Having a Bad Church Website Isn't Really Ok Anymore...

So, full disclosure… my wife works for a website design company. They do a lot of work for non profit organizations, a lot of those being churches. While my purpose for writing this post is not to try and get more churches to buy a website from them, I do hope that if you find that after reading this post you feel your website is inadequate you might look them up and see if they can help.

The primary means of communication for the common person in our culture is the Internet. The primary goal of the Church is presenting the Gospel. It stands to reason then that a powerful means for the church to present the gospel to the common person in our culture is through the Internet. And since we believe that the Gospel is the most important information that anyone can receive we should then present it with excellence. (Please don’t read in too deeply to that statement. I’m not trying to say that someone’s salvation depends on how cool your website is. I’m trying to say that we should take seriously communicating well the message we’ve been given to present.)

Lets face it... this Internet thing isn't just a fad. Chances are that we will not wake up tomorrow thinking to ourselves "Wow, that Internet thing was crazy... I'm glad we're done with that. I prefer to not be able to communicate (almost) instantly with anyone anywhere. I also prefer not being able to access (almost) unlimited information about pretty much anything. It was just a real bother." We’re in the information age, and the Church should embrace this fact, and praise God, for the most part I think it has.

One of the primary goals of the church is to communicate the gospel to people in a way that they can understand it. Paul did it at Mars Hill. The Reformers did it by translating the Word into the common tongue. Missionaries continue that process by seeking out people who do not have the Word in their language and by creating translations for them. Jesus did it by becoming flesh and dwelling among us. He even used the same story telling method of teaching that Rabbis often used to teach (Parables).  Also, Jesus not only communicated in a way that people could understand, he communicated with excellence.

I’d argue that the Church should seek to use the Internet effectively to communicate the Gospel.  And I think that poor quality websites and media (audio/video) are ineffective… I think using poor quality stuff does more damage to some ones understanding of the Gospel then it does to help advance the Gospel.  So, in light of this, I’d suggest that paying for a high quality website is worth it. Don’t just settle for your cousin’s fiancé' who kind of knows how to program and has a little bit of design experience and will do it for free. You’re not helping you church by putting a bad website up just for the sake of being able to have a website up. 

Also, when it comes to posting media don’t settle for poor recordings that make the pastor look like the cookie monster and make it hard to understand what the he's even saying. You’re not helping anyone learn about the Gospel… Chances are that if it’s a poor quality recording they’re going to turn it off in the first 30 seconds anyway (unless your video is so bad that it's funny and it ends up going viral... then tons of people will watch it and then someone will make a remix of it with a cut scene to a goat screaming). If you really want to have sermon recordings online do a bit of research, get some new equipment, train a volunteer to run the thing, and do it right. If you can’t afford to do it right, don’t do it. Maybe think about posting only audio... but that will take a bit of research, money and training to do  good job of too... If you can afford that than think of another way to present the pastor’s sermon online. Maybe ask him to write out a brief summary of it and post it in a blog or something. What ever you do, do it well. Don't settle for poor quality media just so that you can say you have media online.

The Internet is a powerful tool for communication. But it is important to keep it in its place. It is a tool. The Church should never have the goal of creating something so that it can be posted online. The Church should have the goal of creating something that can take advantage of the Internet’s power to communicate the Gospel.  Our goal is communicating the Gospel. Not looking cool to outsiders who have an appreciation for good website design.

As Father Abraham (Kuyper) used to say, “There’s not a square inch in the whole domain of human existence (including the internet) over which Christ who is sovereign over all does not proclaim ‘Mine!’” So lets use the Internet to proclaim the Gospel. And lets do it well. After all it is the Gospel. Why wouldn’t we try to communicate it well?

(Also… shameless plug… if you want to check out a great company, owned and operated by believers, that can help you with improving your website click here.)

Why Worship Together?

In my last post I spent a lot of time explaining the order of our Worship Services. The fact that the Gospel should shape our services is very important to me, and I hope after reading those articles you can see why. But for this article I want to change my focus from the shaping function of the Dialogue of Worship to the participants in the Dialogue of Worship and the direction of those participants’ contributions to the Dialogue. If that doesn’t make sense to you right now, that’s ok. Hopefully by the end of reading this, you’ll understand what I mean.

