On Worship Music
By Bill Marsh | February 21, 2008
From a CT interview, Keith Getty on what should be the purpose, as well as the unifying nature of music in worship:
I have a great affection for both modern worship music and traditional church music. I wanted to do two things. One was to write songs that helped teach the faith, and the second was to write songs that every generation could sing. I don’t think of music as only teaching, but I do think that what we sing profoundly affects how we think. It profoundly affects how we feel. It affects, therefore, our emotional and our didactic relationship with God. But what we sing is for people of all ages.The radical thing is that in the Old Testament, everybody came together and sang. And in the New Testament, the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the Roman, the young and the old all came together and sang together. That’s the witness of church history. It’s not some kind of food court where everyone chooses their favorite music and goes that direction.
He speaks later of the witness of all the saints (past and present) in music:
I don’t know any pastor who doesn’t read commentaries by people who came before. There is an unusual arrogance sometimes in music, where one side is disparaging of contemporary music as if the new generation has nothing to say. But then the flip side of that is the new generation has no interest in what’s been said before.There are 20 centuries of Christian music history and a glorious history of sound traditions from before that. There’s so much we can learn. Even if we detest the musical styles or we feel they’re an irrelevancy to our particular gifting, there’s a rich legacy to be learned from.
HT: Denny Burk
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The Hope Pope
By Bill Marsh | February 19, 2008
That’s one of many epithets David Brooks’ uses in deconstructing the Obama-mania that is sweeping parts of the country. He takes a sober look in a whimsical way. A sample:
The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania — fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation.But they found that as the weeks went on, they needed more and purer hope-injections just to preserve the rush. They wound up craving more hope than even the Hope Pope could provide, and they began experiencing brooding moments of suboptimal hopefulness. Anxious posts began to appear on the Yes We Can! Facebook pages. A sense of ennui began to creep through the nation’s Ian McEwan-centered book clubs.Up until now The Chosen One’s speeches had seemed to them less like stretches of words and more like soul sensations that transcended time and space. But those in the grips of Obama Comedown Syndrome began to wonder if His stuff actually made sense. For example, His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?Patients in the grip of O.C.S. rarely express doubts at first, but in a classic case of transference, many experience slivers of sympathy for Hillary Clinton. They see her campaign morosely traipsing from one depressed industrial area to another — The Sitting Shiva for America Tour. They see that her entire political strategy consists of waiting for primary states as boring as she is.They feel for her. They feel guilty because the entire commentariat now treats her like Richard Nixon. Are liberal elites rationalizing their own betrayal of her? Is Hillary just another fading First Wife thrown away for the first available Trophy Messiah?
Brooks’ worldview is reliably secular in his columns, but he identifies the near-religious fanatacism of some parts of the Obama-mania (I didn’t say all) for the unexamined creepiness that it is.
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ER Nails It!
By Bill Marsh | February 17, 2008
Ezekiel 22:25-28
25 The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured human lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows in her midst. 26 Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. 27 Her princes in her midst are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. 28 And her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ when the Lord has not spoken.
HT: Trevin Wax (via Justin Taylor)
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Can’t Wait to Meet This Guy in April
By Bill Marsh | February 9, 2008
A world, and a church, which is hooked on novelty like some cultural equivalent of crack cocaine needs the cold, cynical eye of the historian to stand as a prophetic witness against it. And make no mistake, when it comes to my approach to trendy evangelical claims to epoch-making insights, beneath the cold, cynical exterior of this particular historian beats a heart of stone.”
-Carl Trueman Minority Report (Scotland: Christian Focus, 2008), p. 26
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Locked to the Pulpit
By Bill Marsh | February 7, 2008
Several weeks ago, a friend sent me this jewel from Steve Holmes’ blog. A lecturer in New Testament at St. Andrews, he write on the priority of preaching in some places at some times. A portion of this may well end up in a sermon in the next week or two:
A week tomorrow, I will preach again in St Salvator’s, the University Chapel here in St Andrews. The pulpit there, removed from the town church, claims to be the one from which John Knox delivered his Reformation sermon; it maintains aspects of the traditional pulpit furniture of Scotland: an hourglass, turned as the preacher began, with the instruction that he should not stop before the sands ran out; and a lock on the outside, so that the congregation may confine the preacher to the pulpit until he has adequately preached the Word.This was a land where people were more eager to hear the Word of God than their ministers were to declare it. No longer, except in odd places (I pay public tribute to the congregation of St Andrews Baptist Church, who do still value the preaching of the Word). My suspicion is that, almost regardless of the gifts or efforts of their ministers, the people heard better preaching as a result. As a preacher, you know when people care about the Word–you can feel it as you stand up to preach. And where the people are excited, eager, expecting to hear from God through the Word, you preach better. And where they have been praying for you through the week, taking their part in the corporate ministry of the Word, there is a chance of a miracle.
And where they are more interested in the prawn sandwiches, or the after-church coffee, they will get the preaching they deserve.
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Dying for the Flock
By Bill Marsh | February 7, 2008
Somehow I had missed the story of the Dorchester Chaplains before today. Read this account on the 65th anniversary of their WWII deaths. (HT: World on the Web)
Their story is a metaphor for the faithful pastor’s life. ”So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor 4:12). The Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep set the pattern for his undershepherds. I’m not complaining about that; rather, I’m coming to understand more and more that this is the way God has ordered spiritual leadership in the church. I’ve always been drawn to Paul’s description of his own ministry later in 2 Corinthians 11, where he describes beatings, shipwrecks, being left for dead, cold, hunger, thirst, and other near-countless hardships. At the end of that list is the greatest burden for him. ”And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28).
