Reflections on SVS 2018

A week ago I spent a few hours in Wilmore, Kentucky. The time went by so quickly for me that I still can’t believe that I was there for two and a half days.

Vineyard Scholars is as nerdy as it sounds but not as academically upscale as you might think. Being rooted in the Vineyard, we have a high value on making conversation accessible to everyone and if anywhere “everyone gets to play” is true in the Vineyard, it’s among the Society of Vineyard Scholars (SVS).

I’ve been reflecting on the experience I’ve just come back from and I want to share some of my thoughts with you. I’d like to tell you about it in 3 parts: 1) the things that I have a problem with about SVS, 2) the things I love about SVS and finally 3) some awards, some unofficial SVSees I'd like to award.

THINGS I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH

First on this list is how quickly it all went. I still cannot figure out why this SVS went by so quickly and seemed to be almost a whole day shorter than past conferences (this was my fourth). Being together with other people with Vineyard roots and thinking and talking through the issues we covered (and didn’t covered) is, for me, more important than the time we have. Given the pace of life, I don’t have much of a solution for this other than to attempt to cultivate mini-gatherings in our respective regions at another time during the year in order to encourage and provoke each other.

The second of my problems is that I worry about the nature of SVS within the Vineyard USA (VUSA) system. We were admonished one morning by Eleanor Mumford with a message that sounded to me a little like the old children’s Sunday School song, “O be careful little mouth what you say /O be careful little mouth what you say / There's a Father up above / And He's looking down in love /So, be careful little mouth what you say.” The implication seemed to be that we need to be careful, as people doing theology, not to tell everyone around us what we’re thinking and working through as our thinking out loud has the potential of being equivalent to a spiritual drive by shooting.

And for God’s sake, don’t Tweet it.

But that wasn’t my problem. My problem is that Eleanor has a very different impression of SVS than I do and I’m not sure which of us has it right.  My problem is that I am afraid that SVS exists primarily as a distraction. A little bread and circuses. As much as I’d like to think SVSers have some impact in our Vineyard Movement, I’m not sure where or how that happens. Theological position papers come out but they haven’t been discussed and vetted first (or second or third) by SVS members. SVS does not discuss or discern the theme for the National Conference or important issues to be discussed at Regional conferences. We don’t vote or come to a consensus on “the Vineyard position” or create papers for the Movement on aspects of theology. And sometimes I get the sinking feeling that SVS has just become a very convenient pressure release valve for those who like to drink deeply from theological wells and drink just as deeply from wine barrels (one in moderation, the other not so much).

THINGS THAT I LOVED

The worship. Songs of substance. Hungry hearts. Loud voices raised in adoration and devotion. Seeing the inclusiveness of the worship team from GCF, our hosts (more on them to come). Seeing some of my favorite people from Campbellsville (who I most know from their legendary status) leading two sets that made my heart explode (in the best way). I loved that we were singing songs that came from the early days of the Vineyard and one of the newest songs in the Vineyard and our common story is woven together by the songs with which we worship.

The opening panel. A great way to begin our time together. Provocative thoughts from across a spectrum of specialties and interests on a single theme, “Entangled in Babylon, Free in Christ.” Powerful insights that were, alone, worth the price of admission. For me, this session set the table for how good it was going to be.

The babies.  There were babies at SVS this year. It might be my status as grandpa now but I was deeply encouraged that the parents of these little ones felt comfortable to bring their babies to sessions.  It was, for me, a simple example of what makes this gathering so beautiful. Theology is for everyone and babies keep us rooted.  I think all papers need to be delivered from now on WHILE holding a baby.

GCF. Great Commission Fellowship in Wilmore, Kentucky, were amazing hosts. They treated us very well, brought the best coffee, showed great hospitality and made us feel very welcomed. Jason Duncan is a star and is pastoring an amazing Vineyard.

Heroes. I was in close proximity to two of my theology heroes. One, Craig Keener, has been very influential for me in both Bible study and in pastoring. Sadly, I didn’t get past my fanboy paralysis to talk to him. Some day.  Getting to listen to him and his incredible wife, Médine, live and in person, was brilliant. On Thursday morning I got out of my own way and introduced myself to another theology hero, Howard Snyder. Dr. Snyder has been an influence on my life through his writing since I became a Christian and has shaped my vision of what the Church can and ought to be. His session was very encouraging and thought provoking as well.

