What Worship Leaders Need Their Pastors to Know: A Call to Theological Leadership in WorshipThis is an article that I have published in the Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies. Introduction: Admitting a Need Worship leaders (of whatever title) might prefer this article to be titled, “What Worship Leaders Wish Their Pastors Knew.” That article gets to dance through all kinds of subjects from the perspective of a worship leader. It already exists, by the way, as a series of excellent and highly recommended blog posts by Bob Kauflin on his website, worshipmatters.com. This article approaches that general idea from the perspective of the needs of the local church. Churches need more from their pastors in worship than a decent working relationship with the so-named worship leaders. Churches need their pastors to understand the nature of their relationship with all the worship ministries—and the worship leaders need that as well. This relationship is vital to a healthy church but misunderstood by many and flatly abused by some. In their defense, many pastors have not been given a proper model for their role in worship, so they do what pastors always do in such situations—make it up as they go. Unfortunately, pastoral training often does not provide the tools necessary for pastors to evaluate their intuitive approach to their worship ministries. They develop an approach to their worship ministries from any number of sources, having a hard enough time deciding if it works to worry if it is right. Consider these analogies:
[Read the rest of this article at jbtsonline.org.]
What Worship Leaders Need Their Pastors to Know: A Call to Theological Leadership in Worship
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They teach preachers to present their congregations with a choice in each sermon and to make that choice so powerful that no one can ignore it. An effective sermon is one out of which the congregation makes a decision to change; i.e. they've been confronted with a decision that would be too painful to avoid. And they teach preachers to keep those choices simple - either/or if at all possible (the application then comes out of that decision). Make such that the congregation cannot help but see the truth and what they need to do about it.
Most people recognize that Jesus has done just that in what we call the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). But they go to the very end of the Sermon for validation - "choose between the narrow gate and the wide gate" - as if that's where Jesus presents us with His "invitation." What I'm going to suggest is that we look at the entire Sermon on the Mount as one long presentation of a choice (the same choice). This approach will help us understand some of the harder teachings in the Sermon, and it will keep us from missing Jesus' point. But first, a little context. Matthew organized his Gospel in masterful form. Matthew begins his story of Jesus' ministry with a Sermon that would establish His entire teaching ministry (we know from Mark and Luke that Jesus repeated elements from this Sermon in many different settings; yes, this means I believe that this is a real sermon that really happened). Matthew then follows the Sermon with a tour de force of proof of Jesus' authority so say such monumental things (Matthew 8-9, power over diseases, power over nature, power over demons, power over sin, power over the law, power over death itself). Matthew was a sharp man. With help from the Spirit, he saw the grand patterns in what Jesus was doing and so made certain to put all of that into his Gospel. Likewise, he realized that Jesus' words were organized equally carefully, so he made certain to keep them all together as Jesus delivered them (it's possible, but not necessary, that Matthew heard Jesus give this Sermon). As a result, we cannot take the organization and wording of this Sermon too seriously. Let's start with a very simplified outline of the Sermon (I'm grouping the teachings by form and wording): |
AuthorIf I ever say something in here that doesn't make sense, please ask me to clarify. It always makes sense in my head, but that doesn't necessary mean anything to you . . . Categories
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