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SONG OF ENDLESS YEARS

The Sleeping Giant of Evangelicalism

10/4/2018

Sing! 2018 - Ligon Duncan

Ligon Duncan, co-founder of Together 4 the Gospel and Chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary was the first plenary speaker at Sing! 2018. Referring to the book of Psalms as the "sleeping giant of evangelicalism," He laid the foundation for the conference. In good Pastor/Professor form, he provided some simple, yet profoundly helpful bullet points.

Basic Structure of the Book of Psalms

BOOK ONE: Psalms 1-41
BOOK TWO: Psalms 42-72
BOOK THREE: Psalms 73-89
BOOK FOUR: Psalms 90-106
BOOK FIVE: Psalms 107-150

Psalm Types

Lyric Poems - feature one main theme in three parts:
1. Announcement 2. Development 3. Recap

Psalms of Lament (e.g. Psalm 130)

Psalms of Praise (e.g. Psalm 8)

Worship Psalms - Psalms which specifically address the context of corporate worship

Nature Poems (e.g. Psalm 42, 19)

Recommended Resources

1. Ryken's Bible Handbook (section on Psalms)
2. Two Volume Commentary by Derek Kidner
3. Give Praise to God: A Vision for Reforming Worship
Chapter 11: Restoring Psalm Singing to Worship - Terry Johnson

Five Core Doctrines in the Psalms

1. GOD - who He is, what He is like, what He has done
2. MAN - our nature and need
3. CREATION - testimony to God's glory
4. SIN - nature and reality
5. WORSHIP

Six Great Themes in the Psalms

1. There is hope
2. The Lord's goodness
3. Our God hears us
4. Our God is amazing
5. We can/should call on God from any situation
6. It is always time to worship

Three Applications

1. God is the center of everything.
2. Everything in life is meant to serve God's praise.
3. Our feelings/emotions must be reckoned with in light of God.

SING! 2018

9/29/2018

The Importance of Congregational Singing

Last September, Getty Music launched a multi-year focus on congregational singing with their first conference - SING! 2017. Through an impressive line-up of plenary and breakout speakers they began to tackle what they define as their five urgent goals:

Teach everyone why and how we sing.
Build deep believers through what we sing.
Strengthen and encourage families to sing together.
Build churches by singing together and to each other.
Witness to our wider communities by our singing

Psalms: Ancient and Modern

Their work continued on an even larger scale this year as the conference more than doubled in attendance and moved from Brentwood Baptist Church to Nashville's Music City Center. After making the case for the necessity of congregational singing in 2017, their logical focus for year 2 two was the Psalms.

digital access passes for sing! 2017 and sing! 2018 here

This year our focus is on the Psalms. As we look to this songbook of the Bible as our singing blueprint it unleashes boundless creativity, it reaches to the breadth of human experience, it gives us a breath taking vision of the vastness of God and His song of salvation to us.

George Herbert once wrote the raw words, 'Wounded I sing, tormented I indite' as he worked out how to understand his human struggles. He concluded 'I live to shew his power, who once did bring / My joyes to weep, and now my griefs to sing.' (Joseph's Coat). The Psalms invite us to honest and deep reflection, to the relief of pouring out our souls to God through the medicinal and beautiful gift of singing to the Lord with His people,

Glory to the Newborn King

12/18/2017

Christmas Hymns have some of the richest theology you can find in congregational song. Perhaps it is because it is hard to sing about the incarnation without going on to explain Jesus' full ministry and reason for coming in the first place.

Think about "What Child is This." Verse one describes the angels, the shepherds, and new mother Mary. Verse two gets to the heart of Jesus' suffering work: Nails, Spear shall pierce him through; the cross be borne for me for you.

Charles Wesley, one of the most significant contributors to protestant hymnody and sung theology, has a number of his 6,000+ hymns in hymnals across denominational lines. His text Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, combined with Mendelssohn's majestic musical setting, is one of my all-time favorite Christmas hymns. It wasn't until a few years ago that I discovered two other verses which are not typically included in hymnals:

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King.”