Friends. Old and new, connecting with both was a beautiful gift. Meeting people in the real world – at least the ones you like – is deeply satisfying and something I hope everyone does more of. It was not enough of a good thing but I feel richer for it nonetheless.

Papers. Papers are presented and while I appreciate everyone thoughtful and brave and kind enough to prepare and share one, here are some favorites I was able to hear presented. 1) Communities and Spiritual Maturity: Rooted with Wings by Walter Thiessen. 2) Theology from Below: What Do the Oppressed Owe Their Oppressors by Donnell T. Wyche. 3) Speak Truth to Power: God’s Kingdom People Against Empire by Nick Fox. 4) Living Liturgies: Embracing the Liturgical Tradition as the Vineyard Movement by Kyla Young Morgan. 5) The dueling paper presentation of Being Vineyard, Being Evangelical: An English Perspective by Tom Creedy and ‘A Parting of Ways’? The Future of the Vineyard within Conservative Evangelicalism by Steve Burnhope. I loved these two friends staking out opposing positions in the kindest, most polite and friendliest way possible. Tom made me glad to be an evangelical and Steve made me want to never use that term again.  6) Quadrilateraling™ in the Vineyard by Luke Geraty.  All of these papers and presentations have given me a lot to think about, some things to change and a reason to hope moving forward.  There were many more papers that were great, these are just some I heard and some I heard that meant the most to me.

Caleb Maskell.  Caleb heads up the SVS and did a fantastic job pastoring this gathering. Caleb not only embodies good scholarship but he also embodies the very marriage of head and heart, mind and spirit, that I think we are looking for, not only in SVS, but the Vineyard as a whole.

SVSee AWARDS

Can I give out some unofficial SVSee Awards for 2018?  Most quotable theologian of SVS 2018, Tom Creedy.  Best presentation given under pressure with our National Director sitting 8 feet away, Luke Geraty. Best insights saved for Q&A time that deserve their own papers, Mike Raburn. Most provocative but also right, Steve Burnhope. Best and Most longsuffering host, Thomas Lyons. Best lunch company who kindly listened to an old man (me) ramble on and on, Dan and Katie Heck.

As I have said in other places, SVS represents the best of the Vineyard movement to me for all the reasons above. I am grateful for this group of people - that they exist and that they gather and that they are so deep and wide.

If you attended SVS, any awards you’d like to give out?

If you didn’t attend SVS, why not go next year?

Dear VUSA pt 2

Dear VUSA,

Hey, it’s me again.

I wanted to finish sharing my feelings with you. (part one here)

Before I get to that, I want to tell you why I’m writing you like this, I’d like to tell you why I am not writing this and then tell you about how I’m feeling.

And then I’ll just leave this with you and won’t bother you again.

VUSA, I love you. I believe in you. I really do. That’s the main reason I’m writing. If I thought you permanently sucked and I hated you, I’d just slip away.

VUSA, I’m writing like this because we have no ombudsman, no party that I know I can reach out to who will listen and will sit us down and help us listen to each other. As a system, you seem both impenetrable and impervious.

But I love you, I believe in you and I have a dream of how our relationship can be, therefore, I write.

I am not writing because I’m lonely or sad or going through a particularly hard time in my local church. I’m not writing you, VUSA, because I have no friends or I’m on the verge of a breakdown. I’m not writing you because I like to complain and want to be “that guy” that causes everyone to inwardly groan when they see he’s in the meeting.

I’m not writing to criticize people, the parts of your sum, VUSA.

This is important because 32% of our population will personalize what I am writing even though it’s not written about them or about any person. I am writing about a system. About VUSA.

You are a system and you have developed a mindset, an attitude, a personality, an existence that lives beyond the individual parts that make you up. You are a system that influences the people who live inside of you every bit as much or more than they influence you. That’s what a system does.

A wise person once said, “The way the kingdom comes is the kingdom that comes.” Systems are not neutral. Your nature will produce fruit after its kind. They way you do things shapes the future as much or more than the words or values you speak, no matter who the people are that are plugged into your system.

I’m not writing with the illusion that I can do a single thing about that, but I do believe that I am my brother’s keeper and if you see a brother, or system, that causes hurt feelings and you don’t speak up or try to speak up, you’re complicit. I don’t want to be complicit.

So this is the part where I finish telling you about how I feel about our relationship.

