Episode 29: Remember, Rehearse, Respond

00;00;02;17 - 00;00;29;08
Brenton
This is further a weekly show for the people of Harmony Bible Church, where we seek to revisit and expand on Sunday sermons with the goal of growing deeper in biblical truth that transforms our lives. Welcome back to Further. I'm Brenton Grimm, and this week we're coming out of a one off topical sermon by Christian Fry on corporate worship.

00;00;29;13 - 00;00;36;16
Brenton
And so to discuss that more, I have Christian Fry himself and Chris Carr. Welcome, guys.

00;00;36;18 - 00;00;37;12
Christian
Good to be back.

00;00;37;18 - 00;00;39;14
Chris
Yep, great to be here.

00;00;39;16 - 00;01;04;26
Brenton
So I think most of us to some extent at least, have seen the issue of corporate worship divide local churches. And for a while it was kind of a common thing for churches to split their Sunday services into two groups those that prefer traditional music and those who kind of like contemporary music. As as it said, I have both of these things in quotes here.

00;01;04;26 - 00;01;24;27
Brenton
So I think that this likely had more significant implications on the body than just being able to hear the type of music you prefer. But why do you think that in general, the corporate worship issue, and I think specifically music has been so divisive?

00;01;25;00 - 00;01;45;20
Christian
Yeah, I'm part of what I talked about on Sunday was, you know, everyone that goes to a church for the most part is is there for the singing or is going to be a part of the singing. And so because of that, I think naturally everyone's going to have an opinion about what it should look like and sound like.

00;01;45;23 - 00;02;17;17
Christian
And so, yeah, there I think you just have this this logical complexity. There are a lot more people involved in that part of corporate worship than really any other. And so you're going to see the most division in opinions, getting the better of churches and people. And then on top of that, you know, music is an art form, and art tends to be pretty, pretty divisive in and of itself because it's in a sense it's the style of art can be very subjective.

00;02;17;24 - 00;02;22;27
Christian
And so you also have that dynamic at play, too.

00;02;23;00 - 00;03;11;00
Chris
Yeah, everybody has their music preferences, right? Different styles that we like. And so we bring that in and unless we're really humble and really thinking about others and really motivated to be unified, which honestly I'm thankful that that seems to be the general vibe of our church. Yeah, it can get it can get really divisive. My experience is, is that there tends also to be quite a few misunderstandings and even flawed teachings in regards to what music is acceptable and what music isn't.

00;03;11;01 - 00;03;51;11
Chris
Yeah, and you know that some of that is tied to our culture. It's tied even to what used to be called the origin of rock music and coming out of a rebellious time in our country's history and all of those kind of things. But there is like a times I've seen a misunderstanding of even what scripture teaches. You know, you go to Psalm 150 and we see there the psalmist encouraging the the Israelites to praise the Lord with trumpet and lute and harp and tambourine and even dance.

00;03;51;14 - 00;03;59;10
Chris
I guess we could talk about that too, which rings five cymbals. And then it says this praise him with loud clashing cymbals.

00;03;59;12 - 00;03;59;28
Brenton
Yeah.

00;04;00;02 - 00;04;29;12
Chris
And and so, you know, there are there churches who actually say they don't use any instruments at all. And and yet we have actually clear evidence that we should actually be using instruments in worship. And so I think I say all that. I think there's there's been quite a bit of flawed teaching when it comes to this that we bring in along with our preferences.

00;04;29;12 - 00;05;03;03
Chris
And it can be a real recipe for for divisiveness. And historically, I mean, there's an old term, I say old now probably 20, 25 years called the worship wars and thankfully would largely past that in most, most places. And certainly we are here. But that had to do with preferences, a clash of preferences and misunderstandings and flawed teaching in regards to what the what, what's acceptable, what's not acceptable biblically.

00;05;03;06 - 00;05;29;24
Brenton
Yeah, well, we'll probably get into it a little later more, but maybe I'll just pose this question to you. But the people I'd say that came in kind of upset about what the direction that worship was going. Yeah, it probably was preference, but that's not how they would have seen it. They would have seen it as, you know, this is a this is a biblical issue or, you know, there would have been some sort of justification past just preference.

00;05;29;24 - 00;05;41;13
Brenton
But how how do we rightly draw that line between preference and and what is actually acceptable biblically?

00;05;41;16 - 00;05;51;21
Chris
Yeah, well, I think that's where we have to go to the scriptures. And, you know, so and I'm not the musical expert here.

00;05;51;24 - 00;05;53;09
Brenton
CHURCH Why, for sure.

00;05;53;09 - 00;06;30;00
Chris
So definitely want him to, to, to speak into this. But you know, there can be a difference between the actual, you know, the music that's played in the lyrics that go along with that. So we've got to kind of pass that out sometimes as well. And I think that where some maybe the many in the past have gone wrong in the church is that this idea that things like, well, let's just, you know, get specific drums in particular they're you know, prohibited by the Bible.

