Auditioning/Recruiting Worship Musicians

I was recently asked this question by a local worship leader:

I'm working with a new worship ministry through [for anonymity...I'll not disclose the name of the church], and they are asking me to audition band members. I have met with some of them and have reviewed their applications, and while they may be talented musicians, some of them lack the spiritual maturity I was asked to discern. I was wondering if you have any suggestions as to how you respond to applicants who may be talented but not as spiritually mature as you would like, when auditioning for the worship team.

Some leaders might not be too thrilled about the prospect of auditioning worship team members. Before Hope College, I had never formally auditioned anyone. There are several liabilities in the audition process that I'll let you imagine for your own circumstances.

I'll point out a few benefits however:

First, over the years, the process has clarified what it is that we need in each musician and team. It is one thing to have a working definition of what a church musician is on paper. It is another thing to see these expectations actually lived out in real people. It is both sobering and inspiring.

Second, auditioning raises the level of commitment, my commitment to each person and their respective commitments to the ministry. A thorough audition process earns you access into each other's lives both to encourage and also to bring correction when needed. It is difficult to challenge people to grow in their character or musical abilities if you have no relationship with them, no trust. I strongly believe in beginning relationships well. If you begin with each person well, you will ensure a steadier and substantial learning curve.

Third, the audition process has forced me to become a better leader. If I pry into each person's life, question their gifting and character, then I must be someone who deserves their trust. Who am I? Why should I have the power to recruit and reject people? Why should I have the right to correct someone's artistic sensibilities or challenge their spiritual growth? This is the humbling/sobering part: I have to continue to be strong enough, to love well, to serve, to be patient and kind yet decisive and consistent.

I realize I haven't yet answered the question posted above. What I've shared so far is the context--some assumptions that I need to explain in order to give a more substantial answer.

So this is some of what I can put in print to describe what I'm looking for in worship musicians:

We should call all of our musicians to worship leadership. They should at some level desire to not just play music but to also want to direct that music toward God. We don't need warm bodies who can ice the guitar riff; we need willing hearts.

Now with that said, I don't expect all of my musicians to be to most spiritually mature students on campus. In fact part of my joy is watching many deepen their faith from year to year. Being on the worship team is hopefully a life changing experience. It is okay for people to be on the team who are struggling in various ways. A good audition process allows me to name those struggles and enter into them with each student. If during the audition process I discover that a person is not interested in growing spiritually, if there is not an inkling that this person could at some point be able to ask for and receive prayer, then they will probably not be a good fit.

You will need a good core of strong believers, people who have a proven track record of consistently practicing their faith. You'll need the help of these stronger leaders. Perhaps you invite these persons into a smaller core leadership team to pray and plan. You need to have team members who can give you reliable positive and critical feedback on song selection and your leadership among other things. You need to be teachable yourself and without a strong contingent of reliable people, you won't be able to continue growing yourself through the accountability of these core leaders.

Ideally, you'll have a healthy balance of more mature Christians and others who are on the journey.

How He Loves Us

Alrighyteeee....Here goes as promised.

If you want to engage this post, I ask you to read (or skim) a few of the previous posts, especially "Should We Critique Worship Music?" Some have been overwhelmed and even frustrated with the effort I'm taking to critique worship music. What I'm doing is analytical, but I hope and pray this critique can better be described as discerning. Discernment, as I use the word is redemptive and positive rather than heavy handed and grumpy. I extend these critiques to you not to ruin your worship experiences, but perhaps to offer you a chance to step back and take a more careful look at your worship practice. Some would rather not take these things so seriously. We should instead lighten up and get on with the "real" act of worship, the opening of the hearts entering into the presence of God and not think too hard. In fact this is the general theme of the song I am considering here (below). The thrust of John Mark MacMillan's "How He Love" is experience, experience, experience--abandonment to experience the tremendous, overwhelming, tree bending love of God. It appeals to Christians who already function with a worship theology that values experience above all else. I find the song compelling, and useful in awakening those who might be more cerebral, the less emotional  Christian hoping they might also discover God's all-embracing love in new and fresh ways.

Here is a working assumption that is helpful to entertain when discerning a worship song: each of us bring our own personal interpretations. My studies in Literature and Language theory are exposing themselves with this point. It is not that I believe all texts are relative. I'm not a deconstructionist in the way it has been fashionable especially in America. Yet I do believe in a kind of fluidity of interpretation. This fluidity is a result of our respective personal histories and vocabularies as well as our respective worship dispositions.

First our subjective histories: if I draw your attention to the word rose, each reader will potentially have a variety of intellectual and/or emotional responses depending on a myriad of factors. You might like roses while others prefer ranunculas. You might have had a bad experience with a rose, given a bunch to a young lady who didn't want to receive them from your hand. Perhaps you've spent too much time pruning your grandmother's rose bushes and been stung by thorns. Or perhaps roses are your favorite and what you look forward to each February. There is a dictionary definition of "rose" that we can all agree on. We know technically what a rose is, that it is not a ranuncula or a tulip and definitely not a tree or even a bird or a house. Language is not relative in that sense, but it has a fluidity because there is within each of us a personal lexicon that continues to be edited and revised as our vocabulary is laden for good or ill by a myriad of experiences.

Further, our interpretations of a worship text are also filtered through our respective personalities. It is perhaps difficult for some of us to accept that God has intentionally designed a variety of emotions in a variety of different types of persons that are all uniquely important to the body of Christ. It is common to assume that because I like a particular song, therefore everyone else must. Here I am somewhat treading near the subjective nature of aesthetics, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  I don't believe that line is true; beauty is instead in the eye of God. It just so happens that none of us are God and none of us completely see what he does. Therefore some of us tend to be more intellectual and approach God through ideas. These Christians desire tangible, true teaching and doctrine. Others are more apt to focus on the heart. These worshipers want to experience a present and tangible person. Other Christians are interested in ideas or emotions if only they lead to action, the doing and serving of the Body of Christ. And then there are the mystical or contemplative worshipers who do not like to use lots of words but prefer silence in God's presence. The essential point is that our denominational or church preferences often have more to do with how they match our personalities than our doctrinal confessions.