Once upon a time I went to work at a store and met some great people. Right away one guy invited me and my wife over for dinner. We were new to town and I was excited about the possibility of establishing new relationships.

We had a great meal, good conversation, funny stories but then after the meal the couple asked me and my wife to have a seat on their couch while they set up a white board on a stand. The warm hospitality suddenly felt awkward.

For the next hour we listened to their multi-level marketing presentation and heard about the incredible opportunity to be one of their “legs.” There were upline people at various levels from diamond to emerald but the goal, as they explained it to us, was to get our own legs and become uplines to others from whom we would eventually collect money off of their work.

VUSA, for me, this is how I feel about our relationship. I feel like my worth to you is in my potential as a leg in your multi-level church planting movement. I feel like I’m a downline. I’m a leg. I feel like my worth to you is based on my ability to produce and to purchase, to get more downlines, more legs planted, more resources flowing upwards to feed you. I’ve watched people diagram you VUSA, I’ve seen them use their hands to demonstrate the multi-levels of your system. I left a system like that in order to join the Vineyard.

And now it’s starting to feel to me like we’ve become what I left.

I’m not mad at you, VUSA, we are what we are and perhaps this is the way that all systems are eventually bound to develop.

I just have this dream that we will have a different sort of relationship where I don’t feel like I work for you but with you and that when you are making decisions that affect me and the church I’m in, you’ll drop us a line and ask for some feedback before it actually happens. I have a dream that our kingdom theology will influence you, our system, as much as it influences our local churches and our every day relationships and that it will influence me because God knows I need it to.

The hard thing is for those who are inside the system to be able to see or relate to what I am talking about. Place influences perspective and there are people who enjoy a connection to your system that can’t possibly relate to how I feel. I acknowledge and accept that. It’s part of the complex nature of family systems – we’re all in ‘normal’ families until we start to hang out with other families because we don’t know what we don’t know.

Our relationship with the couple who invited us over for dinner and a presentation didn’t develop very far because my wife, who has an aversion to multi-level marketing, said we weren’t interested.

And then they weren’t.

And VUSA, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit worried that telling you all this will make you despise me. But I would feel much worse if I never said a word.

I’m one hundred percent sold out for the kingdom and for the Vineyard. The Spirit has used Kingdom theology to shape me and how I fulfill my vocation. I’m not going anywhere. That might be good news or bad news to you VUSA, but I really couldn’t carry on without telling you how I’m feeling.

So I offer both parts of this letter up to the interwebs with a prayer that the Spirit is at work in people AND in systems. I pray that there are better days ahead for us and that we can develop a healthy system that will facilitate our vocation into the future. I hope the same system that produced a booklet for guidance on having hard conversations is willing to embrace sitting down with downliners like me and having some of those hard conversations because the way the kingdom comes is the kingdom that comes.

My Open Letter to Vineyard Music

Dear Vineyard Music,

This is a long overdue letter of appreciation. 

I still remember the first Vineyard meeting I walked into. Before a message was preached, a word given, or a ministry time happened, there was the music.

It was in the worship that I felt God spoke to me, it was in the songs that I heard my own heart’s cry, it was the intimate, hungry, vulnerable, simplicity that I, like many others, was moved to say, “this is my tribe, these are my people.”

We used to eagerly look forward to the newest CD that you would produce and our worship leaders and teams would mine them for the songs we would sing. I still remember attending a small Vineyard on holidays that had no band so worship time was a set list pre-programmed to play from Winds of Worship CDs. I settled into my seat expecting boredom and found myself moved to tears as the Spirit came into the room as a song, recorded months earlier in a continent away opened our hearts to God. Those albums not only gave us songs to sing, they shaped our communities with good theology. The songs not only communicated our Vineyard values but the inclusion of local worship teams and songwriters from local churches made us believe we really meant that everyone gets to play.

Thanks to you, I connected with words and music that have brought me closer to God. You’ve been the conduit through which the artists among us, the poets and prophets, could share what God was putting on their hearts. Our whole movement has been enriched through the ministry you all have performed for us. Thanks to you, our churches have had a common songbook from which to sing for 30 years now. Thanks to you, these songs have transcended our own movement and have gone on to inspire other movements and denominations with our theology and values.  A generation of worship leaders and songwriters now exists who have been influenced significantly by the men and women who have shared their music with us through you.

