Thoughts on the State of Worship Music

Thirty years ago, there was no such thing as “Christian Contermporary Music” (CCM), and it has only been in the past fifteen that “Worship” has really emerged as a music style.    Musical options were limited to the traditional Southern and Black Gospel genres and then all kinds of worldly music. 

Why is this important to note?  Music is so deeply connected to the spiritual realm that I would suggest that all music is spiritual.   Whatever you listen to, you take in the spirit of that music.   So even music with no words, was created with a certain spirit.   I used to listen to “Kind of Bluie”, probably one of the greatest Jazz albums of all time.   It's really a great album, but I found that the spirit of the music did not direct me towards God, so I quit playing it.    Of course Miles Davis and John Coletrane were in no way living holy or giving praise to God with their music.

The more you disconnect from the secular music and plug into worship music, the less will impede your intimacy with God.    I used to listen to CCM music, and I remember having a difficult time learning to like it, and my friends really thought “all Christian music is just bad.”   We thought “you don't like it because it is Christian.”   In reality I think neither answer was right.    The music was not musically bad per se–the spirit of the music was not drenched in God and so I think it “had a form of Godliness which denied the power”   It was designed to be catchy and witty and “good” but it was not really designed to do what God created music for–which was draw heaven and Earth closer.     This became especially clear to me when I visited Charlotte recently.  In Boston, we don't have Christian music stations like down South, so I've gotten used to only listening to my worship CDs.   When I went to Charlotte, I surfed the dial a bit for a “refreshment” but I found that the spirit of CCM was kind of draining.   Now I'm not saying all CCM is bad.  I really do enjoy some of the songs but the enterprise itself lacks.

This is why Hillsongs is so significant.   It took someone on another continent to bring forth some music with real heat.   Hillsongs is passionate music, and it also rocks.  I remember getting “You are my world.”  I literally listened to that CD almost continuously for over a year–can you believe that?  It revolutionized my walk with God. 

Now Hillsongs are not the only people in the genre–there are a lot of worship albums out there now, but not enough that are really pushing the envelope.   Fred Hammond was in this category, but  unfortunately seems to have passed his Zenith.  He did several albums which were really amazing.   “Spirit of David” and “Pages of Life” were two of the best.   He combined cutting edge music with deep psalms to God.     John P. Kee's “Strength” album was great faith music.   It really played well as an entire album and encouraged a victorious mindset in trial.    Israel Houghton has appeared on the scene and people have become fairly excited about him, however it does not have the same spiritual depth as those others.   Don't get me wrong, there are some great moments on the albums, but nothing to grip you for months on end. 

This is why when I go to buy a new album now I don't listen to the music itself, I listen to the anointing on the music.   When you get an anointed album, you can feel it pulling on your spirit as you listen to it.   I like to go onto www.worshipmusic.com and listen to the different albums and see which ones really grab my spirit.    That is how I got turned on to Christian for the Nations CFNI worship .  “Overtaken” and “Glorious” are both magnificent albums.   I mean really top notch.  A wonderful combination of prophetic worship, passion towards God, strong musicality, and most importantly God's presence.   The most recent album, however, changed out all of the personell.   It's not bad, but it's nothing like the previous two albums.

Vineyard has done some great worship, but the problem is wading through their catalog to collect up the good ones.  Their “Women of Worship” has a couple of great female intimacy ballads.   Robin Mark had two great albums called “Revival in Belfast” which combined something new musically with the anointing.  

Now there are people that are more on the prophetic side of worship, such as Robert Stearns and the whole Morningstar set, but I believe these forms have too much flow and not enough structure.  They have some magnificent moments, but the anointing would be much greater if they would constrain themselves more.    This is what those two CFNI albums did so well.  They would ride with the Spirit but keep the form so others could enter in.

What's the future of worshpi?  It seems such an easy temptation for Christians today to trade the anointing for respectability.  Paul Cain used to say that was essentially how it worked–you seek after respectability and you lose your anointing.  Which would you rather have?     I'll take the anointing any day of the week over respectability.  Worship music as a genre will mature, but it may not remain as pure as it has been.   As part of the seeker friendly mindset of compromise people may get into the form more than the Person and the power. 

Reflections on growing in prayer

I just have a couple of thoughts on prayer.   When I was younger I remember a friend saying that she was a Bible person and I was a prayer person…. My prayer life at that time was non-existant minus the few times when things got so bad that I would actually spend more than a few minutes asking for help.