The first and primary participant in the dialogue is obviously God. It is He who reveals himself to us causing our response of adoration and confession. It is He who offers us forgiveness through Christ’s death on the cross, causing our response of thanksgiving. It is He who instructs us on how to live, causing our renewed commitment to Him. And it is He who offers us His blessing as He sends us out, causing us to live for Him in everyday life. Every action causes a reaction. In worship God is the ‘Actor’ and we are the ‘Reactors’. In terms of the direction of dialogue, think of this as God speaking down to earth from heaven (imagine an arrow pointing from God’s mouth down to man’s hearts).

The next participant in Worship is us. As I already stated, we react/respond to God in worship. In directional terms think of it as us sending praises from earth up to God in heaven (imagine an arrow pointing from our hearts to God). An important thing to realize is that when we send our praises up to heaven, we are doing it out of a response to God’s goodness. We are not doing it hoping that God will respond to us by blessing us. We are doing it because God has already blessed us. Now don’t get me wrong here, I’m not saying that God does not respond to us when we seek him in worship. I am saying however, that God’s response to us is not because of our will for Him to respond, but rather because it is His will to respond to us. God wants to engage with us! What wonderful grace have we received, that the Creator of heaven and earth wants to meet with us!

Now, there are not really any more participants in the dialogue than God and us. But I do want to talk about one more direction of the dialogue. It is man to man (imagine an arrow pointing horizontally from your mouth to the other people gathered with you in the worship service). This direction of the dialogue is the most often overlooked. Often times when people come to worship they are most concerned about their own personal experience of God. They say things like, “I close my eyes when I worship because I don’t want to be distracted the other people that are around me. It’s all about me and God.” Now this is not all together a bad thing. Your personal relationship with and experience of God should be strengthened through worship. But that should not be your only focus when coming to a corporate worship service. In Worship we need each other. When one person in our community is suffering, we as Christ’s body should join in their suffering. When we sing a song like ‘In Christ Alone’ we proclaim to our hurting brother the hope that we have in Christ. When another person in the community is celebrating, we should join in their celebration as well. When we sing a song like “Grow in Grace” we are encouraging one another. Check out Psalm 95. Most of it is written in the plural. “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.” The Psalmist is urging the gathered community to worship and we do the same when we gather together for corporate worship.

In summary; in worship God speaks to us, we speak to God, and we speak to each other. Here’s an illustration of the directions. I hope you enjoy my awesome drawing skills.

In the next worship service you attend, try this on for size; think about how what you are doing would be diminished if you were doing it all by yourself. Look for opportunities to proclaim the Gospel to the person sitting next to you. Look for times when you can join into the suffering of the person in front of you (if they are suffering). And if you are at a point in your life when you feel like you can’t worship God, listen to your brothers and sisters in Christ as they sing praise to Him on your behalf.

One of the most moving worship experiences that I have ever had was the day after my friend Kyle Siegers died when I was a sophomore in high school. I was on vacation with my family in Florida at the time, and never before had I ever felt so isolated. All of my friends were back at home together, mourning Kyle’s death, and I was stuck 22 hours away. My family was at a worship service. I can remember it quite clearly. My dad was sitting behind me, my sisters to my side, and my brother on the end. We were singing the song “In Christ Alone”. Well, at least they were singing. I couldn’t sing (kind of like how I can’t type right now as I begin to relive that moment). They got to the line “No guilt in life, no fear in death. This is the power of Christ in me.” And I heard my dad’s voice singing when I couldn’t. And He proclaimed to me the hope that we have through Christ.

So I urge you, don’t come to worship thinking it’s just about you and God. Come to worship ready to encourage your brothers and sisters. Come ready to meet not only with God, but with those whom God has chosen along with you. Remember the Psalmist says, “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.”

*Whenever I spoke of God acting in worship in this post, please know that I am referring to all of the different functions of the Triune God. This includes Father, Son, and Spirit; all of whom play a different role in worship. Look forward to a future post in which I try to flesh out some of the different ways our Triune God works when we engage with Him. 

Do We Over-emphasize the Sermon?

One of the things I love about the Reformed tradition is its intense focus on and love for the Word of God. The Reformation came about as a result of multiple issues in the Church at the time. One of those issues was that the people of God did not have an understanding of the Word of God. This had a lot to do with the fact that Mass was held in Latin. Also there were no Bibles available in the common language of the people, they were all Latin too. You had to be a scholar to be able to read it for yourself, and if you weren’t a scholar and you went to mass, chances are you didn’t understand much of the sermon either. Thank God that we have the Word in our own languages!

