Insights into Biblical Worship from three very different churches

Worship by the Book – D A Carson, Tim Keller, Mark Ashton, R Kent Hughes

I enjoyed this book, although parts of it were slightly outdated (from 2002, you would have thought it would have kept pace, but I don’t think so, quite). There is an introduction by Don Carson (typically thoughtful) and then three chapters describing worship at the Round Church Cambridge, College Church Wheaton IL, and Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in downtown Manhattan, New York.   Tim Keller’s chapter is worth the price of the book alone and I loved his thoughts about Postmodernism and Calvin’s ideas of how worship should be conducted. Worth quoting:

Calvin’s corporate worship tradition resonates with many of the concerns of postmodern people. They have a hunger for ancient roots and a common history; Calvin emphasises this through liturgy in a way that neither traditional Free Church worship nor contemporary praise worship does. They have a hunger for transcendence and experience; Calvin provides awe and wonder better than the cognition-heavy Free Church services in the Zwinglian-Puritan tradition and better than the informal and breezy “seeker services.” Postmodern people are much more ignorant of basic Christian truth than their forebears and need a place to come and learn it, yet they are also more distrustful of “hype” and sentimentality than older generations. Calvin’s worship tradition avoids the emotional manipulation that so frightens secular people about charismatic services, even though they desire the transcendence that contemporary-praise appears to offer.

Thank goodness too, that Keller finally puts paid to the notion that musical form and style are completely neutral – some music is simply inappropriate for worship. However he also shows that style boundaries are much more elastic than traditionalists would have you believe. You can read the book on Google books, here.

The Lord’s Prayer from a great pastor-teacher

The Lord’s Prayer – Peter Lewis

Peter Lewis is the pastor of Cornerstone Church which my son Jonathan has been attending while studying in Nottingham. We visited once and despite the fact that is it a large church of 500 or more on a Sunday morning, he came up to us before the service and said “Jonathan, please introduce me?”  The fact that he bothered, and that he remembered Jonathan’s name, made me want to read what he had to say all the more.

The book is an expanded version of a previous edition, and takes the form of 47 short chapters (which can be read in just 7 weeks at a chapter a day, which is how I did it) exploring the Lord’s Prayer, with many anecdotes from Peter Lewis’ life, which make you warm to him all the more. He talks about the Fatherhood of God, worship, discipleship, forgiveness – the whole Christian life. Just writing this makes me think I need to read it again already.  Highly recommended.

Against the Golden Mean

In this year of John Calvin’s 500th anniversary, this week saw the anniversary of someone half his age – Charles Simeon born 24th September 1759.

Simeon was vicar of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, a church which exerts a strong evangelical influence to this day.  His Simeon Trust still places evangelical ministers in Anglican churches across England.

Simeon “has sometimes been called a Calvinist.”  John Piper has written an excellent post about how he approached his Calvinism in a discussion with John Wesley, someone with whom he should perhaps have been theologically at odds.

I’d like to add one of my favourite quotes from Handley Moule’s excellent biography:

My endeavour is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there… Perhaps you little thought in what you said against the golden mean, that you would carry me along with you. But I go even far beyond you, for to you I can say in words what these thirty years I have proclaimed in deeds, that the truth is not in the middle, and not in one extreme, but in both extremes.

Moule cites many examples to show that Simeon did not intend simply that he steered some vague middle course in his theological outlook:

I have since read Paul, and caught somewhat of his strange notion, oscillating (not vacillating) from pole to pole. Sometimes I am a high Calvinist, at other times a low Arminian, so that if extremes will please you, I am your man; only remember, it is not one extreme that we are to go to, but both extremes.

Food for thought in Simeon’s 250th year and Calvin’s 500th!

Theologically correct and hopelessly wrong?

The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass – ON TOUR: Adrian Plass

A bit of light relief from my current diet of Carson and Piper, but amid the laughing, I think Plass gives me just as much to think about.  Adrian Plass is On Tour, with the usual characters – his longsuffering and insightful wife Anne, son and now Curate Gerald, mad friend Leonard Thynn (now with dancing girlfriend, Angels), and a new theologically-sound-financial-backer Barry Ingstone.

Touring around the country speaking, they meet un-cooperative caretakers, PA operators who can’t, over-optimistic meeting organisers (not exactly 500 people in a theatre, more like 8 in a front room), and lots of people who need Jesus.

