Musical Pews - or The Field of Dreams Church

This is something long overdue.  I’d temporarily set aside doing blogs because of the continuing problem of paralysis in my hand due to the stroke I suffered on April 20, 2008. In fact the last blog I wrote was January 22nd of this year and coincidentally it was similarly themed to this. I’m continuing on with the subject of churches, church growth, and evangelism and I’m trying to kind of combine those topics into one blog and look at them as though they were one subject, which I believe they are. At the very least the topics are interrelated.

Another thing that’s different about this blog is that I’m approaching it from a different way of writing it. I’m using voice transcription software called Dragon Naturally Speaking© and this is a real challenge for me. I’m one of those people who writes better typing as they think.  In other words, my thoughts seem to flow more easily directly from my head to my keyboard. The idea of going from my head to my tongue is a new concept for me as a writer. I’m able to do it easily enough as a teacher, as a lecturer, as a preacher and in general conversation but as a writer this is a new concept for me. This is something I’m having great difficulty teaching myself to do even with a Facebook IQ app telling me that I’m smarter than 98% of the population with an IQ of 148, this difficulty is probably going to be reflected in the end result of this document.

Let me first try to define the problem as I see it. In my immediate community there are a half a dozen or so churches whose worship services follow a very similar format. I call this format the “Field of Dreams” format. Let me explain what I mean by that. You remember the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams? The tagline for that movie was “if you build it they will come.”

Now let me translate that into form and function. What the “Field of Dreams” church is doing is creating fantastic new programs, defined by exciting emotional worship music in a concert type venue, four color advertising with which they anonymously flood their community. Then they sit back in their “Field of Dreams” (buildings) and wait for the unsaved world to come to them. As I’ve said I called this “Field of Dreams” church. They call this the “Seeker church.”

What you end up with is a half dozen churches within a 5 mile radius who are basically doing the same thing just packaged slightly differently. Every 6 to 12 months a group of people that make up any given set of members of any given Seeker church congregation will tire of their particular group of Seekers, get up and migrate to another Seeker church just like the one that they left. When they get to this new Seeker church, many of them; not all but many of them will once again be converted, baptized, and be assigned a position in their new church as new converts. They will be replaced at the church that they just left by a similarly sized group of people that left another Seeker church in the community performing the same pew swapping ritual they just did.

In 6 to 12 months it’ll happen again, and this migration will continue throughout the community every 6 to 12 months. There will be a change of congregations of basically the same people moving to a new Seeker church going through the whole program of conversion and baptism, become recounted as new converts, and each of the Seeker churches will call this process church growth.

I’m calling this musical pews because no real growth has taken place. All that’s happened is a sizable portion of the community has revolved like the spinning barrel of an old time handgun and moved from one place to another and gone through all of the steps again. Don’t get me wrong. Along the way there have been some new genuine conversions, but mostly it’s just a migration.

Now how does this happen? I believe it’s a misunderstanding of the great commission and I’d like to try and explain why I come to that conclusion.

I believe when God says things, He says what He means and He means what He says. For example if He gives you a list; let’s say, as an example, in the list of gifts of the Holy Spirit that Paul details in Corinthians an with minor differences in Ephesians, there is a reason that that list is given in the order in which it’s given. Paul even explains that the last gift in the list is there because it’s the least important of the gifts. Another example of this is when God sets out steps to do something, and he gives an order to those steps. Let’s take the Great Commission for example, as it is given in the book of Acts. We’re told in the book of Acts “daily were added to the church those who were being saved.” (2:47)

Now there are two things happening in the sentence, apart from the fact that both were ongoing processes, and the order is of great importance. Be in very careful not to miss them.

Number one: new believers are being added to the church daily.

Number two: those new believers are being added to the church after they have been converted, again, a daily occurrence for the first century church in Jerusalem.

Do you see the importance of what’s happening in Acts when compared to what’s happening in today’s Seeker church? The order in Jerusalem is that new believers are welcomed into the church after their conversion. New believers are welcomed in to participate as fully vetted members of the family of God, welcome to worship, participate in the Lord’s table, be part of the family because they already are!  This question of before and after is critical, and that’s what the Seeker church is getting wrong.

