Posted July 26th, 2011
One of the most difficult attributes about God to understand and accept is His amazing love towards humanity. In a Christian culture that has been saturated with verses like John 3:16 ("for God so loved the world...") this may seem ridiculous; you may ask something like "what's so hard about believing God loves me - after all, I've heard it all my life!" When we consider the holy and righteous character of God juxtaposed against our unclean and rebellious character, His love shouldn't make sense. There's no reason why our heavenly Father should love creatures who He made to know and worship Him, yet worship anything but Him in their pride and rebellion. Yet He has proved the depths of this perplexing love in sending His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from our sins. In love, God sent Jesus to cleanse sinful people from their sins by His atoning blood, and progressively transform them to be like him in holiness and righteousness. Based upon the prayer "Love Lustres at Calvary," from The Valley of Vision, this song continues the apostolic tradition of expressing endless wonder in the boundless and perplexing love revealed in the Cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14). The cry of every true believer's heart is to not only apprehend the love of God more clearly, but to rest in it and be conformed to it in his or her personal character and daily life more fully.
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Posted July 16th, 2011
| July 18, 2011 7:00 pm | to | July 21, 2011 9:30 pm |
Pardon us for the silence here over the past couple of months. An unusual season of busyness immediately after Easter, a few big projects related to Reformed Praise, and a long personal vacation have distracted us.
I have the privilege of attending the 2011 National Worship Leader Conference in the Kansas City area next week. The conference is being run by the folks at Worship Leader Magazine, to which I subscribe. At this conference I'll get to learn from a wide variety of performers and worship leaders, professors, pastors, and other experts, and look forward to the diversity of approaches and opinions. I'm eager to have my "box" (the limits of my philosophical and practical approaches to music ministry) expanded and ready to be challenged and encouraged.
If you or someone you know is going and knows me or anything about Reformed Praise, please contact me; I'd love to meet anyone who's interested.
Posted May 21st, 2011
In the mid 1990s I used to periodically listen to a radio station in New Jersey founded by Harold Camping called Family Radio. Once I started hearing Camping teach about the Bible and learned of his failed predication that Jesus would return in 1994, I lost interest in listening. This same group has garnered a huge amount of publicity in the past few weeks, making the national media spotlight with Camping's prediction that the new day of judgment was today, May 21st, 2011.
While much biblical prophecy about the end of the world is clouded by culturally removed symbolism, all evangelical, "Bible-believing" Christians agree that Judgment Day is real. As Jesus said in Mark 13:32, "concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." The world will be destroyed and re-made, but not even Jesus knows the specific time of His return. Amazingly, Harold Camping thinks that he has come to understand the living Word of God better than the Word Himself (Jesus is called the "Word" in John chapter 1).
Predictions of a judgment day have been taking place for all of...
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Posted May 18th, 2011
[ We've been working on rewriting our mission and also creating a series of "values" about worship that will communicate our vision for what worship should be all about. While those aren't completely finalized, I think it will be helpful to share some thoughts about each value in a series of short posts. ]
What kind of worship do we want to cultivate? Sixth: Congregationally Oriented
Gathered Worship
I like to call public worship "gathered worship" to emphasize several things including this very value. God commands that we worship Him in several spheres of our lives - in private, in our families, and with our local churches. I'll write more on these spheres next time in our seventh and last worship value. It is certainly true that worship is for God, and in an overarching sense, directed to God; after all, we are to worship God, not anything or anyone else. But at the same time, God wants our gathered worship to be edifying to the church. He has designed the church's public gatherings as a time when the entire church can participate, utilize their spiritual gifts, and be edified. Look at how Paul instructs the Corinthian...
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Posted May 12th, 2011
While there have been several fitting tributes to Chip Stam shared in the past week (Ware and Schreiner, Pierre, SBTS), I would like to share a more personal tribute and explain how Chip and I got to know each other and what he meant to me.
My first memories of "Chip" (Carl) Stam date back to the early 1990s when I was a high school student in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I became a Christian at the age of twelve and within a few years joined a church on my own called the Chapel Hill Bible Church. I was very involved in the youth group and worshiped there just about every Sunday. I remember pastor Jim Abrahamson preaching verse by verse through the book of Romans and Chip's ever-smiling face as he strummed his guitar and led the music on Sundays.
Chip had a flourishing music program which included both a choir and small ensemble with woodwind instruments and a rhythm section. The church used a variety of songs, the majority being the so-called "praise choruses" from that period including many songs by Graham Kendrick. This was the musical language of my...