Through anecdote and conversation, Adrian Plass addresses important truths but with a knack of rising above theological debate to show you the love of God working through flawed, unwilling servants in a fallen world, to heal and help ordinary people.

Anne sums it up, in her response to Barry theologically-correct-but-hopelessly-wrong Ingstone’s objection to using the church simply to help people without preaching to them at the same time.

Barry, in meeting you, I have been brought face to face with a phenomenon that is completely new to me. I have never before known anyone who was so completely and utterly right, and at the same time so totally and unequivocally wrong. Everything you say about the Bible and its teaching is accurate and unarguable. Everything you say about real people and real life and the way God actually is in his dealings with sad, confused human beings was born in some other, distant, cold and unfriendly place, and should never have been allowed to live. I think there’s a very kind person inside you, Barry, and I really hope and pray you’ll teach that person all those Bible verses you know, so that he can use them to bring the love of God to lots and lots of people in the future. I do hope you don’t think that I’ve been rude. Please forgive me if I have been. I’m going to bed now. Goodnight.

Now, I think theological understanding is really important, but a book that helps us to see and feel (that’s Piper creeping back!) that God loves me, and can use me, broken though I am, is pretty important too. And the jokes are good.

The Absolute Priority of Words over Music

I have blogged briefly before about the wonderful Bach Cantata edition by the Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner which is currently being released. These are recordings made during the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000, which aimed to perform all of Bach’s surviving church cantatas on the appointed feast day or Sunday, in locations throughout Europe (and in New York), all within a single year – the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death.

In each beautifully presented set (with marvellous photos by Steve McCurry on the front cover setting the tone) there is a short endword by one of the performers on their experience of the Pilgrimage.  The note by Soprano Katherine Fuge in the latest set caught my eye:

Along with our music, we received each week photocopies of the bible readings set by the lectionary for that particular Sunday…

The words of the Cantatas are based on the readings of the day – sometimes directly, sometimes more obliquely. Clearly Gardiner is persuaded that in order to get the best performance his singers not only need to know the music, but also need to understand the Cantata text. And to understand the text they need to be familiar the Bible readings on which the texts are based.  The results speak for themselves.

There is another equally rich set of Bach cantatas being produced right now from Masaaki Suzuki – a Japanese Christian and organist in the Reformed church – and his Bach Collegium Japan. His performances of Bach in Japan have introduced Bach, and the Christian Faith, to a wide Japanese audience. In an interview with Malcolm Bruno from 2005  Suzuki says this:

Japan’s church population is only 1 percent. It’s not essential to be Christian to understand Bach, but in my case it has been an important motivation. Players as well as singers need to know what the text means, not just how the German should sound phonetically. And as my musicians know very little about the Bible or the words of Christ, I have to explain everything carefully. The tenor aria ‘Schlage doch, schlage’ for example has a very difficult pizzicato accompaniment. When I told the orchestra about the Last Judgement, trying to give them some sense of the angst of the last moment of a person’s life, and the towering sense of judgement in Bach’s Lutheran Germany, they were able to find a new vigour to put into the music.

Later in the interview he adds:

I want not only to reproduce what Bach might have done, but experience cantatas as a nourishment to our human condition. That is why I translate all the German into Japanese myself.

Note that he says “players as well as singers”. Whether singing or accompanying, to interpret music effectively it is essential to understand deeply the words that are being sung.

A further re-inforcement of this for me came recently when Richard Edgar-Wilson came to work with the choir I am fortunate to conduct, Illuminati. We had a fantastic evening. As he worked with us, again and again he drew our attention to the words of what we were singing, whether a folk song, a carol or a latin motet. He encouraged us to think about we could best reflect the meaning of the texts we were singing in phrasing, in dynamics, in all aspects of interpretation.  The results were immediate, and I think will be long-lasting.

Other singers have the same passion. Thomas Quasthoff, in a masterclass I observed once asked one Soprano to lie on the floor so that the Tenor under scrutiny at the time could imagine she was a baby in a cradle as he sang his lullaby. Very funny at the time – but he was making a serious point. Richard Edgar-Wilson mentioned a similar focus from Felicity Palmer, whose discovery of the absolute priority of the words helped transform her singing.  The secret? “To approach every word as though we are speaking it, only there happens to be a pitch.”

