt (as was done during periods of European colonialism ).

In another article in this same issue of WL I found an interesting thought on Revelation 21:26. This passage is describing the New Jerusalem and says that "The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it." I had never thought much on that verse. What is the glory and honor of the nations? According to Frank Fortunato it is "their redeemed cultural expressions." If he's right, that means there will be a great variety of worship music styles in the world to come. Mark Noll, a Notre Dame professor, gives us a great picture of what this could look like in his multicultural interpretation of Psalm 150.

"Praise Him with syncopation and on the beat. Praise Him with 5-tones (the Thai xylophone), 12-tones (most Western music), 24-tones (Arab music), and all scales in between. Praise him a cappella, with orchestra, and with drum set. Praise Him with works of supernal intelligence and greatest simplification. Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! Together!"

Our desire should be to see different cultural expressions redeemed, not automatically discarded because they have an association with something "un-Christian."' We're in a fallen world, everything has the potential to be connected with something negative. But is the style itself really sinful, or is it just the way that it has been used by sinful or misguided people that is the issue?

For example, does a muezzin (muslim prayer singer) have to stop singing that style because he's now become a follower of Christ? I don't think so, but the theology of his songs will change and obviously he's not going to be able to sing for a mosque anymore. We all know that rock music (which is a broad term) has been used to encourage people to engage in various sins. But does that mean that it can't be redeemed and used to get us excited about living for God? Perhaps the volume needs to come down a little and the words need to be sung more clearly, but God can certainly be praised with it. Or how about a drum circle? In some cultures a style like that is used in ancestor worship and going into trances. But that doesn't mean Africans have to forsake their drum music. In fact I think drum circles, when removed from idol worship contexts, can be uniquely used to encourage unity amongst believers and participation in worship because of how easy it can be to join in on them.

These concepts of "redeemed cultural expressions" and "heart music" could be applied right here at home in any churches where worship wars still rage. After all, division over worship styles is often caused by a clash of sub-cultures (age groups, ethnicities, denominations, social classes). The most difficult part is probably getting certain groups of people to acknowledge that most styles are in fact redeemable and valid for use in worship. After that, a body of believers could then focus on "loving one another" (1 John 3:11) by encouraging the use of whatever styles helped different members of the congregation to worship in their "heart music," rather than complaining because a certain style isn't their preference. Worship leaders could be intentional about finding out different people's heart music. There will still probably be one or two dominant styles that suit the majority of a church body, but worship leaders could still change things up from time to time in order to give a smaller minority in the body the chance to worship in their heart music.

I am a Promise

So I'm working on a binder of music with about 15 songs in it for our children's ministry. It includes some easy praise choruses, hymns and children's songs. I had to get lots of song suggestions from the kids' ministry leaders because I really don't know too many children's church songs. I didn't grow up with it, just like I didn't really grow up with hymns, apparently you miss out on that when you don't grow up in the church. Some of you will laugh, but I've just now become familiar with the song "I am a Promise."

My sermon this weekend was based on James 4:13-17, specifically talking about making plans and seeking God's will for our lives. I thought it was neat how this kids' sing song tied in with my message. Seriously though, instead of telling our kids they can be anything they want to be, we should teach them this song. "I can go anywhere He wants me to go, I can be anything that He wants me to be." You never know how much of an impact a simple little song like this might have on their life later on. It might even help prepare them to take James 4 seriously as they get older.

Just in case you're up for something cute, I found this video when I was searching for the chords to this song. I'm pretty sure my baby girl is gonna be this cute when she gets to be that age.

Ethnodoxology? Part 1

Worship Leader Magazine had a great theme in their last issue, "We Being Many, are One," focusing on a global view of worship. I was challenged by an article called the "The Great Misconception," written by an ethnodoxologist named Robin Harris. An ethno-what? An ethnodoxologist, a person that studies the way people worship the Lord around the world. Yeah, I didn't know there was such a thing either.

This article makes the case that the oft-repeated aphorism, "Music is the universal language," is false. Harris says that our responses to music are learned, not intrinsic, and because of this we need to seek to give people the opportunity to worship God in their own heart languages and music. Unfortunately, the Western church did a very poor job of this in the 19th and 20th centuries (probably before that too). Some call it, "music colonialism." There was (and often still is) this idea of cultural evolutionism, where Western/European culture is considered the most highly developed, and so all other cultures need to be brought up to our level. Oh the arrogance. So missionaries would translate the words in their hymnals, but keep the music the same, giving no consideration to this other culture's musical languages and how they might worship God in their unique way.

I've witnessed a bit of an example of this "colonialism" on my trips to Africa. In the summer of 2004 I attended a church service held in a tent in a squatters camp called Five Rand. An American team from a large church in the south had been there months earlier and had given this church an electric keyboard. As we worshiped the Lord in song, the person playing the keyboard used the same three chord progression in every song. It wasn't his fault, that was the extent of his abilities on this new instrument. What was worse was that the keyboard speaker wasn't very powerful, and the volume was cranked, so most of the time there was a very unpleasant distorted sound. To make matters worse, the only electricity this church had came from a generator, so that had to be running outside of the tent while we were trying to sing. Not to mention, this church had very little money, so it was costing them extra to buy the extra gas needed to use this keyboard on Sundays.

Later that week we were invited to this church's choir concert. To our delight, they performed in what was much more of their heart language and music. The only other instruments used besides voice were different sized hand-made drums. The sound was incredible! I remember having tears well up and sensing God's presence. I thought, "Lord this is the sound of the nations worshiping you." It was so great that one of our team members was able to record a CD of this choir and bring it back to the states to share with our culture. The well-meaning Americans that had donated the keyboard were trying to fix something that wasn't broken, and it sent the message to this African church that doing things the American way was what would be best for their ministry too. Ironically, it was this same church that helped fund the distribution of the CD our team had recorded. God sure has a sense of humor :)

In my next post I want to share a little bit more on this global view of worship and then bring these considerations into the more local arena of worship wars over style of music.