The Ten Commandments of Worship Music

This story is right up the alley of this blog. For the most part this represents my take on the use of music in worship. You can read the article HERE.

James

Halloween (Should Christians take part?)

With the less than mention worthy so called holiday of halloween upon us I felt compelled to ad a bit here. I found this post and it's related comments good reading. http://www.pantokrator.org/2005/10/18/Christians-celebrating-pagan-holidays/

I have to say that I do not believe we as Christians should in any way celebrate this holiday. In the above blog the question is raised about Christmas and Easter which a commenter plainly points out should be celebrated but only for the purpose of celebrating Christs birth, his death and resurrection.

My true thoughts on this however deal with the now common practice of having "Fall Festivals" or replacement celebrations at churches. In theory I understand the reasoning behind these is to provide a safe alternative to traditional halloween celebration, however is this a case where the church has compromised? While I have attended many of these and have seen many good aspects of showing Christ at these events somehow it still seems a bit awkward to me.

I can't say at present that it is a bad thing, because it does accomplish it's purpose of being an alternative, but I do wonder if the church and we as Christians should give this terrible night any recognition at all.

James

The Invisible Worship Leader

First of all I prefer the title "Lead Worshiper" because in effect that is what we are to be. I have taken the approach of trying to be transparent and didn't even know it. In the current issue of Worship Leader magazine there is an article entitled "At the crossroads of church and culture" by Kent Morris. The gist of the article is about the up to now poor quality of visual arts used to convey the gospel.

In the article Mr. Morris quotes the publisher Chuck Fromm as saying "Poorly executed art can lead to idolatry." The premise is that poor performances, and I use that word with some trepidation because I don't consider leading worship as a performance, can have the direct opposite effect on those that we are trying to lead. If we as worship leaders do not exemplify excellence in our craft we can become a distraction and accomplish nothing more than being the main topic at the Golden Coral lunch after the service.

The other point is that poor quality multimedia used in the service can have the same effect. I have to say that I can agree with both of these points. I am a strong proponent of using multimedia, video, dance, drama and other forms of art to convey the point, but I don't believe that these things should be used simply to fill some time. Anything that is used in a worship service must have a purpose and bring those in attendance one step closer to the throne of God, otherwise we are simply putting on a performance.

The one gripe I have is that quality multimedia is ridiculously expensive, leaving smaller churches to wallow in the mediocre video and images that they can afford. As the body of Christ we should be more interested in the end result of our worship services instead of turning worship into a fortune 500 company. Don't take me wrong I know that producing these things do not come cheap, I just whish there were more companies that cared more about facilitating worship than there bottom line, after all scripture tells us that if we seek God first and His kingdom, all other things will be added unto us.

I have always tried to be as inconspicuous as possible while leading worship, there has been many times when I would just step back from the mic, I continue to sing, but I don't need to be the focus. I have to agree that anything that distracts people from worshiping God can and most probably will become an idol, and I have no ambitions to be the next American idol. Although as a lead worshiper I have a myriad of things that I need to pay attention to, the most important thing to me is the leading of the Holy Spirit and if I follow Him I will never go wrong.

James

Welcome to the new Revived Writings Blog

Welcome to the new Revived Writings blog, a place where I hope to encourage meaningful discussions on worship and other religion based topics. As time allows I will try and incorporate into this book and music reviews as well and use it as a platform to address issues concerning worship and how music in particular can be used more effectively to show the love of Christ.

So, once again, welcome and I will try to start things off here in the next few days. If there are any topics in particular that anyone would like to tackle first please just leave a comment here and we can do that.

Serving Him,
James