The "Preference" Driven Church - The Living Water

As worship leaders, we have all been tasked with making much of Jesus. Lifting Him above ourselves and making it clear to those around us that He alone is on the throne of our hearts. A fear of mine is that worshippers will eventually become numb to what we are doing. Because we often see worship as a once a week experience, worship has the ability to become part of the scenery, it can begin to blend into the background of our lives, or even worse become part of the sin in our hearts.  Before we enter into worship we need to ask the Holy Spirit to remove us from routine. My hope and prayer is that our experience become and remain fresh each and every time we worship. We need to be freed from our inhibitions and rescued from our own ambitions. 

When we become ambitious for the stage, worship becomes about our own glory and not God’s glory. We are insignificant in worship without Him. Remember that he alone makes our worship significant. We must make sure that we are being used for the building of His Kingdom and not our own. Too often, we make ourselves more important than we actually deserve. And on this platform - we feel as if we become entitled, unappreciated, misunderstood, selfish, and the list goes on and on. We must understand that our well is the well of the Living Christ. If we are seeking Him we will never be thirsty. The problem that we face, as worship leaders, is most of the time we are drinking from the wrong well. Gregg Scheer says, “Sometimes the importance of worship leaders turns into a ‘cult of personality’ in which the worship leader becomes the center of attention rather than the facilitator for the congregations worship… this is a worship fetish – it is idolatry.”[1] In John chapter 4 the story of the woman at the well gives us a little insight into this type of idolatry. 

“There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’ For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’ She said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?’ Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.’”

Granted, there are many things that prevent us from worshiping God. However, this Samaritan woman was sitting next to the Son of God and she did not even realize it. She was lost in her focus of what well she was drinking from, so Jesus told her if you drink from my cup, drink of this living water you will never thirst again. This brings me back to my original point, too often we are not worshiping God because we are drinking from the wrong well. We are operating on selfish ambition, and in turn we are drinking from the wrong well. Our ambition takes hold when we want to be successful or viewed as successful. This ambition is because most of us want to be respected as leaders. If we put our ambition in the place of worshiping God and you have a recipe for disaster. Musicians, how many times have you sat and watched someone else sing or play on instruments and thought, "I could do better than that," "I am better than that," or "I deserve to be up there. These are all thoughts of ambition working itself out through jealousy. If this is the case, then jealousy and ambition have become the well that we are now drinking. The wickedness that is in our hearts wants us to make much of ourselves. But we are not the point, we are not the center of attention. Leading people into worship is not about our own glory. Unlike pop-culture, our worship it is not to make much of ourselves, but instead to celebrate the fact that Jesus died for us and delivered us from this unrighteousness in our hearts. When our ambition becomes the "stage" it becomes less about His glory and all about our own. Don't misunderstand me, there are ambitions that are acceptable, but the good ambitions are demonstrated for the Glory of God. J. Oswald Sanders says, “No doubt, Christians must resist a certain kind of ambition and rid it from their lives. But we must also acknowledge other ambition as noble, worthy, and honorable…When our ambition carries out a burning desire to be effective in the service of God – to realize God’s highest potential for our lives.”[3] Because of the fall, our wickedness can become our undoing, it can become our motivation for worship. But instead of worshiping God we become worshipers of stage time and all that goes along with it. What's worse is in order to worship ourselves; we completely belittle the cross and the sacrifice of Jesus. 



[1] Gregg Scheer, The Art of Worship, A Musicians Guide to Leading Modern Worship (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 2006) 215
[3] J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership, Principles of Excellence for Every Believer (Moody Publishers, Chicago, 2007) 11,2

The "Preference" Driven Church

Moralistic Deism

            We cannot be truly free from sin by our own power. Christ is our mediator, and he has taken our place. Matt Chandler says, “…moral, therapeutic deism is the idea that we are able to earn favor with God and justify ourselves before God by virtue of our behavior.” [1] Because of our culture, we have come to this mindset that we must be perfect Christians. And perfect Christians offer up perfect worship, right? Wrong. When we adopt this mindset, our ability to keep up with our repentance will in turn just weigh us down. We will continually wrestle for moral ground and aptitude. Eventually, we will give up, realizing that we will always be losing more than we will be gaining. When we bring these cultural notions into the church we are often disappointed to see others faults. This is where the label "Christians are all a bunch a hypocrites" comes from. While some will entertain the notion that they are perfect, the truth will remain that we are all sinful by nature. This seems like a disappointing fact, but instead it should allow us to celebrate even more in the victory of Christ’s resurrection. The problem is that the cultures of churches today are preaching perfect Christians, to imperfect people. However, if we truly understand the truth of the Gospel as explained in 1 Corinthians we see that the grace of the Gospel “not only saves us, but it sustains us.”[2] Paul writes to his fellow believers, “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.”[3] In order to form a pure culture of worship in our generation we must teach that – God has saved us through the perfect life of Christ, His substitutionary death, and the bodily resurrection of Christ Jesus.