00;06;30;03 - 00;06;56;22
Chris
And that's just not the case. And there's even, you know, and I've literally heard this, that that the origin of, you know, rock music, the drums, the beat, where that comes from, I'm not even going to get into it because I think it's applicable. It is. But it's also really it's really, really sad. And it it's it actually can make me pretty angry.

00;06;56;22 - 00;07;21;18
Chris
So I don't want to be angry that it's just a false narrative that has just been spouted off about where that all comes from. And yet, I mean, I just read a song where we're talking about symbols and we're talking about loud, loud music to worship the Lord. And it doesn't mean like anything, I think anything goes. Everything needs to also, we're told, needs to be done decently in order.

00;07;21;20 - 00;07;47;03
Chris
And so this is there's a lot of black holes in this discussion and I do think we're going to get on to this, too, though. The the lyrics that we're singing are more important and in my opinion, much, much more important than actual the musical style that we we are playing the songs in. So I don't know how you would comment on that, Christian, but.

00;07;47;03 - 00;08;12;14
Christian
Yeah, well, you know, you're talking about the worship words, quote unquote from 30, 25 years ago or whatever. And but there's been much division on this topic really since the dawn of time in the medieval times. There was something called Diablos in Musica, which is, I think, Latin for the Devil in music. And there was a specific interval.

00;08;12;14 - 00;08;24;22
Christian
So to notes being played at the same time, which is called a tritone. And in the medieval times, the church literally made it like illegal to play those two notes together. And it's not a pleasant that's not pleasant harmony.

00;08;24;22 - 00;08;26;00
Brenton
It's like used in horror movies.

00;08;26;00 - 00;08;51;12
Christian
Right, Right. It's what like ambulances used to like the me really. And yeah, was really a crime to play it and yet again people are shifting meaning in the content of our worship from the words to the vehicle that's delivering them. And we went from, oh, it's the actual music itself that can be of the devil to oh, it's the instruments now that are the devil are from the devil.

00;08;51;14 - 00;09;19;12
Christian
So the problem has unfortunately been reoccurring. It just kind of shifted in how it manifests itself. But yeah, I'll just second kind of what you've already said, Chris. It's all about what we're singing and how that's playing itself out in, in the why of our singing. And you know, there, there's a myriad of ways you can sing that I just sent written recently some it's called Violent worship.

00;09;19;14 - 00;09;20;07
Brenton
Is that what it was called?

00;09;20;08 - 00;09;33;01
Christian
Yeah. And it's like it's, it's heavy metal. Yeah. Right. That's worship. Um, so even that genre can be redeemed with a worship for a reverent style.

00;09;33;03 - 00;09;59;03
Brenton
Yeah, it's a, it's interesting to kind of think through. I was just thinking about the framework that Chris you had brought up, I don't know, a while ago of redeem or Reject it. I think to, to some extent and again, maybe we should just hold onto this for a little later. But the way that the Church has, has tried to redeem really the culture's use of of instruments in in rock and roll.

00;09;59;03 - 00;10;18;26
Brenton
And I mean, that that's kind of where a lot of these things have its roots. That's where our current worship music kind of comes from is from our from our culture. And so just the whether that's a good thing that we've tried to redeem that stuff or if we should have just outright rejected it. And I think that's the argument of some some other people.

00;10;18;26 - 00;10;27;15
Brenton
And so, yeah, we can save this. Let's go to the next one. So I want to talk a little bit about liturgy.

00;10;27;18 - 00;10;29;00
Chris
Of course you do. Yeah, of course.

00;10;29;00 - 00;11;02;26
Brenton
And I think when most people hear the word, I guess U2, they think of more of a traditional church with a lot of repetition and sitting and standing and whatnot. But if we're being accurate with the term, every church has some some form of liturgy. And so can you guys kind of define what that word is and how we've really like what we've landed on that that we feel like we need to include in every Sunday service?

00;11;02;29 - 00;11;28;20
Chris
Sure. The dictionary definition of liturgy, just to get us all kind of on the same footing here is a form or formulary according to which public religious worship, especially Christian worship, is conducted. So that's what we're we're talking about here. I actually think this is a is an important discussion, all joking aside, and we'll maybe come back a little bit later.

00;11;28;20 - 00;11;53;24
Chris
I like that word form because in my opinion, the purpose of corporate worship, one of the purposes of corporate worship is to form us. And so we can we can talk a little bit more about that. And I would say, Christian, maybe would it be fair to say that we're our liturgy is in process and we're working on it and thinking through that for sure.

00;11;53;24 - 00;12;05;29
Chris
But essentially what we're talking about with liturgy is, is the form of our services, which we do have a general form, a basic form that we follow week in and week out.

00;12;06;02 - 00;12;33;06
Christian
Yeah. And while we're always trying to revise it and sharpen it, I would say there's four there's four essentials that have never changed and we'll never change. And that would be scripture. We're always going to open the Bible and read Scripture or have it taught. There's always to be singing. So song, there's always going to be, or at least the majority of the time is going to be some sort of story component.

