The Missing Jewel

This month, I will be 48 years old. I have been involved in Church music leadership for 30 years. I have been called a song leader, music director, Minister of Music, Worship Pastor and Worship Leader. These titles reflect the transformation of Church music, specifically Southern Baptist Church music over these three decades.

I was in on the ground floor of the "praise and worship movement" of the 70's and 80's. Writers like Jack Taylor and his "The Hallelujah Factor" and Don McMinn's "Enter His Presence" taught us that real worship involves intimacy. John Wyatt, then of Lake Country Church in Fort Worth taught about the "Praise Transition", how to transform your church into one that worships Jesus with fervor and intimacy. This praise and worship movement gained ground through the 80's and 90's and was reflected even in the services at our conventions. New songs and older songs blended together with the teaching that worship was a personal and intimate encounter with our Almighty God.

Teaching about worship and transitioning a church is no easy task, it requires us all to examine who we are and what we do and bring that all in line with what pleases God. It involves taking our likes and dislikes and placing them before the Lord so that He can mold us into His image. Moving towards intimacy can make some believers uncomfortable and some don't mind expressing that discomfort.

The "praise and worship movement" that began as a wellspring and became a flood has been reduced to a trickle. It has been replaced with "Contemporary Worship" and "Traditional Worship" denoting stylistic personal preference or K-Love vs. The Gaithers.

Worship involves intimacy "a table for two for you and Jesus". Out of this real, intimate worship comes a "fire in your bones" for sharing your faith, studying God's Word, serving in His church and making a difference in our community. Real worship pleases Him long before it pleases us.

A.W. Tozar wrote in Worship The Missing Jewel "The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place – worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labors and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ."

Flake's Formula

Arthur Flake was a church leader in the 20th century who came to be know as the father of modern Sunday School. He developed a method of reaching out through the Sunday School organization to reach people and bring them into relationship with the living Christ. The five components of the formula are; 1. Know the possibilities, 2.expand the organization, 3. provide the space, 4. train the leaders, 5. go after the people.

Church growth experts have touted Flake's formula in all kinds of forms, substituting Bible Study, Bible Fellowship and small groups for Sunday School. The largest churches in the 20th century were built using Flake's formula.

In the 21st century church, Flake's formula has fallen out of use. We have moved into providing multiple worship venues and styles as the new formula for growth or have moved towards family ministry or cowboy ministry or a dozen other labels.

There is a problem with Flake's formula, not that it is antiquated, but that it involves hard work. A church that reaches out to the unchurched will be full of people who are "not weary in doing good". It will be a church with a vibrant and relevant worship service with preaching that encourages the saved and moves the lost to come to Christ. Flake's formula still works. Its basis is as old as the Great Commission itself. Its all about "GO ye therefore".

Our jobs as worship leaders it to teach and encourage the people to reach out to their lost friends and family, their co-workers and acquaintances. It is also our job to lift up the name of Jesus in our worship services, so that out members will desire to share what God is doing in our churches and bring their friends. No one ever invited a friend over for just a piece of melba toast but they will invite them to an offering of the Bread of Life that is rich, inspiring and filling!

Flake's formula works...it's just hard.

Does the Father seek a style?

Since the fall of 1981, I have been a church worship leader. As I began this journey, the definition of worship began to change. In my faith experience, worship was a noun. It was the place and time when we as the local Body of Christ gathered to sing, take up an offering and hear preaching. In those days, I sat next to my Mother who had an awesome and intimate relationship with the Lord. A we sang during the altar call, she would begin to cry as she sang. I wondered why she did not respond that way during the other singing in the service. I finally discovered that it was the intimacy of the moment that moved her emotions. I then began to question why intimacy with the Lord could only be experienced during the altar call.

As a college student, our wonderful Church Music Professor encouraged us to study the different ways we as the Body of Christ worshiped God. I soon discovered that those churches that were impacting their communities for Christ had a common denominator. Their services were filled with quality, passionate, intimate worship. Even though their styles differed, the worship expressed the same passion for intimacy with the Lord.

28 years later, my observations are the same. Style is just a choice. Contemporary, blended, traditional can all be dead as a doornail if we don't seek Him with all our heart in a desire to please Him, not to just imitate the latest musical fad. The Lord is seeking worshippers (not styles) with passion, whose heart is turned towards Him.

May His church be filled with such worshippers.