Worshiping Through Grief

Worshiping through Grief Receiving comfort and leading others… through devastation, danger, fear, and loss.

Essays, Interviews, Articles, & Journal Entries From the pages of Worship Leader magazine

Worship Leader Partnership

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Worship Leader Partnership 32234 Paseo Adelanto, Suite A San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675

Website: www.worshipleader.com Email: worshipleader@wlmag.com

Originally published in the USA as a series of columns under the title Worship Leader Magazine

Copyright © 2013 by Worship Leader Partnership, San Juan Capistrano, California

All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form without written permission from Worship Leader Partnership. Worship Leader Partnership is a publishing and educational training company that includes Worship Leader magazine, Song DISCovery CD-­‐ROMs, National Worship Leader Conference (NWLC), webinars, ePublishing. For information about subscriptions to the magazines and/or CD-­‐ROMs or local and regional activities, write Audience Development Dept., Worship Leader Partnership, 32234 Paseo Adelanto, Suite A, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675, or visit the WL website at <www.worshipleader.com>.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from The Holy Bible New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The women and men—parents, wives, husbands, children and friends—who have told their stories and shared their personal losses and devastation as well as their healing insight and wisdom in this book are an amazingly diverse collection of Christians. They comprise some of the seminal leaders of the Jesus Movement; the most esteemed pastors, teachers and exemplars of worship; award-­‐winning artists and songwriters, college presidents, leading evangelists, and hidden prophetic intercessors and missionaries. There are those who are currently enduring struggles or battling relentless disease, those who have experienced inexpressible pain and loss over a lifetime, and those who’ve risked their lives in the midst of danger and uncertainty. Their experience of the unanswerable questions surrounding grief and God’s presence in “the valley of shadows” helps those of us who are part of leading worship in whatever capacity to wade through our own seasons of grieving—that may at times seem endless—to receive the love and comfort of both a faithful God and our believing community, and to be able to extend that healing, at the right time, with sensitivity and true empathy to others lost in the dark unknowing.

The choir of comfort assembled here:

Randy Alcorn Jonathan Allen Warren Anderson Jeremy Armstrong Steve Berger Carla Brewington Steven Curtis Chapman Jon Egan Richie Fike Melody Green Kenn Gulliksen Andrea Hunter Greg Laurie Gordon MacDonald Martin E. Marty Brian McLaren Hughes Oliphant Old Randy Phillips Dr. Mark D. Roberts Dr. Lester Ruth Davin Seay Chuck Smith, Jr.

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Tim Timmons Darlene Zschech

Chuck Fromm, Jeremy Armstrong, and Andrea Hunter, eds.

Lindsay Young, ed asst.

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FOREWORD Pastor Jack Hayford once posed a question to me, “Chuck, I wonder if all our expression in heaven will be musical?” It was a provocative thought and something I’ve thought about from time to time since. The worship leader’s second language is music, and learning to articulate a range of emotion is our practice. In this book, the focus is on the practice of comforting those who mourn, receiving God’s comfort ourselves, and leading our communities in worship with sensitivity, wisdom, and knowledge—a topic long overdue for some serious contemplation.

Dealing with grief brings up the point that music or art in the service of worship has different functions and a range of expressions that serves the content…and our media can complement, conform, or conflict with the message. Edward Foley lists some other considerations that may—or may not—be at the top of our media criteria lists, for instance, the aesthetic considerations of music: connecting the Holy with the beautiful. He also points toward “The Emotional Function” and separately addresses “The Mood-­‐setting Function,” which in many ways for me are connected.

We’ve all experienced both at weddings, baptisms, and funerals; the music reinforces and informs the prevailing mood to open our hearts to God and to each other. Foley says that there are “some moments when hope or joy or some other emotion is so profound that it cannot be expressed in words alone….” So both sung poetry, and the poetry of instrumental music, set a mood and evoke or enhance an emotion, helping us express our delight or grief and to “love God with all our heart.”

Two of my favorite Foley functions, which I believe go hand in hand, that really connect with me are “The Revelatory Function” and “The Text-­‐Enhancing Function.”

Worship facilitates hearing from, engaging with, and encountering God. While Foley uses text-­‐enhancing to talk about sacred texts being sung, I’ve adapted it to mean that as we hear prayer poetry, sacred texts take on a new and deeper meaning. As they do, we encounter God and he “reveals” himself and his truth to us. What does this mean? I believe there is music that would serve us in worship that we leave outside the sanctuary because we have missed its important function.

I remember years ago when “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence—a song that for many would be a stretch to consider as worship—was used in churches prior to an altar call in youth settings. The result for many was that the song proved “revelatory” and they confessed their need for a savior. In Amy Grant’s song “Find What You’re Looking For,” I had a revelation about judging—something I thought I had a handle on—and the text to Matthew 7:1-­‐3 was certainly enhanced.

So I’m hoping, as we sing a New Song, we’ll be open to a deeper lexicon of expressive possibilities. When we’re choosing songs for a church that grieves and

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suffers loss, may we be as inclusive in our functions of worship as David, as sensitive to the brokenhearted, the rejected, and the abandoned as Jesus.

For everything there is a season… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. May we as worship leaders respond to the seasons of the heart and soul of our congregations and communities, so we can join them in singing his New Song of comfort, praise, proclamation, revelation, lament, prayer, and ultimate victory over death. Oh yes, Pastor Jack, I think we will sing our thoughts in Heaven.

–Charles E. [Chuck] Fromm, PhD

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PREFACE Wrestling With God & Learning How to Lament in Worship In this book of collected articles, interviews, essays and journal entries, we are exploring suffering, transition, and grief…and our response. So the material and thoughts have a tendency, for obvious reasons, to be a bit intense and emotional.

And, of course, that is fine. There is certainly a place for real stories with real pain, but we want this to be more than merely a vicarious journey into the pain of others.

It is meant to be a tool, a roadmap towards understanding your own grief and your role as a pastor or a steward of music in a service of worship—the role of the worship leader in the realms of suffering, grief, and lament. It also provides an intimate glimpse into the life of those who pastor, lead in worship, write songs as they face their personal grief and, like Jacob, Hannah or David of old, wrestle, weep, pray and worship through it.

Every week you or the people you lead are in the midst of life-­‐and-­‐death tragedies. But suffering goes far beyond the “big” tragedies in life. Hopefully, we may learn to be sensitive to the suffering that is affecting the worldview of the people we lead and encounter each week.

May we remember that in any given church, likely, at least 33 percent have been divorced. Making sure you include all in your language and veer away from sending a message that church is just for families and married couples is critical. Blending generations, those who are married, single, single parents, different races, ethnicities, and worship traditions into a cohesive community is an art that takes commitment, prayer, sensitivity, and a heart of worship.

So many people are suffering from job loss, a cutback of hours or benefits, a transition to retirement, or transition from school to the job market. You can support these members of your body by allowing people to tithe time, when they have no money, offering scholarships to church activities that require personal expense, and in verbally addressing these issues in your sermons, songs, and printed material.

Always there is the reality that someone has lost a love one to death or is struggling as a caretaker with a family member who is ill, developmentally disabled, or being ravaged by mental illness, dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Each time you meet as a community, as you lead in the Word, song, drama, dance, visual worship, you have the opportunity to include and bless people in simple, but powerfully meaningfully ways: a sign language translator, attention to song lyrics or Scriptures or storylines that might be painful and need interpreting or explanation.

Additionally, making activities accessible for those in wheelchairs or disabled in

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various ways at church, and also extending ministry to those who are housebound or providing support for fulltime caretakers, can add comfort instead of additional grief and rejection to those who already feel on the outside.

In the process of gathering these stories of loss and devastation, comfort and glory, we have learned many things, but the most important lesson is that people are hurting in every group that you lead, and in order for worship to be authentic we must make room for lament. But above all, worship is a celebration of the redemptive work of Christ and the overall story of God. That is where we hope to fix our eyes. In the following pages, leaders, pastors, mothers, fathers, missionaries, wives, husbands, all join the conversation. It is our hope that the insights they offer well encourage those who read in their own personal life and in leading and pastoring others. May these true stories and real perspectives on grief tempered in the fires of life experience birth and feed a deep belief in the redemption of all things as revealed in our true final destination—unbroken fellowship with God, where the work of the cross is complete.

Jeremy Armstrong Andrea Hunter

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHORS .........................................................................................................................3 FOREWORD................................................................................................................................................5 PREFACE......................................................................................................................................................7 The Desperate Hope............................................................................................................................ 10 The Beautiful End................................................................................................................................. 14 Immeasurable Loss…And Love...................................................................................................... 17 God Will Make A Way ......................................................................................................................... 20 Celebration And Lament ................................................................................................................... 23 Worship Through The Storm.......................................................................................................... 26 GREIVING TOGETHER........................................................................................................................ 28 Aftershocks.............................................................................................................................................. 29 Worshiping In The Ruins.................................................................................................................. 31 WORSHIP LEADING AND YOUR RESPONSE TO GRIEF...................................................... 33 God Of Sorrow........................................................................................................................................ 34 The Power Of The Cross: “I Am Free”......................................................................................... 37 God Of The Hills And Valleys........................................................................................................... 40 Grieving With Grace............................................................................................................................ 43 Perspective .............................................................................................................................................. 45 “As The Deer” ......................................................................................................................................... 47 SONGWRITING TUNED TO THE GRIEVING HEART ............................................................ 49 The Example Of Charles Wesley.................................................................................................... 50 WORSHIPING AS A NATION............................................................................................................ 53 Seeking Hope In Time Of National Trauma ............................................................................. 54 Columbia: A Reason To Worship? ................................................................................................ 58 Pastoral Diary From Ground Zero................................................................................................ 60 Public Prayer In Troubled Times.................................................................................................. 66 PRAYING THROUGH WAR & WORSHIPING IN DANGEROUS TIMES .......................... 69 Praying Through War......................................................................................................................... 70 Worshiping In A Dangerous Time................................................................................................ 72 GRIEVING: A BENEDICTION ........................................................................................................... 76 Prayer......................................................................................................................................................... 77 AFTERWORD.......................................................................................................................................... 79

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The Desperate Hope Steven Curtis Chapman with Jeremy Armstrong

I first met Steven Curtis Chapman at a night of worship. It was the first night of the Gospel Music Association (GMA) conference in Nashville, April of 2006. The GMA conference is in essence about the business of Christian music, but it typically becomes a bit of a showcase for Christian artists, media outlets, and superstar wannabes. People hope to get discovered. Others look for rediscovery, or to let you know how wonderful their recent releases are, and there are those who attend simply because their label asked them to. As you can probably imagine, that particular worship evening was overlaid with a palpable struggle. It’s a fight to hold to the inclusive ethos of the Christian faith while surrounded by the romance of pop-­‐ Christian celebrity at every turn. Sometimes there is victory, and sometimes defeat.

With the art form of Christian music barely holding its head above the wild waters of the digital revolution and filling its ranks with artists that were, understandably, a bit light on a sense of self-­‐identity and direction, we were in need of leadership.

In an attempt to get some distance from it all during an evening of worship, I was in the balcony of the historic Ryman Auditorium waiting for Hillsong United to take the stage. After a few moments, from the corner of my eye, I saw a shorter than average, blonde man wearing jeans and an army coat, hands in pockets, by himself.

It was Steven Curtis Chapman; there was no doubt in my mind. And he stood in the balcony of the Ryman, away from the buzz below.

Of course, I went to chat with him. I mean, Steven Curtis Chapman. He’s released more than 20 records. He’s won five Grammys and seven “Artist of the Year” Doves.

He had TobyMac rapping on The Great Awakening before DC Talk was even close to legendary. Steven Curtis Chapman has been and currently is one of the finest artists in the Christian industry. Hands down.

The question for me was, “Would SCC have time for me—a random stranger?”

The answer revealed his character. In a place where conversations are often colored by short attention spans and gazes roaming the room, looking for “a more important person to talk to,” Steven Curtis Chapman locked eyes with me, interested, available, authentic. And we simply chatted about life. I doubt Chapman remembers that encounter, but I do.

When I heard of the tragic loss of Steven Curtis Chapman’s daughter in 2008, this chance meeting at the Ryman Auditorium came to mind. My heart broke as I thought, “How can such a horrible thing happen to one of the most authentic people I have ever encountered in the Christian music industry?” It just seemed so unfair.

Of course, when does tragedy seem fair?

Lost Bearings By now you have likely heard the story—Chapman’s five-­‐year-­‐old daughter, Maria, died after she was accidentally hit in the driveway of the family’s home in Franklin, Tennessee, by a car driven by her older brother. In an instant, life lost

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sense, lost direction, lost meaning for an entire family. And grief became Steven Curtis Chapman’s home. But, of course, that isn’t the end of the story; it is the beginning of ours. Almost exactly 18 months after his loss, I had the chance to talk with Steven for a second time. This time it was about his deepest suffering, and everything revolved around one topic: how do you worship God when you have lost your bearings in life? How do you celebrate God’s redemption when all you know has been torn apart? True to our first encounter, Chapman was authentic, vulnerable, and available.

“It all begins with recognizing that we are not God,” says Chapman. “We can’t begin to worship God until we know that we’re not God, and no one else is. And nothing has ever broken me to the point of knowing how not God I am, how not in control I am, than this experience.”

Chapman continues, “When you use the two words together—grieving and worship—literally something sort of leaps in my heart because, and this is going to sound like an outlandish statement, but I didn’t have near the grasp of what worship was until I walked through, and am still walking through, this valley of the shadow of death. My pastor says it like this, we never really cry, ‘Abba!’ until we first cry, ‘Uncle!’ I don’t know that worship really becomes true deep worship until we are able to recognize how desperate we are for God. “And for the last year and a half, that is where my music has come from; it’s been desperate hope. It’s putting those two words together. I’ve been worshiping with grief. And that is, in fact, what has taken me to a depth of desperation for God.” Biblical Grief It’s not a new thing. The Bible is full of people who grieve. King David lost his own son. Ruth lost her husband. Jesus lost his cousin and his friend Lazarus, a grief that brought about one of Christ’s most human expressions in the New Testament—he wept. And these are but a few of the vast amount of stories. Yet even with these examples we often find ourselves unsure of our freedom to grieve. We are confronted with the question, “Am I allowed to question God? Am I allowed to doubt? Am I allowed to wrestle with him?” Chapman doesn’t have every answer, but he suggests that the Psalms are a fine place to start. “When you read the Psalms, the textbook of worship, and you look at the heart of David, it’s easy to think that this guy’s schizophrenic,” says Chapman. “You know? How can you, with the same breath, cry out to God, ‘Where are you? How long? I’m dying! My enemies are overtaking me, life is terrible. I’m in so much despair.’ And then say ‘Your love is better than life God, and I trust you.’