The Seeker Church/”Field of Dreams” church operates on the premise that if you build the building, design a great program, and have a band that can sing the K-Love Top-100 by memory, lost people will come seeking the truth where you are. Here is your first problem. The Bible says that there none who are righteous, (Romans 3:10) and none who seek after God (Romans 3:11). How can you have a church based on the premise that there are seekers when the Bible says that no one is seeking?

The second problem is a little more complicated. It presumes that the Bible was written for everyone, and it’s not. The Bible is written for the Church. The Church is made up not of the building where people worship but of the worshipers themselves! The Bride of Christ.  Those who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ as Savior. They have repented of their sins, they have asked him into their life as Lord and Savior and accepted him as such. That’s the church, and it is to this group of people that the Bible was written, not the rest of the world.

The book of Acts rendering of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:119-20) works this way. The members of the church, from the preacher to the janitor, go out into the world, and communicate the Good News. That’s what the word Gospel means – Good News! They evangelize the world. When they are successful in spreading the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ: the death burial and resurrection of our Savior and people become born again, where they live, then they are to expand out into the rest of the world. That’s the message of Acts 1:8!  Don’t stand around waiting, GO GET THE LOST, and when you’ve found, converted and baptized them, then welcome them into the church. That’s what the verse and emphasis that daily were added to the church those who were being saved means.  That is the order.  It doesn’t say daily those who were seeking the church, found it and got saved after they were added to the church. The “Field of Dreams” model is simply not in harmony with the biblical model.

The problem then is that the Seeker church, no matter what their programs, no matter what music, no matter how loud or soft they play, it no matter how many screens they show it in however many campus satellite facilities they use, no matter what graphic tee of the week they’re wearing, or what hip new English translation of the week they’re preaching from, an evangelistic model that continues to expect the world to find you instead of you going out into the world preaching the gospel is going to continue to result in exactly what it has resulted in. As wise old preacher friend of mine used to say: “if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you’ve always got”, and for the field of dreams church, church growth is going to continue to be nothing more than a rotation of the same group of people moving from church to church to church to church.  And as they get to church to church to church to church, and as they continue to be reconverted and re-baptized and re-101’d and re-102’d only to move on to a new place and do it all, all over again in another 6 to 12 months, the church continues to be a nursery when it should be a seminary!

Church, we’re getting it wrong. We need to take another look at the direction that God gives us through the Holy Spirit in the words of Dr. Luke in the book of Acts and go out in to the world 2 by 2 as Jesus commanded us (“And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two,” Mark 6”7a) and preach the gospel to Jerusalem Judea Samaria and on to the uttermost parts of the earth and when we see conversions, then bring them into the church and train them.  Disciple them. What Acts is talking about is how one on one personal out in the real world face to face evangelism was how the first century church could proclaim, ”daily were added to the church those who were being saved.” That’s still how a church grows. Not by having blocks of born-again people moving from congregation to congregation to congregation and get reborn and get re-baptized every six months to a year.

I trust you will take another look at Matthew 28 and the Great Commission and that you will re-read the first three chapters of Acts and you’ll read through them prayerfully, and just as prayerfully consider how you’re doing church. Rethink the “Field of Dreams” Seeker church and really think about why you’re not reaching your community for Christ. The end is coming. It’s closer than we think. Jesus could return tomorrow: are you ready? Is your Church ready? Is your community ready? My community needs Jesus, and I want to see it turn to Jesus Christ. Who is willing to help me? Let’s commit ourselves to work pray and see our communities turn to Christ and see revival sweep our land before Jesus returns.

YES or NO. It's that simple

I was watching a commercial by career politician (never a good thing, in my opinion) Alex Sink, currently running for a seat in Congress as a Democrat representing a Florida congressional district.  As I listened to her attempt at cuteness, filming with her elderly father, the loser of the most recent Florida Governor's race got me thinking about what I would ask her in a 'town hall' type meeting, if given the chance.  Here's what I came up with:

"Ms. Sink, to simplify things for you, let me first easy that this is a litmus test question.  It's a deal maker or a deal breaker.  And it's a simple unqualified, unpoliticized, no campaign speech needed or wanted YES or NO question.  That's all I want from you.  Yes or No.  I'm a registered republican, but I will vote for you IF I get the answer I'm looking for, but it comes with a caveat.  If you give the answer that results in getting my vote, I will most strongly and vociferously hold you to it.

