The best song to start worship ever?

Over the years I have heard talks about the typical or ideal flow of worship, usually starting with declaration (about the truths of God and why we worship) moving to celebration (our joyous response to these wonderful truths), moving onto intimacy (deeply felt songs about our closeness to God) and hopefully ending with commission (singing our missional response to go out and be salt and light).

Of course there is no perfect flow or formula for worship but often we either consciously or subconsciously develop a pattern because we are generally creatures of habit. A while back I posted on the lack of joy in our worship songs and I have to say recently in my church there has been a lot more joy in our worship times and I am happy about that (if you'll pardon the pun). However, I was reflecting on these elements of declaration, celebration, intimacy and commission and couldn't help thinking there is a missing ingredient: Preparation.

Now ideally we would all individually prepare ourselves before coming together to worship and all be raring to go, but if you are struggling with life's circumstances that is not always easy. And what about those going through serious illness, marriage break ups, redundancy, bereavement and a multitude of other situations that are incredibly tough and have no easy answers, how do they get themselves ready to worship?

Well I wonder could we help by making the start of our worship time accessible, real and inclusive? Rather than going straight to declare God's greatness why not really acknowledge where different people are at and invite us all, despite our circumstances to fix our eyes and soul on Jesus, the one who can meet us where we are. There are many ways we can do this and I would like to share two with you.

The first is a video (An Honest Welcome). If I was to use this I would take the words, make them my own, read them out as a personal welcome and call to worship.

The second is a song "Come on my soul" by Rend Collective Experiment. I think this is the best song to start a time of worship. It helps us individually and collectively sing to the deep of our souls telling them to open up and sing to the Lord. Every time I listen to this song I get to the end of it and I am in a place of worship.

So have a watch of these videos and let me know what you think, what's your ideas for songs or other methods that could or have helped prepare us to worship Jesus the king?

The pressure and pain of surrender

"What can I say, what can I do? But offer this heart O God completely to you".
This is a line from a popular worship song The Stand by Joel Houston. It speaks of the desire of a person who, recognising all that God has done for them all they want to do is to give everything to God.

It's a sentiment that is said in many places in the bible and also in my favourite hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, with the wonderful line - "love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all".

But how do can I give my heart and my life completely to God? If it's easy then surely every Christian would have done it and we would all be saints!

The picture of an orange and a juicer comes to mind. The juice of the orange is all of me, my heart or life if you will. The first squeeze to get a load of the orange juice out is relatively easy. And with each squeeze a little bit more juice comes out but it gets harder and harder each time. The pressure required needs to increase and the pain to ensure the orange juice comes out is more intense.

I know this metaphor isn't perfect, none are, and we rightly ask for more of God but do we realise we could be just as easily be asking for more pressure and pain. A pain which is good for us - "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope" Romans 5:3, as the gym instructor would say to us "if it isn't hurting it isn't working".

Whatever pain you are walking through, chosen or not, may you see the hope that awaits at the end of it.

Are you a work completely done?

On Sunday at church we sang the great song Completely Done which is a lovely song full of truth of what God has done in and for us how we can trust in God completely.

As I sang it though I found the opening phrases - What reason have I to doubt? Why would I dwell in fear? - tripping me up.

Why doubt and fear? As the room sang I thought there are probably plenty of people doubting or fearing something and they lots of valid reasons. The questions in the song seems a little lame. There are plenty of reasons to be fearing for ourselves or our families now or into the future - finances, health, jobs etc.

Also, is there anything wrong with doubt? Isn't it better that we are honest with ourselves and even with God. Isn't doubt just the one side of the coin and faith is the other. Aren't the Psalms full of doubt and faith with faith triumphing, but would that triumph happen without the doubt? If we don't allow ourselves to doubt and question ourselves and God how can we really grow in a balanced way? Show me someone who has never doubted - that would be a scary fanatical person.

Knowing how God sees us and what He has done and is doing for us, helps us overcome our doubts and fears - but lets not condemn ourselves for being human. Indeed I am sure there will be things in our future as yet unknown that we will fear and doubt and God will use those situations to hopefully move us ever deeper into relying on Him.


The other observation I noted was the phrase "what you complete is completely done". The song I believe is referring to our salvation and becoming a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17) and when it is done it is completely done nothing needs to added, worked for or earned. I agree wholeheartedly with this but wondered how many people felt completely and wholly a new and perfect creation? Or do we look at our physical self and wonder how much of the old has gone and new has really come?

It made me think about the creation of a person. As i understand it when a person is born (maybe even when they are conceived) within that person is everything they need to grow up and live their life. Obviously they need shelter, food, teaching etc. but nothing needs to be added to the creation, to the physical body. So our salvation into Christ is similar, when we choose to follow Him and He comes to live in us, in an instant we have everything in us to be Christ-like. All we need is time, care, teaching, and food of the spiritual kind. But no one needs to add any extra salvation hoops for us to do so we can be kitted out with all the necessary equipment to be able to be in Christ.

But do we feel like these perfectly complete people? I would suggest that is a rare feeling. I believe we need to know Christ and to know that we are in Christ in our day to day lives to truly see this, for it to become our reality. And maybe we can only know this when we have feared then believed, when we have doubted and then had faith again and again. As we see the fears and doubts of the old are going we can sing knowingly that the new has indeed come.

Wherever you or I are on the our own faith journey it is good to sing this truth to ourselves even if we don't see, feel or know it at present.

No more happy clappy? (New Music #3)

At the beginning of the year I had a sort out of my CDs, getting rid of some old ones and sorting them into order.  I decided to put all the worship and Christian music together.  Having done this over the last couple of months we have been listening to some old Stoneleigh worship CDs (1995, 96 & 98) and an old vineyard CD (Hungry, 1999).

First off, having listened again to Hungry I think it is the most complete worship CD I have ever heard – it has uplifting joyous praise, great declarations of worship, powerful intimate personal songs to God, it is 9.9 out of 10!

Secondly, I would sum up the Stoneleigh CDs as full of uplifting joyous praise and I have to say I think that is missing from Christian worship these days.  I am not saying new songs (and by new I mean anything in the last five years) aren’t good and hey I only listen to new stuff occasionally on the radio and at church, so there are hundreds of new songs I haven’t heard.  But my question is this really – when (or why) did we become so sombre & serious about our worship? I love singing the great truths about God but do they all need to be so earnest and why do I have to remind myself again and again that I am such a worthless rag? It makes you wonder why God bothered to rescue me if I am so filthy? How about some exuberant praise about the fact that ‘everything that has breath can praise the lord’, ‘there can be joy in the Holy Ghost’, ‘there’s no one like our God’ and ‘the river of God sets our feet a dancing’ to quote some memorable lines from worship songs of the past.

I love that there is a constant stream of new songs and artists and I think a lot of them are great (Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman & Charlie Hall I particularly like) , but I think for the time being I am going to listen to old (over 10 years old!!) praise songs and live in the joy these bring.