“But, I now understand that because I’ve become schizophrenic as well. I have learned to say, ‘I don’t know where you are. I can’t understand anything about what’s going on right now, but I trust you, and I bless your name. You give and you take away, but I’m going to choose to bless your name and trust you. And, in doing that, I have entered into a level of worship that, for me, has become true worship— it’s become a place of really beginning to understand what worship is.

“The place that we’ve walked as a family has helped me realize that in the Psalms, David isn’t worshiping like we imagine it today—swaying back-­‐and-­‐forth in this warm fuzzy moment with the classic open-­‐hands-­‐towards-­‐heaven pose. There are a

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lot of times I see him beating his own chest, saying, wait a minute, why are you casting me down? So, I’ve tried to grab a hold of that. Worship God in that, out of that place of desperation for him. And then worship becomes so much more real and significant.”

Difficult Prospect In the midst of a world that has so much reason for grief, the easy answer for people who hope to offer some sort of consolation is often “It’s okay, God is in control.” But for someone who is in the throes of grief and suffering, that type of simple answer isn’t always the most helpful. It has a tendency to belittle the experience. And even though a grieving person may know deep down the truth of the statement, that type of trust has to come from somewhere deeper than head-­‐ knowledge. “I really would have to say that faith is a gift,” says Chapman. “Even to be able to say, ‘God I believe, but help my unbelief,’ that’s a gift. For me reaching out to God wasn’t a noble decision; I’ve never said, ‘Okay, I’m going to do the right thing here and worship God.’ It was out of a pure place of survival.

“It came out in the earliest moments when I realized my daughter was in heaven with Jesus, and that I wasn’t going to see her again, this side of paradise. That, as a family, we were going to carry this enormous grief and sadness with us through life.

And, I was looking at my son who’s going to carry this huge weight of knowing that he was involved in this accident that took his sister to heaven. I’m looking at my other daughters who were standing in the back yard watching it all happen. And I remember just thinking, ‘God there’s no way we’re going to survive this.’ And, when I felt myself going into the place of the grief and questioning God, ‘How could you, where are you? It was literally like being sucked into a black hole—just into an abyss that had no bottom, no end.”

Catch Me “I remember standing in the emergency room, huddled as a family, and those questions, like tsunami waves started washing us away. And, I would begin to just speak, ‘God, I trust you. I bless your name. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You give.

You take away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I trust you God. You’re faithful. I’m trusting you.’ And, when I would say that with my mouth and just whisper it in my heart it was almost like I could physically feel this hand catch me and began to lift me back up out of the abyss. And I would just begin to breathe again.

“And of course, it’s continued to be a back and forth, almost a tug-­‐of-­‐war, with the questions and demands, and going into that dark place, that black hole again, but also saying, ‘God, I trust you. I trust you. You are faithful. You are good. I know your heart. I know the plans that you have for me.’ And saying those things, worshiping, has literally been like dropping an anchor.

“Being in that kind of grief, it’s like you’re in this storm that’s massive, and it’s going to crush you. Your boat is getting thrown against the rocks, and you’re just about to die. So you do the only thing you can do, you throw that anchor out. And, it holds sometimes for 15 minutes or for a day or two, and then it pulls loose. You have to start over, until you drop that anchor again. And, again, that’s what worship has

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been for me and for my family in this time. It’s just been dropping the anchor again.

It’s been driving the stake again in the ground. It’s been saying, God, I trust you.”

What Can We Do? As worship leaders, this is an important understanding. We have the opportunity to offer, through music, that anchor, that ability to proclaim truth, when it might not be the easiest response for someone in our congregation, when it might not even be possible for them. To let them know that worship is a lifeline, offered to be a catalyst for faith. But it is equally important to keep in mind that there are people hurting in every place we lead. “Every time we lead worship standing in front of a group, there’s a good chance that half of them are ‘on the road marked with suffering,’” says Chapman. “And there’s going to be ‘pain in their offering.’ But, I believe that as followers of Jesus, the one who has overcome death, not only are we invited to grieve, but I think we grieve at a deeper level. I mean, Jesus said, I’ve come that you might have life and have it to the fullest.

“I’ve come to realize we might have interpreted that wrong. A lot of the times the Church in America takes this to mean, God has a wonderful plan for you life. He came to give you full life. He came to give you all the good stuff. Cram your bank account full and your garage and give you a nice home. But full life means both full joy and full pain, I believe. He came that we might have life. He came to take the blinders off and we are going to experience it all: the suffering, the joy, the pain, the hope. That’s what it means to be fully alive.

“So, when we grieve, we are groaning with all of creation. We grieve at a deeper level than anybody else because without true grief, we live in denial. So we are invited into the deepest place of grief.”

Deeper Hope “Jesus gave us a great example of this when he wept at Lazarus’ grave,” continues Chapman. “He knew he was going to raise him from the dead. But he wept—even Jesus. I think that is a profound invitation to grieve, to weep, to suffer, and embrace that we grieve with hope. We have hopefulness, a knowledge that the day is coming when he will make all things new. He’s going to wipe every tear from our eyes.

“If our hope is just for this life, the Apostle Paul says we’re foolish; we are to be pitied. But the hope that we grieve with is the hope that’s anchored to the day that’s coming when God is going to wipe every tear from our eyes and we’re going to understand his story, and the enemy will be completely, once and for all, defeated.

“On that day we are going to understand that God really has overcome death and the grave. So, today, in our grief, we anchor ourselves to that hope. Martin Luther said, ‘There are only two days that matter. It’s today and ‘that day.’ It’s the day that’s coming. And then, this day right now. So, we grieve, yes. But we grieve with the hope of the day that’s coming.”

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The Beautiful End A Conversation between Greg Laurie and Randy Alcorn about Grief and God’s Control

On July 24th, 2008, Christopher Laurie was taken to heaven in a tragic car accident.

His father, Greg Laurie, Pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship and founder of the Harvest Crusades, recently sat with Randy Alcorn, author of the book Heaven, to chat about the implications of Heaven and how it affects our worship in times of grief.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation.

Greg Laurie: We live in a fallen world that will be redeemed one day in the future. But maybe the question becomes more personal when people ask, “Why does God allow good people to suffer, and more to the point, godly people to suffer?” It’s one thing when we hear of tragedy in the world, and it’s far away, but when it comes to our doorstep and a loved one close to us gets cancer or we ourselves get bad news from a doctor.

Or as in my case, wake up one day and our son of 33 years is suddenly no longer with us on this earth, and we wonder why did God let that happen?

We talk about the sovereignty of God and we talk about God being in control. But the question is, “Is he in control?” Is he really aware of all the bad things that are happening? Are some things just happening randomly and God is preoccupied? How involved is the Lord in these things, and how aware of them is he? And how do we respond to people who are suffering?

Randy Alcorn: He is working out a plan. Now in all humility we must say, we don’t always understand that plan. And in the midst of evil and suffering, don’t just snap your fingers and go, “Oh, well, obviously God is doing this. God is doing that. Don’t worry about the tragic situations you’ve just endured because it’s really all for the best.”

That is completely insensitive and inappropriate to say. What is appropriate to say is, “I love you.” Weep with those who weep. Rejoice with those who rejoice. I’m there for you. I love you.

Greg Laurie: Yeah, sometimes when people are trying to bring comfort to a Christian, they may even say things that are correct, but maybe they’re said in the wrong way—a little too cavalier about it. Since we went through all that we’ve gone through and are going through, the pain doesn’t end. It just changes. And what you’re experiencing, the sense of loss, the sense of pain is still there, but I think what I find myself doing more now is listening. I mean, I’m not so quick on the draw with the answer. I still will give biblical verses in the appropriate way. But at the same time, I’ll listen to a person and talk about how we should weep with those that weep.

I interviewed Stephen Curtis Chapman a while back and when I asked him what has helped him, the best thing that was said was, “There are no words.” And there is

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a place for just being there. And he reminded me of the story of Job and his counselors. They actually had it together when they kept their mouths shut. It’s when they started talking that trouble began.

Randy Alcorn: It’s like this, Romans 8:28 is inspired by God, so you would think it is always good and right to quote it, right? But when somebody’s daughter dies of leukemia, do you look at him and say, “Well, God causes all things to work for good. So, don’t feel bad.”

No. That’s completely insensitive. In fact, what Scripture does is it gives us permission to ask questions of God. In the Psalms you basically have David asking, “Why are the heavens silent … Lord, why aren’t you hearing me when I pray? Have you given up on me?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” David said that in Psalm 22. And of course, Jesus said it on the cross. There are going to be times where there is darkness in our lives. Some of us, including myself, have battled some depression and there are times of darkness that come with that. Sometimes they relate to certain circumstances, other times it’s nothing you can put your finger on.

But in the midst of it all, we need to look to the God who shed his blood for us on a cross. And one day, we’ll look at those hands and he may look at us and say, “Do these look like the hands of a God who does not care? All those times you wondered if I care, do you have any doubts now?”

Greg Laurie: Someone out there right now is hurting. They’re living with a disability. Someone close to them died recently. They found out they’re terminally ill. It seems like the walls are closing in on them. And they believe in the Bible. They believe in Jesus Christ but right now, they don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. They see an insurmountable obstacle. They see something that they don’t think they can survive.

What would you say to that person right now?

Randy Alcorn: I would really say, look to Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, who is now seated at the right hand of God.” That specific verse, found in Hebrews 12, is preceded by the stories of great saints of God in Hebrews 11. And something all those saints had in common was how much they suffered. There is a lot of suffering going on in this world, and we have a God who cares. It’s not the God of deism—a watchmaker who started it all and then departed and doesn’t really care what’s going on.

He is a God who looked down. He cries. He weeps for his people. We’re told that in Exodus, he wept for his people. Jesus wept over the people of Jerusalem. And it’s a God who came down to become one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that he extended his arms; his hands bear the mark of the greatest evil that has ever happened in human history. We call that day Good Friday. Why do we call it Good Friday? Why don’t we call it “Bad Friday,” “Horrible Friday”? Because God brought great good out of the worst thing that happened, and he can do that for you, too. And one day, you’ll be embraced by the Lord. You’ll hear him say, if you’ve been faithful to follow him, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

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I know it will prove worth it. There was a beginning that was perfect. There is an end without end that will go on forever that will be perfect. We live in the difficult middle. It is our task to put it in perspective of the past and the future that is built on the finished work of Christ.

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Immeasurable Loss…And Love Melody Green with Andrea Hunter

When it comes to grief, it’s impossible to measure; there isn’t a Richter scale for sorrow. “The heart knows its own bitterness”; like fingerprints, with each person it is unique. That being said, some losses are just “more” than others, and some people seem to be more acquainted with heartache’s myriad forms.

Keith and Melody Green, seminal figures of ‘70’s New Song, were confrontational in their commitment and passionate in their faith. Both of Jewish heritage, and both having sampled a rainbow of new-­‐age religious philosophies and practices—they were swept into the kingdom in the midst of simple worship at a Bible study during the Jesus Movement. As Melody describes it, “Something grabbed my heart that I’d never felt before. The Holy Spirit touched my spirit and I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know who these people are or what they have. But whatever it is, I want it.’

Keith and Melody dove in. She had no previous exposure to Christianity and for both of them the Bible became their discipleship manual. “We did everything together—writing, ministry. I ran sound, Keith sang. It was like we were glued at the hip.” Within a few short years Keith had recorded five albums centering on relationship with Christ; the last, Songs for the Shepherd, was worship focused. It included several songs Melody had written or co-­‐written with Keith; Melody’s “There Is a Redeemer,” one of the best known is still sung around the world today.

As the founders and leaders of Last Days Ministries, with nearly 100 people on staff, some property in Texas, new buildings popping up to house fervent followers and ministry, they were literally having worldwide impact and a seemingly unstoppable wave of favor.

In a Moment On July 28, 1982, a humid Texas evening, a twin engine Cessna, loaded with precious human cargo took off. Then, a deadly crash. In a single moment, Melody Green lost her husband Keith, her three-­‐year-­‐old son Josiah, and her two-­‐year-­‐old daughter Bethany. She was left the single mother of one-­‐year-­‐old Rebekah and six weeks pregnant with Rachel.

“It hits you like a ton of bricks. A lot of people have a false notion that if you’re living right and really loving God and serving God, that you’re guaranteed immunity.

I didn’t believe that, but when Keith and two of my kids died, it was absolutely devastating. My whole life changed forever. And it’s still changed. It’s like somebody comes and pulls the tablecloth out from under your dinner. And everything crashes to the ground. There is something that’s over. And it’s final.

“But when we really read the Bible we see how people suffered. We have the example that following Jesus and knowing Jesus does not guarantee us a pain-­‐free life or that we’ll have no losses. You know, I think sometimes we want to think that’s the case and so when a tragedy strikes us personally, we want to be brave and strong for the people around us so they’ll know that God really is true and really

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works. We wrongly think that we’ll prove that God is good if we don’t show our emotions and show our grief.”

Truth Can Hurt Following Keith’s death, Melody recalls the abundant kind and supportive presence of her community. She also remembers one particularly painful incident: “One friend I knew very well pulled out a picture of my daughter Bethany, who was kind of a late bloomer. It was this beautiful picture she had taken a few weeks before Bethany died. You had to get pictures developed then. So a week or two later she shows it to me, ‘Look at that beautiful smile. Just think of how happy she is in heaven right now. She’s in such a better place right now with the Lord.’ And I remember I just kind of looked at her, excused myself, went in the bathroom and started sobbing. I literally wanted to punch her. Although it was true, truth that’s not sensitive and not in good timing can be wounding. People in mourning need interaction. I needed friends and comfort. But I didn’t need a lot of Scripture or a lot of religion. I knew Jesus. I knew where everybody was. The problem was they weren’t with me anymore.”