00;12;33;06 - 00;13;08;09
Christian
So even this past Sunday, you know, we're commissioning the Dingle times and there's a story there, there's a testimony there on display. And so it maybe isn't always through like an official testimony video. We're always trying to incorporate stories not just of the Bible but of the church into our services. And then a fourth would be prayer. We're always planning prayer in the service, whether it's whoever is preaching, praying, like as a close over communion or there's a is an actual prayer element carved out like this coming Sunday, we'll be praying for teachers and students who are going back to school.

00;13;08;12 - 00;13;17;09
Christian
So I would say those four are fundamental. And then out from there, yeah, there's a little bit more wrestling that takes place.

00;13;17;12 - 00;13;17;20
Chris
Yeah.

00;13;17;20 - 00;13;23;09
Brenton
And we would include like sacraments, like communion, right? We're just not necessarily a an every week.

00;13;23;09 - 00;13;44;09
Christian
Things seem like baptisms. Sure. Giving. That's well that would be another pillar to you know, we used to pass the plate every week which was more it felt more like a service element. Whereas now we just kind of have to announce here are the ways to give. But even that we do that every single week because it's part of our liturgy.

00;13;44;13 - 00;13;52;29
Christian
It's not just because we want people's money, it's a part of worship. And so it's part of, you know, to to remove the word form, part of a form as a church.

00;13;53;02 - 00;14;08;09
Brenton
Okay. So how and or why has harmony landed on these things? Is it where would we go in Scripture for for this kind of information?

00;14;08;11 - 00;14;37;28
Chris
Yeah, there are a number of different passages. One key one would be access to 42 and following where we were told how the first church, once it was formed on the day of Pentecost, how they immediately began to gather and worship and what was included in those gatherings. And so you have the preaching in the word, you have prayer, you have communion.

00;14;38;00 - 00;15;09;13
Chris
We we don't actually see singing there, but we we do see throughout the New Testament instructions like the in Colossians, in Ephesians specifically to sing to one another and hymns and songs and spiritual psalms and spiritual songs. And so, you know, this is more, you know, Christian's message on Sunday was not, you know, from one primary passage, but he brought a lot of different passages into it.

00;15;09;13 - 00;15;34;16
Chris
And that was necessary given given this kind of topic, you know, is a little bit of a systematic theology of of of corporate worship. And so we see we don't always see all of these elements together. In fact, I'm not sure there's even there's one place where we see all of the different elements together, but we do see them throughout specifically the New Testament.

00;15;34;18 - 00;15;41;02
Chris
And so that's where I mean, we could we could run through the passages. He he ran through most of them on Sunday.

00;15;41;04 - 00;15;55;01
Christian
And in to yeah, there's not explicit singing, but there is praising that words used. So I think you could wager to to define that as a form of singing to.

00;15;55;03 - 00;16;33;14
Brenton
So would you say that I guess I guess I'll say why why do different denominations come up with different liturgies? Why? Why do some do communion weekly? Why are there because I mean, like you look at an Episcopalian or Anglican or kind of that more high church model is is very different than than what we do. Where does that come from, The kind of repetition the we have to read from the Old Testament, we have to read from the New Testament every week.

00;16;33;16 - 00;16;51;27
Brenton
Where do you think those things come from? And it doesn't I mean, your answer doesn't seem to be preference at all. And so like, do you just not see the the biblical warrant for these things or and maybe specifically we'll talk about the communion one way. Why isn't that happening every week here?

00;16;52;00 - 00;17;41;09
Chris
So I mean, maybe come at this from two different ways. I'm not a church historian and so somebody might correct me on this. I think a lot of this can be traced back to the to the Reformation and that many of the the high church. Yeah, liturgies are tied more to historically the Catholic approach. And once we hit the Protestant Reformation, we see there the moving away from that or giving the churches and then the new denominations that sprang out, some of them, the Lutheran church is still pretty liturgical for sure, but but then others are not as structured.

00;17;41;12 - 00;18;00;05
Chris
But I mean, the way that I look at it is I think the New Testament lays out for us the elements of what should be included in the service. But I don't think we find anywhere where it says you should. I mean, you can't you cannot go to anywhere in the New Testament that says you should do communion every Sunday.

00;18;00;07 - 00;18;23;22
Chris
And so I think it's fine for for denomination or for a church to have communion every Sunday. I think that that's even good. But I don't think it's any there's there's anywhere we can go and we can say you must have it every time that you gather. Now, probably we have some people who would argue with me and but, but you kind of have to read between the lines to get to to get to that.

00;18;23;24 - 00;18;57;25
Chris
But I do think we can see, you know, preaching needs to be a part of it. We talked about singing prayer and those three three things in particular, pretty much in every example that we have of ever seeing corporate worship or where corporate worship is addressed, those three things are included. And then the other ones, like the ordinances, you call them sacraments, ordinances, and even giving, you know, we have giving as a part of our service.

00;18;57;27 - 00;19;16;05
Chris
I think Christian already addressed that. It's not as much of a part of us as it used to be. Sometimes I think maybe we need to go, go, go back to that. That's will be a good discussion. But those things are not and they're not actually mandated or we don't actually see them included in every example of corporate worship that we have in the New Testament.