John Wimber used to say that you could tell what we value by looking at our calendars and our checkbooks.  I am grateful that, as a Movement, we have invested a part of our annual income to contribute to the flourishing of our worship community within the Vineyard. I’m grateful that, as a Movement, we have put worship events on the national calendar and we have used the finances we collect from local Vineyard churches to encourage and develop local church worship leaders, sound people, songwriters, singers and musicians.  I would be deeply saddened if there ever came a day when we stopped investing our time and money in Vineyard Music, it would say something tragic about the state of our Movement.

Like the sound person who everyone ignores when things are going well but everyone turns to give the stink eye to when something goes wrong, I feel like we don’t adequately appreciate what we have in Vineyard Music. VM doesn’t belong to a big label, unlike other groups producing worship music. VM doesn’t have the deep pockets, in fact you have worked with shrinking pockets, that many other church labels have. Our songwriters and artists have received little or nothing with which to fund their projects over the last few years and yet we continue to have amazing songs from them come to us through you. You have been swimming in the pond with much bigger fish with a lot more resource for promotion and production and yet you've continued to bring us songs and worship projects that give us a lot of gold to mine.

I suspect very few of us are aware of how little finance you have to work with and while we should be marveling at how you’ve multiplied it to do more than seems possible, we’ve been critical because you haven’t done more. I’m sorry for that. I’m grateful for your willingness to make sacrifices that go unnoticed and the imagination you’ve brought to the table to do more than the resources on hand would seem to make possible.

Thanks, Vineyard Music, for all you’ve done and all you are doing to make our Movement, our local churches, our individual lives, richer and deeper and more beautiful. Thank you, songwriters, musicians, singers and worship leaders for giving and giving in this new age of digital music when making a living at your craft has become all but impossible. Thank you, Vineyard Music, for the hard work you do behind the scenes that has brought life and encouragement and resources to our local churches that makes us who we are.

My hope for the future is that we will invest more and more into Vineyard Music and put an emphasis once again on the power of God's presence - free of hype - that has always been a part of our story as worshipers of God and rescuers of men.

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.

My Problem with Worship interlude: (A multi-part post in which I offend many friends)

One of my favorite stories about worship leading comes from Eddie Espinosa.

Eddie tells a story about one of the members of his worship team coming to him to complain that worship had become boring and flat.  His band member zeroed in on the problem, Eddie always had a prepared set list for worship and what he needed to do was toss the list and follow the Spirit.

Eddie listened, didn’t argue and took in what his bandmate was telling him.

And then he went home and prepared for worship the next Sunday just the same way he always did.  He prayed, listened, considered songs, listened and came up with a list.

But this time he made two small changes.  He hid the list.  He didn’t give the list to his bandmates.  The other change was that he asked God for permission not to follow His lead.  What he meant was that while he normally would drop in a song if he sensed the Spirit leading in a particular direction in the midst of worship, this time he would stick to the list, no matter what.  He felt God was with him.

Sunday morning the band sound checked, ran over a couple songs, seemingly at random and then chilled until the service started.  Once the worship service started, Eddie played his set list just as he had prepared it, start to finish.

Worship went so well that his complaining bandmate came to him after the service really excited.  Instead of complaints he told Eddie how amazing the morning worship had been and he told Eddie he knew exactly why it had been so good…because he’d thrown out the list!

And that’s when Eddie told him the truth.  He’d used the list, just like he had every other time. And he’s done the songs in the order they were on the list, just like every other time.

Eddie’s story isn’t about making a list or not making a list, but it does reveal just how subjective our singing experience can be. 

As a worship leader I’ve led some Sunday mornings where I was pretty sure God had left the building and I wished I could’ve gone with Him.  And then mid-week I’ve received an email about how “powerful” the worship time had been that week for someone there.  Other times I’ve felt like we were in the groove and if we were ever anointed it had been that Sunday, only to have another leader tell me how flat and dull worship had seemed that morning.

As a preacher, I’ve preached sermons I felt went nowhere and sermons I felt were almost worthy adding to the back of the Bible.  And just like with the worship songs, the reactions from others have been contrary to my own experience and perspective.  There’s a lot of subjectivity that takes place on a Sunday morning but to be honest, most of the pressure for how a morning goes lands on the worship leader.

They succeeded/failed to create the atmosphere for the Holy Spirit to move.

They succeeded/failed in getting hearts to open up to what God wanted to do.

They succeeded/failed in ushering us into the secret place.