"If elected to represent the State of Florida in the House of Representatives, you will take oath of office.  With your right hand raised, you will repeat the following words:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. "

"Now, here is my question, Ms. Sink.  Keeping in mind the oath you swore, and noting that there is no mention whatsoever of political party, party leadership, or for that matter, leadership of any kind, if your President, or your party leader presents you with legislation that the signing of which will put you in violation of your oath of office, will you honor your your oath, and your promise to the voters who put their trust in you, and refuse to endorse the legislation?

"A simple on the record YES or NO is all that is required."

I will be sending a letter to this effect to everyone running for office at any level where my neighborhood is part of the district they will be aspiring to represent, irrespective of the level.  National mid-term elections will be taking place in November, with the presidential election two years after that.  NOW is the time to get career politicians out of office and make anyone who wants to be elected think about the vow they are taking if elected, and that we, the American electorate are GOING to hold them to their promises.

To Hymn or not to Him - That's really the question

I am often accused of not liking modern church music because I 'don't get it.' There may be something to that. But it's probably more a question of waiting for something to speak to my soul and spirit the way these words do:

"My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness

I dare not trust a sweeter frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' Name.

On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand...

all other ground is sinking sand."

Modern "worship" leaders so often mix songs of praise, worship songs, the 'psalms, hymns and spiritual songs' of which Paul speaks in his letter to the church at Ephesus, under the broad banner of 'worship' to an apparently hard of hearing God, that is it is patently clear the worship leaders don't know what the differences are and can hardly be expected to lead that which they don't 'get'. and then there are the words of Edward Mote, the son of a London pub owner, who wrote what is by all definition, from the first verse to the last chorus, a simple hymn of grace

In Mote's own words:

"One morn­ing it came into my mind as I went to la­bour, to write an hymn on the ‘Gra­cious Ex­per­i­ence of a Christ­ian.’ As I went up Hol­born I had the chor­us,

‘On Christ the solid Rock I stand,

All other ground is sinking sand.’

"In the day I had four first vers­es com­plete, and wrote them off. On the Sab­bath fol­low­ing I met bro­ther King as I came out of Lisle Street Meet­ing…who in­formed me that his wife was ve­ry ill, and asked me to call and see her. I had an ear­ly tea, and called af­ter­wards. He said that it was his usu­al custom to sing a hymn, read a por­tion, and en­gage in pray­er, be­fore he went to meet­ing. He looked for his hymn-book but could find it no­where. I said, ‘I have some vers­es in my pock­et; if he liked, we would sing them.’ We did, and his wife en­joyed them so much, that af­ter ser­vice he asked me, as a fa­vour, to leave a co­py of them for his wife. I went home, and by the fire­side com­posed the last two vers­es, wrote the whole off, and took them to sis­ter King…As these vers­es so met the dy­ing wo­man’s case, my at­ten­tion to them was the more ar­rest­ed, and I had a thou­sand print­ed for dis­tr­ibu­tion. I sent one to the Spir­it­u­al Mag­a­zine, with­out my ini­tials, which ap­peared some time af­ter this. Bro­ther Rees, of Crown Street, So­ho, brought out an edi­tion of hymns [1836], and this hymn was in it. Da­vid Den­ham in­tro­duced it [1837] with Rees’ name, and others af­ter…Your in­sert­ing this brief out­line may in fu­ture shield me from the charge of stealth, and be a vin­di­ca­tion of truth­ful­ness in my con­nect­ion with the Church of God."

~ Edward Mote

Let­ter to the Gos­pel Her­ald

Were he alive today, Edward Mote probably wouldn't 'get it' either, but thank God he 'got it' where the simple truth of the saving grace of God through repentance and faith in the shed blood of Jesus is concerned. And with Pastor Mote I sing,

"On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand...

all other ground is sinking sand."