00;19;16;05 - 00;19;34;18
Chris
So I really I really have a hard time with the idea that if that that we can mandate something that's not mandate that and spelled out very clearly in Scripture, even if we can see pretty strongly that that that's the case, I think we've got to be really, really careful about that.

00;19;34;21 - 00;19;40;14
Brenton
Yeah. So you'd say there's some there's some freedom in in what churches decide to do?

00;19;40;16 - 00;20;10;06
Chris
Absolutely. And I think that and again, there's there's a wide variety of opinions on this. But I think the New Testament shows us the autonomy of the local church. And I think that that's fairly clear to me anyway. People would argue about that. And so I think as as of course, that's certainly harmony is view on it because we are completely autonomous.

00;20;10;08 - 00;20;29;26
Chris
Right. Right. And that means that individual elders are free to lead their congregations in the way that they are bound by the conscience, their conscience by the Holy Spirit, not based on the denominational hierarchy.

00;20;29;29 - 00;20;52;02
Christian
Okay. Yeah, you kind of said like it's not preferential, but to a degree it is because those preferences are borne out of tradition. Like Chris was saying, a lot of this is kind of traced back to tradition through the through the years, through the millennia. So like seeing, for example, we were talking about how, you know, there's the traditional versus contemporary battle.

00;20;52;02 - 00;21;08;04
Christian
And you know, I have a cousin who is in a church that only sings the Psalms. You know, I think it's it's Dutch reformed or something like that. Yeah. So they, they take like, oh, the singing of Psalms is, is like the way to do it. And so they would never sing a song like Great in the Garden or something.

00;21;08;06 - 00;21;27;17
Christian
Yeah. And you know, but we on the other hand we wouldn't just like open our, our Bibles and sing through a song word for word. Neither of those is necessarily wrong. And I don't think my cousin thinks any less of me because we don't just sing the songs. Maybe he does. I don't think he does, and I don't think any less of him.

00;21;27;20 - 00;21;36;02
Christian
Those are just preference show decisions that our churches have made that I think, again, have trickled down from tradition.

00;21;36;04 - 00;22;11;22
Brenton
Yeah, I mean, some of it I think is probably erring on the side of conservative conservatism, of kind of being careful in in what we decide and the the like Presbyterian Presbyterian view of this would be called the regulative principle of worship. So only what is explicitly stated in in Scripture is what we're allowed to do. And so that's kind of where you get the Psalm only, whereas we're kind of the normative side of that, where we'll we'll allow other things in as well.

00;22;11;22 - 00;22;17;12
Brenton
And so, yeah, that's definitely a discussion that gets heated between yes, between some of those people.

00;22;17;19 - 00;22;39;13
Chris
I think. I think the answer is somewhere in between, because I would say, you know, I would say only what we see in the New Testament. But I would say we should we should include those things that are in the New Testament. And there are some people who are normative who think, you know, really than the New Testament, or at least in practice, the New Testament has like nothing to say to us.

00;22;39;13 - 00;22;41;01
Brenton
About our.

00;22;41;04 - 00;23;12;08
Chris
Liturgy of worship and kind of any anything goes. And yeah, so and, you know, so just, you know, give you an example here is that you'll, you'll find churches that will not like sometimes at Christmas or even leading up to Easter, they'll have an Easter pageant or children's, you know, Christmas, you know, show or whatever. And it's called a cantata, anything like that.

00;23;12;11 - 00;23;52;03
Chris
And I'm not opposed to any of those things in principle, but I am opposed to them supplanting the preaching of the word. I have every conviction that the the word should be preached every Sunday and it should have the central place. And in every Sunday worship service. And I think I can back that up by by the word and so that's where so that's a little more regulative than the normative without going in and saying that it's only what we see in the New Testament that's acceptable.

00;23;52;05 - 00;24;00;15
Chris
I don't know that that I don't know that the New Testament is that prescriptive when it comes to worship.

00;24;00;17 - 00;24;23;21
Brenton
But one interesting topic that I think we could talk about, and especially that Christian is here, I don't know if most people have ever even considered the work that is put into song selection here at Harmony. And so could you kind of explain what's what's all involved in in the way we choose music and what actually gets played on Sunday?

00;24;23;23 - 00;24;27;17
Christian
Yeah, it's it's pretty simple. Whatever Chris Carr wants, we do.

00;24;27;19 - 00;24;31;18
Brenton
Well, he's just listening. Okay. K Love Day waiting for the next one.

00;24;31;18 - 00;24;37;02
Chris
You've been waiting the whole podcast to say. I think.

00;24;37;04 - 00;25;09;05
Christian
No, it is not that simple. It is not a a singular there's not a singular individual that's that's calling the shots by themselves. We approach it through a plurality of, of opinions and insights, starting with what songs are we going to include in our repertoire, as it were, even What songs should we phase out? You know, what songs are is maybe are our body kind of tired of singing or are they just kind of feel stale too?

00;25;09;05 - 00;25;27;00
Christian
Yeah. What new songs are we going to bring in? So I guess I'll start there. It can happen in a variety of ways, but typically we generally to do 3 to 4 songs a year, new songs a year. So once a quarter and the worship leaders are usually the ones listening to the most music and have the strongest opinions.