In sum: our respective taste based on our histories and personalities often dictate which worship songs we find worthwhile.


So I'll be honest. The first reason why I was put off by "How He Loves" was because it had been  referred to me as that song that has the line "heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss." I hadn't heard the music or experienced the song in a worship setting and I had already come to it with a chip on my shoulder. Before I explain more my trouble with that line, it is important to confess that my personal taste, my history and my personality, made me grimace at the idea of singing "sloppy wet kiss."

A challenge for a worship song writer is the matter of interpretive space. If we utilize little creativity, little metaphor and limit ourselves to common word choice, then it will be much more obvious to identify what the text means. There will be little space for mis-readings and confusion. However, as Dillard says, "ours is a God who loves pizazz." God is abundant in the work of his creation, should our worship not somehow reflect such extravagance?

It would be a shame to overly limit ourselves creatively, yet the defining nature of corporate or congregational song--worship that serves a larger group of people in honor of God--is a brand of music that must be fairly accessible. This means that our worship leading should not be primarily based on lyrics, chord structures and song arrangements that are merely personal satisfaction. Worship cannot be reduced to my own taste. I must constantly ask what music, what sounds, what words will serve and help the congregation. One scholar describes the great hymn writer Isaac Watt's as one who possessed an "artistic kenosis." We would do well to follow Watts' example in the way he emptied himself of his own creative agenda. Watts was a sophisticated scholar of theology and philosophy. He knew the heights to which language could be used but instead utilized what can be called "sunk phrases" in order to reach a larger group of worshipers. And of course it was his hymns that accompanied and nourished the Great Awakening. It is hard to argue with such fruit from a man who penned more than 500 hymns.

This is a difficult tension then, something of a paradox: how can we think of God and others, the corporate nature of our worship, and still find something personally nourishing, something that we can gladly share in? It is possible but will require surrender, patience, discernment and fidelity.

Honestly, what turned my interest to the possibility of considering "How He Loves" for our worship was the apparent strong interest of students. I want to know what inspires my congregation. Then I heard that Crowder covered it and changed the controversial line to "...unforseen kiss." I spent part of a summer listening to different versions of the song, Crowder's, Jesus Culture's and McMillan's own. I had ordered his record, "The Medicine" and was greatly surprised. It is a good record, very deep and wide lyrically and musically. Overall, the experience of "How He Loves" left me personally moved and excited to give it a shot...with Crowder's lyric change.

What do we loose by avoiding "sloppy wet kiss"?

I very much enjoy those who appreciate this line for its raw, abandoned, very human/heavenly expression of God's love for us in the form of the incarnation. In fact, a very dear friend of mine recently remarked how much he preferred "sloppy we kiss."  I've found myself wanting to engage this line if only because my friend prefers it. It is good to see God through the eyes of someone you love. This is the essence of sharing and worship that we should be after. I learned something about the song through Joesph. And this will be a key way for all of us to grow together: to begin to appreciate what seems foreign through the appreciation of others. We need to keep stretching ourselves and this can most easily be done through relationships. If anything, I hope these posts will stimulate conversations that will help you engage others in important conversations and thus grow deeper in the way you fellowship in worship.


The beauty and force of the song is in its abandonment. I can personally approach the song even now with "sloppy wet kiss" and truly worship without distraction. Yet this is not my position; my leadership is not to give each song a wink, hope for the best and expect everyone to generously appreciate each song the way I can. We must take words seriously enough to identify the best of them for the sake of the church at large.


Why prefer "...an unforeseen kiss" instead:

Let's be literal about the experience of a "sloppy wet kiss." What is it that makes a kiss good? It's sloppiness? Its moisture? Again, remember the question of interpretive space I mentioned above. If there are a myriad of reactions each of us might have to a word like rose, how many more reactions could there be for the sensual kiss? Yes, we have the Song of Songs with some very erotic imagery that has been interpreted by some scholars as a metaphor of our passionate love relationship with God. While I personally appreciate this reading of the Song of Songs, this is still a controversy among  scholars. The underlying question is how much of our human experience can properly be read back into our experience of God? How much of human relations can be used to describe God relations? Does it elevate our understanding of a love relationship with God to compare it to a human, sloppy wet kiss, or does it perhaps reduce a divine engagement with God that far supersedes the human experience of a raw kiss? Is it possible that "sloppy wet kiss" might--all personal style/taste set aside--actually be a reduction of God's engagement with us?

Herein we struggle with the very core essence of the incarnation, "when heaven and earth meet." Is there any other biblical warrant that gives us a sense that it is proper to describe our experiences with God with such sensuality? The prostitute washes Jesus' hair with pure nard and her hair. Jesus reclined at the table with his disciples. The New Testament portrays Jesus as a man who knew how to fish and cook. He walked long distances, probably could sail a boat and knew how to sweat and work hard. Yet we don't have a prevalent sense of him that might give warrant to the sensuality of a sloppy wet kiss.

Further, apart from biblical models, on a human level, how many of us really want to think about our kisses as sloppy and wet even if they might be? This is not what we cherish in our hearts. We don't relish sloppiness and wetness. Those are only the byproducts of something more intimate and profound. "Sloppy wet kiss" does appeal to the raw, humanity of the rest of the song. Unfortunately it can become a sentimental distraction. As we've said before, the sentimental is a focus on an emotion for the sake of an emotion. It is a mistake to confuse the essence of physical intimacy with sloppiness and wetness. Those are ephemera. The prize of intimacy is just that: intimacy.