Now this was not because I did not believe in prayer, but because I really did not have any broader experience of prayer.  Then I read a book by Jim Cymbala which posited prayer as the answer to most of the churches problems.  Next thing, I started attending prayer meetings, because I thought that was where the action was.   Now in that context I did learn to pray some, but it was still very much an experience of asking.    About the same time people taught me about “confessing” so I would get loud, speak in tongues and “confess” God's truth over people and my situation.    Now I will say that that had some effect for me, and certainly helped keep me encouraged.    But I still would not call that a prayer life per se.

When I really developed a prayer life was when I was in a terrible work situation.  It was so bad that I just needed the Lord's peace by lunch time, and so at lunch I would sneak off to a quiet part of the building and just allow the Lord to touch me and empty out all of the pain.   This was the first experience I had of a truly “two way” prayer relationship.  I had looked before for God to “speak to me” but I just was not looking for the right thing or properly equipped to do this.    I was looking for something much more transactional and rational than I think the Lord really brings.   

So I would have times where I felt the “touch” of the Lord, which I will just describe as a warm peaceful feeling, yes feeling,  and then times where I did not really experience anything at all.   I wasn't really unhappy though because this was a huge step forward from what I had before.   And then at least my experience matched the kind of thing I had heard people like Mike Bickle talk about– what he calls “unanointed prayer.”   However that never really sat that well with me.  Sometimes God just did not want me to experience His “presence” or be close to Him, and yet often these times were effective in prayer? 

It was after that that the teaching of Curry Blake began to impact me further.. I started to realize that if something was between me and God it was not God!   It was either something in me or something in the spiritual atmosphere, and if I sought Him more deeply He was “not far from each one of us” as Paul says.    I began to “press through” in prayer until I knew God was with me, and there was a real breakthrough that came.   I believe that when the enemy knows that everytime tries to stop you, he will only be defeated, the game is over.   Now whenever I turn my heart toward God, I know that He is near and I experience His nearness… perhaps not always to the same degree, but it is never dry.   If it's dry, it's not God.

This I believe says a lot about prayer in general.   Somehow we believe that intercession is a practice of essentially begging God to do something, which is really absurd when you think about it.  When He sent Jesus, He did it all.   When we beg it's almost like we think we are better than God.   He's not good enough to give us what we need (to do His will), but somehow we are good enough to want it so badly to beg extensively for it.    Because of Jesus, we can experience the continual kindness and love of the Father towards us even in correction.  There is nothing you are going to add to that.
 
All you can do is begin to come into a place of believing in Him and His character so much that things in you and your surroundings, the Earth, and in the spiritual atmosphere begin to change and you experience the “breakthrough”  We don't beg God, we believe God. 

Toronto and Brownsville

In 1994, God did something special at the Toronto Airport Vineyard.  Likewise, in 1996, God showed up at the Brownsville Assembly of God. Although a lot of what you will find on the internet is purely against Toronto, and some are uncritical proponents, I think we should have a more measured approach.  

I beleive that part of how we measure a revival is through retrospective review of it's impact.   The real criticisms of these movements seem to center around the “manifestations” which occurred.  These manifestations often included some very strange things which I would call clearly demonic in nature.   However, I do not think that the presence of such things invalidates the revival at all.   It may in fact help us authenticate it.   When Jesus showed up and demons were present, things happened.  

I think the problem in both places may have been that they did not deal properly with the devil.   In Toronto there was this phenomenon of people making animal noises and calling it God.  I don't see any Scriptural prototype for this, and on a principle level, it seems more like Satan who wants to debase man, than God who wants to empower him as his ruling agent in the world.   In Brownsville, I don't think they had the baptized animal noises but they did have a lot of people who were most likely demonized hanging out in the crowd.    Perhaps they lacked the wisdom or methods to get these people deliverance and this lent creedence to the critics?   I'm not sure. 

What I can tell you is that both have had a tremendous renewing influence.   Toronto has been called the move of the Father's heart, and even though John Wimber kicked the airport Vineyard out of the movement, I believe it was the culmination of his life's work.   The Toronto movement brought spiritual vitality to those in the “North”: Canada, the UK, the Northern US.  Flights from England at one time were becoming overbooked due to the revival.  It especially impacted charismatics and, early on, some evangelicals. 