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King.”

I have our church sing these extra verses at least one Sunday in Advent. The scriptural allusions show us that God's plan of redemption first promised to Eve in Genesis is fulfilled in the work of the second Adam (Jesus).

Glory to the newborn King!

The Music of Champions

7/8/2016

I always look froward to the Olympics - summer or winter. I really like the competition, the representation of so many nations, and even the cheesy commentary. I try not to think about the doping that is going on or how the host nation is likely to go bankrupt after the Olympics have come and gone.

I love the music. Some of my favorite music appears during the Olympics thanks the the limitless talents of John Williams. Williams has the ability to write motives and melodies that immediately convey an archetype. It can be Superman, Darth Vader, an alien's relation with a child, a shark, a heroic archeologist, the tragedies and triumphs of World War II, the magic of Hogwarts, or the nightly news.

His immediately recognizable tunes make it easy for networks to excerpt small segments of his Olympic music. We will hear portions of these pieces as we go to and return from commercials.

I may or may not listen to this music regularly in the car...

Hopefully, we will hear some of the works in full. If not, you can enjoy them here.

The "Olympic Fanfare and Theme" was written for the 1984 summer olympics in Los Angeles. Williams received a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition.

0In 1988 he wrote "The Olympic Spirit" for the summer olympics in Seoul. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition.

In commemoration of the Centennial of the Modern Olympic Games Williams wrote "Summon the Heroes" for the summer olympics in Atlanta (1996). This theme is used heavily by NBC for intros and outros to commercial breaks.

"Call of the Champions" is a fanfare for orchestra and choir composed for the 2000 winter olympics in Salt Lake City. It opens with the choir singing "Citius! Altius! Fortius!" (Faster, Higher, Stronger), which is the Olympic Motto chosen by the founder of the modern Games.

Keep Singing

6/30/2016

This is a follow up to my previous post on Bob Kauflin's book True Worshipers.

Chapter Seven, True Worshipers Keep Singing: Worship and Perseverance is packed with many helpful questions that have us all at some point. The following list is certainly not exhaustive, but includes the questions that resonated most strongly with me.

WHAT IF I DON'T FEEL LIKE SINGING?
"Sometimes we come in on a Sunday morning and the last thing we want to do is sing. God gave us singing as a means not only of expressing our emotions but also speaking to them. We won't always be moved in the same way or to the same degree when we sing. There may be times when we feel numb. But the answer isn't to stop singing. Crying for grace to feel strong affections toward [God] is itself a sign of true worship. And certainly more fruitful than gritting our teeth and accepting the condition as normal."

WHY DO WE SING SO MANY OLD SONGS (OR NEW SONGS)?
"Objecting to songs simply because they're old is rooted in the same problem as objecting to new ones. We want to sing the songs we like. But the issue isn't how familiar we are with the songs. The issue is whether we're going to take every opportunity as true worshipers to exalt God."

This is a great exhortation to me as one who can be distracted by my own critical spirit when in an unfamiliar worship scenario. Kauflin's answer can be applied to any aspect of a worship service. Perhaps we're in a service more "rigid" than we're used to or perhaps the liturgy is very different. The choice is ours: do we enter in and seek the glory of the Lord or do we itemize those things which do not live up to our standards?

WHAT DO I DO WHEN I'M DISTRACTED?
"It's enough to be distracted internally by our own thoughts, relational challenges, struggles, pains, and anxieties. But distractions can also be external. It might be a leader or someone in the band who's particularly expressive or grumpy looking. It might be the temperature in the room. If you're a musician, you might be bothered by a bad mix. It's the rare meeting that doesn't have something we can complain about. But for true worshipers, the question is always, How can I respond in a way that exalts God's glory in Christ in my mind, affections, and will?"