“As leaders, we’re used to being the strong one that’s always cheering everybody up and charging them on and encouraging them. But, when we’re weak, it’s part of our healing to allow people to help us and bless us.”

Personal Level Because Melody had a minor stroke in 2003, the need to be open to other people’s help was more pressing. In the hospital for six weeks, she had to learn to walk and use her left hand again. “You can need something and people walk right by, they don’t look at you. I realized this was a whole new world. I had to have somebody give me a bath. I felt like I’d lost my dignity. While in a wheelchair, I was overlooked—people didn’t talk to me or they talked extra loud. It was really scary. I thought I may be a burden on people forever. If I don’t recover I may need to live my life being very dependent on others. I’m grateful to God that I recovered. People need to know that those who are struggling will usually minimize it and not tell you all they need because they don’t want to be a burden to you. Because they know life is hard for everybody. And they’re embarrassed and afraid you’ll get tired of helping them. But, I really needed help.

There Is a Redeemer “Amazing things happen in worship. People are comforted, and because we’re looking at God, we’re looking at the big picture that God is God. The Bible tells us that we shouldn’t grieve like the world grieves, as people who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13). That doesn’t mean we don’t grieve, it just means that we have a holy hope that is going to eventually overtake the sorrow. Not that the grief will ever be 100 percent eradicated from our life. But it will eventually not be the largest part of our life. I have a longer-­‐range perspective on it now. And, and I see that God, essentially has taken care of me. He is good to me. He has restored my heart.”

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“Daily life is grueling enough and has its own disappointments… [When Christians gather] you’ve got people that are ill, people losing jobs, people mourning, and you’re going to have some people that don’t know God yet that have showed up. That’s why worship is so important. A worship leader can take the lead and gently in one sentence acknowledge the presence of somebody, or a situation, saying, ‘We know people have lost jobs and they’re struggling right now. There are a lot of things we don’t know that people are going through. Let’s just take this next song and intercede for our body.’ There’s a breath that comes in when you invite the Holy Spirit—when your songs invite the Holy Spirit. There’s another level of the presence of God that shows up. Worship is holy. And we can rejoice and celebrate, giving our hopes, giving our grief, rededicating our hearts. You know, all that goes on in worship. ‘Okay God, I trust you for the next step.’ We’re singing and we’re having an inner dialogue because the Holy Spirit is stirring our hearts, urging us forward.”

Throughout her own healing journey, Melody has always been concerned with others’ healing, as well. She has helped build orphanages and ministries; supplied aid to victims of hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes; fought for the unborn, the widow, and the orphan; spent time with presidents; and even tagged along with Mother Teresa. “I’m really more engaged in running the race and finishing well right now in my life,” says Green. “I have been thinking of heaven, more probably in the last year, than ever, maybe because I’m getting a little older. I have been thinking about—it’s almost hard to wrap my head around—that I’ll see the people that have gone again. But that is not my focus.

Finishing Well “I want to fulfill my destiny; I want to go out with a bang. Not in an, ‘everybody knows her again now’ kind of bang. But in an, ‘I have done what God has asked me to do’ bang. Running the race hard and finishing well. Not going out with a limp in the spirit before God. Not just slipping off into Heaven. My heart is one of an evangelist and of justice, to exhort people who do know the Lord to live that life. To go for it, to do the stuff the Bible says to do: love him, serve him; love each other and help each other, to have a fresh obedience to him…and to finish well.” Her thoughts resonate with a quote from her late husband Keith on their mutual website: The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant,’ is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying ...

Glorifying the only worthy one has to be a minister’s most important goal!

– Keith Green

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God Will Make A Way Don Moen with Jeremy Armstrong

Don Moen sat on an airplane praying, asking God for words that would mean something in a time of hopelessness for his wife's sister, Susan, and her husband, Craig; words that would reach through their deep despondence, and touch them in the place they were. The words came. On a yellow legal pad, he scribbled the lyrics and melody to a deeply personal song. A song written for his family in a time of desperate need that has since reached around the world and touched millions in every walk of life: "God Will Make a Way." By a Roadway in the Wilderness Don's sister-­‐in-­‐law and her husband Craig had four young boys; the oldest of them, Jeremy, was nine. They were en route to a dream family vacation, driving through the Texas Panhandle, bound for the Colorado ski slopes, "They had just laid all the boys down to go to sleep,” Don shares, "they took their seat belts off and made a bed out of the seat in the back of the van. They were on this little, middle of nowhere, two-­‐lane highway. As Craig went through the middle of an intersection, an 18-­‐wheeIer truck slammed into the left rear of the van and spun them around."

In a tragic moment of chaos, the back doors of their van flung open and the four boys were thrown from the spinning vehicle. Craig, a medical doctor, and Susan were saved from injury. But they soon realized the van was empty and they were left to search for their children by listening for their cries.

Don shares, "Craig located three of his boys, seriously injured and buried in mud.

But, he couldn't find Jeremy." When he finally found their nine-­‐year-­‐old boy, he was lying beside a nearby fence. Despite his attempts to revive Jeremy, Craig knew that his son was gone; his neck had been broken. Don recounts that moment, "The Lord said to him, 'Jeremy is with me. Attend to those who are living.'” So Craig had to release his son and care for the rest of his boys, all who were seriously injured, during the two-­‐hour wait for an ambulance.

He Will Be My Guide "When you get a call like that, just what do you say? You know? You just don't know what to say. I got a hold of Craig by telephone in the emergency room and I just felt totally helpless to even say anything to him. He was an elder in his church, a Bible teacher. He knew all the scriptures. He knew what to say. Being a medical doctor, he counseled a lot of people when their family members had died. So, I really couldn't tell Craig anything new.

"The day after talking to him, I got on an airplane and just stared out the window, read my Bible, and prayed. I was thinking, “Oh man, how can this happen Lord? Just give me something fresh to say to Susan and Craig that they haven't heard 100 times before.” The song came to me sitting on that American Airlines jet. It is based on the scripture, Isaiah 43:4. 'Since you are precious in my sight, since you are honored and

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I love you, I will give other men in your place and other peoples in exchange for your life.' And also verse 19, 'Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.'

"So, that's kind of the whole process I went through and I just wanted to bring them hope in a real hopeless situation. I just wrote it down, just wrote the melody and the words on the yellow legal pad."

God will make a way When there seems to be no way He works in ways we cannot see.

He'll make a way for me.

"And I mean it came that quickly. I knew that God wanted me to say to Susan and Craig—‘he works in ways we cannot see’; that line brought hope into a hopeless situation. I only sang it for Susan and Craig. I sang 'God Will Make a Way' in the living room with the piano, and put it on a little cassette tape for when Susan was having a tough day. So, that was it. I never did sing it again for about 2 years."

Universal Pain "One day I was in our staff meeting, leading worship at a devotional at Integrity Music, and the Lord just brought that song back. The whole week before, the song just kept coming back to me. I took out my yellow legal pad and I sang it to my staff that day and it was like everybody in our company needed to hear those words."

"I still thought that this was not a song to be recorded, it was just something I gave to Susan and Craig." But it was clear, this song was meant to reach more people, and Susan and Craig agreed. The song was first recorded for a project called Eternal God in 1993 and soon after, people from around the world began to write and call with stories of how the song had touched their lives.

One such story was shared with Worship Leader about Jamie Howard, a Music Minister at Grace Community Assembly of God in Flower Mound, Texas. In the summer of ‘99 he began bleeding internally and the doctors could never determine the cause. Speculations ranged from parasites to crushed glass in his food. After an emergency surgery, 11 blood transfusions and a 50-­‐pound weight loss he returned home to Dallas. There he underwent three more surgeries and several weeks in hospitals with various complications.

Through continual heartache and very little recovery he lay in bed next to his mother's piano. In his unguarded letter to Don, Jamie shares, "I wanted to play it, but didn't have the strength. Not being able to play it was like not being able to breathe for me. My father would have to undress me so I could sit on the stool in the shower.

I was unable to keep food down and the doctor's prognosis was not good. Here I was at the prime of my life. Early 30s, single with no prospects of a wife, worried that my church wouldn't be able to keep me on staff, and genuinely afraid that the doctor would be right.

But on a Thursday afternoon, five years ago, everything began to change. I felt the Lord spoke to me to get up and play the piano. I stood up, and began to feel the

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familiar anguish and light-­‐headed feeling. For a second I sat back down but regrouped and made my way back to the piano. The song that came to mind was, 'God Will Make a Way.' As I began to play it, the Lord began the healing process. The tears began to flow as I silently sang it."

He will be my guide Hold me closely to his side With love and strength for each new day He will make a way.

Jamie continues, "Six weeks later I met the girl who became my wife. We found out yesterday that we're expecting our first child. I am healed."

God Will The countless stories with similar circumstances that come to Don make him very aware of the pain and suffering that are in the world. Don relates, "In every congregation every Sunday there are people out there, you may not know it, but they are sitting out there—may be in a hopeless marriage, may be in a hopeless financial situation—just crying out to God 'If you don't come through for me today, it's over.' And that's every single Sunday. I think many times we don't want to talk about those things because they aren't pleasant to talk about and everybody's uncomfortable because we don't know what to say.

"It is an issue that is very important to address, and it's like we can't play church anymore and put on the happy face and let it be just a social place. We’re way beyond that. Many years ago we could play religious games, but people these days are more honest. And they don't mind you dealing with honest issues. “’God Will Make a Way' was a song that was a written in a desperate situation in my life," reveals Don. "But it's not a song of desperation; it's a song of declaration.

God will make a way. I mean, if you can even get those words out of your mouth, it has the ability to stir faith in your heart."

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Celebration And Lament A Conversation between Tim Timmons and Jeremy Armstrong about Worship and and Life in the Face of Incurable Cancer

Tim Timmons—husband, father, worship leader, songwriter, and artist—was diagnosed with incurable cancer a decade ago. As a result, times have been “trying, forming, freeing, joyful, intense, and simplifying.” Still, Tim’s love for Jesus fuels his passion to point people toward him.

Jeremy: Can you share a little of your story and how that fits with your role as a worship leader?

Tim: Let me begin by saying that I never wanted to be an occupational worship leader. I had been leading people since the 6th grade and knew that God had gifted me, but I had other plans for my life. I loved the idea of encouraging people to seek Truth, believing that Jesus would reveal himself to the truth-­‐seeker whether in or outside the Church.

After working for four years on high school ministry staff at Mariners Church, I was ready to move on to pursue music as a singer/songwriter. I was 2 weeks away from being jobless and insurance-­‐less when my wife sent me to the doctor to figure out why I was having multiple daily hot flashes (menopause was not an optional diagnosis). I will never forget the doctor’s appointment when I was told that I had an incurable cancer. Talk about a change of plans. You would hope that any church under similar circumstances would actually prove to be the Church and take care of the wounded, and my home church did just that. They gave me the next year to deal primarily with my health and work as I was capable. And in that year God began to change my direction and the focus of my heart. I wanted to help people of the Church fall in love with Jesus and change their communities and world because of him.

Jeremy: Most Western people believe it is God’s job to give them a safe life, how has your understanding of God shifted in your battle with cancer?

Tim: Two things come to mind. First, a few months prior to finding out about cancer, God was successfully getting my attention with one Scripture. Everywhere I’d turn this same verse would tap me on the shoulder and say, “Pssst, Timmons, pay attention.” It was Philippians 1:21: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” I began to seek out what that verse meant when I knew I was potentially leaving my job to go into the unknown. I started to own the first half of that verse in a new way.

I was beginning to understand what it meant to live with Christ as my aim, my peace and my purpose. When cancer hit, I was divinely prepared to understand the verse as a whole: the gain in dying took on new meaning and comfort for me. There’s nothing safe and fluffy about this verse or about following Jesus. It brings to mind the quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, when Lucy asks

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Mr. Beaver if Aslan is safe, “…Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.

But he’s good. He’s the king I tell you.”

Secondly, for 37 chapters, Job and his friends try to figure out the mind, intentions, and heart of God in relation to Job’s suffering. They struggled through all of the questions that we do: “Why? Did I do something to deserve this? If you love me, then…? I’ve been so faithful to you and this is my reward? Can I trust you? Are you there?” Finally, in chapter 38, God replies in a sobering tone: “Where were you when the stars made their first debut… when the earth took form by my command…? Surely you were there, weren’t you Job?” Since my diagnosis, I understand the bigness of God in a new way. Every time I ask these questions, I’m faced with God’s reply that he loves me and he is in control. That’s enough for me.

Jeremy: Worship is, in essence, a celebration, how do you honestly lead people in that celebration when you don’t feel like celebrating yourself?

Tim: Worship is indeed a celebration and worship is equally a lament. I believe that worship is responding to all that God is with all that we are. And if we are truly bringing all that we are before God, it is going to include our sadness, brokenness, and suffering. Otherwise it wouldn’t be honest. But if we believe that God is who he says he is, then he is trustworthy regardless of what we are going through and there are always reasons to praise him. Every weekend, the people in our churches run the entire spectrum of emotions. My role as a worship leader is to lead them to own their honest response to God whether they are experiencing joy or suffering in their lives.

There are times for all of us when we just don’t feel like celebrating and it is then that the phrase “sacrifice of praise” makes sense to me. I think there are times when we praise God as a discipline because it is good for our souls and because the feelings will follow. I would say that since cancer, my celebration is much weightier because I have found that celebration void of desperation falls flat.

Jeremy: As someone who is intimately acquainted with suffering, what types of things do you find helpful from people leading worship?

Tim: I am an advocate of leaders asking great questions to make people think. I want my people to own their response to God, not just take my word for it. If I simply say to my congregation, “God is good! Let’s sing…!” the congregation will not have owned their response to God but are just taking my word for it. But if I were to ask them, “…before we sing about God’s goodness, I want to ask you, why would you say that God is good in your life?” then their response to God is a true response of their own hearts.

In a similar vein, every time I share part of my story from up front, I always turn the focus back to the people, so they can respond out of their own experience. For example, I will tell my cancer story and how the promises of God have sustained me through it. Then I will say, “I have put a few of these promises from God up on the screen for you to read through. If you are going through a tough time right now, and even if you aren’t, which of these promises do you need to hold onto?” Then with the promise they now personally claim they can actually respond to God from their own well of gratitude.