Brownsville, on the other hand, was a move of repentance, which mostly impacted the Southern and Western US and specifically Pentecostals.   The Assemblies of God, which was the type of church where it emerged, has had an ongoing transformation due to the influence of the revival.   When you travel you might hear some AG pastor say “we'll have our Brownsville.”    This in  itself is showing a hunger for God over form, which unfortunately had set into the AG more than we'd like to admit.

At a short glance one could say “why so small and why just two places”, but I believe it was God's strategic direction that used two places to begin to transform His church.  He doesn't just look at the immediate results but the long term impact.  You can never really measure the full impact of what the revived souls will do throughout the world and the new direction they will bring into the church as they mature–the Jesus Movement, for example, birthed Calvary Chapel and ultimately the vineyard along with many other Christian leaders, especially on the west coast.  

In addition, perhaps these two moves of God were a sort of preparation for a much larger move of God which will ignite America and through us the world…

The 5-fold ministry

The idea of a 5-fold ministry has caused some consternation among not just evangelicals but also classic Pentecostals.   I was talking to a brother recently from the Pentecostal Holiness denomination who was upset because their denomination seemed to be pushing everyone to be like “Apostle” Ron Carpenter, who has one of the largest churches in the denomination.  Wayne Grudem, who is generally open to a Charismatic understanding of the Scripture, also does not give high marks to the idea of a modern day apostle, unless by that we mean missionary. 

Of course the problem with the term “apostle” is that it seems to imply greatness or importance, and so when you take it upon yourself to be called “Apostle” so and so, it appears to be a sign of self-exaltation.   Paul, on the other hand, when describing the apostle's role made it sound like a job that not all are cut out for–stoned, shipwrecked, beaten, and generally “dragged in last” like a “spectacle.”    I do not believe that the Bible ever refers to any of the original twelve apostles as “Apostle Paul”, but instead we have things like “Paul, an apostle”  This usage in terminology suggests Paul is identifying his role, not that he expected others to call him “Apostle.”  So I wonderf if really this Pentecostal brother should be taking issue more with the way the modern day term is used than the idea that there might be modern day “apostles.”  We know from Scripture that there certainaly were “the twelve” apostles, but I'm not sure that the case is conclusive that there is no such role today… does smell a bit like that old cessationism.

All that being said, I wanted to look at what is different about each of the 5-fold roles. Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher.   From an idealogical standpoint, I think we're really talking about people who not only have different giftings but also have different views of the priority of life.    Richard Heard talks about how if one of these is your “pastor” you will find yourself growing in accordance, but also lacking in accordance.   Since we do not generally have a full understanding of having these 5 roles function together, there is a good chance that your “pastor” may not actually be a pastor in calling or gifting.  If for example, your “pastor” is really a teacher, you will learn a lot, but you will probably also try up.   If your “pastor” is a prophet, you will grow in the supernatural, but may be disorderly or otherwise unfruitful.    I think that this explains a lot of my experiences anyway.    I've served under pastors who were probably more called as apostles and felt, motivated, orderly and ready to be sent, but very un-pastored.   Often times these men will put pastors around them to handle the care needs of the church.

Here is how I understand the distinctives of the 5 roles:
Apostle–This is someone who breaks up hard ground.  They may be sent to change to paradigm of the church, or to open up closed cities.   This role should be itinerant, not stationary over the long term.  After all, the term means “sent one.”  This person also has authority to put people in various roles in the church.
Prophet– This is someone who hears directly from God in a revelatory way. I believe this role should have both itinerant and stationary components, and should always be teamed up with a pastor or apostle.
Evangelist-- The evangelist cares about the lost.  This role should probably also have itinerant and stationary components.  Often in the church these evangelist types get into pastoral roles.  Recently Steve Hill of Brownsville fame became pastor of a church.   Needless to say, the church centers around evangelism.
Pastor– This is a stationary role.  The pastor is always with the sheep.  The pastor sees the church from the perspective of personal growth.  He cares for each of his sheep, and helps them to stay within God's fold, and to become strong and healthy.  If you have a pastor but no apostle or evangelist, you are likely to become a congregation of fattened sheep who are not reaching out in risk for God.
Teacher–This is someone who has the ability to make confusing things plain.  Someone with a teaching gift is not just smart person who writes books, but it is someone who is able to build people's lives, break bondages, etc, through their teaching.  Some have said that teachers should really be pastor-teachers, because the two roles are the same, but I see two distinct roles.   A teacher should not function apart from a pastor, either.  Otherwise people will know a lot, but not be cared for properly.