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Posted May 4th, 2011
In his classic book Knowing God, theologian J.I. Packer makes the following assertion about the fatherhood of God.
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God… Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption.
In one of the Jesus' most moving parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32; this could also be called the Parable of the Lost Sons), we see salvation portrayed as the restoration of a family, the reuniting of a wayward son with his loving Father. This song draws its inspiration from this parable and attempts to help us remember what kind of father we have in the Lord - a Father who patiently endured our waywardness, even though it cost Him the life of His own precious Son. The word "Dad" is used instead of Father intentionally. When Jesus prayed, He used the Aramaic word "Abba" which translated literally would mean either Papa or Daddy, and His use of this term to address God would have been controversial at the time. The word is meant to show us the intimacy that we can have with our creator - He need no longer be simply the God of the universe, He can become our Daddy through the redeeming work of His Son.
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Posted April 22nd, 2011
The doctrine of imputation is one of the most precious truths in all of Scripture yet it is often neglected or misunderstood. One pastor who understood the doctrine and wrote about it in poems and hymns is Augustus Toplady, one of the greatest English hymn writers. Scattered lines from throughout some of his poems have been edited and assembled, and new lines have been added to form one complete hymn which teaches what imputation is and demonstrates how it should move us to worship. The gospel has sometimes been called the "Great Exchange" because through faith in Jesus, God the Father takes our sin and its punishment and gives it to Jesus, and takes Jesus' perfect record of obedience (His righteousness) and gives it to us. Not only do we stand before God forgiven, but also clean and acceptable before Him because we have the very righteousness of Jesus. This truth gives us confidence, boldness, and joy as we approach God in worship now and in eternity.
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Posted April 20th, 2011
[ We've been working on rewriting our mission and also creating a series of "values" about worship that will communicate our vision for what worship should be all about. While those aren't completely finalized, I think it will be helpful to share some thoughts about each value in a series of short posts. ]
What kind of worship do we want to cultivate? Fifth: Culturally Accessible
This might be the most controversial value because of the various positions theologians have taken regarding the Church's relationship to culture. Culture can be simply defined as the customs, values, and social forms, of a particular group of people. This includes both physical and body language, social customs such as how people express affection, and what drives, to some extent, aesthetics in areas like music, art, and architecture. We could also use the word "style" to represent what we are getting at by using the word culture. Mankind is made up of many cultures, even sub-cultures. Because of modern society's amazing ability to communicate (in various forms), travel, and trade, people associate around shared styles even within geographic areas. In fact, in developed countries, one could argue that culture is...
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Posted April 11th, 2011
I'll be attending the Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago this week where there will be three concerts of worship music given by fellow songwriters and artists who share a love for old hymns and theologically rich worship music. If you are going to be attending the conference this week and know about Reformed Praise, I'd love to meet you; just contact me through the website or just leave comment on this post (they are moderated, so if you pass me your phone number I'll make sure the comment doesn't get posted)
On Tuesday, April 12 at 9 PM several artists from the Indelible Grace Music, Sojourn Music, and Bifrost Arts will put on a concert of old/new hymns.
On Wednesday, April 13 at 9 PM Keith and Kristyn Getty will share their music
On Thursday, April 14 at 8 PM several Christian hip-hop artists will share a concert titled "We Are Unashamed"
The full schedule is available here
Posted April 7th, 2011
The March 2011 issue of Christianity Today features several articles about worship and congregational singing. Allow me to draw your attention to two notable resources.
First, John Koessler's article titled "The Trajectory of Worship" follows the writer's personal journey through decades of worship music changes to the place where he finds himself today, a self-titled curmudgeon, struggling with his personal distaste for much of the music used in public worship. After admitting his struggle, he offers this insight which I find to be rife with humility and wisdom:
Like most churchgoers, I tend to view worship as something that moves from earth to heaven. We think of worship as something that originates with us, our gift to God. Perhaps this is why so many of us are conflicted about it. We consider worship to be an expression of our personal devotion. So when the musical style or some expression gets in the way, we don't feel like it is our worship at all. It is someone else's idea of worship. Perhaps the worship leader's or that of the majority. But not our own. - p.20
He then goes on to explain how this...
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Reformed Praise presents Martin Luther's setting of Psalm 130 in a fresh, reflective, piano-driven setting suitable for a wide range of worship music styles.