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Jeremy: Church leaders, like anyone, feel unprepared to offer anything to someone in pain. They don’t know what to do or say. What has been the most meaningful response/condolence that a church leader has offered you?

Tim: First of all, I used to be one of those church leaders who weren’t quite sure what to say to someone who was suffering. When I was diagnosed with cancer I became the person on the receiving end of that relationship and the whole thing was a bit demystified for me. What I mean is that I realized I was the same guy I’d always been and I wanted to be treated as that. I didn’t want people to tiptoe around me and, on the other hand, I didn’t want people to make an incredibly big deal about my cancer.

Having said that, some advice that I can offer to anyone who finds him/herself in the position to comfort is to primarily listen. I think as leaders we sometimes think that we are obligated to offer some great wisdom or have the “answers” but maybe God’s heart is that we just walk alongside. That is what Jesus has done with me… walked alongside me and carried my burdens. I would also encourage leaders to allow the suffering person their process, whatever that might be. We can gently and continually guide them toward God, but we have to trust that he is able to hold their distrust of him, anger, resentment, fear, etc. and that he will bring them through it.

One last thing might be to ask the person what they need in their situation or how you could best support them. That sounds so simple but it’s surprising how seldom people ask those questions.

Jeremy: It says in Scripture that Jesus was a man acquainted with grief, how does grief change you and change your ministry of worship?

Tim: Grief distills. Grief filters out all of the unnecessary, not-­‐so-­‐important things about life and brings into sharp focus the things that really matter. In some ways, there is no better frame of mind for worship than that. I would say that another advantage of going through grief is credibility. Whether in a conversation on a plane, or leading your church, people listen in a different way. When we can be authentic about our own grief and are willing to share that process, I think we make it acceptable and safe for our congregations to do the same.

Jeremy: When you worship, what do you celebrate?

Tim: That I am loved by the God who put the boundaries to the ocean and knows my name.

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Worship Through The Storm

By Darlene Zschech

My husband Mark and I were expecting a much loved and longed for child, only to learn that the baby I was carrying had died in my womb. When the doctor who had been walking through this journey with us learned that the baby’s heart had stopped, he started to cry before he even told us. From the doctor’s room I let out a deep, long scream. I don’t even know where it came from, but I know many of you understand—when your body involuntarily bypasses all the acceptable means of expression, and shocks you at its intensity. It was the saddest of days. On the way home to prepare for the operation to come, I was completely numb and overcome with grief. Then the God of my life stepped in, and spoke deep into my spirit. “Sing,” he said. “No,” I answered. Again, with more urgency, “Sing.” And again, I lifted my stubbornness to match the grace coming at me. “No,” I insisted. A third time, “Sing, my daughter; sing to me.”

In the Psalms (over 40 times in this book alone) we are instructed to sing. Why would the maker of heaven and earth be interested in our use of song, when the tide of despair is lapping at our feet? Because he knows what our hearts need.

The God of Song The fact is, that our God, our completely creative God—who gave us music to communicate his heart and presence, who through the cross gave it all for us—also gave us his Spirit and his power to stand against the enemy and be strong when our world comes crashing down. And our singing God, the God who himself sings over us in Zephaniah, gives us a song. A song like no other, a song that fills the atmosphere with his Word and his promise, to bring hope and to lift every situation to the answers found in Christ.

This song is like the one Reuben Morgan wrote years ago, “Mourning Into Dancing.” One time a woman whose son had been killed in an accident wrote to me, and she said the only way she could have left her son to be buried on the day of the funeral was the fact that she had that song—a song beloved by her son, filled with the Word of God that she could sing and sing to enable her to breathe through every hour.

Like the song my dearest Marty Sampson wrote, “Carry Me.” The months that followed the loss of my child, I sang and sang that song, and it gave me strength to rise every day and tend to the other needs in life that just kept beckoning. And through the power of his Word, my grieving heart found its way back to the center of my heavenly Father’s love.

More Than Mere Music It’s not just any song you should sing, but songs that welcome the Holy Spirit in power and might, songs that declare that he is greater than any circumstance, songs

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that speak of faith, and songs that stir your mind, your heart, and your soul to the faithfulness of God. I finish with telling you that in my car that day, I did not sing with my mind. And I don’t think my heart was in it, but my spirit and my soul started to sing along. Two songs poured out, one I had written years before that I had not sung or even thought of for a long time went like this, “I will bless you Lord, how my soul cries out to you my God, I will bless you Lord.” Notice the choice in that song; it is our choice to bless the Lord. I will, I will. The other song I sang was “How Great Thou Art.” “Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee, how great thou art.” Not a song that ignored my pain, but it exalted Jesus and his love and life over my pain.

Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy…

(Is 54:1, NIV) Yes, I still lost my baby; that did not change. But something did change on that drive home: faith rose above my anger. The atmosphere was charged with hope, and the worshiper grew deeper in love with the only one who is worthy of our praise.

I leave you with this simple thought: “Never allow your disappointment to become louder than your praise.” As hard as that is, it will teach you the reality of the power of that name of Jesus, who was, and is, and is to come.

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GREIVING TOGETHER

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Aftershocks Worship in the Midst of a Tragedy

By Richie Fike

On January 12th, 2010, my church family was rocked by the news that one of our beloved leaders, David Hames, was declared missing in the rubble of the Hotel Montana in Haiti. The earthquake that instantly claimed so many lives in that region had extended its reach all the way to Colorado Springs. For three and a half weeks, we waited on and sought the Lord for our friend’s rescue. Finally, we were delivered the news that David had indeed gone on to eternity in Heaven. He is survived by a saint of a woman, Renee, and their two adopted boys.

Your Role in Suffering It’s been 6 weeks now, since the first news arrived our way. And the myriad of emotions our church experienced has been vast and violent. Faith, hope, angst, confusion, doubt, disillusionment, anger, resolve, and yes, peace—it’s been amazing to have a finger on the pulse of suffering.

And, I’ve been fully aware of the fact that my job as worship pastor has been, and will continue to be, crucial to our community of faith. The prayers I pray, the songs we sing, the Scripture I read, the overall tone of the services—it’s all been filtered through the current circumstances of our church and the way we are processing our feelings and faith. There’s a famous Gordon Fee quote that has been ringing in my heart: “Show me a church’s songs and I’ll show you their theology.” Now, that is a heavy burden to bear as a worship pastor.

Song Choices In week one of this tragedy, not knowing whether David was alive or dead beneath the rubble, many of our songs were prophetic in nature. We sang songs of rescue and deliverance. We sang these songs in remembrance of what God had done in our lives, and what we believed he would do in David’s life. It was wonderful to realize that the worship set I had picked (a week before the earthquake) was prophetically in line with what we needed to sing: three of the stand-­‐out songs were: “Be Still” (Fike & Dana), “Tear Down the Walls” (Hillsong United), and “Mighty to Save” (Hillsong).

If you are a worship leader who is leading through tragic circumstances, look for new meaning in the songs you already sing. Interpreted anew through the lens of the situation, these songs can become quite powerful and meaningful. Think of our particular situation: we were singing a song that claims, “Savior, he can move the mountains,” and our friend was beneath a mountain of rubble, ironically under a hotel with the Spanish word for mountain—Hotel Montana. The chorus, “Our God is mighty to save,” never meant more to our people.

Beyond the songs that we sang, I also felt it was important to expand the concentric circles a bit. We had lost a brother, a friend. But, hundreds of thousands

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of lives had been affected by that earthquake. It was crucial for us to allow for a broader perspective. We spent quite a bit of time in our services that next week praying for the Haitian people. Yes, we were all hurting for Renee and the boys, but we were leaning toward a myopic obsession, and it did us good to think beyond ourselves.

Pain in the Offering When the news arrived that David was indeed with the Lord in Heaven, I felt it was important for us to push ourselves to praise God. The week after the news of his death was maybe the hardest worship service I’ve ever led. You could feel the tension in the room. You could feel the doubt, the anger. I purposefully chose songs that would create an impasse for our body. “Blessed Be Your Name” was incendiary in a wonderful way for our community. “You give and take away, and my heart will choose to say, blessed be your name.” We’ve sung that song a hundred times at Vanguard. But, that day, it connected in a way that I had never seen. The angst we all felt, and continue to feel towards God, were met in that moment with an opportunity to see him for who he really is. I’ve always believed that the job of a worship leader is to lift the eyes of a people to the face of their God. I believe that no matter what is present in the heart of a man, in the presence of God the only response is worship.

Not Over Our church will continue to wrestle with the aftershocks of this tragedy. We’ll have to address some of the hard questions that surfaced in this trial, such as “Why does God compel us to pray to him if he’s going to do whatever he wants anyway?

What if I don’t want what God wants? Why do horrible things happen to good people? How could David’s death fit within a good plan for Renee’s life? How do we trust a God who says he is good, but is so obviously unsafe?”

At that moment nobody needed to hear that “all things work together for the good.” That approach is incendiary in a bad way. The easiest way to handle pain as a leader or as a fellow worshiper is to simply make an acceptable platitude. But leaders need to wrestle with the reality of a Holy God who may not be safe, but who, for sure, is good. And, we need to give others the space to be real with him. And it will be my responsibility to give voice to this tension and find (or write) songs that express God’s heart in response.

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Worshiping In The Ruins

By Carla Brewington

Carla Brewington Director of Harvest Emergent Relief, a ministry for women called to work in high-­risk areas of the world introduces us to worshipers who offer the sacrifice of praise, when “pain in the offering” isn’t a passing inconvenience, but a daily reality.

Recently, when asked the question: Does worship happen in the midst of loss, grief and tragedy? My response was immediate and unequivocal: Yes! Before me, I saw the hundreds of faces I have encountered in Burma, Thailand, and other places in Asia. Children, both girls and boys who have been ravaged by physical and sexual abuse, compelled to carry guns and grenades, who saw their parents murdered, now living secretly in the midst of their enemies, constantly threatened with forced labor and death, but still choose to worship. Faces of believers in countries where Christianity is a capital offense, worshiping in spite of a sentence of death. And I’ve been with those who have lost everything to flood, famine, or earthquake. When the pretense and pomp are gone, when everything you have known is washed away as it was in Burma with Cyclone Nargis two years ago, or reduced to rubble as it is now in Haiti and Chile, there is always the choice to cry out to God in the midst of the pain. At this moment, many people around the world are making that choice, whether they are victims of natural disasters or of human and governmental violence and cruelty.

Sound of Worship Immediately when I heard about the earthquake in Haiti I knew that I must go. It is the compelling of God that causes Christians to run into places of great grief and death. In the midst of wails of excruciating pain as limbs are sawed off with no pain medication, amid sobbing cries for help and screams of desperation all around them, we come face to face with the reality of God and of death; astonished by the force of both. Death has a smell and God’s life and worship has a sound.

Where is the “all sufficient one,” when there is not enough medicine, food, water, shelter, medical personnel and the substance of God’s mercy? When the strong are stealing from the weak and men push women, children, and the wounded out of the way in food and water lines? When children wander alone—disoriented, confused, hungry, and dying. Despair wins. Death is everywhere. But then, in the midst of the rubble, people stand up and begin to worship, calling out to Jesus and longing for him to rescue them. The women are leading the dance of worship and singing in the streets. The Haitian people are lifting their hands and worshiping God. More Than My Voice What is our response? Do we simply watch CNN and send twenty bucks to assuage our conscience and offer a tiny drop of relief? How do we join them and become agents of true worship?

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Our worshipful response is to engage, as we strive against injustice of all kinds.

Our response must be to suffer with those who suffer, to bring comfort, to bring aid, to worship in the streets with the people of Haiti, with all people who suffer wherever we find them. We must cry out in desperation to the only one who can answer the cries of the forsaken.

The Send Out For all who long to worship with full integrity between song and life, I would recommend Mark Labberton’s book, The Dangerous Act of Worship. In it he says, “The dangerous act of worshipping God in Jesus Christ necessarily draws us into the heart of God and sends us out to embody it, especially the poor, the forgotten and the oppressed. All of this is what matters most and is most at stake in worship,” (pg 14). True worshipers are those who worship both in Spirit and in truth. And the Spirit is always prodding us to do justice as an act of worship.

Right now in Haiti, the need is still great: medical supplies, tents, water purification systems, and the list goes on and on, but what continues are pockets of true worship. Not all of us will jump on a plane to Haiti (and in fact that could be more a hindrance than a help), but we can all join in worship. Whether it is in the jungles of Burma rescuing child soldiers and orphans, caring for the displaced people on the run from the Burma Army, bringing relief to refugees on borders, fighting for the rights of women in countries where there is no freedom, or today helping in the harshness of Haiti or Chile’s disaster, everyone can engage in acts of worship. The truth remains: “In as much as you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it unto me.” Without active participation in laboring for justice our worship is thin and our faith is worthless.

What can we do to be part of the acts of worship being demonstrated around the world? We can begin by looking outside of our own personal world, walking in obedience to the mercy of God and offering our “bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Rom 12:1 KJV). We can begin by engaging in acts of justice which is what worship is all about. This is truly the heart of God.

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WORSHIP LEADING AND YOUR RESPONSE TO GRIEF

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God Of Sorrow The Unique Relationship Between Suffering and Worship

By Warren Anderson

On the Sunday morning following the tragic shootings at Northern Illinois University (2008), I decided to abandon the typically peppy call to worship that I had planned. This wasn’t a hard decision, by any means. The daughter of one of my praise team members had been in the classroom when the gunman opened fire, and she, like hundreds of other students, had to crawl to safety in the midst of the chaos.

The collective spirit among the assembled that morning was somber, questioning, even fearful—grieving with this family and with the other local families that had lost sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. How do we lead young people in worship after they have experienced such tragedy?

Pain in the Offering Like the displaced Israelites suffering in Babylonian captivity, we were, that morning, understandably tempted to ask, “How can we sing the songs of the Lord” in the “strange land” of our grief and confusion (Ps 137:4)? Was there any place at all for worship when every single one of us was “weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care”? My theological training told me the answer was “yes,” but I didn’t have as quick an answer for how to translate that truth, how to make some sense of that which made no sense.