It wasn’t me screaming at my wife on the way to the service, or yelling at my kids all morning to get them ready.  It wasn’t that I haven’t looked at my Bible app since we left the service last Sunday.  It has nothing to do with my total disengagement with prayer since the last Amen the previous week.  The problem rests solely with our worship leader not jiggling the right levers that got me with the feels.  It was the poor song selection.  It was the bands lack of attention to their transitions.  Or it was simply because the stupid fog machine broke down between first and second service and I can’t get my praise on without diffused light and copious amounts of fog.

Worship is a performance but it never has to be entertainment, even if we are entertained.  A performance is something we do together, share together and own together.  Entertainment is something we grade, we consume and when it doesn’t keep us engaged we move on to another vendor. 

Internal. External.

There is a subjective nature to our worship service that begs for leaders, senior leaders, who will trust their worship leaders and work collaboratively with them.  We need senior leaders to communicate with our congregations that we are all responsible for our worship experience and Sunday mornings are the summation of our experience that started on Monday morning and not a pep rally to get us through the week.

and thus I conclude this interlude...tomorrow I conclude my ranting...

on worship.

As always, leave your comments after the beep, I love to hear from you.

*Eddie's story appeared in Things they Didn't Teach Me in Worship Leading School, Tom Kraeuter, Emerald Books, 1995.

My Problem with Worship pt. 3 (A multi-part post in which I offend many friends)

Part one is here.  Part two is here.

Let me sum up the big idea of part one and two – we have turned worship into a commodity. We leverage it to obtain market share and we treat songwriters, worship leaders and worship music like cogs in our machine.  This has created a number of unintended consequences.

Back in the day, John Wimber, who became the catalyst of the Vineyard Movement, knew music and knew musicians because he was one.  That’s exactly the kind of leader you want to lead a movement with the songs of worship and the experience of the presence of God at its core. Heart of an artist, mind of a strategist, imperfectly perfect to nurture the vulnerable and artistic hearts that gathered to sing and seek, hungry for an authentic experience of God’s presence.

John’s leadership was critical because he understood that the journey to the heart of God always had a singular result – to be propelled back out into the world to love the lost and least, to be the Church. Worship was more than the songs we were singing in the Vineyard, worship was a life laid down in surrender and obedience – a willingness to be a fool for Christ.

And then, worship became popular.

I remember when Christian radio wasn’t playing worship because everyone wanted to listen to contemporary Christian music – it was about God, it was about living for God but it wasn’t usually about God or to God.  It was more often a sermon set to music, sometimes heavy on emotion – “hey kid, who are those Christmas shoes for?” – but it moved away from worship songs.

And then, worship became popular.

The Vineyard had a lot to do with this – not exclusively, but the Vineyard was very influential in making worship (and forgive me for this expression) relevant again. John and the Vineyard influence went overseas – not to plant Vineyards at first, but to come alongside and work together with the churches in the U.K. that were hungry and open to what John and the Vineyard had to offer. It was like fanning a flame or pouring gas on a match – like all these songwriters had just been waiting for someone to say it was o.k. to give birth to new songs and new sounds.  John brought a spark but the tinder was there and ready.

And then, worship became very popular.

And then someone said, “Hey, we can make some money off this!”

Little companies sprang up and big companies bought them and worship as a commodity quickly took shape. And worship filled the airwaves again.

First we bought CDs packed full of amazing songs.  Then we bought CDs with a couple amazing songs.  Then we bought CDs hoping for at least one amazing songs.  Because when we commodify something, we lose interest in quality in our drive to have product to sell.  Eventually we saturate the market to the maximum of what it will bear. And then just a little bit more.

And we start ripping songs, trading and sharing songs because as consumers we know the man is sticking it to us with a 12 song CD that only has two tracks we really like so we’re totally justified in sharing and not paying for our tunes ‘cause, y’know, it’s the man. 

And the artists suffered.  The creators piece of the pie became infinitesimally smaller.  Getting on a CD now was just “giving people exposure” for which they should be thankful and they should stop asking or royalties.

What does all this have to do with how worship became songs?

As we commodified worship, it required us to elevate singing in order to secure our futures.  It’s like toothpaste or shampoo – in order to get your dollars, we have to make the paste about more than teeth and the shampoo about more than soap for your hair.  We’re selling you a brand, a lifestyle, a chance at romance, self-esteem and admiration.  We can’t really brand serving homeless people a meal or speaking out against human trafficking or showing hospitality to strangers or building a racially diverse community or doing most of the things that love does.  Mind you, we’ll brand it and commodify it when and where we can, but it’s just a lot harder than commodifying songs to sing.