What about kisses that are not sloppy? Are they less passionate or intimate?


Giving McMillan the benefit of the doubt, I'm assuming this lyric is an allusion to the doctrine of the incarnation. Yet, I sense he is intending more. What McMillan seems to be getting at is less a biblical truth and more of an existential or mystical idea of oneness between God and humanity. There is a great tradition of mystical authors that either border on or cross over into the territory of the sensual/erotic to describe our participation in the love and life of God. So the next question is whether or not our corporate worship songs should draw more from our subjective understanding of such mystical unions or if we should restrain our spiritual poetry to more sound Biblically grounded conceptions of spirituality.

Because I do value this mystical tradition and do claim to be Charismatic who wants a warm heart and consistent communion with the person of God, to walk in the Spirit, I can see both sides--to keep the original lyric or to use Crowder's re-write.

However, my final argument against the original McMillan lyric is again in regards to the context in which I lead. While a good portion of our students may be deeply moved further into intimacy with God in the lyric's original form, I know there is another contingent of students who may not be able to appreciate the artistic license. How many of  the students I regularly lead have ever been kissed? How many have enjoyed being kissed? How many have been hurt by the wrong kiss? Especially in the context of a campus ministry, it seems appropriate to avoid the use of sensual language that opens such a large range of subjective mis-readings.

I am aware this is especially hard at Hope College. How many students in a Friday chapel with hands raised, singing at the top of their lungs with such seeming conviction...how many of these students later that night will be expressing their passion with a beer in their hand (either underage or too many), or passionately in the arms of someone they shouldn't be touching? The music we make in chapel is already very physical and perhaps even sensual. The beats are strong. The melodies soar. The layers and textures of sounds are evocative. The rest of McMillan's song is already powerful and effective in its offering of striking images that hint at the intensity of God's immanent approach to his people, "I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy." Or "if grace is an ocean, we're all sinking." I don't believe we need "sloppy wet kiss" to get the point. To do so in our particular campus ministry context seems gratuitous.

Meeting John Mark McMillan

One last bit of a story might be helpful for those of you who still disagree with me: I feel queasy dropping names, but I did have the pleasure of being around McMillan for a few days at a worship conference roughly a year ago. Of all the worship leaders I encountered that weekend, he seemed the most down to earth and easy going among them. We had a few substantial conversations. We discovered a shared affection for the worship leader Kevin Prosch and the recording engineer/producer, Ethan Johns. My interaction with him was a true gift.

Ironically David Crowder led "How He Loves" during one of the services. Afterwards, I gathered up the courage to ask McMillan what he thought about the lyric change. If I am remembering correctly, he seemed either clueless to the switch or unaffected. He said something like, "huh...now what do you mean?" I explained that "sloppy wet kiss" had been replaced by "...unforeseen kiss." He shrugged his shoulders, a kind of "oh well...whatever."

I share this story as an encouragement to those "sloppy wet kiss" loyalists to pursue Watt's "artistic kenosis" as I witnessed it in John Mark McMillan: be less worried about a lyric change and more concerned with moving ahead to worship God. Why should any of us be more offended or alarmed by the lyric change than the song's original author?

I've mentioned this before: I'm concerned that a generation of young Christians have made these worship leaders and worship movements their church, the primary source of their spiritual formation. I like John Mark McMillain. I'm looking forward to listening to his new record. I hope our paths cross again someday. But no single leader or song is my priority. I care more for the corporate body of worshipers I lead weekly. As with my decision regarding the Jon Foreman verse, "How He Loves" is so well written, it already is so creatively effective that these alterations are small and minor.

Should We Critique Worship Music?

Here is a job description I recently found for a "director of worship and creative arts" position at a local church.

Purpose of Position: This position focuses upon creating a musical sound and style that is excellent in execution, attracts people, a style consistent with our demographic, and a spirit that enables people to encounter God, and enhance the Gathering. This position is also responsible for developing teams for all technical (sound, lighting, audio) functions in a Gathering as well as working towards creative elements within Gatherings which would include but not be limited to video pieces, music, stage décor, drama, etc.

Skill and Experience
1. BA Degree Required
2. Has been a worship leader and involved with creative elements on a church team where the average Sunday attendance has been 700 or more
3. Licensed Minister or in process towards licensure from an approved organization
4. Competent in basic MS office, Finale or equivalent music program, can work with and meet budget, can set budget

Unfortunately nowhere does the description say that the worship leader needs any biblical or theological training, any wisdom or discernment. Nowhere does it suggest that the work of a worship pastor is fundamentally discerning which sounds, which tunes, which arrangements, which texts, which artistic tools will best serve to form followers of Christ. #3 vaguely alludes to a requirement for at least being in the "process towards licensure from an approved organization," but I'm not sure what that means.
 
If I had the courage and time I would like to write a book that might be called something like More Than The Hipster: Worship Music and 'The Cool.' I have pondered other possibilities: More Than Charismatic or  More Than Winsome. The former evokes the pentecostal/charismatic section of Christianity and isn't my point while the latter just sounds stuffy. My concern is that in our attempts to help the church keep up with the times, to be relevant and voice its worship in a contemporary sound, we have lost a careful, informed discernment of what we are doing. We naively practice various production techniques and values; we appropriate 'the Cool' and have little understanding of how it is confusing our worship capacities. We recruit talented and likeable leaders who have good intentions but little formation. And this happens during a time when many Christian leaders are beginning to realize that the arts--especially worship music--is having as significant of a role, if not a more significant role than the sermon in the shaping of our understanding of what Christianity is essentially.