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            [1] Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel (Wheaton, Crossway Books, 2012) , 203

            [2] Matt Chandler, The Explicit Gospel…, 209 

            [3] 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 (NASB)

The "Preference" Driven Church

We live in a fast paced society. Everything is fast and ready in an instant. We have instant food to eat while we are running out the door. And each day our lives are made up of a vast amount of choices. For instance, what or where will I eat today? Whom will I be eating with? Why type of food and then which restaurant that serves that type of food? All of these choices are driven by our preferences. We are a preference driven culture in a preference driven world and this is what is leading me to write this blog. I am becoming more and more worried that our society of preferences have become the chain that is driving decisions being made in churches. Think about it for just a moment.  There are churches of all types - traditional, modern, post-modern, ancient-modern, contemporary, liturgical, etc... Then all of these "styles" break down into denominations, and many times further into differing "theologies" of preferences. All the while, people are so caught up on focusing on these things and loosing sight of the purpose of the church. Now don't get me wrong, I do believe that all of these churches serve their purpose within the body, but I am growing concerned that the church is presenting a misleading nature of its own preferences; above the nature of Christ's desire for His church. For instance, look at how people "shop around" for a church? What are they looking for? Style? Traditions? Dress codes? I am tempted to ask the question... have we sold out to some kind of "secular-attraction" model that exists in our culture? Either way, our preferences should never interfere with our worship to God. We should always be driven by our privilege to worship and not our preferences of worship. Take for example the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4. She was so blinded by her cultural restrictions and preferences that she could not see the Son of God sitting right in front of her. She was blinded by her own wants and her own desires that she could not see the truth. Jesus' response to her was epic! He had this to say; 


“...believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

When our preferences drive our worship, plan and simple, it is idolatry. Why do you think so many people abandon the church? Ask anyone who has left the church, and I guarantee that there reasoning is along the lines of - they don't like a particular style; they can't worship in the same room with a particular person or persons; they dislike the way that the church is operated; they believe that they could do things better; they don't get anything out of it anymore; their kids don't like it; they don't feel like they need to go to church to be a Christian....etc. To me, these are all "preferences." How can we be called to "die" to our selfish nature and to "live" in Christ if we cannot get out of our own way! This is what it means when the Apostle Paul says, "For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." One truth and one fact remains...If you go to church for any other reason than Christ, you will leave the church for any other reason than Christ. Someone once asked the German Christian George Mueller the secret of his victorious Christian life. He replied: “There came a day when George Mueller died, utterly died! No longer did his own desires, preferences, and tastes come first. He knew that from then on Christ must be all in all.” What a statement. His desires and preferences no longer came first. Imagine a church full of individuals willing to give up their personal preferences and desires. How arrogant have we become as individuals to think that we know Christ's church better than the head of the church - Christ Himself? How arrogant have we become to deny Christ his passion by submitting to our own preferences above the work of the Kingdom? We are once again a culture of idolatry. A culture of preferences. We prefer to do this... prefer not to do that...would rather do this... instead of doing that... all the while ignoring our call to Christ.  

So what do we do? Remember that Christ died for His church and when we dismiss the church, I believe, in turn we are dismissing Christ. The problem is not of "Christ's Church," but instead the problem is us and our "preference driven" culture. It is not that we "can't" worship God in any situation, it is that we "won't." The church cannot let things like preferences continue to hold it down. We have made God into this little bit sized piece of gum that we can chew whenever we want and spit out whenever we don't need Him around. But the truth is that, God is bigger than our preferences. And our preferences, and everything that go along with them, died the day we became His child. A.W. Tozer once said, “One of the ingredients in worship is boundless confidence in the character of God. We cant’ worship these days because we do not have a high enough opinion of God. God has been reduced, modified, edited, changed and amended until He is not the God Isaiah saw high and lifted up but something else. Worship rises or falls in any church altogether depending upon the attitude we take toward, whether we see God big or whether we see Him little, and if there is one terrible disease in the church of Christ, it is that we do not see God as great as He is.”

... What Defines Your Worship?

