It is finished. My Essentials Green Final project.

I chose to focus on the worship value of Kingdom Expectation along with some thoughts gleaned from the Devotional Classics book, specifically C.S. Lewis’ “Giving All to Christ” from his book “Mere Christianity”.

I decided quite quickly about what I was going to do the creative project about because of how much the topic had impacted me.  I spent the next two weeks trying to figure out how I was going to write a song about it though.  There is not a whole lot in the New Testament that is expressly or straightforwardly about Kingdom expectation.  It is really something that a reader picks up on throughout the whole New Testament.

What really impacted me and what I tried to communicate in the song is the idea that we ought to expect God to do something in our lives and in our corporate worship.  Not because of who we are, but because of what God has promised, because of who He is – our Creator, King, Savior, and Friend.  Also, the idea that if we are not seeking to be transformed, seeking to look like, talk like, and act like Christ, then everything we do as a Church is meaningless and not acceptable to God.  He wants all of our lives, every part.

Hope that gives some meaning to the song “Set Our Hearts Free” and hope this is encouraging to anyone who happens to listen to it.  The link to listen to the song is  http://sites.google.com/a/essentialscourse.com/projects/green.

I really enjoyed recording this song because I had the privilege of recording in a real recording studio.  A friend (Bob Cook) has an home recording studio and let me come over to record it.  I was going to record it on my laptop but the quality was really bad.  The last 2 projects I did were recording on the church’s sound system, and were decent, but not near as nice as in a studio. Anyway, it made a world of difference recording in a real studio.

What a fantastice online course! The Essentials course made up of Essentials Green, Red, and Blue, was my first experience with online education. It was a great experience.

I have been leading worship in churches for almost 10 years.  Being a faithful follower of Christ has been my aim all of that time.  This weeks focus on spiritual formation challenged me in an area that has been missing.  The inner spiritual life of worship, of being.  One of the laws of leadership is that you cannot lead people where you have not been.  Though I have experience great times of individual worship, it is not a priority in my daily life.  I could offer many explanations for why I don’t make time (the same ones I would probably give for not excercising on a regular basis), but they would be an excuse.  Anyway, I was encouraged to make it a priority.

One other idea that really was inspiring was that our inner life needs to overflow and be the mold for our exterior life.  This is of ultimate importance.  Dan Wilt gave a very vivid illustration in the week 4 video “Intro to Spiritual Formation”.  He explained how certain objects in space that appear to be large may have very little gravitational pull on other objects, and objects of apparently small size can have gravitational pull far greater than that of very large objects.  This may be because of the make up of the object, the density of the matter or gas.  It helps illustrate the importance of being solid spiritually on the inside so that you are better able to influence those around you.

I was greatly challenged this week by our (Essentials Green online cours) topic of “Kingdom Expectation.”  More to the point I was personally challenge on whether I really expect God to show up, to act in my life and in our corporate gatherings.  The reality is that though I say I believe that God can and will act, I don’t really expect Him to.  Maybe this is a kind of insult.  The Great King of the universe promises (and He always keeps His promises) to care for, to act on behalf of, to work powerfuly in the lives of His children and yet His children go through their lives as if they are poor, orphans without hope and without a future.

Maybe the issue is transferring head knowledge to heart belief and action.  What we believe in our heads needs to be expressed in the way we live, in the things we say and do.  What does this look like when “Kingdom Expectation” and our worship services collide?  Maybe we are more intentional about creating space for people to open up their hearts, to share their burdens, their sin, and their hurt.  Maybe it is creating space for prayer that is not simply a list of needs, but is a real conversation with an Almighty Father who we know and expect will act for our good.

One things is for certain.  I do not want to continue in a lifeless, powerless way of life.  I desire to see lives transformed and made really alive, to see people reflecting the image of our Creator.

Cultural relevance has been a much discussed topic with churches for sometime.  Another term for it might be “seeker sensitive” or “seeker friendly”.  Of course many churches might agree that it is a good idea to make the worship service atmosphere culturally relevant, but taking the steps to change so that it is doesn’t always happen.  Someone reading this may ask what culturally relevant means.  It is much more than using music that has a contemporary sound.  It means using language that unchurched people understand.  It means addressing real issues with Biblical answers.  It means studying the culture around us and asking ourselves how we can engage it, how we can influence it.

Accessibility is an issue that is greatly affected by trying to be culurually relevant, though not dependent on it.  One great example of this is in the area of music.  The church I am part of decided about 7 or 8 yeasrs ago to change the music style to be more contemporary, more culturally relevant.  This decision made it more accessible for unchurched and younger people to conect with the music and thus to connect with God in worship.  The result, however, is that this made corporate worship time less accessible for many older people or people.  The challenge for worship leaders then is to find creative ways to engage those from previous generations, previous culture along with the current culture.  This can be done in a variety of ways.  It can be as simple as using one old song every week, or taking older songs and “rejuvenating” them – the melody stays the same, stays familiar, but the sound and feel is altered so that it has a more culturally relevant tone.