This lack of oversight is a relatively new phenomenon. The church historically has had a much more active role in holding worship composition accountable to singing true words with proper discretion. I am glad I don't live in the time of the Genevan community in the 16th century for example. Louis Bourgeois, one of three main contributors to the Genevan Psalter, was arrested for making musical changes to some songs he presumably had written himself. There was an outcry from many who did not want to learn any new tunes. John Calvin's primary concern was that congregational singing would be restricted to singing only the Psalms and that the music not pervert or sensualize the biblical text. No harmony or any "secular" tunes were used in worship. The purpose of restricting the Genevan Psalter to the 126 tunes was to clearly delineate proper, safe and worthy Christian music. Calvin would later personally intervene and have Bourgeois released from prison but due to the restrictions of Geneva Bourgeois eventually left for Paris and later had his daughter baptized a Catholic.

In contrast the worship music tradition that has arisen from Martin Luther is comparatively libertine. Luther embraced harmony (polyphony) as well as monastic chant, folk tunes and highly ornate orchestration. In short, the Lutheran tradition did not restrict singing to the Psalms but instead allowed for what my be considered Christian, or theological poetry. 

[I highly recommend both Jeremy Begbie's The Resounding Truth and Paul Westermeyer's Te Deum for substantial examinations of the history of music in the church.]

While this is a gross simplification, we might generally say that our worship today is influenced by both Lutheran and Reformed traditions. We want Biblically sound yet creatively rich worship music. We want music that focuses on God, yet we also want freedom to express this worship however we'd like. 

It is my experience that most of us take the former for granted. We assume that each of us wants good, strong Christo-centric worship. This explains why the job description above doesn't explicitly require any formal biblical or theological training. Yet we assume too much about our respective intentions and are terribly afraid of offending someone else's worship sensibilities. It seems rude doesn't it? To critique worship? Shouldn't each of us be able to sing what we want to God if we mean well? If our hearts are in the right place? If we are being authentic and sincere? 

We don't have to be as heavy handed as the Genevan experiment in order to properly steward and discern worship music. There is a long history of hymn composers who have edited, revised, re-written, added verses and eliminated verses from hymns. Charles Wesley's great hymn, "O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing My Great Redeemer's Praise," originally contained 18 stanzas. What we now sing as the first stanza was originally stanza seven. Wesley's text originally read "...my dear redeemer's praise." Now we sing it commonly as "...my great redeemer's praise." I'm sure there are many other edits.

"Come Thou Fount" originally read, "Praise the mount--I'm fixed upon it,/ Mount of God's unchanging love!" Most contemporary uses of the hymn read, "Praise his name, I'm fixed upon it,/ Name of God's redeeming love." There is also that difficult stanza:

Here I raise mine Ebenezer,
Hither by thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home;
Jesus sought me, when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed his precious blood.

What does Ebenezer mean? What does interposed mean? Most of us don't know and so we accept the newer contemporized re-write:


Hither to Thy love has blest me,
Thou hast bro’t me to this place.
And I know Thy hand will bring me
safely home by Thy good grace.
Jesus sought me when a stranger 
wandering from the fold of God
He to rescue me from danger, 
bought me with His precious blood.

This is just a very small glimpse into how the church has edited, revised, critiqued and discerned worship music for decades and centuries. The words we use to describe God are powerful and weighty. They need to be handled with care, and proper discernment or critique of worship music needs to also treat people with care, gently and lovingly. Unfortunately, sometimes the decisions a worship pastor might make can result in pain and confusion.

I have had a handful of students approach me about my previous post regarding Jon Foreman's "Your Love Is Strong." I knew the decision to eliminate the second verse and that my writing about it would be frustrating for some. I'm incredibly grateful to the students who took the time to come talk to me. Unfortunately in the context of a campus ministry I am not always as accessible that I'd like to be. I want to be available to learn with you. These blog entries are one of the venues I use to extend myself, my thoughts, the things I've learned, the questions I still have...to bring myself closer to you.

So, please feel free to email or stop by. My door is open.

And I am going to get to writing out some thoughts on a the John Mark MacMilan, "How He Loves Us." So if you are interested in these things, stay tuned.

The Posture of Criticism - Discernment Vis a Vis Judgement

I got the cold/flu about five days ago so these posts are coming out more slowly than I'd hoped. I'll pick up on the critique of "How He Loves" soon. I know that taking a step back to cover a few topics like what follows below might not be as exciting of a read as if I were to keep chipping away, critiquing some more songs. I know this post may seem tedious in comparison, a kind of disclaimer, but I'm more concerned about how and why I'm being critical of contemporary worship music than just coming off as your dime a dozen cynic. I've spent years repenting of the sin of cynicism.

Life Lesson #101: Scoffing at what is wrong is easy. Loving the church and contending for it is hard.

With 100 some hits on the previous post (Critique of "Your Love Is Strong") in less than two days--for this little blog--I must have hit a nerve, especially at Hope College. I remember my freshman year at Wheaton was full of many late night debates in the dorm. I tried to avoid them or I mostly listened, but a few times I dove right in. We had disagreements about everything from the classic Protestant conundrum of the 'free will' versus 'predestination,' the naive dichotomy of  'secular music' versus Christian; we questioned whether speaking in tongues is for Christians today, and which was right independent or denominational churches? Baptists or Reformed? Dispensationalism versus covenant theology? It was a nerve wracking translation of ourselves from our safe, parochial home churches and youth groups to a comparatively more ecumenical academic community. Some conversations would go on for hours with new voices adding into a conversation throughout the night. So many strong, intelligent opinions and experiences held with Christian vigor. Freshman year could be painful and awkward at times.