We can learn a great deal about worship from our brother Isaiah. He gives us a greater vision of God and the church. When we task ourselves with this idea of practicing genuine worship, we too can have an enlarged vision of the body. In Isaiah chapter 6, the prophet saw the absolute truth of God's perfect holiness. In this place, he was convicted of sins and he began worshiping. When he was captured by God's awesome presence, he heard God say, "Whom shall I send, and whom will go for us?"Then Isaiah responded by stating, "Here am I, send me." What an awesome display of obedience. In his time of worship, Isaiah saw the need to respond to God through service. Further, there is no commitment to tradition. He didn't commit to only serve here or there. He didn't say, "I will serve... but here are some exceptions." He didn't say, "Here am I, send me... but not to that church, with those people, with that style of music." Further, he didn't say, "I will serve you Lord, but only when it is convenient for me." His commitment wasn't to form, style, or time commitments. Isaiah's commitment to God rose above all else. His worship was lifted above all the things we label as worship! He didn't commit to a specific sermon style, order of worship, special music, offering, or anything that we choose to place in our worship services each week. Isaiah made a commitment to God alone. The greatest part of this commitment is that Isaiah saw that, in his commitment, he was called to obedient service. He saw his life, his family, his nation, even his ministry as a single entity. In that moment his vision of the church was enlarged!

How many times have you heard a "Christian" say, "I just can't worship with that style of music," "That is simply not my thing," or my personal favorite "That style of music (or musical instrument) has no place in the church." These fallacies are simply taking God out of the equation. We are in effect making our worship more about what we want and our preferences have become our God. In Psalm 150 it states that we are to praise God "... with the trumpet blast; Praise Him with the harp and lyre. Praise Him with tambourine and dance; Praise Him with the flute and strings. Praise Him with the resounding cymbals; Praise Him with the clashing cymbals." In order to see the greater vision of the church, we must focus our attention on Him. This will change our hearts and open our minds our service to Him. We cannot confine our worship to just one culture or one meeting place.

I have no doubt that some that read this will immediately think, "I need to go to a church where I can be fed, a church I 'like,' or a church that meets the needs of 'my' culture." Let's think about these statements for a moment. Jesus gave us the example that the more we minister to one another in our daily lives, the easier it will be to minister to each other as we gather together to worship Him. What is even more important is our attitude of service during the times when we gather. We don't meet to be served, but instead to serve (Matt. 20:28). In Isaiah's case, his culture, preferences, wants, desires, personal styles, or place of worship didn't define him - instead he allowed his service - to God - to define his worship. When we allow our preferences to define or capture our attention our worship becomes shallow and secular. However, when we allow God to capture our attention a new and exciting idea of worship will flow from His church. An idea of service, and an attitude of contrite hearts will all join together to lift one another in one spirit of worship.

Horizontal Worship Wars

"...if you are offering your gift at the alter and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to that person; then come and offer your gift." 

Matthew 5:23-24

Often, when we worship, we can really maintain a grasp on the vertical idea of our praise. It is fairly natural for our worship to be vertical and pointing to God. Giving glory and praise to Him. This is rightly justified through the songs that we sing. Typically our "praise and worship" music is geared toward lifting praise to Him, and we celebrate our transformation from old to new, dead to living, and corruptible to incorruptible. In turn, this should transform our way of thinking, living, and love for one another. However, we often forget about the horizontal aspect of worship and Jesus tells us, very clearly, that if we enter a place of worship and have a grudge or something against a brother/sister we should immediately abandon our worship and go and make things right.

 If our vertical worship is aligned with scripture, our horizontal worship will also align. Our worship is the sum of our relationship with Him. Therefore our relationships should reflect His glory through us. Our horizontal relationships are a vital part of our spiritual development. In fact we find in Romans 12:9 - 15:9 instructions on how to maintain and uphold our horizontal relationships. In the book The Great Commission Worshippers, Vernon Whaley and David Wheeler say that we are often content "... to live in a cesspool of anger, resentment, and passive-aggressive behavior when we know someone has done us wrong, misrepresented us, sought to undermine our ministry, or destroy our influence..." However, according to Romans 12, as worshipers we are to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer (v12).  We are supposed to bless those who persecute us (v14) and not repay evil with evil (v17) - but instead overcome evil with good (v21). We are to be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone (v17) and live at peace with everyone (v18). We are to feed our enemy when he is hungry and give him something to drink when he is thirsty (v20). We are not to be vengeful, but instead leave room for God's wrath, "for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay" (v19).

The bottom line is that getting along with one another is one of the very best ways to give testimony to the fact that we are worshippers. In Romans 13:10 it says, "Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." Our actions are the fruit of our worship. How we act, what we say, how we say what we say, and how we live what we believe these are all aspects of our worship and our testimony with God. God expects nothing less from us. While we are called to hate evil and cling to good, hating evil doesn't mean that we disregard the person doing evil. Instead we are to love them, seek them out and build a relationship with them.

God’s Intentional Plan for Marriage

First, let me begin by saying, that as sinners, it is virtually impossible for us to imagine true marriage as God intended it. We live in a society where nothing comes at a price anymore. We want things to be free and without ties. As a culture, we have made ourselves more important than anything else.  We want freedom from authorities and we are governed by self-control. Our worship is becoming more about being entertained than bringing Glory to God. And we have idols that we worship: Television, the Internet, & Movies. What's worse is that virtually all of the previous idols are generalized around an uninhibited flavor for sexual intercourse - which is our cultures greatest idol. So is it possible for a culture with so many preconceived notions about what "we believe" really understand the true meaning of marriage?

