Substantial worship music

God is glorious. He is worthy of praise, and for very good reasons. Here's a quote from John Piper's Desiring God:

The death of Christ is the wisdom of God by which the love of God saves sinners from the wrath of God, and all the while upholds and demonstrates the righteousness of God.

God's glory has facets as diverse as holy wrath and saving love, and yet he does things that reveal that he in fact harmoniously possesses these attributes more than anyone else in the universe. He is dependent on no one. No man can stay God's hand as he sovereignly rules the universe, and yet he does it with unlimited knowledge and perfect wisdom. Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

There is obviously lots more to be said, but my point is this: there are absolutely compelling grounds for the praiseworthiness of God, but for some reason the almost universal trend since the 2nd Great Awakening has been to ignore all that. Instead of making God the subject of our songs, we like to make our praise the subject. And that's in the songs that actually make sense. More often, the songs that are coming out today are just an incoherent stringing together of pious-sounding phrases, as if they were written using a P&W edition of those poetry refrigerator magnets. I'm reading this hilarious book by a British writer named Nick Page, called And Now Let's Move into a Time of Nonsense, in which he makes a plea for worship songwriters to write songs that say something coherent and meaningful. I think that's a timely exhortation.

But more than that I want to ask why we think it's more worshipful to ignore all the reasons the scripture gives us to praise God, and go for pure emotional fluff. Don't hear me saying that emotions have nothing to do with worship--I'm with Jonathan Edwards that "true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections." But you don't just come right out of the hatch with cathartic affections. People don't come to church on Sunday with hearts bursting forth with praise to God for all he is and does. They have to be given a vision of God to respond to. You have to labor to paint them a huge biblical vision of God with a view to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, awaken those affections in them.

That's why I love old hymns. Not all hymns, mind you--most hymnals published in the last 75 years are 75% garbage. But the great hymns are ones that present to us something about God's nature or characture or acts that elicits a response of praise (or joy, or godly sorrow, or some other holy affection). I'm glad groups like Indelible Grace are writing new music to these hymns, and I've done that a bit myself.

But I'd like to see some completely new songs written that will feed our faith with truth presented memorably, that will remind us of who God is and what he has done, and that will be our favorites, not because they sound just like Coldplay, but because of how much the truth they communicate has carried us through difficult times.

Here are a few examples:

• "He Is Altogether Lovely" - written by Eric Schumacher, pastor of Northbrook Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He wrote the words, and suggests they be sung to the hymn tune called "Hyfrydol", which you may have heard with the lyrics "Jesus, What a Friend for Sinners" or "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus". This hymn is based on the content of Jonathan Edwards' sermon on "The Excellency of Christ". When was the last time you sang a song in church that was explicitly about the greatness of Christ? Seriously, when?

• "Awake, My Soul" - A great song written by Sandra McCracken, who is married to Derek Webb and has contributed songs and vocals to all of the Indelible Grace albums. Her album, The Builder and the Architect, is one of the best worship music records I own.

• "Indescribable" - written by Laura Story, recorded by Chris Tomlin.

Music recommendation: Matthew Perryman Jones

I'm gonna play to my strengths on this blog and do some music recommendations, since people are always asking me for them. I have bought an absolutely ridiculous amount of music on iTunes since I moved to Mexico--more than I care to admit, actually. I also buy alot of CDs of independent artists that can't be found on iTunes.

I'll start with a CD I recently received in the mail: Throwing Punches in the Dark by Matthew Perryman Jones. Matthew is one of my favorite male vocalists, so I knew this CD was going to be good. (Actually, I very impatiently anticipated its release.) He has sung a few songs on each of the four Indelible Grace records. His last few records have been more stripped down and folky for the most part, but they were both full of great songs performed well. This record is a full band record, produced by Neilson Hubbard (who produced Glen Phillips' new record--more on that later). Turns out it's even better than I thought. You have to order it through the link on his MySpace site, but it's worth it.