It’s true. Maybe it’s how I’m wired, but I wake up with these people on my mind. I go to sleep many nights with them on my mind. They go on vacation with me. We grocery shop together. They are with me when I cut the grass. I cry over some of them. I rejoice over others. But they are always there. Mark Twain is reported to have said once that if a man found a job he loved, he would never have to “work” again another day in his life. While I would have a different doctrine of vocation than Mr. Clemens’, the experiential conclusion is close to the same. Like the Dorchester Chaplains, what better work could a man spend himself for and on than the glorious Church of the Lord Jesus Christ?
(Speaking of which, I need to quit blogging and get back to it….)
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“Doing Church”
By Bill Marsh | February 1, 2008
Carl Trueman takes on the recent phrase, “doing church” in an article at Ref 21. An excerpt:
Of course, this has implications in many different areas. If church is an act of God’s grace, if God `does church’ and not us, then other parts of the trendy new vocabulary need to be subjected to the searchlight of sovereign gracious action. Is preaching a conversation? If so, with whom is it a conversation? Between humans? So where does God fit in? Well, perhaps between humans and God then? But the church is an act of God’s grace, not a synthesis of the divine and human as such a conversational model would imply. No. Preaching is no more a conversation than the church is a co-operative venture of God and humanity. Preaching is God’s word; it is an act of divine grace, and it calls the church into being, constituting it as a reality. Sure, there is human response; but it is the dialogical response of those who are first addressed and thus compelled to respond in repentance, faith, and gratitude; it is not the chit-chat of autonomous individuals who stand in positions of broad equality with each other.
None of this is to dismiss the many legitimate questions which are often bracketed under the category of `doing church.’ There are many such questions which can and should – indeed, must – be asked. It is, however, a twofold plea. First, let’s try to avoid the proliferation of a trendy, almost Gnostic, vocabulary to express things which, frankly, have been regarded as part and parcel of Christian common sense for generations. Second, we need to ensure that our manner of speaking does not embody within itself theological problems. We must think about what church looks like; but we must not fall into the trap of talking about `doing church’ because to do so carries with it a gravitational pull towards a Pelagianism, a synthesis of divine grace and human action, which is simply not an accurate representation of what the church is.
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From Grief to Glory
By Bill Marsh | February 1, 2008
The death of children is often far-removed from our daily experience, which is a significant change from the previous centuries of human existence. Several years ago, James Bruce wrote From Grief to Glory: Spiritual Journeys of Mourning Parents after losing his own infant son. Drawing from the writings of Luther, Calvin, Bach, Spurgeon, Rutherford, Dabney, and others, Bruce writes of hard truths with a manly tenderness borne of his own experience. In preparing to preach for a memorial service last night, I re-read this book on Tuesday morning. Providentially, Nathan Williams at the Shepherds’ Fellowship posted a review of it on Wednesday. It is pure, solid-granite, Biblical truth wrapped in the warm sobs of the saints of previous generations. I cannot commend it enough as a resource for grieving parents and all who love them. An excerpt, from a letter Samuel Rutherford wrote to a woman whose daughter had recently died:
Your lease on your daughter has run out; and you can no more quarrel against your great Superior for taking what He owns, than a poor tenant can complain when the landowner takes back his own land when the lease is expired. Do you think she is lost, when she is only sleeping in the bosom of the Almighty? If she were with a dear friend, your concern for her would be small, even though you would never see her again. Oh now, is she not with a dear friend, and gone higher, upon a certain hope that you shall see her again at the resurrection? Your daughter was a part of yourself; and, therefore, being as it were cut in half, you will be grieved. But you have to rejoice; though a part of you is on earth, a great part of you is glorified in heaven.
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I’ll Take My Chances
By Bill Marsh | January 29, 2008
Mary Chapin Carpenter had a song in the early 90’s titled “I’ll Take My Chances.” I found myself humming that song to myself on Sunday morning as we worshipped in a very different tradition from our own while away on vacation. There are not a lot of options on Sunday mornings at the beach, particular in the middle of January. Unless you’re up for a 20-35 mile drive to a church in an orthodox and reformed denomination, the choices are pretty much liberal Episcopalian, squishy PCUSA, or a semi-fundamentalist Baptist congregation. Given the choice, I’ll take the Baptists every time. Let me explain.
Though their views of worship, music, culture, the covenants, Revelation 20, and polity are very different from my own, they actually believe that God has spoken in Scripture and applies that through His Spirit. And that we can know that truth. And that we are obliged to obey it. See, the other ecclesiastical options on the island have music more to my liking, probably have a millennial position closer to mine, and have a view of Christian liberty more consistent with my own. But what they don’t have is the Gospel. The virgin birth of Jesus as fully man yet still fully God, sinless life, propitiatory death, bodily resurrection, and physical ascension of Jesus, all in obedience to His Father’s plan to redeem a people for His own glory is a bit passe in those other places. It is cherished among my Baptist friends. So, though it may not be a church I could join if I lived here all the time, it is a faithful outpost of believers who love Christ and treasure His word. ”I’ll take my chances” — with them, every time.
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Stott on God’s Credibility
By Bill Marsh | January 25, 2008
I spent a couple of hours last night with a couple who will bury their first child today. John Stott says poetically what I hope I communicated to them through our shared tears:
“It is the cross that gives God his credibility. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche (the nineteenth-century German philosopher) ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?In the course of my travels I have entered a number of Buddhist temples in different Asian countries. I have stood respectfully before a statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth, serene and silent, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time, after a while, I have had to turn away. And in my imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerable thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness.
The crucified one is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us, dying in our place in order that we might be forgiven. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross, which symbolizes divine suffering.”
- John Stott, Why I Am a Christian, 63
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