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."

Thoughtful Analogies

Burroughs caught my attention with his descriptive analogies in today's reading. For instance his reference to the knife that cut the throat of a father's child got me thinking as to what sin really is and how much I should hate it. I also loved his illustration of the warmth of a fire. I find both of this illustrations very helpful as I consider communion and how little communion means if I don't seriously consider the cross and view it in faith.

I thought the "Plan Peaceably" principle on page 110 was really awesome and encouraging. It sometimes can be stressful to pick songs for a worship service and to want to have everything right and new and cool. God doesn't care about that though. As long as we plan prayerfully God will show us the songs that will make the difference in our worship service. We can worry and stress and change anything we want but ultimately God's songs will be used. I thought this chapter in general was very clear and helpful in giving principles for putting together a worship service. The ideas presented can take a lot of stress of of the planning.

I picked out two major things in today's reading. First i've been thinking about what it says in Worship Matters concerning using music to support what goes on in a service. I used to be uneasy about this practice because i felt like people only used it to manipulate people's emotions. However, I'm beginning to agree with Kauflin that music can be rightly used to carry truth and increase it's impact. Second, I was very convicted by our reading in Give Praise to God because I realized that my personal devotions aren't what they should be. And I was reminded of how much my spiritual life depends on it.