I am so thankful for Bob Kauflin's work in music and worship at Sovereign Grace. It has helped me grow in so many ways and I hope it helps us all to keep singing!

Christian Worship is Participatory

6/30/2016

In the last few posts I unpacked the three broad characteristics of Christian worship as defined by the BiFrost Arts curriculum. Read more about the curriculum here. The curriculum asserts that Christian worship will be Biblical, Trinitarian, and Redemptive.

The fourth broad characteristic of Christian worship is that it is Participatory.
Participatory worship helps to challenge two idolatries:

seeing the preacher as the one who does all the heavy lifting in the worship service.
believing that a worship leader or musician will deliver an expressive experience of worship to us.

If the preacher/pastor is doing all of the heavy lifting, then we are tempted to check out of the rest of the service. "It's all lead up to the sermon anyway." We might even be tempted to substitute podcast sermons for actual worship attendance, when we are physically able to attend church. Biblical sermons are excellent, but it is easy to treat them as another self help talk if we think Sunday worship is just about me learning more.

So when we read scripture together in worship, read it intentionally. When we confess our sins, may it be heartfelt and genuine. When we hear the promise of the gospel that our sins are forgiven in Jesus, take it in deeply. When we listen to musicians or soloists we do not have to be passive. Listen actively, searching for God's glory in what is being sung or played. The work of our worship is actively receiving the finished work of Jesus.

True Worshipers

3/30/2016

I recently finished Bob Kauflin's book True Worshipers. In his normal winsome and clear way, Kauflin draws our attention to the core truths about worship. While many of his insights are not new, he provides them in a context which helps the believer process worship individually and in community.

His chapters on music are particularly helpful. In chapter six, TRUE WORSHIPERS SING: Worship and Music, he covers the what and why of corporate singing, acknowledging that if we sing without understanding God's purpose for it, we won't be motivated to sing.

"No one is excused. Not even those with zero musical ability. The critical question is not Do I have a voice? but Do I have a song? And if you're a true worshiper, forgiven and reconciled to God through the atoning work of Christ, the answer is a resounding yes. It's not a song we originated or created. We can't add to it, change it, or improve upon it. It's the song of the redeemed for their great Redeemer. It's a song God's people have been singing together for thousands of years."

Most of us are struggling at some time in worship. We might be fighting fatigue, children, depression, or any number of emotional and relational battles as we try to stand and engage in the work of worship. If singing is just about our expression and what we can contribute, we can feel resentful or hypocritical when our hearts are not in it. His next question, WHAT does singing do? provides grounding for our hearts.

Singing encourages and expresses the Spirit's work in our hearts and it helps us to remember God's Word. It helps us to teach and be taught and to express and engage our emotions. It also encourages physical expressiveness and help us to express our unity with the church. Remember these corporate aspects of song the next time you are tempted to check out during the service and remember that the body of Christ is a collection of believers, skeptics, and strugglers who are uniting around the perfect work of Jesus and singing HIS song.

"If you no longer have to fear eternal separation from God, if death is merely the doorway to unspeakable joy, if sin has been conquered, hell is overcome, and Jesus has saved you to enjoy unending pleasures at God's right hand, then you have a song to sing. And it's a song that no trial, no disease, no struggle, no persecution, no power on earth or in hell can stop."

Will you pity us less because our faith is feeble?

11/19/2015

A song for the weak and broken

Click above to read Kevin Twit's article
on the Desiring God website.

I have long been thankful for the work of Indelible Grace. Beginning in 1999, these musicians spearheaded a movement of returning to older hymn texts sung to more current styles, realizing that the truths contained in these texts are timeless and eternal.

Twit writes about his song Heal Us: When our faith is feeble, and particularly when we look at the overwhelming problems in our world, it is difficult to believe there can be any real hope. But as Cowper shows us, hope is found in the character of our God. “Will you pity us less because our faith is feeble?” What an honest question! We all think it and even fear that the Lord will not extend his mercy to those of little faith.

