WORSHIP. PERIOD.

A friend and I were having a conversation about how often we all overuse the term “ironic” when in fact the events in question were merely “coincidental”. I saw a comic one time who has this whole bit about how nothing in Alanis Morisette’s song “Ironic” is actually ironic. Pretty funny.

“A traffic jam when you’re already late. No, that’s not ironic, that’s just a pain in the butt. There’s nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you’re late…unless you’re a town planner, and you’re late for a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area and couldn’t get to it ‘cuz you were stuck in a traffic jam.”

So, that being said, I guess I found it coincidental – not ironic – that a concept and a passage from 1 Chronicles and Psalm 84 has been popping up in my noggin a lot in the last day or two. I had been thinking about writing a blog about “gatekeeper worship” for a little while now, and I’ll explain that a bit further down. Then this weekend I was reminded of that because our weekend service was focused on a theme called “pictures of eternity” and the song “Better is One Day” made an appearance. I remembered a devotional I’d done with our team a while back talking about the Sons of Korah, the gatekeepers at the temple, to whom this Psalm is attributed. I filed the thoughts away again, now mashed together with this whole gatekeeper idea I had rolling around.

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Ok, pet peeve time. You’re at a worship rehearsal, running through the set list for an upcoming service or event. You meander through the song a few times and nobody is 100% sure if we’re repeating this chorus or if the outro is the same as the intro or if we’re ending on 4 or 1. Everyone looks to the leader and he shuffles his pages, clearly moving to the next song and then he casually drops the bomb: “Ok, that’s good, we’ll just let the spirit lead on that one come Sunday.”

At this point a scene usually kicks on in my mind that portrays me darting across the stage, tackling the dude and shaking him mercilessly. I have anger issues, apparently. Qualified therapists, feel free to email me.

So, why does this bug me so much? Is it that I don’t believe the spirit can lead us in a different direction on Sunday, or that we shouldn’t leave room to adjust ourselves based on what God is doing at that moment as we lead? Yes, that’s it.

Just kidding. (I trust that was obvious.)

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Happy to have guest-blogger and friend Jamie Cambers share some thoughts about the cost of worship. Jamie’s a great guitar player and leads worship at Lutes Mountain Nazarene Church. You can check out more from Jamie on his blog.

From Jamie:

I recently bought some fencing for my backyard through a connection at my work. My company supplies industrial parts for a local fencing company and I asked if he might be able to get me a deal on a 25 foot length and a gate. He said to me, “Of course. I’ll see what we have lying around and put something together for you.” Maybe I’m just naive, but by his tone of voice and the “wink-and-gun” he gave me, I thought that meant “free fence”. The next day I got a quote. Now, I did get a good deal and still have the laborious task of putting it together, but it was not free. It cost me money. The old adage “nothing in this life is free” certainly applies here and for most aspects of our lives. This includes our worship which I’ve come to discover by reading 2 Samuel 24:18-26 (NIV).

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There are paradoxes in our faith. Some of them are confusing, some of them I find rather glorious, but they’re there. The first shall be last, lose your life to gain it, there’s no shortage. Sort of like Matt Chandler says, I understand enough about God to know that I’ll never completely understand Him, this side of Heaven (my paraphrase).

This week and weekend as I was preparing for worship I spent some time thinking about one of those kinds of things – the idea of “all”. It appears all the time in reference to a relationship with Christ, and there are countless examples in scripture. But, like a coin or a sweet mix tape, there’s 2 sides.

On one hand it’s repeatedly modeled for us that a relationship with Jesus means “leaving it all behind”. The so-called ‘rich young ruler’ in Mark 10 is told to sell it all and give it away to the poor to follow Christ. A couple chapters later we read the story of the woman who gave all the money she had and Christ admonished her for it. Over in Luke we read about the disciples first encounters with Jesus. Levi/Matthew “got up, left everything and followed (Jesus)”, it tells us in chapter 5. The same chapter tells us how Jesus used a fishing analogy to call some fishermen who “left everything and followed him”. Later in Luke, chapter 14, we read the words, “any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple”.

All. Everything. The whole shebang. Got it.

I think sometimes we have difficulty doing that particularly in our worship. It’s tough to “leave it all behind”, especially if you’re referring to things like our focus, our attitude, our inhibitions, our guilt, our judgement, our insecurities…some of that stuff is tough to leave at the door, isn’t it? Still I think when we gather for corporate worship, our mandate as worshipers is to do just that – leave it behind. My boss and pal Pastor Gord always says, “He can be the focus, or we can be the focus, but we can’t both be the focus”.

As worship leaders part of our role is often in shepherding the collective and individual focus of the group. We’re charged with reminding our congregations of why we’re there and who the focus needs to be. We need to use everything at our disposal to paint a picture of God that leaves no room for attention to anything or anyone else.

The end. Oh, wait. What about the other side of that proverbial mix tape?

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Pastor Bob was my boss when I served as Worship Director at West Vancouver Baptist Church on Vancouver, BC’s North Shore. He was (and I suppose still is) a very experienced guy; a veteran pastor, if you will. He was hired at West-Van (I think abbreviations make me sound cooler) in the wake of a tough period in the church’s history. His experience in leading churches through and out of tough times made him a good choice. He was a very black and white, no-nonsense kind of guy. My Northern-Irish friend Alan said it was because of his Germanic heritage. I don’t know what that means, but Al is smart so we’ll go with that. He was a quirky dude. He had a rat puppet named “Ratso” who made weekly appearances in our children’s moment. It was a surreal experience the first time I saw Ratso in action. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. I was even more surprised to find out how beloved the little rat was around the church. People talked about him like he was a real person; “Did you hear what Ratso said today? Oh my, he’s cheeky.” Maybe he was real and I just missed it…I have to make a call…

At the same time, however, Pastor Bob was one of those guys that terms like “spirit-led” became clichés for. He made seeking the spirit first in everything and acting on promptings look easy. Again, maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t always find it easy, but for the sake of continuity play along with me please.
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I was recently listening to that Treasure Box of Canadiana known as the CBC radio and I heard an interview with a lady who was a “historian” specializing in Photobooths. I guess the line was long when they handed out specializations in historian school.  As I listened I became oddly interested in what her and the show’s host were musing about.

They talked about the days when Photobooths were first introduced and their different incarnations and uses over the years. They discussed the advent of the digital camera has, in part, caused the photobooth’s popularity to wane (which is less desirable than waxing) in recent years. I was pretty surprised at just how intense Nakki Goranin (the historian in question) was about the subject matter. She talked about seeing people’s photobooth photos and being brought to tears by this little “glimpse into their soul”. All I’ve ever gotten out of those little photo strips is a record of myself doing the rabbit ears behind someone’s head or crossing my eyes.

Then she said something that started my wheels a-turnin’. Check it out:
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