We began our worship with the songbook of all songbooks, for the Psalms not only give us permission to feel sad, but also to question, even to be angry. Certainly our omniscient Father knows how we feel anyway (Ps 139:1). The incarnate Jesus— fully God and fully man—experienced similar kinds of feelings (Jn 11:34-­‐36; Mt 27:46; Lk 22:42). And the Holy Spirit would not be referred to as “the Comforter” (Jn 14:16, KJV) if there were never anything for us to be comforted about.

Be that as it may, many Christians adopt a stoic response to suffering, as if sadness, doubt, or anger is somehow a sign of an immature faith or a lack of trust— i.e., since we have a sovereign God, he must have been okay with whatever event caused us this suffering, so the sooner we get on with the task of living our victorious Christian life the better.

Strange Expectation In my previous ministry, one of the staff members lost her twenty-­‐something daughter to Marfan Syndrome, a cruel disease that attacked the connective tissue surrounding her heart. A few months later, I asked her how she was coping, and I’ll never forget her response: “I have my good days and my bad days, of course,” she said. “But the hardest part of all this has not been losing my daughter; I know she’s with the Lord. The hardest part has been my Christian friends wondering why I haven’t gotten over this yet, why I haven’t gotten on with my life.”

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To be sure, Robert Webber famously wrote that worship is a verb, but for those in the throes of painful circumstances, it’s often a verb in the future perfect tense.

Like Job, by the time many suffering souls come to the end of their crisis, turmoil, or struggle, they will have, somewhere along the way, found the capacity for worship.

But it’s definitely not—or shouldn’t be—a knee-­‐jerk reaction; worship is not the obvious, immediate offspring of suffering. Hanging on the cross, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” No cheap, “Praise-­‐the-­‐Lord-­‐anyway” sentiment there.

Still, the fact that worship and suffering can be linked at all is rather remarkable.

Eugene Peterson, in his masterful introduction to the book of Job in The Message, writes, “Perhaps the greatest mystery in suffering is how it can bring a person into the presence of God in a state of worship, full of wonder, love, and praise. Suffering does not inevitably do that, but it does it far more often than we would expect.”

Why? In the Thick There seems to be something inherent in the process of experiencing pain that helps us “experience God” (to use the evangelical vernacular of recent years), whether or not we make a conscious decision initially to ask God to fill the vacuum in our lives that the suffering creates. In 1 Peter 4 it says when believers suffer, at some basic level they share in the sufferings of Jesus. The text, apparently, offers no choice: if you’re suffering, you’re going to end up “in the very thick of what Christ experienced” (Peterson’s rendering of verse 13).

Of course the disciples often serve as reminders that the transformation from theory to practice isn’t always smooth sailing. Mark 6:45-­‐52 tells the story of Jesus walking on the water, and the NIV uses the word “terrified” to describe the reaction of the disciples to being in the presence of Jesus that evening. Mike Yaconelli described the disciples’ response in his book Dangerous Wonder: “The disciples had been with Jesus for two years. They had seen miracles, healings, and people brought back from the dead, and still they were terrified when they saw him on the water. But in the midst of their terror they heard Jesus whisper, ‘Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid’… and then he climbed into the boat with them.

What did the disciples do then? Matthew tells us they worshiped him. Their worship was a direct result of their experience with Jesus in the dark. Now the disciples knew Jesus even better. They understood now, but only now, that when life gets dark, when we are alone, we aren’t alone. Jesus Christ is Lord even in the darkness” (emphasis his).

Suffering Sinners Like the disciples, we often come to know Jesus better in the midst of our dark experiences—and not necessarily because of our personal piety. For like the disciples, we all too often manifest residue of The Fall: pettiness, jealousy, ingratitude. Suffering, in and of itself, doesn’t qualify one for sainthood. And yet, also like the disciples, we soon find ourselves in a spirit of worship more often than the outward circumstances of our lives would seem to warrant. Like the disciples, we

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acknowledge the presence of the swirling winds and the struggle to keep rowing.

But, also like the disciples, when Jesus steps into the midst of our chaos—even when we’re too busy or fatigued or worried or self-­‐absorbed to extend the invitation—we become awestruck in the presence of the Savior of the world.

An admittedly simplistic summary: When believers suffer, they will, at some point in the process, share in Christ’s suffering. This can help them experience God in new and profound ways and motivate them to worship him. Thus, in spite of what would seem logical, worship frequently is the offspring of suffering, although the gestation period seems to vary from believer to believer. We sense from Paul’s writings that he moved fairly quickly into a spirit of worship in the midst of incarceration and physical abuse. Job and most of the rest of us take a little longer.

And some never get there. We don’t know what happened to Jonah after the account of his conversation with God at the end of chapter four, but his self-­‐centered ranting doesn’t seem to reflect an attitude of worship.

But then again, maybe he came around in time. A Bible professor friend of mine once pointed out that immediately preceding the most comforting passage in all of Scripture, Psalm 23, comes a psalm featuring as its opening sentiment the anguished lament with which I decided to begin that service a few days after the tragedy at NIU, in an attempt to help us begin that journey from suffering to worship—that cry of David, which became the cry of Christ on the cross. Sometimes we must permit ourselves (and be permitted by others) to ask, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” before we come to the place where we can once again say with confidence, “The Lord is my shepherd; I have no other needs.”

May the Lord bless and comfort us during our times of trial. And in the midst of them, may he increase our faith and cause us to worship him. Amen.

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The Power Of The Cross: “I Am Free” Jon Egan with Jeremy Armstrong

“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36 NAS

Mechanics should be able to turn a wrench, chefs should be able to dice tomatoes, and professional marathon runners should be pretty well versed in the skills of walking, let alone the bigger issues that come from stepping it up to a run for 26 miles. These things are what most would call the “givens.” The obvious parts of the job, and if an aspiring mechanic just can’t seem to twist a wrench in a circle, they may want to explore some other options. But what happens if you’ve been doing a job for a number of years, then suddenly lose the basics? The foundation starts to crack. Jon Egan was one of the leaders of Desperation Band (at the time he led alongside Glenn Packiam and Jared Anderson)—the youth band at New Life Church in Colorado Springs known for it’s high-­‐energy worship—when he had such an experience.

Cage Sitting in a hotel café 20 floors above the downtown Nashville strip, running a little late for the ASCAP awards, where his song “I Am Free” was about to receive an award for being one of the most played songs in Christian music in 2006, Jon Egan shares about the genesis and private import of his song. And though many people have been drawn to it, “‘I Am Free” is extremely personal to him. “It represents the end to the pain,” he says. “I’ve always known I’ve been called to lead worship. It was always such a passion of mine, but one winter, I was headed up a mountain to lead worship for a junior high retreat, and I was completely consumed by fear.” When Egan was in High school, anxiety started taking a prominent role in his life, which would lead to depression. It would show up in his days without warning and make him feel caged to a life of fear. And it reared its head on the way to the to the junior high winter retreat. “It was this fear that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off,” says Egan.

“I wouldn’t be able to sing, to lead effectively, that I would just be a joke. It was not good. I struggled through the whole retreat.”

In high school, the anxiety seemed to fade away on its own. But, every once in a while, even through college, it would show up and remind Egan that it could always show up and take control. Then in the months before Egan wrote “I Am Free” it came back, but with a tenacity that wouldn’t go away. “I got convinced that something was up. Something was wrong ’cause I couldn’t kick it,” says Egan. “And I was on staff at New Life to lead worship. That was my job. So pretty much, every day became a struggle. I’d wake up in the morning and not want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face the next time I’d have to go onto a stage and lead worship. I had this very convincing fear that when I would open my mouth to sing, nothing would come out—that I would be ineffective completely.

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“And I tried praying through it. I’d say, ‘Lord, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to deliver me. You’ve got to set me free.’ But I wasn’t gaining any ground. In fact, it just started to get worse.”

In the Thick of Things Jon Egan started to feel the familiar signs of depression. Desperation Band had just signed with Integrity and were playing more, the church had a vibrant youth group that was being drawn into a deep faith through the worship, and yet Egan was ready to quit. “It was a nightmare. I was confused. I was frustrated. I hated it. So, finally it came to a head. I was leading the youth on a Wednesday night, and that morning, when I was sitting with our youth pastor, Brent Parsley, and he asked me: ‘Do you feel like you’re called to lead worship?’ When I told him ‘yes,’ he just said, ‘Then what’s the problem? Just do it.’

“When you hear truth like that, it just cuts you, you know? So I started processing it. And I picked up this little booklet by Joyce Meyer called Do It Afraid, which was the same thing that my friend was saying. If you’re called to do something, you do it.

Even if you have fear about it, it doesn’t matter. If you feel sick about it; it doesn’t matter. You don’t let your fears dictate what you’re going to do. You let God dictate what you’re going to do. So that night, I led worship. And it felt a little better. It was still hard. But it felt a little better.”

That attitude started to give Egan a different outlook. Though the battle wasn’t over in one night, he felt headed in the right direction. And with a few days respite from being onstage, Egan took the opportunity to explore God’s call. “God started speaking loudly about freedom,” he says. “And basically I had been asking God to set me free, for him to heal me, to do all these things. And the Lord came back and asked, ‘What I did on the cross, was that not enough for you? You are free. Just open your eyes. Look at the cross. Look to truth. Look to who I say you are, and stop respecting your fears.’

I’d wake up in the morning and not want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face the next time I’d have to go onto a stage and lead worship.

“I just started to realize that fear exists solely in our obedience to it. If you stop believing in it, it doesn’t have a place to live. It doesn’t have a place to breathe. It was like the Lord asked me: ‘What are you going to bow to? Who are you going to respect? Who are you going to live for?’”

I Am Free Egan realized that he had been asking for a blessing that God had already given him. He asked God for freedom from lies that paralyzed him. God had a vision of Jon Egan that Jon himself didn’t have; it was a vision of a pure and free life that was possible because of the Cross. And all Egan had to do, was live in that truth. Of course, that is not always an easy task. But Egan continues, “As I made that decision and continued to walk that path, it was amazing to watch this fear and anxiety start to decrease. And it didn’t take months. It took days of practicing that truth.

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“I was in my office late one night and pretty much everybody was gone. I had my guitar and decided that I wasn’t going to sing about how I want to be free, I am free, you know? I am free to run, dance; I’m free to live for God in the way that He’s called me to live. I wanted a proclamation of that truth. So it was the Lord and me in an office. I wasn’t asking for freedom, I was opening my eyes to it. I am and I always have been free.”

That night the chorus was written as a prayer and proclamation to God. From there, Egan played the chorus with his youth group and found that people could track with it musically and emotionally. So he set out to write the verses and make it complete. Since then it has literally made its way around the world. It resonates with Christians because it is a proclamation of the power of the Cross, and it lays claim to God’s redeeming grace. As much as that has been true around the world, it seemed to be a grace that Egan’s home community has needed as much as anyone.

No More Chains New Life Church has been subject to a very public scandal. And while the world could look on from the outside and make their judgments, Egan and Desperation Band were in the thick of ministry—engaging with the pains, fears, and inestimable sense of loss and grief of their community, as well as their own. That is when the song, “I Am Free,” in a way, came home. “There were a few weeks in the church where we were just focusing on taking care of the body,” shares Egan. “Our worship services were a bit more subdued. We had a major loss. But in that grieving process, there came a point where it was the healthy time to make the turn and start to look to the future. And that’s when we sang ‘I Am Free’ and it was a significant moment for our church.”

Grabbing onto the truth of the freedom that has been given to us through the Cross is significant in every arena. We could spend a lifetime in fear, anxiety, grief, bitterness, despair, anger, resentment, a litany of possible constraints, keeping us from our calling and the promise of our relationship with Christ. “I Am Free” helps us proclaim that and gives us a push to begin living in that truth.

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God Of The Hills And Valleys

By Randy Phillips

The valley is when you learn that your talent and charm can’t heal, can’t deliver and can’t bring anyone into the throne room. The valley is when you get reintroduced to your desperate need for him.

“Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the LORD." (1 Kings 20:28)

Every worship leader, pastor and musician knows what it means to be “in the flow.” It’s when lyrics, music, and ideas seemingly are pouring out of you like honey from a jar. Eternity gushes through your porous soul onto paper, keyboard and out through the microphone. And then, as suddenly as it appears, the flow dries up!

What’s going on? Welcome to God’s graduate program called: Hills and Valleys. If you’ve ever experienced the peaks of God’s anointing, then you will also visit the in-­‐ between times, the valleys. Know this, he is the God of both; and both are used for very specific purposes.

Entering the Low Places Have you ever wondered if it is God or the Devil bringing you into low places?

The answer is “yes.”

The truth is valleys teach us something about God’s nature that a mountain never could. Valleys teach us something about our own nature that a mountain never could. We love the heights and loathe the low lands. We love compliments not criticism. We think serve me, not serve others. Indeed our self-­‐preserving nature demands, “Can’t I just live on the mountain?” Heaven answers back, “No!” Why not?

• Character is constructed in the valley.

• Patience is perfected in the valley.

• Dependence upon God is developed in the valley.

Show me a shallow, spotlight-­‐seeking, ego driven, “church as a stepping-­‐stone” performer and I’ll show you someone who God is moving to the valley. Show me a mature, balanced, Christ-­‐centered, people driven, “church as the center of my heart” attitude and I’ll show you someone moving away from the valley.

Character in Adversity True character is usually forged on the anvil of adversity. Euphoric altitudes aren’t conducive to the bending of a will. The Apostle Paul said, “I’m going to travail till Christ be formed in you.” Formed. Shaped in fire. Yielded to the hammer. I’ve heard preachers say more than once: “God is more interested in your character than your comfort.” In those moments when the spotlight goes out, the phone quits ringing, when the congregation is unmoved, when the creative flow has been dry, when your praise is stale, when you feel you’re going through the motions – you are

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in a valley. In this place of stillness and pain, reach out to God. He’s there. Close by.

Whisper his name. The mountain-­‐top experiences involve shouting, jubilance, kicking doors in, dancing and celebration – God is praised for his power! But in the valley, he will be worshiped for his gentleness. The fabric of intimacy is woven in the deepest valley. In the middle of your darkness and confusion he whispers, “Be still and know that I am God.” Perfecting Patience We worship leaders, pastors and directors know that timing is everything. We are the people who drive the program, shape the ministry, push the envelope and blaze the trail. “Nothing just happens, you make it happen!” I’ve heard my senior pastor say this more than once. Oh my, but the valley has a clock that’s different from your time zone. “Please re-­‐set your clock, you are now on CVST.” Central Valley Standard Time. God is requesting that we relinquish time to him. He is perfecting patience in our lives.