John Piper has this to say about our cultural mirage of marriage, “… my own sin and selfishness and cultural bondage makes it almost impossible for me to feel the wonder of God’s purpose for marriage. The fact that we live in a society that can defend two men or two women entering a sexual relationship and, with wild inconceivability, call it marriage shows that the collapse of our culture into debauchery and anarchy is probably not far away.”[1] Pipers idea behind writing this was in “hopes that it might wake (us) up to consider a vision of marriage higher and deeper and stronger and more glorious than anything in this culture… the greatness and glory of marriage is beyond our ability to think or feel without divine revelation and without illumining and awakening work of the Holy Spirit. The world cannot know what marriage is without learning it from God.”[2]

So in order for us to understand God’s intentional plan in marriage we must break ourselves away from our sinful, culturally contaminated ideas of what marriage is not intended to be. We must understand that marriage is God’s design and it is evident through His creation. When “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…’”[3] Further, God makes it very clear in Genesis 2 that God Himself made a being perfectly suited for man – a woman. This was just after God paraded all of the animals in front of Adam. God knew that none of the animals were suitable for man! So he created women. Whew! Sigh of relief. I for one am glad He didn't choose an animal!

We must understand that God spoke the existence of marriage into motion with his creation. God said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”[4] Jesus reaffirms this in Matthew 19 when he says, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’”[5]

The most fundamental thing we can say about marriage is that it is from God and it is through God. God created it in his perfect creation. He saw that it was good. However, it seems in our culture, that we are more likely to substitute our own truth, in order to make God's word culturally sustainable; than we are to rely on God's truth to remain culturally relevant. With this mindset, “Such a culture will find the glory of marriage in the mind of Jesus virtually incomprehensible. Jesus would probably say to us today, when he had finished opening the mystery for us, the same thing he said in his own day: ‘Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given…. Let the one who able to receive this receive it.”[6]

It is truly impossible to understand God’s plan for marriage between man and wife, when we ignore God’s marriage between the Bridegroom (Christ) and His Bride (the Church). Paul calls this marriage the Great Mystery. God’s truth, in Biblical marriage, is that it is for the Glory of His name! Marriage is patterned after Christ’s relationship to his redeemed people! “Therefore, the highest meaning and most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and His church on display.”[7] This is why God created marriage in the beginning. Marriage was established by God and for God glory.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave this understanding of one man and one women, "As you gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."[8] I pray that, as Christians, we will understand that marriage is more than a legal document binding two souls together, and we will seek to understand God's true purpose for marriage as it was created to be. 

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[1] John Piper, This Momentary Marriage, A Parable of Permanence (Crossway Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 2009) , 20 

[2] John Piper, This Momentary Marriage,…, 20

[3] Genesis 1:27-28 (NASB)

[4] Genesis 2:24

[5] Matthew 19:4-5

[6] Matthew 19:11-12

[7] John Piper, This Momentary Marriage,…, 25

[8] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. 27-28

Blind Spots...

During this mornings Bible study time, I came across a verse that really opened my eyes! In Romans 15:5-6 Paul's prays this prayer, "Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." This got me thinking that living in harmony takes endurance and encouragement from God. This is not something we can accomplish with our own strength or with our own strategies. Our wisdom alone will more than likely only make things worse! 

Another part of this verse talks about     "one voice." When I read this I visualized a massive choir singing an Eric Whitacre piece (as seen in the video). Recently Whitacre put together a "virtual choir" in which people submitted videos from all over the world. When you simply listen to the track they sound as if they are all together performing as a choir. However, they are all in separate places. The harmonies are blending, the vowels are together, and the choir sounds as if it is "one voice" singing praise to God. It really is an amazing display of Gods provisions for us. 

When dealing with music in general, relationships don't interfere with the harmonies and melodies being performed. Like in the video above we can be miles apart but still make the musical connection. But, when we turn our attention to bringing God the glory through our music and connection; we find that we cannot praise God one moment, criticize our pastor the next, and think we're offering acceptable praise to God through Jesus Christ. This is why I have come to the conclusion that in order to have significant worship we must put to death any selfishness that is in us - so that Christ might be seen more clearly seen through us. 


Often our view of who we are is completely different from others view of us. Sin is deceptive in this capacity. Most of us have "blind spots" to our imperfections. Sometimes it takes a friendly nudge or an kind gesture to help us see our "blind spots" so we can avoid a major crash! We should thank God daily for placing people in our lives that can help us see what we cannot see ourselves. 

God's plan is always better than our own and I am convicted that He intends to use our relationships to make us more like His Son. In this process we must become more effective in serving the church and bringing God the glory!