The Problem with Scholarship

So I recently found out that I need to review my Hebrew for an upcoming class.  I got out my old Hebrew book and started to review.   I quickly found myself lost in details as I tried to capture the big picture.  I was swimming in exception cases on Dagesh Fortes before I knew it.    Nevermind nouns and adjectives.

This kind of approach is typical to scholarly literature.   It's hard to see the forest for the trees.   I remember in College, the hardest class I ever took was statistics.  It got so bad that I went to the mall and got a copy of some kind of dummies book.  The guy at the counter said something like “I almost failed statistics too.”   As soon as I started reading the book, everything made sense.  The book that I was using as an “intro text” was probably better suited for, well, the professor.  Instead of explain the basics, we were doing some kind of reverse proofs.    Onece I started reading the dummies book, my grade leapt out of the garbage can, and I managed to pass.

Now I don't think there is a problem with reverse proofs or the finer points of Hebrew accents, I just think it should be for those who have already mastered the basics, not as some kind of weed out that separates the future scholars from the rest of us.   That's the thing though.. the academy promotes and produces this kind of ultra-technical lost in the forest way of thinking, and attracts those who like it.   Every once in a while you get one of these professors who is a true teacher and has made it his life to make the abstruse plain.   These are the people that inspire you about a subject.    The problem is that they should be the rule, not the exception. 

I believe what ultimately matters is communication and application and this makes me a populist.  I'd rather have a so called “popular” treatment of almost anything than a scholarly treatment, because that is what it means–it means something that has been distilled so that you can understand it, and so that it focuses on the big picture.  The scholarly treatments should be for scholars not for intro students… but then, how would they stay in business if they did it that way?

Bible Translations.. Argh!

In the time of Martin Luther, the Bible could be found chained to the Pulpit inaccessible both because of it’s language and it’s location. It has been pointed out that this was also figuratively true– that the Church held sole control over the Scripture and its interpretation and it was Luther who unchained it. He translated it into the language of the people, and he also taught them to live by it and from it. This was a very dangerous thing as far as Satan was concerned. He has fought long and hard to keep the Bible out of the hands of the people. The story of the English Bible reads red in a trail of martyrs blood. The Chinese Communists tried to eradicate every single Bible in the country, only to find an unstoppable Chinese underground church. In America we completely take all of this for granted of course. Satan’s strategy has been to keep us from reading it, or if we must read it, to use a variety of methods to superimpose an external meaning upon it.

This strategy of keeping the Word of God out of the hands of the people I believe can be seen in the area of Bible translations too. For some reason large sections of the American church have clung to the King James Version. Now the only problem I have with the King James is that it is not in my language. Other than that, it’s a great Bible. Had I been born in 1600 or so, I think it would have been an ideal Bible to use.. This is more than an issue with “thee” and “thou”, it’s about fundamental changes in word meanings that we would have to “translate” into our language to get proper understanding. So I’ll skip the KJV– funny thing was that until about 30 years ago, it was almost the only conservative translation available.

Enter the NIV. The NIV was written at a 6th grade level and I believe orginally intended to be for that audience. Someone it went mainstream, and it went very mainstream. It became the nearly universal Bible among evangelicals and moderates. Over time, however, people began to become increasingly dissatisfied with the NIV for several reasons. First, evangelicals were not satisfied that the Bible was really close enough to the Greek. It left some room for the translators to interpret. A “thought for thought” or “dynamic equivalence” translation inherently has the translators making decisions about what a text means even when it may have been ambiguous in the original. Second, the NIV was “dumbed down” to a simple reading level, and folks like J.I. Packer felt that this was not appropriate for God’s Word. The more complicated language should be retained to be truly accurate. Thirdly, and probalby most importantly, Zondervan, who owns the NIV, was embracing egalitarianism in a big way by using gender “neutral” language, which of course is not really the way English is used.

The primary other option, if you wanted literal was the NASB. Now Charles Stanley used the NASB, and that guy can teach the Bible, so it definitely had its supporters. But the NASB was the opposite of user friendly. No paragraphs and English that read like Greek made it not a first choice for readers or memorizers. You always found yourself memorizing something unnatural in English vernacular. In 1995 they did an update and improved some of that, and then later they did a couple of Bibles with paragraphs, and that was helpful too, but it was a bit late to start.

So when the NIV went south, people started thinking, it’s time for a new translation. We want it to be NASB literal and reliable without the NASB problems. It needs to be memorizable and readable, not just good for study. Enter the ESV. An Evangelical “who’s who” came together and did a translation that was conservative in language, readable, and similar to the history of English Bible. This probably makes it the best Bible available today.