My assumption is that there are more reading who disagree with me, and I want to encourage such disagreement. There is nothing wrong with having differences of opinion. After all, our differences will not matter too much if we actively remember how much more we have in agreement. Disagreement, doubt and questions are fine, good and healthy even. The greater concern is not so much about the convictions we arrive at, but the charitable, Christ-like way we engage one another in conversation. I'm not saying that our ultimate conclusions are not important or relative but that our convictions are shaped by the journey we make to identify and confirm those convictions. Our ideas and beliefs are for better or worse shaped by our context.

A disagreement can cut deep into the ego and threaten what each of us believe is real and true. To do theology, to be a part of the church, to be committed to the growth of our shared understanding of God and his purposes, we have to wear these things carefully with humility. I admit that I can be weak in the wrong moment. I know the temptation to strive to be right and to have control. A large obstacle is that we often approach God like we might math. We tend to believe that if each of us could just become objective and get outside the question at hand, then surely we could all come to perfect agreement. But our ideas are not so much shaped by our rational minds in a kind of objective, abstract bubble. A conviction is held in the heart as much if not more so than the mind. A conviction is shaped by our character, by our affections, insecurities and fears. It is a wonder God has revealed himself to us at all.

St. Augustine has been my favorite model of how I might posture myself when daring to use words to explain or understand the things of God:

The Confessions Book XI, Chapter I.  O Lord, since eternity is Yours, are You ignorant of the things which I say unto You? Or see Thou at the time that which comes to pass in time? Why, therefore, do I place before You so many relations of things? Not surely that You might know them through me, but that I may awaken my own love and that of my readers towards You, that we may all say, Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. I have already said, and shall say, for the love of Your love do I this. For we also pray, and yet Truth says, Your Father knows what things you have need of before you ask Him. Matthew 6:8 Therefore do we make known unto You our love, in confessing unto You our own miseries and Your mercies upon us, that You may free us altogether, since You have begun, that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves, and that we may be blessed in You; since You have called us, that we may be poor in spirit, and meek, and mourners, and hungering and thirsty after righteousness, and merciful, and pure in heart, and peacemakers. Matthew 5:3-9 Behold, I have told unto You many things, which I could and which I would, for You first would have me confess unto You, the Lord my God, for You are good, since Your mercy endures for ever. 

Everything that Augustine 'confessed' (a double meaning of confession, both of his sin and his faith) was in accordance with the ordo amoris, the order of love. To paraphrase him, let all that this wretched person has to say about God lead to loving God and each other more abundantly. Our 'theologizing' should lead to doxology. Our talk about God should itself be a kind of worship. 

So while I am practicing critique, I do not believe that the primary role of the Church or a theologian or a pastor is to act as a watchdog. A Christian's primary posture is not critical but doxological. If we are to be critical, it is for the sake of discernment rather than judgement. Jesus' teaching as accounted in Matthew 7:16 and Luke 6:44 is often misquoted as "judge a tree by the fruit that it bears." The English translation is instead most commonly "know" or "recognize" not "judge." In fact, it is interesting that chapter seven opens with "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get." "Judge" here is closer to "condemn." It means to separate and divide in the way a court judge pronounces a sentence. To "know" a tree is to be close, to become acquainted with it, to discern its value.

Romans 12:2 contains a very helpful use of "discernment,"

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

This passage is often used to pit Christianity against so-called "worldliness." Such interpretations can lead to a sectarian or isolationist posture to encourage wary watchdogs, alert and on the ready to spot and root out sin. The fruit of such a critical posture is strife and  bitterness. Our hearts become constrained more by condemnation/judgement rather than discernment/judgement. This Romans 12 use of "discern" calls us to practice redemption. To discern is primarily about identifying what is right and good and true rather than pouncing on what is wrong. We discern for the sake of pleasing God and worshiping God. We go into the world, into the fray of confusion with love to dust off and prize the beautiful rather than obsess, control and despise what is broken. We are better as lovers--at least a concerned parent or the biblical caring shepherd rather than the police, the Inquisition or the Gestapo or the acidic talking head politico.

So let me be clear, when I identify what concerns me about the state of the church today, when I ask questions about contemporary worship music, when I write a film, TV or CD review or critique a worship song, I do these things because I want a better love life, I want to worship more freely. If anything, even if you don't agree with me, I pray my teaching, leadership and writings might stir up good conversation and prayer, as Augustine says, "that I may awaken my own love and that of my readers towards You...."

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you oh, God. Would you burn away any empty word or thought in the consuming fire of your love. If we have anything worth saying to each other, the those words be yours, eternal, unmovable and filled with your mercy.

Thanks for reading.

Upcoming Posts & A Critique of "Your Love Is Strong"

There are a handful of things I’d like to write about in the next week or so. I’m going to try and push out a few blog posts in the next few days. Thanks to those who read and keep me thinking of better ways to communicate ideas that matter greatly to me, and many thanks to my students for keeping me on my toes too.

Here are the topics I want to get at:

1.     I’d like to follow up on the comment I made in my last post about making too much of art but that rather we should instead focus on being better humans (which implies engagement of the arts). There is much to discuss here. I’m glad to get emails from people who appreciate this concern. Because it seems to others to be a poignant nuance of my way of prioritizing the arts, I’d like to flesh the idea out some more.

2.     Another friend asked me to recall for her some teaching I offered in the past on the distinction between capital “A” Artists and the rest of us who are all created as artists. The idea is that we are all artistic. To be human is to be creative. The question is which of us are called to practice a discipline of art making at more advanced levels with years of training for the sake of vocational, bi-vocational or a-vocational art making. Further thoughts on this will connect to what I want to write about for topic 1 above. Perhaps I can answer both of those in the same post. We’ll see.