I find these questions so timely, in light of the racial tensions in our country, the attacks from ISIS and the resulting refugee crisis, the mind numbing drone of political and social media, as well as my own walk as a person with cancer and little faith.

Read about and have a listen to Twit's song on the latest Indelible Grace project, Look to Jesus.

There is hope.

The Big Story: Redemptive Worship, part two

7/16/2015

Continuing from my last post, I want to discuss how Trinity's worship reflects God's Big Story.

Our services are structured around five main pillars: God gathers, cleanses, speaks, strengthens, and sends.

God Gathers Us
God initiates (CREATION) and calls us to Himself through his Word. We read scripture, ask for God's help in worship, and sing songs in praise of his attributes.

God Cleanses Us
The Confession and Assurance sequence (FALL - REDEMPTION) presents one of the many paradoxes in worship. Despite the joyful nature of the material that precedes it - singing, calls to worship, and prayers of adoration - the proper result of praise is a form of sorrow. Sorrow that our lives don't reflect the glorious attributes of our Creator. Sorrow that our hearts have worshipped things other than God. The Confession/Assurance sequence, though reflective in tone, leads us out of sorrow into pardon, relief, and joy through the hope of the gospel, the atoning work of Jesus on the cross.

Repentance and forgiveness is central to the life of the believer. Martin Luther spoke of this in the first of his Ninety-Five Theses: "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." Confessing corporately reminds us that we must be doing this individually. It unites believers under the promises of the gospel and shows those among us who do not yet believe that our hope is not in ourselves, our self-determination, or our abilities, but in Jesus Christ alone.

God Speaks to Us
Through the preaching of God's Word (CREATION-FALL-REDEMPTION-CONSUMMATION), we hear more of God's loving instruction and exhortation and are further equipped to live as those who has been called out of darkness into his light. "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

God Strengthens Us
The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is a simultaneous look back at the cross and our need for the atoning blood of Jesus (FALL-REDEMPTION) and a look forward in anticipation of the marriage supper of the Lamb (CONSUMMATION) .

In his book Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace, James Torrance speaks of the Lord's Supper as the supreme expression of all worship. "It is the act in which the risen and ascended Lord meets us at his table, in the power of the Spirit, to bring his passion to our remembrance and to draw us to himself that we may share his communion with the Father and his intercessions for the world."

God Sends Us
Although we have been reminded of our forgiveness in Christ and have been strengthened through the promises of the gospel preached and enacted in Communion, we are still sojourners in a fallen world. We are reminded that just as we have been the church gathered, we are being sent out to be the church scattered. Our worship and our mission are joined.

The Big Story: Redemptive Worship

7/16/2015

I recently finished reading The Stories We Tell, by Mike Cosper, which is a fascinating discussion of literature, TV, and movies. In it, Cosper says that "the Big Story of the Bible--creation, fall, redemption, and consummation--is so pervasive, so all-encompassing of our world, that we can't help but echo it (or movements within it) when we're telling other stories." He provides a diverse media diet and approaches the shows and films with an eye toward the Big Story.

Services of worship tell a story as well. Whether the content of the service is heavily outlined with headings or done with a higher emphasis on continuity and smooth transition, our corporate worship is a story we tell, enact, and embody every time we gather.

The concept of story is central to the third of the four broad characteristics of biblical worship we discussed in my Sunday School class. (Read more about #1 scriptural and #2 triune here.)

3. Redemptive

"Worship should celebrate and enact the redeeming work of God in the life of his people."

Here are reasons for ensuring that God’s redemption story is present throughout our worship service every week:

We assume there are people sitting in our worship service on any given Sunday morning who have never heard the gospel.
Believers need to remember the story of the gospel and be strengthened by it in the corporate gathering each week.
Liturgical practice is formative, ingraining thoughts and attitudes in us in ways we do not understand.

How does a worship service reflect the dynamics of Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consumption?
What does this look like practically at Trinity?

I'll unpack this in the next post.