ready to praise God

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, in whose name we pray and serve and worship.

This is a longer Midweek than usual—stay with me!

I’ve been thinking more about our worship practices lately. As we gradually relax some of our protective measures (the fancy term is “layered mitigation strategies”), I’m looking ahead to what it will be like to sing together again. This past Sunday it was a joy to hear your voices as we said our prayers and creed out loud—if all goes to plan, we’ll be singing together in time for Palm Sunday.

There are few things that cause more discomfort and conflict in churches than the choices of music we sing. If we’re honest with each other (and ourselves), the heat really comes from our defense of our preferences—we like what we like, and that’s what we want everyone else to sing. Sound familiar? Rarely does anyone come to me or send me an email saying that we would be a better church with one kind of music or another (that’s the only winning argument, by the way).

I have a pretty diverse background when it comes to music. I grew up singing in choirs—my high school had a long tradition of excellence in vocal music, and I participated in every genre they offered: madrigals and other classical styles, jazz, musical theatre (ask me about “My Fair Lady”), and even Barbershop. At church I sang in plays and on Sundays, and in the early 80s I sang with an ensemble that turned out to be a prototype for contemporary worship teams. In my London church we had a tradition of performing challenging choral pieces in honor of Remembrance Day, and in 2014 I got to sing Mozart’s Requiem with a stellar choir.

Here at First Pres I talk a lot about blended worship. All that really means is that I place a high value on using diverse styles in worship, rather than being limited to just one. In an intergenerational church, which is truly the only believable future for First Pres, blended worship includes everyone, taking the best of different styles of music and liturgy to tell the story of Jesus in a meaningful way.

Too often we make the mistake of seeing this as a standoff between hymns and contemporary worship music. But why can’t we have both? The two styles do different things. Hymns are great at teaching deep theological truths and at capturing the majesty of God—we want all of that in our worship, right? But contemporary songs add a layer of intimacy and relational depth to our praise that we want and need, whether it’s what we grew up with or not.

This past Sunday was a perfect example (thanks, Scott!). In our opening hymn we heard this verse—there is enough in these eight lines to fill a theology book. Here’s what our ensemble sang for us:

Alleluia! King eternal,
Thee the Lord of lords we own:
Alleluia! born of Mary,
Earth thy footstool, heaven thy throne:
Thou within the veil, hast entered,
Robed in flesh, our great High Priest:
Thou on earth both priest and victim,

In the Eucharistic feast!

There’s so much more to this than I can tackle here, but off the top of my head this single verse talks about the eternal nature of Christ, the incarnation, Jesus and the Temple, the Cross, and Communion. That’s just one verse. It’s deep and rich and important—these are truths that are the foundation of any true worship.

Later in the service we heard a song that includes this chorus:

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God
Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the ninety-nine
I couldn't earn it, and I don't deserve it, still, You give Yourself away
Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.

In these four lines we learn something essential about the God we learned about in that first hymn: we learn that God loves us relentlessly and sacrificially. Just in these four lines we’re reminded that God’s love never ends, that it borders on recklessness, that it pursues us and fights for us even when we go off on our own (with a nice allusion to the Parable of the Lost Sheep in Matthew 18). None of it is deserved—it’s a free gift of grace—it’s the way God loves each of us, even when we don’t love ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but I need that expression of intimacy and God’s persistent faithfulness every day.

Why wouldn’t we sing about both? My answer to that is that we will.

As we prepare to resume singing together, come prepared to sing the best of the familiar hymns—there’s no excuse from cutting ourselves off from the richness of what we learn in them. But also come ready to sing songs of praise that give us language for the intimacy of our relationships with Jesus. You’ve been hearing the ensemble singing more of these songs over the last year or so, and soon it will be your turn.

Mostly, though, come ready to praise God joyfully and with as much of your heart as you can muster. It’s never been about musical styles—it’s always been about praising the God who made us and loves us, who sent Christ to redeem us and show us how to live and love. If that’s your focus, you can worship to any style, at any volume.

As we watch and wait and pray for this pandemic to release its grip on us, take some time to prepare your hearts for what it really means to worship and praise God together. In the meantime, continue to be careful—stay safe and healthy.

Pastor John 

PS: Our texts for the next two Sundays are Matthew 9:9-13 and Mark 6:45-52.