00;25;27;00 - 00;26;03;04
Christian
So we'll kind of have one or two songs apiece. So between the four of us that will bring to the table and then kind of hash out, yeah, which, which of these we want to kind of send up the rest of the, the totem pole and then the whole service planning crew, which includes all of our campus pastors, Brant and yourself, all of our production staff, and then Clay Baker, our executive pastor, they're kind of all on that I guess, team for the board and the songs will go to them and you guys will just kind of say, I like this one the best, maybe this one second piece and you'll give us the why.

00;26;03;11 - 00;26;32;17
Christian
And then from there it's basically okay, you know, which one got the most votes. And we typically go with that one and it works out pretty well, I would say, the majority of the time. So that's the most common way. Occasionally, a lot of a lot of people will come up to me about a particular song, like I'll get four or five comments over the course of a couple of months about how I've been listening to this new song, and I would love to do it in that we've we've introduced songs that way that Belong is actually kind of came to me that way.

00;26;32;19 - 00;26;50;29
Christian
I didn't really want to do that song. Now because it's a good song, but I feel like we had other similar songs to it. Yeah, just stylistically and structurally. But so many people were like, Oh man, have you heard this song? But it belongs. I love it. So finally I was like, All right, we'll do that. So yeah, trying to keep an ear to the ground, so to speak, is the way we do it as well.

00;26;51;06 - 00;27;07;27
Christian
And then occasionally I will, you know, we'll have like when we had our suffering series last year, Son of Suffering had just been released and I was kind of like, Look, this is kind of a no brainer song to do. So as long as everyone's on board with it, I'll kind of push push this song through that way.

00;27;07;27 - 00;27;26;12
Christian
That's that usually doesn't happen, but occasionally the starts kind of align and it makes sense for us to to go after one that way. So that's kind of how we do it on a macro level, on a micro level, week to week, the worship leaders will get together and have the the texts for a given month pulled up.

00;27;26;13 - 00;27;49;08
Christian
So like these next seven weeks it's been or it's going to be Romans eight and we will we'll use that as a as a guide to. Okay what songs are talking about some of the content here. And I remember like in the big story series when we were in like the Old Testament, some weeks it was like, I have no idea what song matches up with the the Book of Judges or whatever.

00;27;49;11 - 00;28;11;29
Christian
So we just kind of shoot from the hip and the Holy Spirit does. And occasionally Chris will have, Hey, I'm going to go this direction. It'd be great to close with this song or whatever. And so the bottom line is it's very collaborative. It's not just me saying this song, it's not just Chris saying this song. We do it as a team, and that's very important to us.

00;28;12;05 - 00;28;36;11
Brenton
Yeah, from the perspective of kind of week, week to week, it kind of fits in with what you were talking about earlier with story, right, that we're trying to tell kind of a consistent story through one service. So based upon that and that's really dictated by what's being preached that we can and not anything else. So whatever the text is, that's kind of what we kind of build that build that service around.

00;28;36;14 - 00;28;46;17
Brenton
Right. I remember not too long after you came here, I forget the number, but we had some like ridiculous number of songs that were in rotation. Do you remember how many that was?

00;28;46;17 - 00;28;49;09
Christian
I was like hundreds. It was crazy. Way too many.

00;28;49;15 - 00;29;10;14
Brenton
So I remember you kind of run into that with the rest of the team and call them those down and yeah, come to a place where we're, you know, I think one thing that we kind of tossed around a lot is the band and the staff are here in these songs constantly. And so we get tired of them first.

00;29;10;16 - 00;29;29;15
Brenton
But by the time we're kind of getting tired of them, the the congregation is just starting to learn them right then. So so we're about by cutting that number down, we're kind of, I think, really kind of encouraging some some engagement from the from the congregation, too.

00;29;29;17 - 00;29;55;07
Christian
Yeah, absolutely. And we actually have a like a Google Sheets page where we organize our song pool into categories. So we have like a new category, which it's kind of a relative term term because some of these songs are closer to like two years old, but they feel new to us, they're newer to the church. And then we have like our staples to songs that like we play these out in a given week and even event and they're going to go great.

00;29;55;09 - 00;30;21;15
Christian
And there's about 40 songs between those two categories. And then we have a discernment column, songs that maybe are really good, maybe they're a little bit old, maybe they feel a little stale if we try to do them too much. But they still have their place here in there. And then hymns, of course, have their own category. And then more recently, we've we've kind of started what we call a vintage category, which could be an offensive term because these are songs that are somewhere in between, like what's new and current and what's like a hymn.

00;30;21;16 - 00;30;25;03
Christian
Yeah. So songs from like the eighties and nineties.

00;30;25;06 - 00;30;31;03
Chris
Early aughts. Yeah. Well, what's vintage to you? It's not vintage to me, so.

00;30;31;06 - 00;30;31;14
Christian
Right.

00;30;31;16 - 00;30;33;05
Chris
I would like this.

00;30;33;05 - 00;30;35;29
Christian
Term we could come up with.