*Topics 1 and 2 will need to wait a bit because I want to cover a few topics for my students. These are thoughts that have been growing in response to their questions and our discussions.  This is teaching at its best: when I feel stumped in class and need to step back and rediscover how to communicate what is most important.

3.     I need to more explicitly and unapologetically explain my concerns about some contemporary worship texts. Two songs came up in class this week, “Your Love is Strong” by Switchfoot’s Jon Foreman and “How He Loves Us,” by John Mark McMillan.

4.     Then in another post I need to do a better job of connecting the overarching creedal portions of our class to specific cultural examples—to demonstrate why an inquiry into the ontological framework of the sacrament and Trinity matter to regular worship leading.

CRITICAL THOUGHTS ON “Your Love Is Strong”

First, let me emphatically encourage readers to see this not so much of a bashing of Jon Foreman and more of a case study. I don’t own any Switchfoot records, but I’m a fan. I like “Your Love Is Strong.” I believe that Foreman’s four seasonal EP recordings are fantastic examples of good, thoughtful creativity. However, there is just so much worship music out there, so many great songs that I can afford to be picky.

Second, I don’t expect most readers to initially appreciate the kind of discernment I am modeling here. That is why I teach this class. We generally don’t critique our songs very well if at all. What I’m offering here could make me seem like a crotchety old man, harrumphing around with arms folded and a frown. I’d like to disagree, that loving worship, loving the church and even loving Jon Foreman requires us to be discerning. I wouldn’t go to such great lengths to think through this song if I didn’t like it.

Third, I’ll point out that this is only the second lyric that I have adjusted for pastoral concerns in the almost six years of my ministry at Hope College. I’d never messed with the lyrics in the roughly ten years of worship ministry previous either. The point is that I don’t have a heavy hand. Actually, I do in terms of picking songs in the first place, but that is a whole other discussion.

So, I did a poor job in class of explaining why we have decided to ditch the second verse of this song:

I look out the window.
The birds are composing.
Not a note is out of tune
Or out of place.
I look at the meadow
And stare at the flowers.
Better dressed than any girl
On her wedding day. 

First of all a confession: I can personally appreciate and worship with these words. I can navigate around the strengths and weaknesses of this verse and find meaning. I especially like the first half of the verse and am sad to say goodbye to it. However, the question is not what I personally can worship to. The question is what best serves the spiritual formation of the 1000 give or take a few hundred who join us for worship four times per week.

I think I overemphasized that our decision to nix the verse is squarely because of a response to some women who are frustrated with it. The initial concern begins with whether or not we would like to think that feminine beauty should be reduced to a woman on her wedding day. Is a woman in a wedding dress the definitive aesthetic achievement of a woman?

Arguments for keeping the Foreman lyric:

Argument one: we should not ditch worship songs or portions of a worship text because of a person’s personal quandaries. The worship text isn’t about an individual.  A worship text is about God and so we should all work to focus on the best in a song and not get hung up on a particular word choice, phrase or even a whole worship text.

Argument two: Further, there is no such thing as a perfect worship song, perfect worship service or worship leader. Coming to worship requires us to readily forgive each other when our worship words, leadership, expression and participation do not live up to our personal expectations.

In class I overemphasized that the concern was how this worship passage might elicit personal confusion from young women who join us in fellowship. Yes, it is true; each of us bring our own personal baggage into worship. Our own experience can skew our ability to interpret and appreciate various worship expressions. Yes we must be charitable and forgiving when we run into worship passages that confuse or distract us.

However, in choosing to nix this part of Foreman’s song I am acknowledging that there are certain lines for the sake of a corporate a worship service that I need to guard and watch with discernment.

Arguments for not using the Foreman lyric:

Argument one: I don’t believe that a woman on her wedding day is the proper defining moment of feminine beauty that can properly ‘contextualize’ or contemporize the original Biblical passage the Foreman worship verse is responding to:

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

The trouble is that we don’t have royal splendor in North America and so Foreman turns to a wedding to attempt to evoke the same kind of meaning. Wedding day takes the place of King Solomon’s glory. This might seem acceptable especially when we consider that the New Testament uses marriage substantially to illustrate God’s relationship with the church, the bride of Christ.  However, the focus here is not on how the bride of Christ is beautiful now, but more about how the church is being made beautiful. The bride of Christ is making herself ready (Rev 19:7). So it turns out that using the concept of the bride of Christ to defend this lyric is somewhat of a hermeneutical leap.

The trouble is that we have nothing in our culture that can properly help us understand Jesus’ reference to Solomon’s glory. I would personally prefer that worship songwriters had the courage to make specific Biblical references instead of always trying to contemporize. Let’s dare to become biblically literate.

Argument two: Even if we can appreciate the artistic license of Foreman’s lyric and can understand the spirit of what he is trying to convey, consider the lyrics artistic integrity. Here is where subjective enters the discussion. So this is admittedly my weakest point. This lyric is largely sentimental. Read these words together: window, birds, composing, note, tune, meadow, dressed, girl, wedding day. These are the words of a hallmark card. Now this is my subjective reading of the lyrics, and I even think that the great hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth” is prone to such sentimentalism as well. However, I am more willing to sing the hymn because of the gravity of the years and generations who have sung it.

Remember the definition of sentimentalism: emotion for emotions sake. Personally, when I have sung the line I find that images of brides in wedding gowns take greater space in my head than the initial point of the lyric which is the splendor of God’s creation.