Rather than following the Wimberism that the “meat is in the streets,” the commodification of worship has led us to believe that what we do in here is the meat.

And so we influence the Church at large to embrace the belief that songs are our worship.  When we sing is when God shows up.  Because we’re doing this song, miracles can finally happen here.  Social Justice is a code for liberal theology and works based faith, we’ve transcended that with worship and the Spirit will change the world in response to the sweet songs of love we gather to sing.  I don’t need to tell anyone about Jesus or live like Jesus with my neighbor, I just worship him and people walking by will be hit with waves of the Holy Spirit and want to follow him.

Then we started judging Sunday morning worship by whether we did that song we really like, the one that gives us the feels.  Was “Oceans” in the set? Then the anointing was present.  Was “Oceans” still in the worship set? The anointing has obviously left that worship leader/team.  And we’ve reduced our worship experience to measuring the ability of the leader and team to give us the feels rather than our ability to pour out our hearts to God, lose and find ourselves in the Father’s heart and to be compelled by his great love back out into a world full of pain and need.

Recently, I heard someone say, to oppose the powers, you’ve got to oppose the Powers.

I’m writing this as a follower Jesus who loves to worship with songs, who learned to play guitar so he could write songs and sings songs to Jesus.  I’m writing this as a follower of Jesus who has been shaped by worship music by people with last names like Barnett, Tuttle, Doerksen, Park, Smith, Ruis, Prosch, Redman, Mark, Beeching, Hughes, Houston and others.  I am not suggesting that present day worshipers don’t minister to people beyond their songs.  I am simply observing that powers have generally coopted our worship wherever possible, commodified it and marketed it to the singers of the songs by reducing worship to this single expression for which we can be charged a reasonable fee.

And our artists become baristas. (no offense to baristas, I need you too!)

I will now put on my tinfoil hat and sit quietly in my corner.

My Problem with Worship pt. 2: (A multi-post in which I offend many friends)

Part one is here.

Since this is a blog and not a thesis, I’m going to make some observations that I won’t be able to back up with statistics or footnotes to research.  This doesn’t mean that my observations have no merit or are not true.  But they will just be observations that come from my experience.  Feel free to tell me how it really is.

In my original post I wrote, “We’ve created a culture that has mistakenly come to believe that worship is primarily songs we sing about God or to God and that loving God is best and most adequately accomplished through singing songs.”

I am convinced this belief has taken root in our church culture because we have commodified worship.  We’ve found a way to harness the winds of heaven in a way to benefit ourselves. And by “we,” I specifically mean those in senior leadership of the Church. Worship has become a commodity by which we secure market shares and fortify our positions.

I’m old enough to remember when contemporary worship started to gain traction.  I’m a veteran of the ‘worship wars.’  I can still recall when, “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me…” was both contemporary and risky to sing on a Sunday morning. I’ve survived a church split where the style of worship was ground zero for the pent up frustrations of two similar but distinct groups of people.

But we’ve crossed the Rubicon, even if skirmishes continue to break out in some places.

And do you know when the tipping point came?

Ever see a gas war?  I used to drive through a small town with 3 gas stations situated on 3 corners of a 4 way intersection.  They always had the same price on gas.

Until one of them blinked.

And then down came the price for a time. First in one, then in the other two. Market driven competition.

In the worship wars, someone blinked.

Someone told their former senior pastor they were now going to another church because they used guitars and drums in their worship.  Blink.

It was less an ideological shift and more a pragmatic shift.  Not for everyone, but for the mainstream folks, we went from killing the musical prophets one month to investing in new sound systems the next.  And in most places, non-musical pastors started telling gifted musical people how to play, what to play and with whom to play.

And as soon as we pastors saw how the musical people created “the feels” for people, we both feared and adored them.  We feared them for their influence and we adored them for their influence.  The fault was not in our stars, but in ourselves.

And frankly, we still fear and adore those who lead our worship.  And so we’ve been handicapped from the start of this adventure. Senior leaders know that those who gather can just as easily scatter and often have.  So senior leaders do what every human is tempted to do when they are scared: they control.

And there are so many ways to control.