The Word of God is vital in the life of a Christian. The Word of God is the Gospel of Jesus Christ! The Reformed Tradition understands this, and as a result rightfully emphasizes the preaching and proclamation of the Word of God in Worship Services.

The negative result of this emphasis on the Sermon is that sometimes the other aspects of the worship service get de-emphasized and even misunderstood. We often think of every aspect of a service in relation to the sermon. Many people think the first portion of the service is meant to get the people excited and happy to worship God, guide them through an emotional experience which then in turn will prepare their hearts to hear the sermon. Many people see the singing time after the sermon as a time that is meant to allow the Sunday school teachers time to get to their classrooms and set up before their students come. (Just an aside for your information: Martin Luther did not think this way, neither did John Calvin… read chapters three and four of Christ Centered Worship by Bryan Chappell if you don’t believe me… also if you’re going to read those chapters you might as well read the whole thing.)

Let me come right out and say it. The music before the sermon is not meant to prepare you for the sermon. The music after the sermon is not meant to give you time to get out of the sanctuary before everyone else. The music in the service is not secondary to the sermon. Music is not a tool meant to be used to prepare hearts for the sermon; it is meant to be a tool used for glorifying God and proclaiming the same Gospel that the sermon is meant to be proclaiming. (Note: The sermon is also a tool used to accomplish goal of proclaiming the Gospel.)

Our services are meant to be an engagement with God formed by what I like to call the Gospel Pattern. This is how Bryan Chappell, in his book Christ Centered Worship, describes this Gospel Pattern in the context of an individual’s interaction with the good news of Jesus Christ:

 “The gospel first affects the heart by enabling us to recognize who God is. When we truly understand the glory of his holiness, then we also recognize who we really are and confess our need of him. The gospel then assures us of the grace that he provides, and our hearts respond in both thanksgiving and humble petition for his aid so that we can give proper devotion to him. In response to our desire for his aid, God provides his Word. We heed his instruction, know that we are both charged to do so and have the promise of his blessing as we live for him (p 99).”

Our services should be formatted in such a way that every element proclaims some aspect of this Gospel Pattern. Thankfully we don’t have to come up with this format all by ourselves. We see it in scripture (check out my last post about the dialogue of worship) and we see it in many of the liturgies of the churches throughout history.

Bryan Chappell summarizes the consistent elements found within many Historic Liturgies (p 100):

                         Recognition of God’s Character (Adoration)

Acknowledgment of Our Character (Confession)

Affirmation of Grace (Assurance)

Expression of Devotion (Thanksgiving)

Desire for Aid in Living for God (Petition and Intercession)

Acquiring Knowledge for Pleasing God (Instruction from God’s Word)

Living unto God with His Blessing (Charge and Benediction)

This same Gospel Pattern should shape our worship. Not because it’s tradition. But because if we follow this pattern in worship, each element of our service will work with the next to proclaim the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ—this is of utmost importance.

So in the next service that you attend I’d encourage you to think about each element of the service individually and then think about them all as a whole unit. Think of them as different scenes in the drama that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without one of the scenes the drama might make a little bit of sense. But when all scenes are put together there is no mistaking the drama for anything but the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here’s the point: the Word of God is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our entire worship services are meant to proclaim this Gospel, not just the sermon. If the Gospel Pattern is followed in our worship services, we have proclaimed the Gospel, participated in the Gospel, and personally and corporately experienced the Gospel. We leave the service having encountered the Triune God and His power to save. This is life changing!

"Postmodern Hymnody (is that even a real word?)"

In my last post I asked the question "Are we too dumb to sing hymns?". I ended with the helpful conclusion: "I don't know." But as promised in my last post, this post is going to touch on the same subject. A better answer to the previously posed question I think is, "No, we aren't too dumb. We just think differently now." In our current postmodern age we engage information differently than did the people in the modern age. By exploring this distinction between the thought process of people in the modern age verses the thought process of people in our current age we will discover some helpful insights into why we sing what we sing in church.

Through a brief discussion on Modern Art vs. Postmodern Art, how hymns and contemporary songs fit into those categories, and how this can be good and bad, Christians can be more mindful of what they like to sing and why they like to sing it, and if it is even a good thing to like to sing.