00;30;36;01 - 00;31;03;10
Chris
I would like here to press you a little bit Christian get, get you go a little bit deeper. What are the the kind of things we're looking for or you know what what are the characteristics in a song that, that we want to see? What are those kind of things if we're actually going to to use them, if we're going to sing them on a Sunday.

00;31;03;10 - 00;31;22;02
Chris
So it's not just about and it's not just about, you know, what is this worship leader, you know, think we should do and what is this, you know, friend, I think we should do what is what are you hearing from different people in the congregation? But but what elements or what is it about songs that we're looking for?

00;31;22;03 - 00;31;28;09
Chris
Because obviously there's a huge variety of songs that we could potentially do.

00;31;28;11 - 00;32;00;13
Christian
Mm hmm. Yeah, it's a great question. And back to some of what I refer to my sermon. It needs to be biblically inspired. So maybe it's not singing scripture specifically. We try to do that as much as we can, but it needs to be If it's a if it's a lyric that's interpretive, we'll say it needs to be still rooted in scriptural truths that are, you know, doctrinally sound and fit on our our theological grid, for lack of a better way of saying that.

00;32;00;15 - 00;32;30;16
Christian
And then within that, they they need to be simple truths or simple to comprehend. Like we don't want to say things in a way, or we want to sing things in a way that is hard to understand or could be interpreted in a way that's not doctrinally sound. And so when it comes to like biblical accuracy, we're thinking about, okay, how does this point it back to Scripture and how does it do so in a way that's not just compelling and helpful, but against sound.

00;32;30;18 - 00;32;51;03
Christian
So that's that's like the most important thing I would say comes to to that comes back to you to singing scripture. But then on a more practical level, okay, is this song easy to sing? Is it easy for people to pick up on and, you know, we want we want songs to be to be catchy and singable. Singable, Yeah.

00;32;51;06 - 00;33;15;22
Christian
Which is sometimes a pretty subjective concept. Um, I think a song sometimes I think a song is really singable and another worship leader be like, I can't stay in that song. So sometimes there's a little bit of wrestling there and, and I'll say that about song selection, like we're not afraid to pull a song out, spend a lot of time deliberating over whether we should bring to the congregation and we trust that it's going to go well and sometimes it doesn't.

00;33;15;22 - 00;33;35;29
Christian
And we have to kind of back that. Don't say, All right, well, back to the drawing board, because these things, again, you try to you try to read, read the room or get a sense of what you're going to expect. But you can't always do that until you actually leave them. See, I sing ability and even like with volunteers in mind, like, is this a song or like that fits our context?

00;33;36;02 - 00;34;05;11
Christian
There's a really popular worship group called Maverick City right now, and they're particularly inspired by the gospel genre of worship music, which fits some church contexts really well. We're not really a church like that, so they write some great songs, but they're not necessarily compatible with our context. So cultural context, musical context, I would say, is also a big piece of this discussion.

00;34;05;13 - 00;34;48;04
Chris
Yeah, I would just add God's got centered that, you know, the focus on on him not upon us, certainly, but what he's done for us. But it's it's not it's not about it's not about us. We're God center means gospel centered. And so we also, you know, want to be singing the gospel to remind ourselves of the gospel, to point ourselves to the gospel, then also to sing the gospel over one another, really important part of the whole singing and why we all need to be singing is because it's not ultimately, it's not about us.

00;34;48;04 - 00;35;09;10
Chris
It's about him, but it's also about other people. Because other people can be encouraged and they can be even disciples as they hear us singing the gospel. And that's just one, you know, point that I would really make to to our people who may be like, You got you hit this singing thing pretty hard on Sunday and you did really well in that.

00;35;09;10 - 00;35;37;19
Chris
I would just add to that is like people in the body need us to sing. They need to hear us singing the gospel to one another. And that really that's what we have in a fetus. Sing hymns, songs and spiritual songs with Gladys Thanksgiving in Your Heart to God in that and in the context there is is really it's not just an upward focus, but it's a it's an it's an outward focus.

00;35;37;23 - 00;35;58;29
Chris
And so many times I'm getting you know, I'm going to preach here a little bit, but you go back to the preference thing when we come in and it's about the music that we like and oh, I'm not I don't like that song, so I'm not going to I'm not going to sing or it's too loud or it's too soft, you know, or, you know, not energetic and it's slow, I mean, and all that kind of stuff.

00;35;59;02 - 00;36;29;08
Chris
And I'm not saying that those things don't matter. You point out the Christian that they do, and we think about those things and we wrestle with those things. But it's not about it's not about me. It's about him and it's about about other people. And quite honestly, when my focus is on him and on others, then it becomes more to me, it becomes a bigger part of my discipleship and and this is true in all of life, right?

00;36;29;08 - 00;36;38;23
Chris
When you when you focus on yourself, you ruin everything, and then you focus on him and on other people. That's where the real, real joy and growth comes from.