Argument three: This argument is contextual to our campus ministry and is my most important. The lyric can idealize marriage and wedding dresses. I am pulling the lyric not so much because of the girls who already are frustrated with it, but for those young ladies who aren’t frustrated with it. I’m pulling the lyric for the many young men who might also have romantic idealizations about a wedding day. I’m pulling the lyric because I know how powerful worship words are to form a persons imagination. I don’t want to pedestalize marriage or brides. As a pastor I don’t want to reinforce the notion that girls are mostly highly valued, most beautiful when they get married. No, a woman in a wedding dress is not the definitive aesthetic achievement of a woman.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be picky about this if I weren’t serving a campus ministry where there is so much pressure on relationships, the temptation to obsess in the search of the one, true love. I spend considerable amount of time and energy trying to help college students learn how to see the opposite sex as a human being first and a potential spouse much, much later.  We have so many layers of confusion that push and pull on our sexuality, it seems easier to avoid language in worship that might perpetuate that confusion. If the rest of this particular lyric had enough weight/value and wasn’t prone to sentimentalism, then perhaps I’d fight for it.

A Good Day: Seeing The Dogs is Like Living Well

Living a day well is akin to paying attention to our dogs. Little Ike and Coen, the last two of a litter of puppies left at the shelter when my wife rescued them. They were so helpless and loveable she couldn’t just pick one. She had to bring home two to surprise me for a Valentine’s Day present four year ago this next February. We figure Ike was picked over because he was the runt with a definitively oversized portion of the “little man syndrome,” meaning that if he isn’t being coddled he can be quite the grump. Coen was picked over because even though he is quite handsome and well proportioned, he is skittish and afraid of silly things like smooth floor tile, heat vents and gutters. We loved these two little fur balls for two years and then somehow in the third year we got distracted. Then we had a baby and now they are always here, ready and eager for our attention if only we had the patience and clarity of heart and mind to give it them. Now living a day well doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve given love to dogs, but it means that we are in a better posture to.

Prayer must certainly be like this and art and love too. How many gorgeous things surround me that I cannot attend to because I’m busy, self consumed, self important, blind dumb and numb? Again, Annie Dillard. I believe it’s chapter two of Pilgrim At a Tinker Creek. She begins, “I’ve been thinking about seeing.” She tells the story of hiding pennies in crevices and crooks of old trees and along sidewalks as a little girl. She drew arrows on the sidewalk with the words, “treasure this way!” Her point is that there are hidden pennies everywhere in life and creation with arrows and maps pointing the way to treasures but sadly, as she says in her essay “Total Eclipse” in Teaching Stones to Talk, “we are born and bored in a stroke.”

Somehow I got caught up in all this talk about the arts. Lets champion the artist, the misunderstood, the marginalized and fringe, the bohemian, the crafty creative person because (again Dillard) ours is a God who loves pizazz. Sure I love the arts. I just spent an hour reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna to my wife until she fell asleep. We’ve been into the latest season of the TV series Damages with Glenn Close and Rose Byrne. It is exciting and somewhat redeemable, a titillating expose of white-collar crime and it’s no small feat to make white collar crime mysterious and riveting. Yet as Susanna began to yawn and apologize for having to ask me to stop reading we had a brief discussion about how much nicer it is to finish the evening with a book rather than a TV show. Definitely. We love the arts. We love Kingsolver’s prose. She makes me want to travel south of the border again soon for pollo frito fresh squeezed juice and la playa. Yet is this really all that much about art itself or it is about being a better human and living a day well?

I say its time we stop talking so much about the arts and begin talking about talking about how to live a day well, how to live better, how to be better humans, and yes this will require the arts but not art as an end in itself but as a means, a kind of training in how to see better. 

Kingsolver makes me want to travel south of the border for a proper margarita and carnitas and she makes me want to pay attention to my dogs more. How did they become so boring to me? If my dogs can become boring, then is it possible for me to let my work, my art, my marriage and even my beautiful son become boring too? Yes. Please God forgive us all our boredom. Oh ennui, the noonday demon.

Kate Kooyman gave a beautiful message tonight at the Gathering on sin and forgiveness. In the first third of her message, she unpacked the difference between sin and immorality and how we confuse the latter for the former. Being a sinner isn’t just about specific acts but about an overall dispassion of being turned inward toward self-worship. I’ll add that sin is fundamentally being cut off from the life of God. It is living without the right redemptive perspective of forgiveness and hope, of love and light. Sinfulness is living in the gutter of the darkness of the self.

So art plus redemption can lead us to seeing better? Yep. True, however art by itself will shape and change us but it cannot save us. Art by itself becomes its own idolatrous end; its own party; its own scene that alienates and separates those who get it and those who don’t. The in and the out. But redemptive human creativity is essential to becoming a Christian. My dogs are beautiful little guys. People stop me and remark when I’m with them on a walk. Wow, what beautiful or amazing or cute little dogs! And inside I’m hoping just to get them to poop so we can get back to the house and on to more important things, to my things, to my agenda. I’m a sinner self-consumed. I’m ignoring the blazing colors of the Fall leaves, the ones remaining on the branch and those scattered on the ground. I’m blind to the subtle changes in wind and temperature, the joy of pulling my scarf tighter. I don’t reflect on the month past, the summer past, the winter ahead. I walk a straight boring line from point A to point B to get the job done, to go back inside and be boring again.

This is not all true. I’m being a good Midwestern boy with a guilt complex. I can see. Yesterday I cut our the burning bushes that line the front of our house back so far that they are little bitty stumps of potentiality—that is if I didn’t kill them (they were getting so huge and everything I could find on the mighty internet said burning bushes are resilient). Behind the bushes was a large planters box eight feet long sitting underneath the front windows. Until yesterday you couldn’t see that its paint was peeling away or that the box itself was almost rotted out, a liability I could have left of the spring? The two hour job turned into six. I was forced outside a bit longer. The dogs tied to the railing on our front steps and wow was Ike grumpy with the cats and dogs and children running freely and flagrantly in front of his tied up self. I cut back the bushes. I raked leaves. I removed the flower box. I scraped the flaking paint behind it. I repainted the shake shingles. I raked some more and the sun set. It got colder. We went inside and made French toast with bananas and honey. Then I pet my dogs with Casper. He chased them around the kitchen island a bit. I could see it.

