My Problem with Worship part 4: (A multi-part post...)

You can find part one here, part two here and part three here.

So, my big idea is this, as we’ve commodified worship a number of unintended but detrimental consequences have occurred. The story behind Matt Redman’s song, “The Heart of Worship” illustrates one pastor and a congregation’s effort to face and overcome some of these consequences.  That a song about that church’s struggle with worship being reduced to our musical preferences became a huge successful song on the worship charts is a perfect illustration of the power of the Powers.

We will sing about not singing and the irony will be lost on us.

That’s not Matt Redman’s fault, that’s my fault, I led that song a lot without even once thinking about the irony.  The best way to worship with that song is likely not to sing it and instead, share the story and invite people to bring their own offerings.

Not thinking about what we’re singing is, for me, an issue.

In part one, I wrote, “We have neglected to pay attention to what we sing.  Our songs will shape our theology if our theology hasn’t shaped our songs.  I’m part of a movement that holds at its core a belief in an enacted inaugurated eschatology. My experience is we quite often sing songs coming from other perspectives that are inherently based on other central beliefs that are in conflict with our own.  We have sacrificed good theology for “a good beat I can dance to.”  We don’t have to, we just do. I believe that within our movement we’ll soon wake up to find the songs we sing have moved us a long way from the radical middle.”

The context of my thoughts about this is the movement of which I am a part.  But I think anyone, in any church with a statement of faith, a mission statement or even a motto needs to give this some consideration. What in the world are you saying with your songs?

I remember attending a worship service at a church several years ago that sang a song whose title I can only guess is, "Money Cometh," based on the repetitive phrase in the chorus.  I attended another church that sang Kevin Prosch's song, "Show Your Power" and found myself awkwardly singing different lyrics than the rest of the congregation when we came to the line that Prosch wrote, "We ask not for riches but look to the cross..." They would not sing, "We ask not for riches..." negative faith baby.  So the lyrics were were written so they could ask for riches while they looked at the Cross. 

A few years ago, as a church planting pastor and a worship leader, I attended a small gathering of academics and theologians – professors and smart people and such – to talk about post-modern hermeneutics.  I was the dimmest bulb in the room and my mind was blown over and over.  During a break, I was standing by two other participants and listening as they were talking about a very popular worship song at the time.  “When it gets to…” and he quoted the line, “I stop singing and look around to see if anyone else seems aware of what they’re singing.”  Having just led that song the Sunday before, it had never occurred to me to stop, nor had I really thought much about that particular line – because the chorus was awesome and I sounded really good on it too.

Considering what they were saying, I realized I didn't believe what I was singing either, it painted a very ugly picture of God if a person thought about it, and I didn't want our church singing that line either.

Overhearing their brief exchange started me thinking more about what I was singing.  It made me realize that the songs we sing shape what we believe about God as much or more than the messages I preached.  Never once did I hang out with someone during the week when I heard them unconsciously repeating lines from my message but I often heard people singing a line or two to themselves from a song from the past Sunday morning worship time. I never had someone ask me, mid-week, if I would repeat the message from a week before, but I did have people ask if we were doing that song again.

Our songs don’t reinforce the pulpit; our songs are pulpits.

When Is Your Tribe Not Your Tribe?

About 20 years ago I walked into my first Vineyard Church meeting.  My story is like the story of many others who did the very same thing and suddenly realized, “This is my tribe! These are my people!”

My own journey with God had taken me from a Cessationist movement and into a desert where my faith was deconstructed.  It turned out that my desert was in an ocean all along and God was engaging me in a process of formation that continues until the Last day. But I’ve enjoyed this feeling for two decades – I am part of a Tribe that gets me, that connects with God the way I connect with God, that lets God define himself rather than the boxes we build for him.

As I have lived and grown and been changed, I’ve found my Tribe within the Tribe: the Vineyard Scholars.  From a certain perspective, I might be a scholar.  I am not a theologian, but I do love theology. But what makes this Tribe within the Tribe dear to me is that, in hanging around them, reading them and engaging with them in conversation, I feel at home in both my head and my heart. This group is a grace from God to me.  They make me feel sane, they challenge me, they remind me what I have always loved about the Vineyard from the very first day I walked into my very first Vineyard Church meeting.

But lately I feel I am standing at a crossroads. I feel like I am standing at the center of an X where trajectories would appear to offer alternate futures from this time and place we’ve been sharing together. I love my Vineyard Tribe, but the question I contemplate a lot is this: what happens when your Tribe stops behaving like your Tribe?

From my perspective there are 4 Vineyards within the Vineyard today.  Let’s call one “Vineyard Classic.”  That’s the Vineyard that Carol Wimber gathered in her living room and connected with God in worship using 3 chords and a lot of hunger.  I’d call number two “Vineyard lite”, we maintain our continuity with our history but we’ve pursued legitimacy and reputation over our values.  We’re much more about church growth than we are about Kingdom theology.  The 3^rd version I see on the go and growing is “Baptiyard,” a strange Baptist/Vineyard hybrid that references the Holy Spirit, teaches on the Holy Spirit but utilizes the Spirit as a tool and more likely to listen to experts on “exponential attendance growth” than waiting on the Holy Spirit. This group is invested in a primary goal, being a new mega-church (or at least a mini-mega-church). Finally, the 4^th stream that flows is what I would call “Bethyard,” another hybrid, this one a mix of Bethel and the Vineyard.  There have always been some in the Vineyard who want more, more experiences of the “glory cloud/gold dust/angel feathers/stick quarters to the wall” stuff.  Who believe “everyone gets to play” but seem to think one or two of us are better at playing than the others. In the Vineyard we have embraced the Already and Not Yet of the Kingdom of God: an enacted inaugurated eschatology.  The Bethyard folks have simply concluded that in the Vineyard we’ve emphasized the “not yet” too much and they, like Bethel, prefer a realized eschatology and land heavily on the “already.” The trouble, of course, for the Bethyard folks is this – what do they do when a Bethel gets planted nearby? Why will people stick around for the hybrid when they could have the real thing?

Back to me. (…cause, y’know, it’s all about me…)

Seeing this all play out around me, like a stranger in a strange land, has me contemplating these days, wondering what happens when my Tribe doesn’t feel or behave like my Tribe anymore? These are probably the growing pains of any movement, we are young at this in the Vineyard. But for sure, some of us have already decided to take our stuff and go elsewhere.  And a recent letter let us know that some Vineyards haven’t been contributing their 3% and if it that doesn’t change by October, they will be presumed dead (my expression, not the Vineyards). Can a relational movement, as I have perceived it, survive when consultation and conversation is replaced by position papers and mass emails?  Or were we never a relational movement and I’m simply deluded?

In May, I participated in a two-day workshop hosted by my regional leaders and led by Derek Morphew. It was brilliant and I was reminded by both the content and the participants why Vineyard is my Tribe. But for me it was also bittersweet as my perception is that the content that focused on Mark and Kingdom theology is becoming an ever quieted voice within our Tribe and the values that pulled us all together with Jesus at the center, is becoming something other than what it once was.  We all grow, we all change, life is a process and this is not an ode to the good old days. This is just me, a little voice out on the edge that feels deeply indebted to my Tribe, deeply appreciative for who I perceive we are, but I am feeling increasingly doubtful that when I show up for the next reunion the Tribe I once discovered will be the Tribe I will find.