00;36;38;25 - 00;37;01;07
Christian
Yeah, that's that's so true. And I'll say this as well. The preference thing is something that, like your worship leaders battle with too. Like I would be lying flat out if I said I love every single song that we lead here and that we sing here again. It's a it's a collaborative effort. So sometimes songs come through and the whole team might kind of vote that one to be the new song.

00;37;01;10 - 00;37;02;19
Christian
And I'm sitting there like, Oh, I.

00;37;02;19 - 00;37;04;12
Chris
Don't like this.

00;37;04;14 - 00;37;19;05
Christian
But I got to get out and lead it and I really mean it. So I got to set my preference aside, leave my, my ego at the door and say, All right, well, I'm going to figure out how to not make this about me, make this about the God that it's worshiping. Like this is about the people that are here to do that.

00;37;19;07 - 00;37;25;11
Christian
And thank the Lord. Most of the time it works out and I come around the songs and do themselves.

00;37;25;11 - 00;37;51;12
Chris
Yeah, I mean, there's even, you know, between between you and me, this dance that we do, so to speak, is, you know, there's some songs that I would like us to do and you might not want to do them or songs that you think are good. And I'm like, Yeah, And you know, you and I have the most influence on what what songs play we do on a Sunday.

00;37;51;12 - 00;38;04;25
Chris
And so, you know, you're working with all the worship leaders and just trying to work on that together and not for any of us have to have our way. But what's going to be best for the church is worship of the Lord and with one another.

00;38;05;00 - 00;38;07;05
Christian
So yeah.

00;38;07;07 - 00;38;32;07
Brenton
Yeah, that's helpful. That's there's a lot of different facets that go into it and a lot of different people and a lot of time is spent on on these decisions. So yeah, it's good to hear. We see a lot of different ways that people worship God and Scripture. And of course you brought it up a little earlier, but you know, the Psalms are full of imperatives from David and for example, Psalm 100.

00;38;32;07 - 00;39;01;10
Brenton
He says, Make a joyful noise to the Lord. All the earth serve the Lord with gladness, come into His presence with singing. And most of us would recognize that that as being relevant to corporate worship. But then, like in Second Samuel, we see David worshiping God, bye bye, dancing, arguably dancing naked. And so biblically, would you distinguish between individual worship and corporate worship?

00;39;01;17 - 00;39;13;27
Brenton
Are there specific guardrails we would put on corporate gatherings that we wouldn't on individual worship?

00;39;13;29 - 00;39;15;01
Christian
Yes.

00;39;15;04 - 00;39;17;13
Chris
Okay.

00;39;17;16 - 00;39;39;26
Christian
I mean, just kind of on an obvious level, we don't want our worship time or corporate worship time, corporate specifically to be distracting. Distracting. And so like, yeah, obviously we're not going to have people make sure that's produced. Yeah, but even like we think about.

00;39;39;26 - 00;39;40;05
Brenton
That's the.

00;39;40;05 - 00;40;15;00
Christian
Extreme right. That's extreme. We even think about preparation, you know, as a worship leader, I want my volunteers to be prepared. And if they're not prepared, we're going to have to figure that out, because if they're not prepared, it's distracting. So there are all sorts of of obvious, I think, qualifiers here. But the most helpful one in one of the ones I think we probably take the most serious is, yeah, we don't want things to be distracting kind of on a on a at a staff level and then on an individual level, I think most people have the wherewithal like, okay, this isn't about me.

00;40;15;03 - 00;40;39;07
Christian
This is a, this is a corporate gathering. And so again, there's a there's a level of understanding that I'm not going to do things that are going to be distracting or draw attention to myself, draw a draw attention away from from God. In the bigger picture here, just because I'm feeling it or whatever. And I think most people have a pretty good sense of that, not always, but for the most part.

00;40;39;09 - 00;40;43;01
Brenton
Yeah. Any thoughts on that?

00;40;43;03 - 00;41;05;04
Chris
No, I think that's really good. I mean, one thing might be helpful to point out is just because something is described in the Bible doesn't mean that it's prescribed. And so we get to, you know, David, dancing naked is is a description. It's not a prescription of how we are to worship. And all joking aside, it doesn't mean like anything goes in worship.

00;41;05;04 - 00;41;35;15
Chris
I go back, everything be done decently and in order and you know all of the talk about the Psalms. So there are Psalms where the the individual mostly David is describing his individual worship. But we've got to remember that the Psalms are Israel's hymn book, and they're like, he's writing those for there to be a corporate experience of that.

00;41;35;17 - 00;41;57;10
Chris
And so I think sometimes we we have this thing where like we can individually worship, but we don't need to corporately. I worship Jesus on my own, and so I don't need to worship Jesus with with the with the church. And that just is it's just not true. It's just not faithful to what we see in the Scripture.

00;41;57;10 - 00;42;09;05
Chris
Yes, we we should be reading our Bible on our own and praying on our own. That should be a key part. But that's not that. That's not to the exclusion of worshiping together.

00;42;09;07 - 00;42;32;25
Brenton
Yeah, that's helpful to the just thinking through it in the lens of descriptive versus prescriptive, I think is is helpful. And yeah, to, to understand the context to what you're talking about with, with the Psalms being a handbook, I mean that that is meant for corporate worship and, and so that's how it was used. And so you know, thinking about context of what it, what was actually written there.