There are other options of course. The HCSB was created for similar reasons. This is probably the most readable of all of the fairly literal translations, but you will find some surprises– not the phrasings you are used to or grew up with… and what is with calling it the “Holman” anyway? Who want’s a Bible translation with some guy’s name on it?

The NKJV is also very literal… The late great Adrian Rogers was in on this one. Difference is that the NKJV uses the same manuscripts as the KJV instead of the ones used by all of the modern translations. Some people think these “majority text” readings are best, but most people who have looked into the matter find that the so called “critical text” is probably better. I like the NKJV though.. again too bad they don’t print it with paragraphs.

The other issue is that each translation has a different level of publisher support. The NIV has the Zondervan Juggernaut behind it. Every possible imaginable Bible or Bible product is available in the NIV. The HCSB has the backing of the Southern Baptist Convention and so it also has many options available. The other translations seem backwater by comparison. The ESV has very few formats, and slowly adds them each year as they have money. The NKJV and NASB seem to be managed by very conservative groups who do not really see the value in all of Bible options.

The ESV, NASB and HCSB are about the only Bibles I would use. The other ones are too loose or too liberal usually. If I want a commentary, I’ll buy one. I’d like God’s Words direct, especially since all of those people died for me to have it.

Thoughts on Charismatic Bible Interpretation

In the last post on this topic, I was touching on various approaches to the Bible. I’d like to hone in a bit more on the crux of what I’m grappling with. There exists today a tremendous gap between Charistmatics and Evangelicals in their approach to Scripture. So I’m a hard core Charismatic with an evangelical background at an evangelical seminary. No wonder I’m living in tension.

Why the tension? Well on the one hand the best of evangelical preaching and thought is very grounding. It’s straightforward. It’s wholesome. It’s clear. Take Charles Stanley. I think he may be the best of all evangelical Bible teachers. Here is a guy who opens up the Bible, and tells you the most straightforward facts it contains, and yet you remain glued to the TV. What is the deal? Part of the deal is certainly his view of Scripture. He teaches from the Bible. He assumes that the Bible must teach you. No points for complex or secondary interpretation. On the other hand, the best of Charismatic preaching is incredibly dynamic and interesting. The best of the Spirit filled guys can take was seems to be the most obscure Bible passage and bring it to life with a whole new shade of meaning you never saw. I’m always thinking “man I wish I could learn how those guys get that out of the Bible.” Can you have both?

Recently I’ve been thinking about the actual process of getting value from the Word. The problem with even the best of evangelical approaches is that they start and end with the rational mind. Intense memorization, incredible background study, etc. I’ve come to realize the fact that we are spiritual beings and that we must live out of The Spirit. The mind should definitely be engaged, but the Spirit should govern. Moving in the Spirit in one day, you can probably do more than a whole lifetime of the mind only. Take T.L Osborn. He was a missionary to India. No fruit. Came back, encountered William Branham began to move in faith and the supernatural, and for decades to come led massive crusades which healed untold numbers and changed countless lives. If the process of Bible interpretation begins and ends with the Spirit, then I think we’ll get real value. I rather have a prepared Spirit and an unprepared mind than a prepared mind and an unprepared Spirit. Of course, what you really want is both. When I preach my goal is to know all of my facts and points, but to be animated by God.

Here is the thing about Charismatic Bible Interpretation that I’m starting to realize though. We’ve come to the place where if it is new and exciting, or has a new angle we think it’s true. It’s a “revelation.” There is a spiritual atmosphere when people preach and deliver these revelations. It can be very captivating and life shaping, but it may not be 100% true. That’s the danger of a revelation isn’t it? Not so bad for an occasional message, but when an entire branch of the Church is built around it, it can get unbalanced. Instead of being really tied to the Bible and its plain meaning for truth, we are actually tied to these revelations which are preached. I think the Bible calls that “being tossed about by every wind of doctrine.”

The problem when you shut down revelatory preaching, however is not only that things can often get as dry as a stick, but that you’ve actually undermined the way that the New Testament itself was formed. Many of the OT quotations in the New would never be derived from a rational study of the OT text or by use of the so called grammatico-historical approach. They come by revelation to the apostolic authors. Now they do not undermine the text, but the average reader would not likely have gotten from point A to point B. I believe we ought to be in the same hermeneutical flow as the apostles were. More on that later.