I really enjoyed the media content for week one of Essentials Green, especially Brian Doerksen’s video on intimacy.  We, our church, our just now in a series on Holy Living and specifically focusing on God’s Pattern for Relationships.  This Sunday the topic is marriage.  Brian emphasized that intimacy is about relationship and vulnerability in relationship, and illustrated intimacy in worship using marriage as an example.  I also liked how he portrayed intimacy as an adventure.  It really is.  When we think of adventures, we think of danger, risks, and exciting journeys.  Real intimacy, making your self vulnerable, opening up your real self to someone else, includes all those elements.

Praise God, my Essentials Blue project is finished! The completion of this project is an example, at least for me, of one of our themes. We talked a lot about God the Creator and us as sub-creators. We are creative because we are created in God’s image. The creative project really reinforces this. Also, we talked about echoes, and I wonder if I may have experienced another echo of God’s nature. I worked very hard on this creative project. I changed direction three times on the music for the song, and reworked the words a few times. When it was complete and it seemed to have a wholeness to it, I felt a joy and a feeling of satisfaction. I wonder if those feelings are an echo of what God must have felt after creation, after He said of everything, “It is very good.

I chose to focus on the theme of being created in God’s image, and of restoration to the image that we were created in. I wanted to first communicate the idea that we were created in God’s image for to reflect His glory and convey that glory into this world.

Then I wanted to paint a picture of how that image was broke or corrupted by our sin, and I felt the picture of a “broken” or “cracked” mirror did that well. Also, I came upon a thought as a result of a study by John Eldrige. The thought that in the garden of Eden, God came walking trough the garden to talk with Adam, and even though God knew that Adam was in the garden, He said, “Adam, where are you.” It wasn’t that God didn’t know where His own creation was, it was as if He didn’t quite recognize it any more. It had been altered, corrupted, changed into something not so beautiful, not so just, not so “good.”

Finally, I wanted to remind us that God has been working for our restoration ever since our rejection of Him. He is a Savior, and this aspect of His nature is demonstrated through the sacrifice of His Son on the cross and the conquering of death and the grave through Jesus’ resurrection.

I had some help recording this song. Some of the worship band helped me, and I really appreciated what they added to it. John Gunckel, James Howie, and Peter Pietrangelo — if you guys ever read this, thank you.

You can listen or download “In Your Image” by going to this site.  The link for the mp3 of this song is http://www.saultchurch.org/Audio%20of%20Sermons.htm.   Scroll down the page to the section labeled Randy Peasley.    The pdf chord chart is there also.

This is the last post for my Essentials Blue course and as I understand it is a copy of what I posted on the discussion board in the Facebook group. 

Worship is giving glory, ascribing worth, surrendering, and yielding to something or someone. Every human worships. The question is who or what do we worship. As believers, we worship God, but why? What would create in us a desire to worship God and Him only? Our desire to worship God is a result of, a response to, who God is and what He has done for us. So worship can also be described as a response to who God is as Creator, King, Savior, and “Trinity” (the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and a response to what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do in our lives and in this world.

We express our worship in many ways, but we must never associate worship with a only the one hour Sunday service, or even just the music part of a service. It needs to be a way of life. That said, we do often associate music and artistic expression with worship. I believe this is natural based on who we are as image bearers (humans created in God’s likeness, according to His nature). All of creation, from the microscopic level to the vastness of space, expresses God’s creativity. Created in His image, we are creative. Dan Wilt uses the term “SubCreators”¹ The difference between our creating and God’s is that He created from nothing and we “create” from what God created. This creativity and our desire and appreciation for beauty come together powerfully in the form of music and art. Music is used more commonly in our corporate worship because we can join together as a community, expressing unified words of worship and praise. Other forms of artistic expression are much more subjective and open to individual interpretation.

Worshiping is a very important part of furthering the Kingdom Story in the world, the story about God setting things back to right, the story of God’s plan for restoration both for us and all of creation. The reason it is so important is that we “become like what we worship”². Since we become like what we worship, the more often and the more intensely that we worship, the more like God, the more like how He originally created us we will become. If we want people to understand and believe that they desperately need forgiveness and restoration, then they need to see in us God’s reflection, God’s restoring work displayed in our lives. One of the most practical ways of expressing this is in how we treat or relate to others.

As worship leaders we need to incorporate the Kingdom Story and God’s nature in our worship. We need to think outside of the box with our creativity in leading and inviting people to join into lifestyle worship, into the dance that is the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I think most importantly, we need to be examples of the image bearer who makes worship a lifestyle, not just Sunday morning activity or a theological discussion.
¹Dan Wilt, Essentials Blue: Online Studies in Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview, 28.

²N.T.Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: Harper One, 2006), 148

This week’s media content for Essentials Red had some very practical suggestions and theological suggestions for worship leading.

N.T. Wright, in the video “God-Centered Songs,” pointed out the need to be careful using to many “I centered” songs and to make sure we use “God centered,” songs. Besides the theological concept that God is the only one deserving of our worship and praise, that He is the central figure in the story, N.T. Wright reminds us that people can be going through all sorts of physical, emotional, spiritual difficulties and may not be able to genuinely say, “I love You, Lord”, or they might be new people, visitors, who do not have a relationship with God.