00;42;33;01 - 00;43;01;25
Chris
Yeah. I mean we can just talk about like dancing, you know, if you want to dance before the Lord in the privacy of your home or on your own. And I think that there's a lot of freedom there. If that happens in the corporate gatherings of of our church and it gets distractive, distracting, one of our elders is going to have a conversation with you honestly, just because and, you know, I think our church is a really good job of this.

00;43;01;25 - 00;43;10;18
Chris
I don't really have any concerns. But but we again, we have to think about not only the Lord but other other people, too.

00;43;10;24 - 00;43;14;06
Christian
So which doesn't mean we don't have problems because our problems on the other end.

00;43;14;06 - 00;43;15;13
Chris
Yeah, sure, we could.

00;43;15;13 - 00;43;16;03
Christian
Be more expressive.

00;43;16;04 - 00;43;42;15
Chris
We could be more expressive. Absolutely. And we're actually, you know, called there's a call to to raise our hands and to be expressive in and worship in the New Testament. So yeah, that's, that's a good counterbalance to, to what I said, I'm not really worried about the I'm much more concerned that we see people more expressive, as you heard on Sunday, than people, you know, getting out of control.

00;43;42;17 - 00;44;00;27
Christian
So you think of it in terms of like athletics, you know, you like I remember playing soccer, I, I played soccer to be on a team to play in games. But then there was practice. And when we practice, we would do stupid stuff like try to, you know, try to score a goal from midfield or whatever. It's like, you'd never do that in a game, right?

00;44;00;29 - 00;44;13;09
Christian
But that's because practice allows you to kind of open up a little bit more and have some fun and try something that you wouldn't normally do. I think there's some parallels there. Interesting.

00;44;13;11 - 00;44;44;16
Brenton
One of your points on Sunday, Christian, was our understanding of a mission or vision drastically affects how we approach our involvement with that mission and vision. And you you gave the example of someone digging a ditch and how the more they understood the final product, the more they bought into their small part of it. And I think your point was really that no matter how insignificant someone's involvement in our corporate worship seems, it serves the bigger goal of bringing glory to God and edifying the body.

00;44;44;16 - 00;44;58;17
Brenton
And so that said, if if someone feels like they have nothing to offer the church in the way of talent, how would you still encourage them to get involved?

00;44;58;19 - 00;45;38;23
Christian
Yeah, this is a great question. I think, you know, we we give to the church not just our money and not just our our possessions, but also our time and similarly, when we serve the church, we're not just trying to serve in line with like what our gifts are, what our strengths or whatever we're giving our time. Like, even though it's like we're worship team volunteers, for example, even though they might be skilled musicians or production production people, they're still giving their time a lot of it.

00;45;38;26 - 00;46;10;00
Christian
And so you can't you can't escape that. Whether we're talking about giving or serving, there's a time component. And so like, start. They're like, what time do I have to give to to the Lord through corporate worship? And I think, you know, once you figure that out, come into the pastor leadership and saying, here, here's here's a time that I have set aside that I just want to be able to serve the Lord and in his church, can you help me?

00;46;10;00 - 00;46;30;10
Christian
And we can probably find a place to put you, even if it's something unconventional. It all starts with with making the time and having the perspective that says, like, you know, my time is ultimately the Lord's in and I want to give it to him whether I know exactly how to do that because of my skills and my abilities or it's it's a bit more open ended than that I think of.

00;46;30;12 - 00;46;51;03
Christian
And I could think of a lot of people in our own church that do this. But growing up in our in our church back home, like there was this guy who just made CDs every week, like just robotically, like in the in the burner. And he was like our CD ministry guy. And so many people got to hear the gospel preached in our and got to stay in tune with our church.

00;46;51;03 - 00;47;06;15
Christian
This is because this guy's name was Bill. He's with the Lord now, just because Bill's faithfulness to go back every week and load up a CD deck and hit record and then package them up and get them to whoever was in charge of distributing them. And that's really powerful. You know, that's exactly what I think we're talking about here.

00;47;06;18 - 00;47;08;00
Christian
You have to be available.

00;47;08;03 - 00;47;34;08
Brenton
Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot of people on Sundays between our three campuses that you wouldn't even necessarily know are involved. There's so many people in the background. Yes. That are just pivotal to what we do every week. And so, yeah, there is no job too small and I think there is a lot of jobs available. And so I think just to encourage you guys, if if you're not involved, get involved.

00;47;34;08 - 00;47;50;05
Brenton
And if you know someone that that's that's regularly attending and isn't involved, get them get them involved too. Yeah. Great. Look, guys, I appreciate it. Thanks, Christian, for preaching this week. Yeah. Yeah. Next week we are.

00;47;50;08 - 00;47;53;05
Chris
Back to Romans back. Looking forward to it. Yeah.

00;47;53;08 - 00;47;59;21
Brenton
Can't wait. So Chris will be back and we're yeah, we're jumping into the rest of Romans. Okay guys, thank you.