I can remember as a child watching my mom bake cakes; she’d let me lick the spoons. Putting that cake in the oven challenged my understanding of cooking.

“Can’t we take it out now?” I’d ask. “It’s not done,” my mother would reply. The Bible is resplendent with phrases like, “and when the fullness of time had come,” “and it came to pass.” You may wonder when your time in the valley will be complete. “How much longer will I remain hidden in this place?” “If I’m the favored of God, what is taking so long for my ministry to flourish?” You ask, “When am I complete?” The answer is: when the fullness of time comes; when his patience is perfected in your life. The valley teaches you to wait on God. In 1 Peter 5:6-­‐7, it says, “Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and he will exalt you in due time.” Let God complete you in the valley.

Dependence on God “Greatest worship leader in America.” “Freshest writer in decades.” “Second coming of David the Psalmist.” “Most likely to lead worship in Heaven.” Don’t you have a few of these headline clippings hanging on your wall somewhere or perhaps floating in your mind? Somewhere in the middle of all the accolades, we begin to believe our own press. We begin to formulize success. We begin to depend upon the strength of our flesh as if we can go into worship mode at anytime, just like flipping a switch. We don’t have to stay on our face to seek his glory or approval. Hungering for his presence becomes secondary to the applause. Like Esau, we’ve traded the anointing for a bowl of lentils. The valley is when the formulas don’t work. The valley is when you learn that your talent and charm can’t heal, can’t deliver and can’t bring anyone into the throne room. The valley is when you get reintroduced to your desperate need for him.

“Oh God I need you. I don’t want to sing a note without you. I have no right to give my congregation anything till I’m filled with your glory. Oh God, don’t take your presence from me.”

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The amazing thing about the hills and valleys is this; God is God of both. However, when you look back over your life it may be the lessons learned in the valleys that you most appreciate. I know I do.

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Grieving With Grace Planning a Service of Worship in the Midst of Tragedy

By Jonathan Allen

I remember exactly where I was when I heard about the 9-­‐11 attacks, the space shuttle disasters, and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. There are events in our lives that leave permanent marks on our souls, whether a national tragedy, the loss of a musical icon, or something that hits much closer to home. More vividly than any of these, I remember exactly where I was when I heard about Josiah Berger’s car accident. All time stopped.

Our pastor’s eldest son Josiah was in a catastrophic accident on August 11, 2009.

Thus began one of the most difficult seasons of my life and the life of our church. As soon as I heard, I went to the hospital and joined the people of Grace Chapel who were gathering to pray and offer comfort. The doctors’ reports were not good, but we continued asking God for a miracle. We crammed into the small hospital chapel, crying out to God for healing. As a church body, we cried and worshiped.

Realities As hours became days, the hospital graciously opened a larger room for us. We sang every hymn or worship song that came to mind and continued to beg God for a miracle. In the midst of all this, I knew that Sunday services were still fast approaching. Needing to prepare for the possibility that Josiah would be going to Heaven, I began to contact worship team members for Sunday. The texts read something like: “I don’t know how Sunday will look, but I know that we need to be ready. Can you play?” They responded immediately. It’s so important to have a healthy team around when tragedy strikes, willing to do “whatever it takes.” And this leads me to lesson number one: Prepare, equip, and release your team members before grief comes knocking at your church’s door.

Empower Your Team I am eternally grateful for the extraordinary people of the Grace Chapel worship team. In the months leading up to the accident, I had been learning how to more fully embrace each team member’s strengths, releasing them to serve in new ways.

In those dark hours they selflessly went to work, leading the people in worship wherever and whenever they were needed.

When we got the news that Josiah had gone to Heaven the time had come to plan the upcoming services. I realized that the songs had to allow the people to grieve honestly while clinging to the faithfulness of God. Most worship songs fall into one of two categories: those that express how we feel about God, and those that express the truth of God. Both are important in the worship life of a church. However, I sensed it was critical to rely heavily on songs that declared the truth about God during our time of corporate grief. Mourning can definitely affect how one feels about God and, frankly, just about everything else, but

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God’s goodness does not waver. Honestly allowing God’s kindness and steadfastness to intersect our grief in worship is a great, healing gift. Reminding ourselves that “Jesus has overcome and the grave is overwhelmed”; singing out, “God in my laughing / There in my weeping / God in my hurting / God in my healing,” these words brought strength. To declare, “No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from his hand. Till he returns or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I’ll stand,” anchors us in his sovereignty. We can sing those lyrics, even through sobs, because they are faithful and true, just like the Jesus we worship.

During a difficult season, it’s critical to model authenticity. During profound loss, people are looking for leadership. There is a temptation to try to be something you’re not, claiming to have answers you don’t. We don’t have to have all the answers, we just have to point to the one who does.

No matter how weak we feel, God is able. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. In Christ, you have what it takes because God has placed you in this place of leadership, for this congregation, for such a time as this. If you are faced with congregational grief remember to trust your team, worship honestly, and above all, lean hard into the God who gives grace in and to the grieving.

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Perspective Worship Leader Have Heart

By Steve Berger

Truth. Hope. Comfort. Peace. These four different words, in that order, mean more to me now than any time in my life. In fact, they are my life. On August 11th my soon to be 19 year old son Josiah was in a critical one-­‐car accident on a very foggy, curvy country road. On August 14th, his 19th birthday, we released him to Heaven.

Truth A word that gets thrown around too loosely in my estimation. When you need truth like you need air, and I’m not being dramatic, you understand how lost and hopeless we are without truth. It is the truth we know that sets us free (Jn 8:32).

Truth sets us free from the grip of everything, from despair to utter despondency.

Worship leader, you have the awesome privilege and responsibility of leading your people in the understanding and declaration of truth. In the midst of their suffering, whether they know it or not, what they need is truth, gospel truth. It is what will set them free and give them hope. Read truth to God’s people; remind them of it; sing it over them; sing it with them. Guard against doing it in a shallow, flippant, auto-­‐ worship way. Make sure your heart has first marinated in the truth and then share what you have received and believed.

Hope It is the result of knowing and believing the truth. Hope in the faithfulness of God. Hope in the promises of God. Hope in the presence of God. Hope in the power of God. Hope in God. “Hope in God” was such a necessary ingredient in the healing of the hurting that David repeated it in Psalm 42 two different times (verses 5,11). Hope is a precious commodity when you’re suffering. In fact, there are times when you wonder if you’ll ever hope again. You will, so long as you know and believe truth.

Worship leader, give people hope by pointing them toward the truth of God. They need to know their life isn’t over, even when circumstances seem to say so. Give your suffering people Jeremiah 29:11. Give it to them with warm eyes and a compassionate heart. By the way, and this is my opinion, stay away from Romans 8:28, let them discover that from the gentle voice of God himself.

Comfort Remind God’s people that the Father is the God of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3). Let them know the Comforter is present and available for them in the midst of their grief. Make room for the Comforter to touch the grieving during your worship time, acknowledge them, pray for them, love them, encourage them. Allow, even encourage, the suffering to mourn, for it is in their mourning that they find comfort (Mt 5:4). And then you comfort them as well (1 Thess 4:18). Comfort, reprieve, relief

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from your suffering circumstances, even for a moment, is a much welcome experience to the hurting. Truth and hope lead the way for comfort to happen.

Peace The shalom of God. The complete well being of your spirit. Peace is to know that even in the midst of the worst storm of life, you’ll be ok, God will come through. Oh how the suffering long for it. Without question it is the fruit of keeping your mind fixed on God and trusting him (Isa 26:3). The peace of God goes beyond human understanding; it is spiritual and supernatural (Phil 4:7). Lead people to the Prince of Peace by providing truth, hope, and comfort.

Worship leader, every single week in the congregation there are hurting, heartbroken, suffering people. Many of them try to put their best smile on, while they are dying inside. I strongly encourage you to set the table, for these precious hurting saints, so they can feast on God’s goodness. Provide an atmosphere where the Holy Spirit can reveal truth, ignite hope, bring comfort, and establish peace. You have an awesome opportunity, do it with tenderness and excellence.

On a personal note, thank you for what you do, it makes a greater difference in people’s lives than you’ll ever know this side of heaven. Truth, hope, comfort, and peace to you as you serve.

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“As The Deer”

By Dr. Mark D. Roberts

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God . . .

My tears have been my food day and night. . . .

Psalm 42:1, 3

Almost every Christian congregation uses the Psalms in worship. Psalms can be sung or chanted as they appear in the Bible, though they are usually paraphrased to supply lyrics for hymns or contemporary songs. Psalms are also preached, prayed, printed, and projected. Often, they are read, either for the congregation, by the congregation, or responsively.

But, in my experience, most Christians are selective in our use of the Psalms. Not only do we tend to draw mostly from certain psalms (for example, Psalms 23, 84, 95, 98, 100), but also we generally use only selections from individual psalms. This is not true, of course, in traditions that read or chant entire chapters. But most of us take from the Psalms that which seems most palatable, leaving behind the parts that don’t easily fit our assumptions about worship. In particular, we edit out the verses that are angry, desperate, or sorrowful.

The Example of “As the Deer” Consider, for example, the classic worship song by Martin Nystrom, “As the Deer.”

In the last two decades, few songs have been sung as often as this one, which is still on the CCLI top 100 more than twenty-­‐five years after it was written. “As the Deer” begins with an Old English paraphrase of Psalm 42:1 “As the deer panteth for the water, So my soul longeth after thee.” The rest of the song develops the theme of our longing and love for the Lord.

The popularity of “As the Deer” is both understandable and commendable. It expresses simply our heart’s desire for God. But if our only use of Psalm 42 is of the memorable line about the deer’s longing for water, then we miss something essential, both in the psalm and in our worship.

Full Engagement with God in Psalm 42 Why was the writer of Psalm 42 (one of “the Sons of Korah”) longing for God with such intensity? Because he had been grieving: “My tears have been my food day and night” (42:3). In an effort to cheer himself up, the psalmist remembered his former participation in the procession to the Temple, when he led it “with shouts of joy and thanksgiving” (42:4). But this memory only accentuated his sadness, leaving his soul “downcast” and “disturbed” (42:5).

That is exactly the condition of many who come to worship in our churches.

Though they might put on a momentary happy face, especially if their church culture frowns on sadness, their hearts are aching. They long to meet God in their grief, yet

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often find that nothing in the worship service reflects their situation. Worship seems to be for cheerful people, not for those who are in pain—unless the congregation was to read or even sing more of Psalm 42 than just the beginning. (Dozens of psalms, in fact, express grief in terms we almost never hear in our worship gatherings because we don’t read or sing those chapters.)

Psalm 42 acknowledges the reality of grief. It invites us into a genuine encounter with God that takes seriously our sorrow. In verse 5, the psalmist urges himself to hope in and praise God. To encourage his faith even in the midst of sorrow, the writer chooses once again to remember. This time, however, the focus of his memory is God (42:6) rather than the psalmist’s experience. “By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me” (42:7).

Outside the Box But then Psalm 42 takes a surprising turn back to lamentation: “I say to God my Rock, ‘Why have you forgotten me?” (42:9). “My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me” (42:10). What we see in this psalm is not a basic “I was sad but God helped me so I praise him” model. Rather, Psalm 42 moves from yearning to sadness to remembering and celebrating God’s salvation and love, and back to sorrow and crying out to God. The psalm reflects the reality and complexity of our lives and our faith.

Notice that the God to whom the psalmist cries is not some distant, unknown, impersonal deity. He is not just “the Rock,” but “my Rock,” who protects the writer.

God is “my Savior and my God” (42:11). Thus we see in Psalm 42 a gripping picture of genuine engagement with God in the midst of suffering. We see faith and desperation, joy and sorrow, praise and agony. The intermingling of these expressions stir up the psalmist’s thirst for God. Psalm 42 isn’t neat, but messy. Painful emotions are not ignored. Nor are they cloistered in some neat little theological box. Rather, grief and lamentation mix with hope and praise, enriching the dialogue of worship and encouraging us to expand our expectations for what is appropriate and, indeed, essential, if our worship is to be a whole-­‐person, whole-­‐community, whole-­‐life engagement with the living God.

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SONGWRITING TUNED TO THE GRIEVING HEART

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The Example Of Charles Wesley Capturing Biblical Honesty in Songwriting

By Dr. Lester Ruth

One of the attractive things about the Bible is how honest its characters are with God. The corresponding wonder is how gracious God is in dealing with their frankness. In Bible stories, people complain, lament, question, repent, cry out in pain, pester, and otherwise deluge God with candor. And time and again, God reveals the majesty and humbleness of love in his response. If you have hit any speed bumps in life at all or deterred into any ditches, you know how wonderful it is to find folks in the Bible who have hashed out with God all our same emotions in difficult times. And you know the relief in seeing how well God cares for them in those moments.

How can songwriters capture some of this same dynamic of honest expression yet do so in a way that is not simply self-­‐indulgent? One possible answer is to root in biblical stories our songs to God. Eighteenth century songwriter Charles Wesley—an Anglican priest, co-­‐founder of Methodism with John, his brother, and one of the most prolific worship songwriters of all time—often used two poetic techniques in his songs that allowed worshipers to express a wide range of emotions before God and to do so in ways connected to biblical stories. Seeing his techniques is helpful for sparking lyrical imagination today.

Intensely Corporate One poetic device that he used was to sing a story from the inside out. These songs placed the worshiper in the shoes of the biblical character. Singing a biblical story from the inside allows the worship song to be intense but, because it comes from the book common to the whole Church, the Bible, it avoids being too private.

Consider the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30ff.). Following a long history of interpretation, Wesley placed the worshiper into the shoes (sandals?) of the traveler who is robbed, beaten up, and left by the side of the road in desperate need of help. In Wesley’s piece, this experience becomes a way of speaking about being waylaid by the ravages of sin, leaving the worshiper acknowledging her or his utter helplessness. Even short excerpts show the passion of a sin-­‐sick worshiper’s cry: “The thieves have rob’d, and stript, and bound… / My putrid wounds stand open wide, My head is faint, and sick of pride, / And all corrupt my heart.”1 After Wesley explored how legalistic religious righteousness (the priest and the Levite in the story) don’t provide any comfort, the desperate worshiper notes the approach of another who can and will help (the Samaritan who represents [drum roll, please] Jesus Christ): “But Life I see in death appear! / The good Samaritan is near…/ Bind up my wounds by opening thine, / Apply the balm of blood Divine.”