Oh please God, help me see tomorrow.

                                                                                      

A Good Day: Seeing The Dogs is Like Living Well

Living a day well is akin to paying attention to our dogs. Little Ike and Coen, the last two of a litter of puppies left at the shelter when my wife rescued them. They were so helpless and loveable she couldn’t just pick one. She had to bring home two to surprise me for a Valentine’s Day present four year ago this next February. We figure Ike was picked over because he was the runt with a definitively oversized portion of the “little man syndrome,” meaning that if he isn’t being coddled he can be quite the grump. Coen was picked over because even though he is quite handsome and well proportioned, he is skittish and afraid of silly things like smooth floor tile, heat vents and gutters. We loved these two little fur balls for two years and then somehow in the third year we got distracted. Then we had a baby and now they are always here, ready and eager for our attention if only we had the patience and clarity of heart and mind to give it them. Now living a day well doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve given love to dogs, but it means that we are in a better posture to.

Prayer must certainly be like this and art and love too. How many gorgeous things surround me that I cannot attend to because I’m busy, self consumed, self important, blind dumb and numb? Again, Annie Dillard. I believe it’s chapter two of Pilgrim At a Tinker Creek. She begins, “I’ve been thinking about seeing.” She tells the story of hiding pennies in crevices and crooks of old trees and along sidewalks as a little girl. She drew arrows on the sidewalk with the words, “treasure this way!” Her point is that there are hidden pennies everywhere in life and creation with arrows and maps pointing the way to treasures but sadly, as she says in her essay “Total Eclipse” in Teaching Stones to Talk, “we are born and bored in a stroke.”

Somehow I got caught up in all this talk about the arts. Lets champion the artist, the misunderstood, the marginalized and fringe, the bohemian, the crafty creative person because (again Dillard) ours is a God who loves pizazz. Sure I love the arts. I just spent an hour reading Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna to my wife until she fell asleep. We’ve been into the latest season of the TV series Damages with Glenn Close and Rose Byrne. It is exciting and somewhat redeemable, a titillating expose of white-collar crime and it’s no small feat to make white collar crime mysterious and riveting. Yet as Susanna began to yawn and apologize for having to ask me to stop reading we had a brief discussion about how much nicer it is to finish the evening with a book rather than a TV show. Definitely. We love the arts. We love Kingsolver’s prose. She makes me want to travel south of the border again soon for pollo frito fresh squeezed juice and la playa. Yet is this really all that much about art itself or it is about being a better human and living a day well?

I say its time we stop talking so much about the arts and begin talking about talking about how to live a day well, how to live better, how to be better humans, and yes this will require the arts but not art as an end in itself but as a means, a kind of training in how to see better.

Kingsolver makes me want to travel south of the border for a proper margarita and carnitas and she makes me want to pay attention to my dogs more. How did they become so boring to me? If my dogs can become boring, then is it possible for me to let my work, my art, my marriage and even my beautiful son become boring too? Yes. Please God forgive us all our boredom. Oh ennui, the noonday demon.

Kate Kooyman gave a beautiful message tonight at the Gathering on sin and forgiveness. In the first third of her message, she unpacked the difference between sin and immorality and how we confuse the latter for the former. Being a sinner isn’t just about specific acts but about an overall dispassion of being turned inward toward self-worship. I’ll add that sin is fundamentally being cut off from the life of God. It is living without the right redemptive perspective of forgiveness and hope, of love and light. Sinfulness is living in the gutter of the darkness of the self.

So art plus redemption can lead us to seeing better? Yep. True, however art by itself will shape and change us but it cannot save us. Art by itself becomes its own idolatrous end; its own party; its own scene that alienates and separates those who get it and those who don’t. The in and the out. But redemptive human creativity is essential to becoming a Christian. My dogs are beautiful little guys. People stop me and remark when I’m with them on a walk. Wow, what beautiful or amazing or cute little dogs! And inside I’m hoping just to get them to poop so we can get back to the house and on to more important things, to my things, to my agenda. I’m a sinner self-consumed. I’m ignoring the blazing colors of the Fall leaves, the ones remaining on the branch and those scattered on the ground. I’m blind to the subtle changes in wind and temperature, the joy of pulling my scarf tighter. I don’t reflect on the month past, the summer past, the winter ahead. I walk a straight boring line from point A to point B to get the job done, to go back inside and be boring again.

This is not all true. I’m being a good Midwestern boy with a guilt complex. I can see. Yesterday I cut our the burning bushes that line the front of our house back so far that they are little bitty stumps of potentiality—that is if I didn’t kill them (they were getting so huge and everything I could find on the mighty internet said burning bushes are resilient). Behind the bushes was a large planters box eight feet long sitting underneath the front windows. Until yesterday you couldn’t see that its paint was peeling away or that the box itself was almost rotted out, a liability I could have left of the spring? The two hour job turned into six. I was forced outside a bit longer. The dogs tied to the railing on our front steps and wow was Ike grumpy with the cats and dogs and children running freely and flagrantly in front of his tied up self. I cut back the bushes. I raked leaves. I removed the flower box. I scraped the flaking paint behind it. I repainted the shake shingles. I raked some more and the sun set. It got colder. We went inside and made French toast with bananas and honey. Then I pet my dogs with Casper. He chased them around the kitchen island a bit. I could see it.

Oh please God, help me see tomorrow.