Legalism seen from an eternal perspective

I just saw this post on Justin Taylor's blog about the recent resolution passed at the Southern Baptist Convention. I wholeheartedly agree with Justin's thoughts, but what stood out to me more was part of a John Piper sermon that he quoted. Speaking of an amendment to his church's constitution in which he seeks to abolish the requirement that all members be teetotalers, Piper (a teetotaler himself) says:

I want to hate what God hates and love what God loves. And this I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: God hates legalism as much as he hates alcoholism. If any of you still wonders why I go on supporting this amendment, after hearing all the tragic stories about lives ruined through alcohol, the reason is that when I go home at night and close my eyes and let eternity rise in my mind I see ten million more people in hell because of legalism than because of alcoholism. And I think that is a literal understatement. Satan is so sly. "He disguises himself as an angel of light," the apostle says in 2 Corinthians 11:14. He keeps his deadliest diseases most sanitary. He clothes his captains in religious garments and houses his weapons in temples.

The pastor of my home church always says (something along the lines of) that the bad thing about legalism is not that it makes Christianity too hard, but that it makes it too easy. In other words, legalists easily follow their rules and think they have earned God's favor, when an essential truth of Christianity is that no one can (see Romans 3).

I love it when someone brings this kind of biblical clarity to bear on these issues.

Leading worship: disclaimer

I am, among other things, a worship leader. That means I get the opportunity of leading the gathered Church in the worship of her Creator and Redeemer. And in my church circles, that almost always means through music, though many would (rightly) lament the fact that "worship" has come to be synonimous with "singing"--more on that in a future post.

Though that's an unspeakably wonderful privilege, it's also a sobering responsibility. I love Jesus Christ, and I love his Church, and so I have some strong feelings about worship in the Church in America. So that's a topic I'll be posting on frequently. If you're interested in worship leading, first go and read everything at Bob Kauflin's blog before you waste any time on what I have to say. Bob has much more valuable input than mine, and it's always expressed so well and with such grace that you can actually learn alot just from observing his manner. Before he dives into some topic regarding worship leading, he'll first talk to you about the gospel, and in that way he'll lead you to worship before he's even started dealing with worship leading. I have tremendous respect for the man, and I have benefitted greatly from what he has offered just in the few months he's had a blog.

Subject matter

Oh, I forgot to tell you what this blog is gonna be about. That's probably a good thing, since that last post was getting so long (and booooring).

Anyway, you can tell from the blog description what I'm into. Those things are what I'll post about. So you can see it won't be a very focused blog. Hopefully it will be thought provoking, and hopefully it will generate some interesting discussion.

Speaking of discussion, please feel free to comment. But if you think I won't delete your comments if they're obnoxious, you're wrong.

Welcome

Welcome. Wow, that really makes it sound like you're on my turf, which seems a little presumptuous considering the only thing I did to earn this blog was choose a url that was available. It took me several tries, actually.

Speaking of being on someone else's turf, that's what the name of this blog means: extranjero. I'm an American living in Mexico, though I don't typically refer to myself as an American, since that apparently offends everyone north and south of the border, as if I'm implying that the only nation in the Americas is the USA. I have no agenda to imply that, and given the fact that I am on their turf, I'll happily oblige to call myself something else. I'm told I should say norteamericano ("North American", which in my mind seems like it would be equally offensive) or estadounidense ("UnitedStatesian", if it translated to English).

Anyway, I've been here almost two years, working to build into Evangelical churches all over Mexico. I'm doing alright with the language, and I have lots of friends, but still most of the time I feel like a stranger. Given the circumstances, that doesn't worry me. I'm a cultural outsider, and you can still count on me saying several awkward Spanish phrases in any given conversation. Also, I'm quickly approaching 30 years old, so when I hang out with the youth I'm very conspicuously the old guy.

This text simultaneously comforts and challenges me:

Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cozy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they'll be won over to God's side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives. 1 Peter 4:11-12 (The Message)