Don Williams, in the video “Cross and Resurrection, The Language of Sacrifice, How Songs Teach Us,” points out that maybe we focus to much on the cross. We do need to remember the sacrifice the cross represents because it does create in us an attitude of gratitude. That has a catchy ring to it – attitude of gratitude. The cross, however, is not the final word, nor is there any power in the cross. Don reminds us that it is in the resurrection that God’s power is displayed. It is the resurrection that really gives us hope. So God’s love, grace, and mercy are displayed in the cross, but His power over Satan and death, His ability to set things to right, to restore all things, is displayed in the resurrection. Paul addresses those who do not believe in a resurrection in I Corinthians chapter 15. He says that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith in Him is worthless, because when we die, we will die in our sins. So if our hope is in Jesus only for this life, then we truly should be pitied. What foolishness to try to live a pleasing life before God, to live a life treating or relating well with God and man, only to die in our sins, still eternally separated from God. We would be better off following the world’s motto of get all I can while I can no matter how it may hurt others. All that to illustrate how important the resurrection is to our theology, and that it ought to have a little more prominence in our songs of worship and praise.

We review some challenging and inspiring concepts in this week’s media for Essentials Blue course. We focused on our nature as human beings. Let me summarize briefly. As humans we are created in God’s image. This is expressed in two ways. First, we have or reflect God’s nature, His character. One example is our creativity that is a reflection of God’s creativity seen in Genesis chapter one with the creation of both heaven and earth, everything that exists. Secondly, we reflect God’s image by vocation, what we are supposed to do while we are here on this planet. We are supposed to be stewards, caretakers of all of God’s creation including animate and inanimate objects. N.T. Wright in “Creation Integration” compares us to an angled mirror that reflects God’s nature into creation and which also reflects all of creations worship back to God.

This next quotation by Dean Sherman as quoted by Ed Gentry in the podcast “Two Brothers On Righteousness” really caught my attention and is and leads into the discussion of righteousness as right-relatedness. “Every problem in the world is a relationship problem and if you are not relating you are part of the problem.” I think I would modify that by saying “if you are not relating rightly you are a part of the problem.” I am really grateful that Dan Wilt and Ed Gentry produced this as a podcast. The whole explanation of righteousness as right-relatedness makes so many things more easily understandable. I really appreciated the explanation about how our relationship with creation, others, ourselves, and God were broken in the garden. That really gives fresh light to the reality we see in the world around us and throughout history. There has been a consistent and constant longing for those relationships to be set to right, but on our own, we always come up short, we always end up making matters worse. It is only through God’s restorative work, His “salvific” work that all of our relationships can be made right again.

This week’s media for Essentials Blue covers some basic and essential theology, not only for worship but for the Christian life. Theology is the study of God and one of the primary questions we try to answer is “what is God like?” One way to answer that is by asking the question, “what does or has God done?” Dan Wilt, Director of The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies at St. Stephen’s University, covers 4 aspects of God’s nature that answer both of those questions.

First, we looked at God as Creator. This is for us as humans the starting point for understanding who God is. One of the most important questions people ask in life is how did we get here, how did the planets and stars get here. The answer to this is fundamental to the way we order our lives, to the morals we live by. So understanding God as creator and what that means for us is very important. God creativity does not end with the initial creation. Because He created us in His image, we are creative beings and so His creativity is expressed through us. Even the creativity that does not honor God, is still a reminder of God’s nature in us.

Secondly, we looked at God as King. Because God has created all things, He is by default, sovereign, ruler of all things. It is important to note that had God not created anything, He would still be sovereign. This understanding of God as King is essential for us as Christians. If God is King then we must always defer to what God says, and what God wants us to do rather than what man may say or want us to do, even if it means that we must alter our lifestyle, or that we may be persecuted, or even forfeit our lives.

Thirdly, we looked at God as Trinity. This understanding is probably the most controversial, the most difficult to explain, the most difficult to understand. We read over and over throughout the Old Testament, “hear O Israel, the Lord your God is One God.” Yet when we Jesus comes on the scene, we hear him say things like “I and the Father are One”. The Gospel of John begins with this statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And to top it all off, we have God’s spirit (and in two instance we read of the spirit of Jesus – Acts 16:7 and Philippians 1:19). This doesn’t sound like “One” God anymore. And this was a problem for the Jews. The early church used the word Trinity as a way of expressing this mystery of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Regardless of whether we understand exactly “how it all works,” there is something important to learn from their relationship. There is a very close relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy spirit. Again, we are created in God’s image and we know we are because we have a deep desire for relationship both with other humans, and with God.

Finally, we looked at God as Savior. Our understanding of God as Creator may be foundational, but our understanding of God as Savior is the resolution to our most fundamental need. Because of our rebellion against God, we were destined for eternal separation and punishment. We needed a Savior. And not only a Savior who could restore our relationship with God, but who could also restore life back to the way God originally created it. Which brings us back to the Creator God!