transcendence

Keith Getty is a remarkable modern Irish composer and musician. Collaborating with his wife Kristyn and with English worship leader Stuart Townend, Getty has created noteworthy songs of modern Christian worship. Composition skills, attention to poetry, and pentatonic Irish stylings make this work beautiful and effective.

On Friday April 25, 2014, Keith Getty led a session for more than 50 worship leaders and pastors in my city. This was an act of kindness associated with weekend performances at our church. Among the helpful points made by Keith Getty during the session was the call for clergy and worship leaders to spend more time reflecting on congregational participation, not simply the quality of the worship presentation. "How did the congregation sing?" was the question Getty implored us to explore after each worship service.

Keith's point was that Christian worship should involve the assembled congregation.

Perhaps this seems obvious, as assembling to honor God should be a corporate act, somehow.

But I've been thinking hard about "How did the congregation sing?"  Though Keith's point about moving the focus from the stage to the room is always appropriate, let me explain why congregational singing should not be the measure of an effective Christian worship service. In this discussion, I assume that the elements of the worship service have been skillfully designed and convey truth. That is not the issue here.

The central problem is a confusion that equates congregational singing with congregational worship.

This is the same confusion that faces liturgical churches, who confuse congregational reading with congregational worship. 

I believe, at least for me and in my experience, whether I do or do not sing at some particular point in a congregational worship service is not a good indication of whether I am experiencing and offering worship in my heart and mind.

Let me be blunt: the Lord isn't the least bit interested in hearing my voice singing or reading. This is not a joy to him at all.

It totally isn't!!

Singing or other visible evidence of participation is a superficial measure of worship. Worship isn't even really about congregational time together. Worship is rather a lifestyle that has the potential to pervade what we do and think all our lives. 

I would argue that the Lord is really ultimately interested in my heart and mind.

In John's gospel, chapter 4, verse 24, Jesus meets a faithful woman from Samaria who inquires about how God should properly be worshipped, given sectarian religious arguments between religious factions of the time.  Jesus responds

"But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

If I do good or look good or appear to participate, but have a bad attitude, no points for me.

If I have a seeking and submissive attitude, or am broken and surrendered, yet stand quietly, arms folded as an "observer," full credit.

After all, his love for us isn't related to what we do anyway, it's related to what Christ did for us. It's not outward appearance that matters, it's what's going on inside my heart.

Here's a confession from my own experience. Worship is not about me telling God something. It is about God and me experiencing each other. I find that during worship services there are really just fleeting moments or instants of true worship in my heart, punctuating very long periods where my heart attitude is cold to God because I'm thinking technically or pridefully or I am distracted.

Working to increase the number and duration of these rare surrendered and selfless moments is my goal as a worshipper and as a worship musician. 

That being said, if I think about my most powerful experiences of heartfelt worship, some have indeed involved singing my heart out (easiest for me when the music overwhelms me and those around me) and other times when I am in a huge audience watching and listening silently in awe to the beauty of a stunning performance by a skilled person or team.

Worship is what is inside. "How did the congregation sing" is superficial in that it fails to measure the important questions like "how were people's hearts surrendered?" or "how many sensed a special closeness with God during this time together" or "how many were changed by this worship experience" or "how many had even a few moments thinking less about themselves and more about him?"  or "how many found themselves overwhelmed by joy in spite of their circumstances?"

All those questions relate to what I believe God wants for us in worship, and none of them has anything to do with whether we are speaking out loud, reading, or singing! We oversimplify and cheapen in our desire to "measure" worship by visible signs of involvement. Worship can be happening without these signs. Absence of singing does not mean an absence of worship. Conversely, outward appearance of participation absolutely does not prove worship.  I "participated" in reading liturgy for years without engaging my mind or heart.

Because worship is about my heart and my mind, not my gestures or my voice, motivating more people to sing accomplishes nothing if the experience doesn't move their hearts. Moving hearts accomplishes everything, with or without singing.

This analysis has practical implications. As a worship musician, I need to be working to actually clear my own heart, submitting and welcoming the spirit during my time on stage. My focus needs to be on my own worship before I can try to guess what is going on in the hearts of the congregation I serve.

My discipline is then to seek in my worship to at least sometimes experience Christ and in those instants to express my love for him, thanksgiving for him, and praise for him, whether in words or not.

It's about my thoughts not my visible behavior.

I have decided that focus on the external appearances of reading or singing or moving misses this whole point. I can only measure worship by my own heart experience. I don't know any other way.

Finally, in thinking about worship, let me suggest that two words guide the discussion. These words can help us meaningfully talk about our own personal experience. That is all we can know.

Passion: this word implies that I will bring to my intentional interaction with God an internal energy and focus of heart and mind reserved for only the most important things in my life.

Transcendence:  this word describes those few moments in this life where I glimpse selflessness and surrender to sense him, not me. C.S. Lewis described such fleeting instants with the word joy. My goal in worship is to seek these moments of transcendence in my own heart, not for my sake, but for his. Worship is not for me, but for God. His terms are spirit and truth. Since I can only assess that reality in myself, the pursuit of transcendence is where I must place focus. It is in these transcendent moments that God shares what awaits in the timeless life beyond.

7/6/14