She said this in a recent interview

…more than anything, I want to be remembered as a communicator. Singers who don’t communicate the words as well as the music can make you feel bored very quickly. That’s not to say that I don’t think ravishing voices are sensational to listen to, but after a while, I want more.

…and this

If we didn’t have words in opera, it would just be vocalise, and we’d be flautists or whatever. Our vital dimension is provided by the words you hear, and if we don’t get that across both in the emotion and in the actual colouring of the words then we’ve failed because it’s our duty to do that.

Which (eventually) brings me to my conclusion. As primarily a Church musician I’m involved Sunday by Sunday in a context where we have the most fantastic words (the Word) and thoughts in the world to communicate – whether in a worship song, or hymn, a solo, or even an instrumental piece. If musicians in the concert hall, opera house or recital room make words such a priority how much more should we who “have the words of Eternal Life” (John 6:68)

A Many Generation Foundation (1)

I am prompted to start what might be a series of posts because of a series of recent and upcoming events.

Most recently I read this post from Bob Kauflin about the legacy of Asaph, the Levite, later chief musician and author of Psalm 78 (and 11 others):

The Legacy of Asaph – Learning to Sing in the Same Room

In it Bob talks about Asaph’s enduring legacy. He ministered in the tabernacle, he was chief cymbal player when David returned the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem. The “sons” of Asaph ministered in the tabernacle and later Temple for David and Solomon. All through the reign of the kings of Judah sons of Asaph ministered, worshipped, prophesied and were at the heart of Revivals of Hezekiah and Josiah, and the rebuilding of the temple of after the exile under Ezra. That’s a pretty high calling. To establish such a heritage is worth working for. Something Isaiah calls “a foundation of many generations”

And the Lord will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.

Isaiah 58:11-12

The story of Asaph reminded me that I have a copy of Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest with the following inscription:

A Token of Appreciation

to

Miss Joan Castro [my mother]

from

German P.O.Ws at 194 camp, Penkridge

in Remembrance

of her Valuable Singing at many

Musical Services

in the

Parish Church – Penkridge

Then yesterday I discovered that a close relative (possibly father) of a great-great grandmother of mine had been a Baptist Pastor in Gislingham, Suffolk – about 45 mins drive from where I now live. By all accounts my grandmother’s family were all stauch non-conformists going back generations in Suffolk.  He had certainly raised up a many-generation foundation which includes missionaries, Baptist ministers as well as many ordinary Christians now in churches as far afield as Belgium, Seattle Washington, Colorado, London… and Ipswich.

Then lastly my twins, both of whom have helped lead the music for worship at our Church for the last several years, are both off to College/University to study music in the next 2 weeks.  My prayer for them (and for their elder brother Jonathan) has always been that they will be the next generation of the many-generation foundation of those serving God.

It inspired me to keep praying, to keep working at leading of music for others to worship, and at the raising up together of the next Generation to do that. What higher calling could there be?

Paul’s Pukka Prayers

A Call to Spiritual Reformation – D A Carson

At New Word Alive 2008 Don Carson (professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois) was interviewed by Richard Cunningham head of UCCF. As I recall when listening on-line someone said how much they had enjoyed this book – A Call to Spiritual Reformation – but thought it might have had more readers if the title had been changed to “Paul’s Pukka Prayers”.

This book is based on a series of sermons which Carson preached a few years ago, and he takes as his starting point the “urgent need of the church” which is a deeper knowledge of God.  For Carson, all the other problems in the Church and in Society at large point back to this. The book then goes on to address a (the?) vital part of that challenge to know God better – that is, prayer. Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, “what a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more.”  Where better to learn how to pray, than to look at Paul’s prayers and “align our prayer habits with his” ?

There are practical tips on how to plan to pray, and organise your prayer life. Strongly recommended is to tie your prayer to your Bible reading and to “think through, in the light of Scripture, what it is God wants us to ask for.”  This seems to me so fundamental – that to pray with confidence we must pray knowing that God wants to give us what we ask for. Yet how little time I spend trying to seek God to find out those things which I believe he has promised me.  And what joy and fantastic answers to prayer I have known the few times I have really sought God in this way.