Sometimes we control with honey.  We make promises that range from paid salaries or stipends to goals of getting your music recorded and published.  We tell you how wonderful you are and valuable you are, under the umbrella of our covering. Or some other non-sense that puts you under me.

Sometimes we control with a stick.  We berate worship leaders on their song choices, the length of time the songs took that service, the lack of response from the congregation.  We wonder to our worship leaders if maybe they aren’t harboring some hidden sin.  We accuse them of building their own empires or having a “spirit of pride.” And we keep those who are wired to be sensitive and who tend towards self-doubt off balance and disempowered. Hungry for our benevolent approval or fearful of our anointed disappointment.

And so we created an us vs. them world, when really there’s only ever us.

But as soon as you’re a “them” and you’re not an “us,” it’s ever so easy to turn you and what you do into a commodity.  Rather than I/Thou, we maintain an I/It relationship which never produces life. 

Never.

What happens next?  Tuesday…how worship came to mean singing.

My Problem with Worship (A multi-part post in which I offend many friends)

The root of my troubles with worship is this: commodification, the source of all kinds of evil. 

As soon as we figured out a way to make money* off of Jesus and the stuff of heaven, we started dancing in the dragon’s jaws. We have to be on guard about this constantly in North America.

(I know most of my musician friends would love to make money from their music and very, very few of them actually do.  The couple that I know who have or do make money off their music also happen to be some of the most generous people that I know and they would be embarrassed to find out how the stories of their generosity have leaked out. Making a living at writing, producing or leading worship isn’t what I’m talking about.)

What I will be writing about in this multi-part post:

1) We’ve created a culture that has mistakenly come to believe that worship is primarily songs we sing about God or to God and that loving God is best and most adequately accomplished through singing songs.

2) 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.

3) The intimacy, vulnerability, simplicity and honesty that was the heart (as I perceived it) of Vineyard worship is being altered by #2 above and as a result we are beginning to experience a new norm in preaching and teaching that neglects these same virtues.

4) We relate to our worship leaders, songwriters and singers as commodities. Within the worship community they find encouragement, support and understanding from one another, but seldom do they experience these things from senior pastors and leaders. Us vs. them feelings are generated by the way senior leaders relate to worship leaders and communities.  Bands and worship leaders come to our churches to play and lead worship and regularly receive, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” but we are giving them nothing or whatever is right next to nothing for what they've done.  

To be clear, it’s not the songwriters in the Vineyard that are at the root of this.  It is the diminished emphasis we are giving to worship and worship music generated in and by the Vineyard that I believe is at the heart of this. It is our propensity to commodify.

It’s a leadership issue, not an artist issue. 

As local pastors, we have adopted a new credo – growing my church is the most important thing on my agenda.  It is my only agenda.  If we’re growing, God’s blessing is on us and therefore on whatever I do or don’t do to get there. I am judged by the size of the church I attend or lead.

A friend of mine was leading worship at one of our churches during a season of personal grief as one of his children was attacked by cancer.  This season drew deep and powerful songs of lament from my friend who was kindly asked by leadership to, "stop singing the sad songs..." because it was bringing the worship vibe down on Sundays.

So much for weep with those who weep.  

And so we play to the crowd because attendance and offering equals salvation and success.  We reinforce this on so many levels that it must be true. We emulate other wildly ‘successful’ senior pastors and ignore when they crash and burn or leave a trail of broken and bloody people “under the bus.”  We ignore all the stories we know of worship leaders and worship pastors (in and out of our movement) that have been burned out and tossed aside like commodities rather than image bearers.  We stop listening to our veterans and the wisdom they have earned because we need what’s new, what’s sexy, what’s getting air time on the radio.  Because we’re competing for market share and we have to produce something better than the church(es) one block over.

And deep down, you know that’s true.

Worship has become commodified.  And worship leaders are a commodity.  And our worship services have become about the market. Again, this commodification is not the work of the artists, but the system of which we are a part.  And that atmosphere you permit is the product you will create.

The Church is at its best as a prophetic witness to the world by living with a different agenda, in a different way that looks more Cross than marketplace and looks at people as image bearers and not fodder and see worship as a way we live and not a commodity we leverage for a greater share of the market.

And thus ends my homily for today…

Feel free to comment and suggest ways to fix me or fix the problem.  

Part two will be posted Monday.

(* and money's just a symbol.)

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.