First thing's first... Modern Art. Its hard to describe art with out looking at it... but since I don't want to have to worry about copyright infringement I'm not going to post any images (if you want to see some, google Pablo Picasso). But here's a basic understanding of modern art... let me emphasize that, this is basic, basic, basic stuff. Modern art seeks to portray the ultimate reality or essence of the subject. For example, if you take away things that make a dog a dog one by one, eventually you will get down to the last thing that makes a dog a dog. If you take it away the dog will no longer be a dog. That last thing could be described as "Doginess." So, an artist painting a dog would not just look at a dog and paint exactly what he sees, he would paint what makes the dog a dog. The artist would seek to paint doginess. A difficult task if you ask me. The value in Modern Art comes with the Artist's engagement and treatment of the subject of the art. This is why modern art often seems to be abstract. To be honest, a lot of it looks weird to me. But it makes sense that it would look weird. The artist isn't just painting a dog. He's painting the doginess of a dog. An artist painting doginess might try to convey loyalty, an always present need for approval, doofyness and intelligence (at the same time). A painting with all of those things in it would definitely look weird. The important thing about Modern Art is the emphasis on objective truth. The modern artist seeks to portray Objective Truth through whatever medium he is using.

Postmodern art is a bit different. And it will make more sense to us... after all we live in the postmodern age. A postmodern artist seeks to portray a subject with the intentions of having the audience engage with that subject (google Andy Warhol). So instead of painting doginess like a modern artist, a postmodern artist would paint a dog. The value in the postmodern artists work comes when the audience looks at the dog and thinks about what this dog means to them. Maybe the image reminds them of their childhood dog. Maybe it reminds them of a time they got bit. The painting of the dog is valuable to some people because some people love dogs. However other people might hate it because they are cat people (which is a mystery in itself).

In summary, the main distinction between Modern Art and Postmodern Art is the thinking behind the art. Modern Artists seek to portray an objective truth about the subject. Postmodern Artists seek to portray a subject that will mean different things to different people emphasizing the subjective truth about the subject.

In general, we can apply this understanding to Hymns and Contemporary praise songs as well. Where hymns often seek to articulate some sort of deep theological truth and tend to be written using lines directly taken from scripture, contemporary songs tend be written in a way that can mean different things to different people. Here's a good example:

Modern Worship Song - "Holy Holy Holy"


Verse 1
Holy holy holy
Lord God Almighty
Early in the morning
Our song shall rise to Thee
Holy holy holy
Merciful and mighty
God in three persons
Blessed Trinity

Verse 2
Holy holy holy
All the saints adore Thee
Casting down their golden crowns
Around the glassy sea
Cherubim and seraphim
Falling down before Thee
Which wert and art
And evermore shalt be

Verse 3
Holy holy holy
Though the darkness hide Thee
Though the eye of sinful man
Thy glory may not see
Only Thou art holy
There is none beside Thee
Perfect in power
In love and purity

Verse 4
Holy holy holy
Lord God Almighty
All Thy works shall praise Thy name
In earth and sky and sea
Holy holy holy
Merciful and mighty
God in three persons
Blessed Trinity


Postmodern Worship Song - "Holy is the Lord"



Verse 1
We stand and lift up our hands
For the joy of the Lord is our strength
We bow down and worship Him now
How great how awesome is He

Pre-Chorus
And together we sing
Ev'ryone sing

Chorus 1
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The earth is filled with His glory
The earth is filled with His glory

Misc
It is rising up all around
It's the anthem of the Lord's renown
It's rising up all around
It's the anthem of the Lord's renown

These songs are both concentrating on the same theological truth. However, where the first uses language describing God's holiness as well as scenes from scripture, the second speaks of our interaction with God and uses a lot of repeated lines. I don't think that this means that the writer of the second song is lazy and the writer of the first was more elegant and articulate... Rather I think the second writer meant to repeat the lines multiple times to offer the people singing the song time to ponder God's holiness and what it means to them, where as the first writer meant to articulate the objective truth about God's holiness as seen in scripture.

There are good and bad things about both Contemporary songs meant for the congregation to engage with, and Hymns meant to articulate truths. A good thing about Hymns is the fact that they teach us Biblical truths (not to say that contemporary songs don't) and in troubled times in life we are reminded of the promises of God through reciting a hymn we grew up singing. A good thing about Contemporary songs is that we have the opportunity to reflect on our own life and the unique way that God has brought us to Him and praise Him for that. The bad thing about hymns is that some times there is so much information and truth packed into one 3 minute song that we don't have time to engage and understand the truth that the hymn is articulating. A bad thing about contemporary music is the fact that some times it is shallow and lacking in the truth department and depends to much on the music and the way that the congregation engages with it so much that the individuals become the subject in worship rather than God.