So I suppose it boils down to m I hanging on to tradition for tradition sake, and therefore, for tradition’s sake, rejecting anything and everything ‘new’ out of hand because in the end, I really don’t ‘get it’.  I didn’t ‘get’ the old stuff by that measure either, if I’m being honest.

No, there must be an objective, immutable means of measuring the sacred validity of the concept of what is or is not worship music, and it can no more be popular culture, which is itself prone to fly here and there with each new trendy thing that comes along, than it can be established by my judgment, for the admitted opposite reason – rigid inflexibility.  There must be something more in a place where one does not invalidate the other and each recognizes that its passing fancy cannot realistically be the exclusive norm, either.  After all, even though VH-1 named it the number 1 one-hit wonder of all time, who among us really wishes ‘Macarena’ was still a permanent part of our party going experience in 2014?

For something more definitive, and critically so for the Christ follower, the only place an answer can be found is the Bible.

     Paul said is time Ephesians 5:18-20 (NIV) Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

      This Scripture has several key words in the original Greek which help clarify things, I think.

      That very first phrase in verse 18 – ‘Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery’. The phrase ‘get drunk’ isn’t really about alcohol or imbibing. It is, rather, a metaphor for control, or more to the point, losing control to something. In the specific metaphor, Paul speaks of drinking wine to the point of excess – where the wine controls you. Paul contrasts this in the very next statement Instead, be filled (controlled) with (by) the Spirit.

     ‘Be Filled’, the Greek here is playro’o, is a direct contradistinction to ‘be drunk’ or ‘be controlled’. It is in a voice and tense that suggests that the reader is to be in a constant state of being replenished and controlled by the Holy Spirit of God; the third member of the Godhead or triunity (a word I like in preference to the more commonly used term trinity).

     Next, Paul instructs his readers to ‘Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ., which is the other point of our friendly disagreement.

      Three different words are used with reference to how we use music when we approach God. They have different etymology and are not interchangeable, although our tendency is to do just that.

      First, the word translated Psalms. In the original, it is Psal-mos. Literally, it means the book of the Psalms in the Old Testament. More generally it means ‘scripture.’ Since the text begins with the word ‘speaking’, the context calls for two distinctly different, yet contextually similar ideas. Preaching the Word to each other, and singing the Word to each other. In other words, use the text of Scripture in your singing just as you would in your preaching.

     The second word is translated ‘hymns.’ It is the Greek word humnos – from the older, hudeo, and it means to bring praises in singing. These are praise songs, and are an entirely different genre from psalms used in singing, although Psalms (Scripture songs) can include Praise and Worship songs.

     Third is the word spiritual songs,’ from the Greek words pneumatikos, which means literally breathed by the Holy Spirit, and ‘oday’, which means ‘to sing in an attitude of reverence.’ In other words, these are worship songs.

     Preached (spoken) and sung Scripture, songs of praise, and songs of worship. Each existing separately, yet harmoniously in the instruction of the Apostle as he teaches us about the way we are to approach the Almighty, Omniscient God of Eternity in our worship of Him. Each different. Each distinct. Each a necessary part. And, I can’t help but notice that in each case the focus is on God, the Creator, and not man, the creation.

      And to think – the Psalmist, on top of all that – this has been about our voices in praise and worship - in the 150th Psalm, gave us an orchestra with which to accompany our singing.

     It is important to note that order and distinction are significant in God’s Word. These terms and forms function in harmony, but they are not synonymous. Praise is not Worship. Scripture is not personal testimony or experience. There is order to God’s plan and to lead we must first understand.

     So, reflecting back on Edward Mote’s hymn, one must conclude that the question is not nor has it ever been one of Hymns OR the new stuff. The question is, if you are calling it Worship music, does it fit the Biblical definition of Worship music, i.e., do the words and music (a) worship God) and (b) bring about an attitude of worship in others? And by this I mean worshiping God as opposed to praising God (two different things), and more importantly, worshiping or praising GOD or worshiping/praising (drawing attention to) ME (and my performance as worship leader)? Most church music today is just loud, self-gratifying music that stirs emotions as loudly as possible ( as if God is hard of hearing) and focuses attention not on God, but on the performance skills of the worship leader and his/her ability to stir your emotions. That's true whether it's done with old hymns or the k-love top 40.