At the heart of Carson’s approach is his belief that “the Bible simultaneously pictures God as utterly sovereign, and as a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God.” This approach saves us from both “a resigned fatalism that asks for nothing and a badgering desparation that exhibits little trust.” He advises us to follow the Puritans and “pray until you pray.”

Alongside practical advice Carson takes us through model prayer’s of Paul’s from practically all of his letters. A whole chapter on praying for others brings together all the verses from the epistles where Paul prays for others, for us to to read through and meditate on, while his conclusion on Paul’s passion for people, evident from his prayers, is that many a church would benefit hugely if “by God’s grace we make it our commitment not to put anyone down – except on our prayer list.”

Other chapters look at Excuses for not praying, Praying for Power, and a very helpful overview from Romans of how we can best pray for our Ministers and Church Leaders.

I found the chapter on God’s Sovereignty very helpful. As our appreciation of the complete Sovereignty of God increases, it is easy sometimes to think that our prayers no longer matter. Carson admits that at one point he was tempted down that path.  But as he says: “something has gone amiss in our theology if our theology becomes a disincentive to pray.”

This is a book that is worth reading slowly and carefully, and coming back to. Above all it’s a book to act on, something I need personally to take more to heart than I have to date!

Desiring God – book review

Desiring God by John Piper is probably the most significant book I have read in the past few years, but its subtitle, “Meditations of a Christian Hedonist”, might lead you to wonder what’s coming.  Is this a book about the Prosperity Gospel perhaps – if you give to God he will make you rich? Or perhaps Piper is saying that if you have faith all your problems will disappear and you will never be sick or in trouble every again and be happy every day?

Emphatically no! The clue is in the title – Desiring God. This is a book to stop you seeking pleasure anywhere else other than in God Himself.   What Piper has discovered is a golden thread that runs through the Bible, through the life of Jesus and St Paul, the great theologians Augustine, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards to C S Lewis and beyond

John Piper is pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, and has been for almost 30 years. Before that he was a seminary professor, and he holds a PhD from the University of Munich. He is a passionate preacher, pastor and thinker.

But early in his career he was struggling with the fact that “if I did something good because it would make me happy, I would ruin its goodness.”  He felt somehow, as C S Lewis explained it, that “there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing…”  And yet other Christians across the ages had discovered something different:

Blaise Pascal wrote: “All men seek happiness. This is without exception.”

Jeremy Taylor: “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy.”

Augustine: “If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become Christians, every man will answer truly, ‘For the sake of happiness.’”

We all desire joy, and happiness but somehow feel that these desires should be suppressed and that “to be motivated by a desire for happiness when [volunteering] for Christian service or [going] to church – that seemed selfish…”  However hard we try, though, it seems we have “an overwhelming longing to be happy, a tremendously powerful impulse to seek pleasure.”  Through the writings of C S Lewis, Jonathan Edwards and others Piper finally saw that  ”I must pursue joy in God if I am to glorify Him as the surpassingly valuable Reality in the universe.”

So through looking at Conversion, Worship, Love, Scripture, Prayer, Money, Marriage, Missions and Suffering, John Piper seeks to show that “the chief end [purpose] of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever” and that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”

This brief overview cannot do the book justice. Piper does not avoid the hard questions. The chapter on Suffering is a real challenge to the comfortable Christianity of much of the Western Church.  Occasionally Piper seems to stretch a point or over-complicate, and you might need to re-read the odd paragraph to get the argument,  but these are small points. Overall the book creates a desire, at least in me, to pursue knowledge of God, delight in God and the glory of God more and more, which leads to the most radical Christian discipleship.

As a musician and “worship leader” (although I think only the Holy Spirit can truly lead us in Worship) I find Piper’s writing always creates excitement in me to see God worshipped and glorified in my life and in the Church. I cannot recommend this book too highly.

Bach Cantatas for the Summer!

I’ve been collecting these Bach Cantata CDs from the Monteverdi Choir and John Eliot Gardiner, since they started publishing them a few years back. They are absolutely brilliant performances and recordings and the presenting is superb.

Forthcoming Releases

Give it one…

…is the title of a Jazz CD i just bought today – featuring 16 (that’s sixteen) French Horns.  If you’ve never heard jazz on the French Horn then you won’t be alone – but this CD might convert you!

http://www.giveitone.com/give-it-one/44-give-it-one/64-welcome