So fellow Christians, BE CAREFUL!

If we're not careful, contemporary songs become more about our engagement with them then about our engagement with God. If we're not careful we start to write and sing songs that we think will be meaningful to people because of the experience that we as leaders can create for the participants in worship. Eventually we start to emphasize the experience of worship over the subject of our worship, and we stop focusing on God and we focus on the spiritual high that we felt the last time we sang "that song." The congregation gets this emotional high at certain points in a song, and worship leaders are smart enough to key in on this point and are able to recreate it over and over and over.

Ultimately, worship becomes more about the emotional experience, controlled by the worship leader and band (whether the congregation knows it or not), than the engagement with God. 

So, I'd like to suggest that when we gather together to worship we sing truth... But let's not only sing truth, lets engage truth, lets reflect on how it effects our lives, and lets be changed by it! After all, He is the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.

Are we too dumb to sing hymns?

So, interwebs, I'd like to ask you a question. Are we to dumb to sing hymns? Let me rephrase that... Can the average church goer process the deep theological "meat" often found in hymns, worship God for these truths, and be changed by these truths in the time that it takes for a congregation to sing 5 verses of 'Amazing Grace'? My answer in short is: I'm not sure. BUT I'd like to suggest that people might prefer not to sing hymns not only because the style of the music is not as popular nowadays, but because it takes less brain straining to sing something more contemporary. Contemporary songs are easier to understand because the subject matter in the song usually isn't as deep as that of a hymn.

Speaking of Amazing Grace, lets take a look at the verses.

Verse 1 
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found. I was blind, but now I see.

Verse 2 
Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believe.

Verse 3 
The Lord has promised good to me, his word my hope secures.
He will me shield and portion be, as long as life endures.

Verse 4 
Through many dangers toils and snares I have already come.
Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.

Verse 5 
When we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise then when we'd first begun.

Now since you probably didn't read through those verses (bc you saw they were in italics and you thought to yourself, "I've sung this song a thousand times... I don't think I'm too dumb to sing all of them") I'd like to encourage you to re-read them as if you were reading them for the first time. Think about what they actually mean, not just how nice and poetic they sound.

I'm going to be honest, I was tripped up by verse 2. I think my thought process was something like "uh... grace taught my heart to fear?.. Fear what? oh yeah, God obviously... Grace my fears relieved... obviously I dont have to fear evils of the world b/c God is on my side... but maybe I don't have to fear God's punishment bc of grace? Could go either way.. I like the second interpretation better... Fits with the first line better...
How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed... ok now we are going back to a conversion moment... I guess that works with the first two lines... I was taught to fear God because of grace, I was taught that I don't have to fear God's wrath because of grace, and when I realized these truths, grace is even more precious."

Please excuse the disjointed rambling above...

My point is that even with a hymn as familiar as Amazing Grace, there are a lot of truths being discussed in a short period of time and even after having sung the song for my whole life, I had never internalized the truths that verse 2 was talking about until I took the time to read it line by line. I don't think I'm the only one to experience this either...

Here's another example from the same song -

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine.
But God who calls me here below, will be forever mine.

Ever wonder why the Gray Psalter doesn't include that verse and adds its own verse 5... which Newton didn't even write? Well, it's because the Christian Reformed Church (the publisher of the Gray Psalter) doesn't believe that the earth is going to dissolve like snow, or that the sun will forbear to shine. The reformers believe that all of creation is going to be reformed, redeemed, and renewed.

So in the short amount of time that it takes to sing 5 verses of Amazing Grace we have discussed a conversion experience, the fear of the Lord, the faithfulness of God in regard to the promises in His Word, experiencing trials in life and overcoming through God's grace, and Eschatology. There is a lot of deep theological truths going on in there... but is it to much for the average church goer? I don't think so. But I do think that it is more difficult for someone to internalize a song like this over a song like Chris Tomlin's Your Grace is Enough. Is this bad? Maybe...

Have we de-intellectualized church? Have we over-emotionalized it so much that when we sing about theological truth we don't even realize what we're singing rather we just get lost in the music?

I think that exploring the effect that postmodern art has on what we sing in church would provide insight for my original question: "Are we to dumb to sing hymns?".

Stayed tuned for my next post "Postmodern Hymnity (is that even a real word?)"