As I contemplated all of the materials, class discussions, and learning experiences of this course, I had to chuckle to myself, because what I learned was not at all what I had anticipated when I registered for it. I had in my mind some picture of Doc bringing in his guitar, and us dragging our instruments to the fourth floor, and learning different worship leading techniques or something. What I found in this class, however, was quite different.
I eventually learned that my high hopes of worship leading techniques, were actually spoken against in this class -that my worship of the waiter, rather than the meal was actually idolatry.
Instead of techiniques and steps and things, I learned something that quite transcends instruments, and musical notes, and so on. Instead I learned about the Centrality of the Gospel, the Authority of Scripture, and the Supremacy of Christ. I learned that God the Father has outlined in Scripture, specifics about how He is to be worshipped, and that this is all much bigger than whether you have guitars or an organ on sunday morning.
Through reading of authors dating back to the Puritan era, and up to the past few years, we were able to observe the earnest effort of godly men to keep the Scripture, and the Trinity present in Worship. We are saved for the glory of God alone.
I have now learned that the texts of worship ought to contain, or atleast mirror the language of Scripture. I have commited to seek to worship as Scriture outlines, that my worship be Logo-centric, Christo-centric and FOR HIS GLORY ALONE! I have not yet arrived but I know where I am heading!

What I learned

Biblically there is a difference between corporate worship and worship in daily life. The Bible specifically calls for certain elements in our corporate worship gatherings such as, prayer, singing, and preaching. We could be freer from people’s opinions in defining how a church service should be run if we focused on what the Bible calls for.

Choose meaningful text for songs, where you read the lyrics before you hear the tune of the song. I found the exercises on studying texts that we did in class were very helpful it caused me to start evaluation text more than before. I realized that many of the songs I enjoyed really didn’t have much to say. A focus on text in our churches would revolutionize the worship wars we face today.

The goal of church is not to be seeker friendly, but to nourish the body. Of course the church should seek to reach the lost, but its primary goal is not to be cool and modern in order to attract the unchurched and get them ‘saved’. Its primary goal is to develop mature Christians who are able to reach their world for Christ.

Final Blog

After thinking back about what we have read and discussed in class I feel that there is one issue that we have been trying to solve. I think that every one is trying to figure out what our worship should consist of when it comes to Sunday morning services. It can be a very contoversial subject between churches and the mind set, I feel, has become, "Whatever works for you." I think that this in a way allows people to make they're own interpretation of the Bible and what is important and that is how so many different worship services have come to be. Many worsip services have gotten away from what true worsip looks like. They have become entertainment that plays with your emotion. The worship leader is put up on a pedestal and becomes more than just your normal sinner. The book Worship Matters gives an example of what a worship leaders llife should be like: "A faithful worship leader magnnifies the greatness of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit by skillfully combining God's Word with music, thereby motivating the gathered church to proclaim the gospel, to chersih God's oresence, and to live for God's glory." Instead of glorifying himself the worship leader needs to be focusing everything on God's glory. The service needs to consist of truth. We need to be reading, singing and praying truth to the people in the congregation. This is how God's glory is shown, throuhg the truth in his Word, not the greatness of the musicians or songs. We need to be calling the church to the Bible. Our call isn ot to give the church something culturally relevant that will move us emotionally but leave us once we leave the service. We need to be calling the church to the truth found is the scripture by choosing music full of God's truth and reading passages of scripture, the source of truth. Through everything we have looked at I feel challenged to always make sure that my worship consists of truth and so that I know exactly who I am worshiping.

As a result of our reading, I have been thinking alot about the manipulation of emotions during worship. The more I think about it the more I realize that part of being a worship leader must be being sensitive to the emotions of the congregation, with out taking advantage of them. What I mean by that is that in our endeavour to be faithful stewards, there must be an awareness of the Spirits work, and we must not try to be the Spirit for believers. So what I am wondering is, is it safe to say we are facilitators as worship leaders? I am still thinking this through...

"Spontaneous" Worship

I loved page 370 in Give Praise to God so much that I would almost cut it out and put it on my wall. I loved the statement "It is surely ironic that those who criticize the traditional forms of worship... Often become the most careful planners of emotion." I had never thought of it that way before. Even the most "spontaneous" worship services are carefully planned to get a desired effect. This makes me realize that I need to have specific goals in mind when preparing a worship service. If I'm not aiming at helping people understand God better I will probably just end up making them have spiritual feelings.

The Spirit in Worship

Kaufflin talks about how the goal in worship is to "gathered and to be changed" and then he talks about the Spirit's work in the worship service. Sometimes I think that in our circles we get scared of attributing different things to the Spirit especially in the worship service, and I am still not sure what to think.

Something that caught my attention as I was reading Worship Matters was when the author was telling us how when C.J. Mahaney is asked how he is doing he replies, "Better than I deserve." This is to remind him of the gospel and how he deserves to go to hell for his sins but God's grace has granted him life and forgiveness and also many other gifts he does not deserve. The author also adopted this phrase into some of his conversations and noticed some negative responses. Some people thought he had a case of low self-esteem because his response was one that didn't speak highly of himself. It caught my attention that in our culture when we make less of ourselves or humble ourselves in front of others, people assume there is something wrong with us. Our culture is so self-focused that when we purposefully point attention away from ourselves it is viewed as not normal and people don't understand what we are doing. Yet this is the kind of attitude we should have in view of God's grace. We all are sinners and deserve hell so no matter what is happening in our lives we are always doing "better than we deserve."