1The full text can be found in S. T. K imbrough, ed., Charles Wesley: Poet a nd Theologian ( Nashville:

Kingswood Books, 1992), 114-­‐8.

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The Great Source Some of Wesley’s best loved pieces used this poetic device of singing a biblical story from the inside out to give worshipers the words for prayer which were deeply personal and intense and yet also common to Christians. By placing worshipers in the shoes of biblical characters, he could provide the Bible as the source of language for songs which prayed the agony and the ecstasy of what it means to be saved and encounter God. A great example is the song below—a relentless prayer that depicts the worshiper wrestling with God in order to gain an understanding of him. He frames this struggle as that of Jacob wrestling for a blessing from God in Genesis 32. Eventually persistence in prayer pays off as Jesus is revealed as the one through whom the blessing of God comes:

Come, O thou Traveler unknown, Whom still I hold, but cannot see!

My company before is gone, And I am left alone with thee; With thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day.

In vain thou strugglest to get free, I never will unloose my hold; Art thou the Man that died for me?

The secret of thy love unfold: Wrestling, I will not let thee go Till I thy name, thy nature know.

‘Tis Love! ‘Tis Love! Thou diedst for me; I hear thy whisper in my heart.

The morning breaks, the shadows flee, Pure Universal Love thou art: To my, to all, thy mercies move— Thy nature, and thy name, is Love.2 Need Inspiration?

Where can modern songwriters go to find the words for prayers that lament or complain or cry out to God in pain? Consider a biblical story where that’s the posture of the worshiper before God. What would David have prayed as he fled from Saul in the desert? Jeremiah as he endured the siege of Jerusalem? The woman caught in adultery under threat of being stoned but saved by the intervention of Jesus? Place the singer in their shoes.

2This hymn can be found in many hymnals under the title of “Come O Thou Traveler Unknown.” It can also be found by looking for “Wrestling Jacob” in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742) at http://www.divinity.duke.edu/wesleyan/texts/cw_published_verse.html, which is an excellent s ite to find W esley’s published songs.

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Another poetic device Charles Wesley used to provide vivid language for worship songs was to fudge with verb tenses in recounting key events in the life of Christ.

Although, strictly speaking, these events should be portrayed with past tense verbs, Wesley often grabs the potential of poetry and uses present tense verbs so that the worshiper is right there before Jesus, whether at his manger, his cross, or his tomb.

This playfulness with verbs often came with an invitation in the song for the worshiper to see or sense what was happening with Jesus. The result was a startling immediacy:

See the slaughter’d Sacrifice, See the altar stain’d with blood!

Crucified before our eyes Faith discerns the dying God, Dying that our souls might live, Gasping at his death, Forgive!3 Poetic Narrative Such encounters could lead to intensity in the words stirred in the worshiper who had been transported into the biblical story by the song’s fudging with verb tenses. And so, instead of writing some generic statement about feeling broken before God, Wesley allowed the startling gravity of sin to sink into the singer by placing him or her at the foot of the cross. There one finds the proper cry as the worshiper encounters the “dying God” directly and sees the crucifixion in “real time” as it were:

Beneath my load He faints and dies.

I filled his soul with pangs unknown; I caused those mortal groans and cries; I killed the Father’s only Son!4

What would we say to God if we stood at the foot of the cross or the manger?

What about if we watched Herod’s killing of the babies in Bethlehem, gaped into the empty tomb, or observed Jesus healing the blind man?

In the Bible, God does not seem repulsed or angered by honest prayer, whether complaint, ecstasy, lament, or sorrow. Charles Wesley’s poetic creativity in songwriting shows us ways to dive into this book as a source for singers who still need to pray as honestly today.

3Look for Hymn 1 8 in Hymns on the Lord’s S upper (1745) a t

http://www.divinity.duke.edu/wesleyan/texts/cw_published_verse.html, 4This t ext can be found as v erse 11 in “A Passion-­‐Hymn” in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742) at http://www.divinity.duke.edu/wesleyan/texts/cw_published_verse.html.

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WORSHIPING AS A NATION

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Seeking Hope In Time Of National Trauma Four Ways of Worship for the Christian Citizen

By Martin E. Marty

“God Bless America” The sound of the song has been inescapable, the sight of its title bannered in red, white and blue has been unavoidable since September 11, 2001 and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere. Citizens for many reasons beginning with the need to ritualize their grieving, moving through their common search for meaning, and climaxing for many in their celebration of hope, have been praying, gathering, worshiping.

All this is going on in a society that usually gets typed as “secular” and “pluralistic.” Secular societies—as some Western European nations are—include so many citizens who have become indifferent to God and the godly. They do not ask God to bless them, do not have an instinct to pray, to gather or worship. Any sense of sacredness has been deemed a thing of the past.

National Religious Scene The world “secular” comes from the Latin saeculum, which refers to “this age.” In a secular order people make all decisions about personal and public life apart from any consciousness of their being a transcendent order. The world “rounds itself off” without reference to such, and certainly without reference to God. In many respects America will remain secular. Our marker transactions, many aspects of political life, most of the world of entertainment, are of this secular character. But we have seen anew how many dimensions of life do evoke the sense of the sacred in a majority of citizens.

Yes, and “pluralist” we certainly are. Pluralism, in colloquial terms, means: 1) any number can play; 2) great numbers do; 3) there are rules of the game; 4) and an ethos, a set of customs develop. Religious pluralism means that hundreds of denominations stake out their claims here. The United States’ Constitution in broad outline sets forth some “rules of the game.” The American ethos calls both for devotion to one’s own faith, tolerance of others, and, on occasion, activity that crosses the boundaries of faith communities. “God Bless America” does not mean “God Bless American Presbyterians” or, for that matter, “Episcopalians” or “Pentecostals.” We are presumed to have some things in common. So, in trauma and crisis, we search.

That common search leads to confusions and difficulties both for the anti-­‐God or casually God-­‐less minority—are its members less than full citizens?—and for people who take very seriously the particular ways of apprehending God’s action and of worshiping God. They may at times seem to be stumbling and at others unpatriotically standoffish. What to do?

The situations are too complex for any single response. But I do want to suggest one four-­‐fold scheme for conceiving worship in this time when public,

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congregational, and personal approaches overlap and are all exposed to view. We need names for these four. I will call the zones of worship 1) civil religion; 2) interfaith; 3) Christian; 4) confessional.

Toward National Unity Civil religion is most visible in a time when a scattered set of citizens faces a common threat or opportunity. American founders invoked Divine Providence, without special reference to, say, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or the Father of Jesus Christ. Abraham Lincoln was the most profound theologian of this civil religion. For him it witnessed to “transcendent justice” and an Almighty who had “his own purposes.” Edmund Wilson said that Lincoln treated the Union itself as “religious mysticism.”

Such civil religion is most celebrated in times of war. Its icons are all red, white and blue. Its rituals tend to find military symbolism congenial. God is invoked, but in a very general way.

The Jewish theologian and sociologist Will Herberg, who often commented on America’s “civic faith,” said two things about it. First, he thought that every complex society did generate such a faith, and must do so. “We hold these truths…” And, he noted, from the viewpoint of prophetic (as in biblical prophet-­‐speak) language and viewpoint, all civil religion was idolatrous. That is, in our case, it is easy to arrogate to the United States the special status of ancient Israel as God’s people, and to come to worship this captive God and these people and their symbols.

Christians are often called these days to be measured by such a civil religion. It would be bad manners, even offensive, to ask for theological precision when people gather at “Ground Zero” in New York or the thousands of town squares and court house lawns to grieve, to find resolve, to seek hope.

Participating and even leading such worship becomes a kind of civic duty. But from the prophetic and Christian angle, such leadership involves some uneasiness, some reserve, some need for caution.

Toward Economical Dialogue Second, interfaith worship. Some believers are so open to “the other” in religion that they put the highest premium on occasions where Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, and more, link arms and languages for a common prayer. In some ways this is what we might call a form of “public religion,” where communities and their leaders come out of their particularities for common witness.

Interfaith worship raises the stakes on both sides over civil religion. On the positive side, with the many faith-­‐representatives giving voice to prayer, there is less and there is more readiness to reach for the sacred realm that transcends it. On the negative side, worshipers can give the impression that the religions, whose members have citizen parity and can be equally helpful in national causes, are themselves on a par, “different boats heading for the same shore.”

What then results is confusion, muddling, the potential for wishy-­‐washiness. One must be careful about what is being signaled. The morning after a national disaster is not the moment to stand off, to try to make extra points that are beside the point

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to the grievers and hopers. But I think there are ways for participants to make common cause with fellow citizens and be clear about their faith.

The most vivid and potentially abrasive point comes when Christians are confronted with the choice: either omit reference to Jesus Christ, through whom they believe they have access to the father, or needlessly offend common worshippers for whom Christ is not that means of access and, in their view, may even block it, as in “stumbling-­‐block.”

No easy solutions are here. I resent the notion that Christian prayer is general prayer to which the name of Jesus Christ is tacked on. And I resent being taken for granted, as when a praying parson at a presidential inauguration invokes that part of the audience (not congregation) which follows Jesus Christ as being the specially chosen, the in-­‐crowd. What to do?

Toward Biblical Distinction Third, Christian worship. Here most of us expect prayer to be ecumenical in character. Even the most sectarian and self-­‐isolated denominations use hymn books from which hymns and prayers and liturgies came from outside their own “sectarian” traditions. While the differences between denominations are of great importance, they do not have to be settled on the day of common Christian worship.

The values of Christian worship include the prophetic possibility that we keep God and not nation as our main focus and that we do not let the concern for earthly survival, victory in war, or national politics be matters of ultimate concern. The God beyond the nation, the “God beyond the gods” is the only fitting magnet for worship and this is most clear in common Christian witness. Participants can return home and settle theological disputes in different venues, without cluttering Christian worship by distracting and, to mourners and hope-­‐seeking people, momentarily beside-­‐the-­‐point accents.

Finally, there is what we might call “confessional” worship. This does not refer to confession of sins, though there will be plenty of that. It refers to “confessions of faith,” creed-­‐based, belief-­‐centered communities that together make up the one, holy, catholic and apostolic. And it refers, therefore, especially to congregational worship. Such worship draws upon long memories and extravagant hopes, on clarified witness and evocative stories.

Thus, as a personal example: after September 11, I was often involved, though at television-­‐distance, in observing civil religious ceremonies at football games and public memorials. On a couple of occasions, I worshiped at (but was not called to lead) interfaith gatherings, but I have often been a leader at such when national crisis was not central. A Christian service that drew on diverse traditions was “home-­‐plus,” and enriched my understanding and offered a wider variety of options.

After those three, nothing meant more than when my own “home” congregation gathered and gathers. It is Lutheran, and we draw on specific Lutheran understandings about time and eternity, sin and grace, divine vengeance and human action. Down the block the Catholics are doing the same, and so are the Presbyterians and, a bit further down the block, the Pentecostals and Baptists. This is really rich worship. It allows for family-­‐feeling and familiarity, though I hope never in an exclusive sense.

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Levels of Transcendence James Fowler has written that in a pluralist society most believers feel that at times they are withholding the most helpful words and gestures, biting their lip and tongue, holding back. I sense that when called to speak at a service for former colleagues. On one occasion I attended the Resurrection Eucharist of a fellow Lutheran and was transported “above” by the chorales, the organ, the communion.

Then I spoke at an academic-­‐civil gathering at the University of Chicago for this same person, a trustee. We could eulogize him and celebrate his causes, but we did not reach so deeply. On another occasion, when a very prominent trustee died, his family asked me not to speak but to preach a Rockefeller Chapel, a cathedral-­‐sized sanctuary on our campus. “Chicago’s powerful will be there,” a family member said, “Protestant, Catholic, Jew, atheist. We want you to say, “The family has asked me to pretend this is Mr. X’s little white church in X, and I have been asked to preach a message of Christian resurrection hope.” And I did. At the reception following, quite a number of Jews and non-­‐believers said thanks, in informal words that I’ll condense thus: “Now we know what holds you Christians together and gives you strength. We get to so many interfaith gatherings that we hear only muffled versions, and don’t witness to what animates you.”

So the Christian is left with two callings: one, to participate on every level possible in speaking words of “transcendent justice” and human hopes to a grieving, not always repentant, groping citizenry. Worship there is not a theological forum where all the niceties get straightened out. And, second, to participate on profound levels in the language of Christ crucified and risen, of God’s judgment upon all nations and God’s word of hope to those who respond. Trauma time, crisis time, is not a time to resolve all issues connected with worship. It is a time when we can think through more clearly than before, what are the purposes of worship and witness, of citizen life and profound expressions of Christian faith.

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Columbia: A Reason To Worship?

By Davin Seay

Our response as a nation to the tragedy of the Columbia space shuttle disaster speaks directly to the depth of our faith. It is our leaders who give voice to that depth and President Bush rose to the occasion with eloquence and compassion, evoking the words of Isaiah as the prophet pondered the inexpressible omnipotence of God. Silent Empathy Yet in the end, our reaction, both individually and corporately, is bound by that same inexpressibility. Words routinely fall to take the full measure of the sorrow we share: emotions overflow, questions crowd, empathy becomes burden we cannot discharge. We are reduced to silence before the awesome purposes of our Creator; yet it is not a silence that sits comfortably. We long to find some way to connect with each other in our grief, to offer some shred of comfort and hope and to find comfort for ourselves in the company of others.

Our yearning and the silence it evokes is, of course, the consequence of our human condition. We have no way to divine why God’s will encompasses the untimely and violent extinguishing of seven of his living lights. We are left to struggle with that which we cannot contain and, as those thoughts and feelings overwhelm us, we are most poignantly recalled to our own frailty and finiteness.

Yet, as surely as such a tragedy brings us up hard against our limits, so, too, does God require a response, no matter how inadequate it may seem to us in the moment.

As we grow older we are more and more confronted with the necessity of succoring those in the throes of loss. Friends and relations die and there seems to always be that pregnant moment when we reach out to hug the grieving survivor, our mind desperately racing for something—anything—to say that will express the compassion we feel… a compassion that has no words.

