What are proper and improper ways to express yourself in corporate worship?

Posted by Josh Howerton on Oct 19, 2010 | 1 comment

Here’s what’s interesting about writing this (I’ve been thinking about this post for a long time): though we’re theologically unified, The Bridge is one of the most diverse groups of Christians I’ve ever seen when it comes to worship backgrounds.  One podcast listener described The Bridge to me as being “Presbapticostal”.  We have large segments of our church body that come from Presbyterian, Southern Baptist, and Charismatic backgrounds which each have unique, unspoken “rules” for what worship should look like.

What ends up happening, I think, is that the more charismatic people in our church body wonder why some people aren’t more enthusiastic, the ex-Presbyterians REALLY wonder why people feel like they have to clap and shout sometimes, and the people with Southern Baptist backgrounds just want to make sure no one is speaking in tongues.

This should be our goal when it comes to expression in worship: we should want to worship like the Bible portrays worship.  When we approach the Bible seriously, we find that it warns us against both atrophy (lack of expression) and excess (selfish indulgence in over-expression).

The Bible is very descriptive about what acceptable worship to God looks like.  It richly describes all of the following things as appropriate expressions of worship…

• loud singing (Psalm 5:11, Psalm 7:17, and 70 other references in Psalms)
• raised hands (Psalm 28:2, Psalm 63:4, Psalm 119:48, etc)
• clapping (Psalm 47:1, Psalm 98:8)
• shouting (Psalm 20:5, Psalm 27:6, Psalm 66:1, etc)
• bowing (Psalm 5:7, Psalm 22:27, etc)
• kneeling (Psalm 95:6)

These passages – among MANY others – push us out of worship atrophy.  They portray corporate worship as a passionate, extremely expressive display of our love, reverence for, and awe of God.  However, the Bible doesn’t lead us to a place of uncontrollable chaos in worship either.  1 Corinthians 14 helpfully gives us the following guidelines…

• All things should be done with love for others in mind (1 Cor 13 serves as a preface for 1 Cor 14)
• Expressions of worship should be sober-minded (vs. 15)
• We should be missionally-minded in how we choose to express ourselves in worship.  Lost people should not leave saying “they’re out of their minds” as a result of our expressiveness. (vs. 23)
• Our expressions should be under our control (vs. 32-33)
• Worship should be orderly, not chaotic. (vs. 33 and 40)

These passages keep us from worship excess. They portray corporate worship as orderly and sober-minded rather than chaotic, frenzied, or bohemian.

• If our worship is stoical, devoid of emotion or expression, and passionless then it’s sub-Biblical.  We should praise God with rich, deep passion.  Singing, shouting, raised hands, clapping, bowing, kneeling – we should seek hearts that overflow in these types of praise.
• If our worship is uncontrollable, chaotic, or not “sober-minded” then it’s also sub-Biblical.  Chaotic and frenzied worship is strange to a Biblical text that portrays corporate worship as passionate but orderly and the presence of the Holy Spirit as resulting in “a sound mind”.
• If an expression of worship we enjoy isn’t prescribed in Scripture and is distracting to people around us, love for our neighbor should compel us to consider keeping that expression to private worship rather than corporate worship.
• We should use our worship gatherings as a missional opportunity, intentionally seeking out new people and making them feel welcome in our midst AND worshipping in such a way as to make Christ known as he is: glorious.

If we’re prone to either one of these errors – atrophy or excess – the most important thing for us to do is ask “Why?”, examining our hearts for indwelling sin that taints our worship.

Divorce: what about abuse?

Posted by Josh Howerton on Apr 22, 2010 | Comments Off

• The only two situations the Bible lays out as grounds for divorce are adultery and abandonment by an unbelieving spouse. Abuse is not mentioned as a reason for Biblical divorce.

• The Bible establishes the government (Rom 13:1ff, 1 Peter 2:14, Matt 22:21) and the church as authorities over Christians.  Abuse is gross, illicit sin as well as illegal. Biblically, an abusive husband should be reported to both church elders for church discipline (Matt 18) and to the governing authorities for legal action.

• 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 says, “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.”
  • This passage may be referring to other circumstances in which separation from a spouse is necessary, but not divorce.  Abuse would be that case.  I would advise a wife being physically, sexually, or emotionally abused by her husband to separate from the home without divorcing while she is following the previous action steps of reporting him to the church elders and governing authorities.

• If a husband who claims to be a Christian continues in abuse after being confronted by the previous two authorities, a wife may need to permanently separate herself from living with him but not divorcing him. If, after continuing in the blatant sin of abuse and her subsequent separation, he initiates divorces with her, he should be treated as an unbeliever for living in open, unrepentant sin (Matt 18:17) and the wife should not feel guilt for the divorce.  She is free to remarry according to 1 Corinthians 7:15.

Again, these are broad and unclarified thoughts from Scripture, not across-the-board “rules”.  Relational situations are always best taken case-by-case and should be handled as such by the elders of a church, but these are some general guidelines from The Bible. I understand the personal pain and the depth at which thinking through this issue will effect some people.  I know your situation might not fit into a cookie-cutter interpretation of The Bible.  If you’d like to dialogue more about this, email me at josh.howerton@bridgesh.com

UPDATE: Pastor Rick dealt with this topic on his blog HERE.

How much do numbers matter?

Posted by Josh Howerton on Apr 12, 2010 | 4 comments

“How big is your church?” is the most-asked question I get when I tell someone I’m a pastor.  Most people that read this blog post will fall into one of two categories when it comes to churches evaluating attendance numbers…

1. Why are you even counting?  This isn’t an organization! Numbers don’t matter. Discipleship does.
2. Numbers are THE barometer of a church’s success.  Bigger is better!

As a side note, a lot of people I meet in Spring Hill have been in churches that equated “bigger” with “better”, became disillusioned, and are now violent category 1 members.  Here’s the passage by which we should evaluate this issue – Jesus’ assignment to the church:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

When it comes to evaluating a church’s success, there are two parts to this command:

• “Go and make”
• “Disciple and teach”

If fulfilling both of those parts of Jesus’ “Great Commission” = success, here are some ways we can FAIL as a church…

• By simply making spectators.  We can grow to having a crowd of thousands at our weekend worship gatherings by using cool video, having a great band, and me learning to be funnier (and smarter and better looking), but if all we’re doing is getting more spectators, we’re utterly FAILING.
• By simply “making converts”.  While this is a LOT BETTER than the first way to fail, if a church is totally focused on the “number of decisions” and not discipling people after conversion, it’s failing to fulfill Jesus’ assignment.  I once heard a VERY evangelistic pastor say, “We’re too busy gettin’ em’ saved; we don’t have time for discipleship” #FAIL
• By being anything other than rabidly evangelistic.  On the other hand, I hear a lot of church leaders say things like “discipleship is more important than growth” as an excuse not to grow. There are billions of people dying and going to hell.  They live in our neighborhoods and work in our offices.  If we’re not sold out on reaching the people in our community and seeing the church grow, we’re FAILING.

Numbers do matter because we’re told to “go and make” but they’re not our standard of success because we’re told to “disciple and teach”.  Here’s the phrase our staff has adopted during this season of quick growth in The Bridge…

Growth doesn’t equal health, but healthy things grow.

For more on this, here’s a post I wrote about a year ago: “The church is getting too big”