Passionate Wholehearted Worship

C.S. Lewis wrote, “I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on, I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were never-the-less being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit. It is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.” Answers to Questions on Christianity

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"Devotion and benefit" Perhaps that echoes John 4:24,"in spirit and in truth"? And that, I've come to believe, means whole-hearted and authentic. Our family is committed to encouraging whole-hearted and authentic worship in ourselves and our fellow believers. We want them to sing what they believe and believe what they sing. When we lead worship we pray that people will come to a fresh understanding of the words they are singing and declare them to the Lord as though for the first time.

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We became Christians in the Anglican church. It was a conservative, evangelical church with teaching of the highest standards, in the tradition of John Stott. Some of our clergy had trained at All Souls, Langham Place. I thank God for leading us to that church and giving us so many years of excellent Bible teaching and a firm foundation to our faith.

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The music was also traditional. They had a choir and an apparently rather good organ, a Director of Music, a classical ensemble of musicians who were all professionals and every single person in that music team was a passionate, sincere Christian. But the worship was 'all terribly British' and not a toe was tapped, or a hand raised from clutching the hymn book, even when we sang newer songs which had what we didn't- rhythm. Jamie and I felt that something was missing, though didn't know what it was.

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I noticed that when I held friends' babies or toddlers during the singing that I could do what no one else did and that was MOVE! Baby-jiggling some of us called it. As long as we had a little one in our arms or on our hips, me and my friends felt liberated to move to the rhythm of the music and we loved it! So did babies we jiggled.{g}

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We moved to a new area and left our beloved Anglican church behind. Since then, we've experienced the full range of church worship behaviour. There's the rigidly upright, besuited gentlemen who refused to sing at all, lest in doing so, they betray that shameful thing, emotion. And the other end of the range, what seems to be a female thing, of casting yourself onto the floor at the slightest touch of another's hand to weep or laugh uncontrollably. (Different churches! LOL)

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As worship leaders, naturally, we've read many, many books on the subject, from books which hate musical worship; which fear it, because the authors also fear emotion in themselves and others, all the way through to books which seem to imply that if your congregation aren't in some sort of trance by the time you've sung the 100th chorus 'I could sing of your love forever' and ready to go down like nine-pins then 'the spirit isn't there' or you've 'lost your annointing'.

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I think that people have three categories when it comes to faith. The first is the Essentials of their faith, the truth found clearly in the Bible, and shared by all Christians. For eg, Jesus was the Son of God. The second department is that of strong Beliefs based on Biblical principles, which may differ widely among Christians, such as infant or adult baptism. And the third is that of Practices based on personal feelings.

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Music and how we respond to God through music at church (what, for the purposes of this post, I'm referring to as Worship) falls under the Practices category. The Bible does not indicate whether baby-jiggling is acceptable to God{g}, however, there are many glimpses in the Old Testament of how the Israelites worshipped (dancing seems to have been common) and also Revelation gives us some clues about current and future worship in Heaven.

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So, the style in which we choose to worship God is a result of a personal choice. The only thing the Bible tells us is that it must be 'in spirit and in truth'.

Jamie and I think we've got enough experience now to detect a lack of sincerity in worship of all kinds of churches, with all sorts of worship music and practices. I think we've got some sort of built-in Authenticity Detector. {vbg}

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Yesterday, we took a Sunday away from our new church, where we have at times, a quite difficult remit of modernising the worship and updating the repertoire, to be refreshed and encouraged elsewhere. We went into a church in Oxford where we'd never been before. They were having a 'cafe church' morning and we entered a hall where tables were laid for breakfast and the band were finishing rehearsals. Mmmm good food and good music? It was looking promising!

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Breakfast was great. We sat at a table for 8 people where 5 of us were totally new to the church. Several people came and sat with us for a while and chatted, including the church leaders. After 30 minutes of this there was a period of 30 minutes or so of uninterrupted worship. I was interested to see what their practices were at this church. I was completely struck by the lack of phoniness. They were relaxed and earnest at the same time. Each sang passionately. Each chose their own preferred stance(s). Some knelt, some bowed, some stretched up their arms, making the Y shape preferred by the Israelites, some raised their hands a little, some kept their arms at their sides, but bowed their heads. We had the sense that all were free to express themselves in ways which were personal to them. Nothing unexpected or embarrassing happened. There was no forcing or manipulating of emotions by the band, who were very competant. The songs were all biblical.

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It was, in short, worship 'in spirit and in truth'. Whole-hearted and authentic. For us, it was like a soothing balm. We'd love to help create such an atmosphere of liberated sincerity at our own church.