Essentials Blue - Final Project

Essentials Blue Spring ’09 – Worship Experience - Final Project

For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Course with Dan Wilt

How do justice, spirituality, relationship, and beauty influence our vocation as worshippers?

When we choose to accept Jesus as our Savior, we become part of a family and community. We also take up a vocation as worshippers of God. While most of us have a vocation in the secular world, our spiritual vocation should be reflected in the secular world by our everyday existence and dealings. We are the messengers of God’s Word and as such have a duty to convey to those who don’t know him the life-changing story of what he gave to us. What we are to convey to others, however, is not our opinions but the true story. How and when we choose to tell others the story not only influences others, it also influences and tests us – it tells others how seriously we take our vocation. “Listening to God’s voice in scripture doesn’t put us in the position of having infallible opinions. It puts us where it put Jesus himself: in possession of a vocation, whether for a lifetime or for the next minute. Vocations are fragile, and are tested in performance.” (1) Hopefully we have chosen our spiritual vocation for a lifetime, not just when it is convenient for us. What Jesus did throughout his lifetime was anything but convenient for him.

To endure in our vocation for a lifetime takes perseverance, study, and dedication. We need to make time to learn all we can about Jesus, his life, his death, and his relationship with God his father. By doing this, we become skilled artisans and worthy of our vocation. “We are to be informed by the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus; by the leading of the Spirit; by the wisdom we find in scripture; by the fact of our baptism and all that it means; by the sense of God’s presence and guidance through prayer; and by the fellowship of other Christians, both our contemporaries and those of other ages whose lives and writings are ours to use as wise guides.” (2) When we are born, we are not expected to thrive or mature on our own or in a vacuum. To truly become a functioning member of society, we require interaction and instruction from other people. Likewise, to become a fully functioning member of our spiritual community requires relationship and influence of other Christians. And we learn not only from Christians who are here with us in body today, but those who are here with us in spirit - those who have left us their stories and insights through the Bible and other mediums. Studying these works of art and beauty lead us into a more full and loving relationship with God.

Even though it is necessary, even vital to our existence, to interact with the people we come in contact with, we need to remain separate and apart from their ways if their ways are not biblically correct or sound. We as Christians live by a code of ethics that is set out clearly in the Bible. “Christian ethics is not a matter of discovering what’s going on in the world and getting in tune with it. It isn’t a matter of doing things to earn God’s favor. It is not about trying to obey dusty rulebooks from long ago or far away. It is about practicing, in the present, the tunes we shall sing in God’s new world.” (3) We need to adhere to our code of ethics, no matter how difficult or seemingly unpopular. After all, we are new creatures in Christ and answer to a higher calling.

That calling is to become messengers and heralds – envoys if you will – of the good news God wants to impart to everyone. The good news is that he sent his son as the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that we could enter into a relationship with Him, and through that relationship discover the joy and beauty of all he has to offer. While the death of Jesus on the cross was not fair from a worldly view, it was just. Without it, we would not have access to God and his higher form of justice – the offer of eternal life. “As our high priest and perfect sacrifice, Jesus is our ‘password’ into God’s presence. Without his substitutionary sacrifice we could never draw near to God. . . . His access is sufficient and unique. Apart from Jesus Christ, we cannot approach God. . . . This makes a huge difference as we lead others to worship God.” (4)

We lead others to worship God through our actions, our music, our writings – our very lives. “We are called to be a part of God’s new creation, called to be agents of that new creation here and now. We are call to model and display the new creation in symphonies and family life, in restorative justice and poetry, in holiness and service to the poor, in politics and painting. . . . We are called to become people who can speak and live and paint and sing that word so that those who have heard its echoes can come and lend a hand in the larger project. That is the opportunity that stands before us, as gift and possibility. Christian holiness is not (as people often imagine) a matter of denying something good. It is about growing up and grasping something even better.” (5)

When we grow up, we put away childish things – both physically and spiritually. Our toys, the tools we used during our maturing process, are put away and become memories and experiences to draw on in our adult lives. As we grow, our focus should change from frivolous, selfish pursuits to pursuits that develop and nurture a secure future for us and others. We need to make ourselves living sacrifices to God and his will for our lives. As we mature we come to realize that without God, we are nothing and all our efforts are useless without the intervention of Jesus. “All our offerings are humbled by the work of Christ because they would be unacceptable to God without him. All our offerings are exalted because when they are joined to the atoning sacrifice of the Savior, God accepts them as though his own Son were offering them. . . . It’s not the excellence of our offering that makes our worship acceptable but the excellence of Christ. . . . Our worship is accepted not on the basis of what we have done, but on the basis of what Christ has done.” (6) This truth is one of the messages that we should be passing on to others when we are leading them in or to worship.

And when we are leading worship, we need to keep in mind at all times that it is not about “me”, it is about God. It becomes so easy to make what we do a performance for our earthly audience, when in actuality is for only an audience of one – God. That is the audience we are “performing” for and playing or singing to. And that audience doesn’t look at how perfect our execution is or how meaningful our construction is or even how touching our sincerity is. He looks at whether or not the reason for our performance is in the right place and for the right reason – to exalt God, not self. God looks beyond the performance to the reason behind it. And if the reason behind it is not the right one, our worship is rejected and we cannot come before him. “We need to remember that our access to God is not based on last week’s performance, today’s practices, or tomorrow’s potential. . . . God poured out on his Son the cup of wrath we deserved. And Jesus drank the last drop. No wrath or judgment remains for those who have trusted in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. . . . Christ’s work on the cross also assures us that our worship is acceptable to God.” (7)

In pursuing our vocation, let us always strive to be the best we can be and to keep in mind the ultimate goal – eternal life and relationship with God – and leading others to that goal. Let us not simply settle for what we can do now, but let us work to continually improve our gifts and make them as perfect as we can. Let us keep in mind that “[m]ade for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. . . . It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, and stewards of the day that is dawning.” (8) Let us honor God and those we lead in and to worship by being what He wants us to be – the best Christian and human being that we can be. And let us by our example be a leader to others and lead them on the right path – the path to justice and beauty and a lasting relationship with God.

(1) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), p. 189.

(2) N.T.Wright, ibid, p. 224.

(3) N.T.Wright, ibid, p. 222.

(4) Bob Kauflin, Worship Matters, Leading Other to Encounter the Greatness of God,
(Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2008), p. 74.

(5) N.T.Wright, ibid, p. 236, 237.

(6) Bob Kauflin, ibid, p. 75.

(7) Bob Kauflin, ibid, p. 74.

(8) N.T.Wright, ibid, p. 237.