Long ago I learned that such words do not exist. There are some events in life that cannot be compassed by language. But, in those precise situations, I have also learned the extraordinary benefits of trying, in spite of my tied tongue and numbed mind. More often than I care to remember have I simply said, “Please accept my condolences,” and, almost invariably, a gleam of gratitude, a recognition of shared loss, glints through the tears of the bereaved.

Trying and Connecting And that’s the point—to try. Nothing we will ever say, no matter how eloquent or artful, will erase the anguish, restore the missing or set back the clock to that dreadful moment before tragedy strikes. That is not in our power.

What is in our power is to struggle to make a connection, between each other to God. Surely, nothing we ever say will be enough, but it’s the doing that counts, and

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the willingness that God honors. And it is in that obedience that a link is forged to the spirit of worship.

No worship song can every fully express the majesty of God or the depth of his love. Yet ultimately inadequate as our gifts and talents may be, we are commanded, compelled, to employ them. It is in the space between our efforts and our aspirations that God’s spirit is made manifest. It is our part to try.

As with worship, so with grieving. The often overpowering feeling to share our sorrow, no matter how halting or hackneyed, springs from that same divine prompting as to lift our voices in praise. It is God’s will, in such times as these, that we seek the comfort of community, express empathy one to another and impart strength in shared prayer for those whose suffering is greatest. We seek to step outside ourselves, to confess our neediness and vulnerability. We create impromptu memorials. We call in to talk shows. We pray in the dark hours of the night and are reminded once again of how big God’s universe is and how small we are.

Can a time of sorrowing be a time of worship? Strange as it may seem to those for whom worship is solely an act of celebration, the answer is an emphatic ‘yes.’

Worship is about evoking the majesty of God, submitting to his perfect will, seeking him in fear and trembling, no less than in love and devotion. Grieving, when we allow for it, fulfills something of these same great goals. Tragedy brings us closer to God and it is that closeness that always ignites the heart of worship. Beyond all the unanswered questions, the all-­‐too-­‐human emotions, of the tragic event we witnessed over the warm winter skies of the Texas pine barrens, a loving God, and the terrible mystery of his will, is made manifest.

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Pastoral Diary From Ground Zero Renewing Faith in the Midst of Tragedy

By Gordon MacDonald

As the world shook in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Gordon and Gail MacDonald found themselves working alongside rescue personnel and religious workers at Ground Zero—“the Pit,” as those around the site of New York’s former World Trade Center had dubbed it. The following entries are excerpted from Gordon’s e-­‐mail diary capturing their experiences and documenting the moments that renewed their faith that God’s empowering presence was evident.

18 September 2001 My wife Gail and I joined a small team of Salvation Army people just feet away from the entrance to the crater where men poured in and out. At first, I was mesmerized by the unbroken line of men (and a few women) going into the crater: like soldiers headed to the front in a war. Each was carrying some kind of tool; a shovel, a pickax, electronic equipment. But the line just kept going. Then I saw another line, just as fascinating, but far more disturbing. Men coming out: exhausted, filthy, hardly able to walk.

So I simply stepped out as the lines moved passed and started crying, “You look like a man who needs something to drink.” Virtually every man I encountered stopped and took what I offered. I would engage them in conversation: “How long have you been in the hole?” “Where’s your family?” “What station are you with?” “Do you have buddies in the pile?”

Virtually every man had someone they were concerned about. Almost all of them had lost more than one person they knew well. Many had lost relatives but almost no one refused my offer to talk. They would spill their guts. I talked with men who’d just uncovered body parts. You could smell death in their clothes.

Often I would say, “I’m a guy who likes to pray for his friends. Would you mind a prayer?” No one ever refused. Most of them reached out and grabbed my hand, or, if I would put my hands on their shoulders, they would instinctively draw closer. My prayer was simply this: “God, I thank you for my new friends. Please keep him brave, strong, safe, and true. And help him to remember that this city dearly loves him today.”

We did that for almost 12 hours until near midnight. As the sun had fallen, the halogen lights had been turned on, and the whole sight became something of an artificial day. All the ruins took on an eerie appearance, somewhat ghostlike. And still, late into the evenings, the lines of men came and went. People from hundreds of miles away.

As the hours of the evening began, word came that the men on the bucket brigades were becoming increasingly hot and thirsty. So a couple of us decided to start taking bottles of water into the site itself. We filled large buckets with small

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plastic bottles of water and started into the crater—two buckets each. Soon I found myself right up on the piles of rubble alongside the men and the sniffer dogs. The smell was not as oppressive as I’d been warned, but it was definitely noticeable.

And more than once I asked myself—as everyone asked—is God here? And I decided that he is closer to this place than any other place I’ve ever visited. The strange irony is that, amidst this absolute catastrophe of unspeakable proportions, there is a beauty in the way human beings are acting that defies the imagination.

Everyone—absolutely everyone—is everyone else’s brother or sister. There are not strangers among the thousands at the work site. Everyone talks; everyone cooperates; everyone does the next thing that has to be done. No job is too small, too humble, or even too large.

No church service, no church sanctuary, no religiously inspiring service has spoken so deeply to my soul or witnessed to the presence of God as those hours last night at the crash site.

19 September 2001 As I randomly think through the past day, I keep thinking of the men and women I’ve met—hundreds of them. Again, there are no strangers on the site. Everyone immediately talks to each other as if they’ve known one another all their lives. No one complains (except about the waiting); everyone is thankful. Over and over again, hard-­‐boiled police say to me, “You guys are tremendous; we don’t know what we’d do without you.” And I kept responding, “And you are dearly loved by this city.”

My Franciscan friend stops by regularly to talk. I saw something of the rationale for the monk’s habit when, while we were talking, two police women came up and addressed him directly, “Father, will you bless us? We have to go in there.” They ignored me because I was in civilian clothing. He gave them the sign of the cross and said something, and they went off.

I asked him what he’d said, and he responded, “I signed them with the cross and said, ‘May the blessing of God Almighty rest and abide upon you and may this sign of the cross be your peace and safety. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’”And then he added with a chuckle, “The important thing is the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit; the rest is all Hollywood.”

I liked him. Again and again, we’d cross paths and say words of encouragement.

He was clearly burdened with his pastoral tasks, very much alone (while we are on a team). His brown habit was filthy with dust. I learned to copy his ways. And often, when there was little time with workmen, I would simply say, “May I give you a blessing?” And I repeated his words with the sign of the cross. This symbolic gesture is a wonderful thing. Why did we give that pastoral piece up to the Catholics and decide it was foolish? In times like this the visible sign of the cross is very important to exhausted men and women who are scared, horrified and in shock.

Finally at midnight last night a new team arrived at the station. The first large team we’ve seen. They were fresh and ready to go. We gladly handed over the operation to them. I can’t describe how much I’ve loved being with these people under these circumstances. These days will always remain in my memories as I’ve seen simple, ordinary people living the lives of saints. Human beings never look better when they are serving one another.

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20 September 2001 As I talk to and pray for firefighters, it suddenly occurs to me that I have not touched a man whose shoulders aren’t enormous. They are, for the most part, tough men. But they have deep hearts. One firefighter said to me, “My sister is a real Christian. And she’s been on my back because I’ve backslidden. This thing has really awakened me. I’ve got to stop the backsliding.”

So I suggested we could put a stop to the backsliding right then and there. He thought that was a great idea so I prayed, “Help my friend, John, to cut out the backsliding. Give him a new heart; help him to make you proud.” He wept and was so grateful. And headed for the pit.

Later on, as we drove through the streets there were people on almost every corner holding up “Thank You” signs. This still grabs me every time I witness it. Why are New Yorkers out on the streets at midnight doing nothing but waving signs?

Why are they almost shoving bottles of water into your face and cheering for you? Is it their only way to be involved?

I don’t want to forget the box Gail and I found at the pit. It was from a group of mothers and children 3000 miles from New York City. On the top of the box they had taped a sign with large letters: “To the people working in New York at the Trade Center. Please receive these cookies with our love and prayers. Making them for you was the only thing we could think to do to let you know that we are praying for you.”

Somehow the personal dimension of that one box of cookies captured our emotions for a moment and we wondered about this unnamed group of others and children who had spent a morning creating this act of love for people who would never be able to thank them.

21 September 2001 Henri Nouwen’s prayer “that I may embrace littleness, hiddenness, and powerlessness,” is very real to me here. I have been praying that this would be my contentment for the past two years. Here next to the pit you have to be willing to become little, hidden, and powerless to get your work done. So, God seems to be responding to my prayer.

I’ve noticed that some clergy are straining to be high-­‐profile. The other night we listened to one noted televangelist boast about the fact that he’d been invited to the National Cathedral for the memorial service. I think he might have been more useful somewhere around the edge of the pit myself. And how do I discipline my feelings about those preachers who identify this tragedy with gays, lesbians and the ACLU? Sometimes we seem a movement abundant in words and sparse in deeds. God, spare us from the mouths of those with an angry, graceless agenda.

There is an abundance of good stories that have emerged to distract us from the stark reality. There is a man at our corner whose job it is to record the trucks as they leave the pit with their load of rubble. He is from Jamaica, and he has one of the most radiant smiles I’ve ever seen. He brings a kind of spiritual sunshine to the entire intersection. I watch him with his red, white and blue hardhat talking to each truck driver as they wait their turn to go in and get a load. He brightens men up. In the

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midst of all those smells, the dust, the clashing sounds, he brings a civilizing influence to the moment.

Occasionally I go out to him and bring him some water. At other times he comes over to chat. We always laugh when we engage. I said to him last night, “You’re a follower of the Lord, aren’t you?”

He gave me an enthusiastic, “Yes, Jesus is with me all the time.”

When I offered to pray for him, he nodded vigorously. So I prayed, “Lord, you’ve given my friend a beautiful face and the gift of cheer. Keep him safe among those trucks. And make every person he deals with feel the love of Christ through him even if they don’t know his name.” He represents to me the quintessential picture of the ideal follower of Christ: out in the middle of the chaos, doing his job, pressing a bit of joy into a wild situation.

22 September 2001 It is Saturday and we arrived at Ground Zero for our last time. When we said goodbye to the Salvation Army officers who came on for the nighttime shift I had a feeling of great regret. While I will not miss the smell, the dust in the air, and the constant state of frenzy, I will miss the edginess of this week’s experience. I have felt Jesus’ presence in an unusual way each day. I’ve asked myself time and again, ‘What is it that has drawn me here and has made me feel so alive?’

Possible answers: Almost everyone is absolutely real and there is not a hint of superficiality. There is virtually no small talk. Both men and women are on site because they are dedicated. Beyond that, to reclaim the World Trade Center from the horror and terrorists created. They are committed to wiping away every sign of a defeat in this place. And we are there to serve them in any way we can.

“There is a tremendous satisfaction in losing yourself in something that is more important than you are,” Kingman Brewster once said. And that has been my feeling throughout this week. Gail and I are into something that is bigger than we are, over our heads. The practicality of it all: binding wounds, encouraging despairing spirits, praying for people who need to be reminded that God is near. Someone wrote to me this week and reflected on the irony that this tragedy began with the acts of people who care nothing about human life and is ending with people who will scratch with their fingernails if it means retrieving one more body part.

On the mirror above the bar someone had written the name and number of his fire brigade and then added the words, “others run out; we run in!” Seeing this reminded me of something I read in a book entitled The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark where he suggests this very point: Christianity grew in the first three centuries because Christians stuck around and helped when others turned and fled.

When the pagans ran to the hills when plague, earthquakes and fire broke out in the cities, the Christians stayed and ministered to the sick and dying. It is no wonder the Christian message was so powerful.

A New York policewoman, Regina, came to the station seeking some hand lotion.

After Gail had helped her wash her hands, she rubbed lotion into them. It reminded me of the woman who cleaned Jesus’ feet with her tears and perfume. While this was happening I asked Regina how she was doing. Her face lit up and she said she was just fine.

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I said, “Now, come on, what makes it possible for you to be so fine?”

In answer to my question she opened up her police jacket and showed me a Walkman harnessed to her side. Then she opened up the lid because she wanted me to see that the CD was full of Christian praise choruses. Then she lifted the flap on a large pocket in her pants and pulled out a small Bible.

“Can’t miss being anything but find when I have those two things,” she said.

Somehow this struck me as wonderfully funny: this cheerful policewoman with a big pistol strapped to her side, a walkman full of praise choruses strapped to the other side, and a Bible in her pants pocket, the one where police ordinarily carry their wallet for giving out tickets.

I keep remembering Annie Dillard’s words: “It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church. We should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to the pew. For the sleeping God may awake some day and take offenses, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.” Can Gail and I ever return to the way things were in the past? I think not. We are marked for life by this experience.

24 September 2001 I am reminded that when missionaries return home from “hot spots” where they have seen death, poverty, disease and great spiritual darkness, they often appear in shock and over-­‐critical of the way they see American Christians living. You sense their frustration when they hear us talk about problems that are petty in comparison. I suspect that Gail and I will struggle with that same withdrawal for a while.

I now appreciate why many missionaries come to regard some Third World site as their real home. There is a quality of life on that edge that tugs at our souls and calls from us a better quality of person. We find that the Gospel works better there; that it is designed to fit best in the suffering situation and is powerfully transforming. When we go to such places of tragedy and give away everything we have, we like ourselves a lot better.

I grew up in a faith tradition that seemed to take the dimmest and the most pessimistic view of humanity. I still hear those voices in some parts of our Christian movement. They are often heard condemning, accusing, and mocking those whose positions and perspectives diverge from ours. Frankly, they embarrass me. I wish they would stand down and become quiet before the Lord. They have misunderstood the genius of bridge-­‐building, of quietly serving and loving as the primary way of gaining access to another person’s heart and mind. Every one of us should take a required course on the life and ministry of St. Francis, a servant of servants.

The pit has been my most unforgettable “market-­‐place.” There, away from the religious programs to which I’ve grown accustomed, I saw so many good things about authentic men and women; their love and loyalty for one another, their ability to work countless hours without any expectation of pay, their humor under fire as well as their tears. And I saw their spiritual hunger, what a person looks like in the context of terrible grief and horror. I am grateful to say—so very, very grateful— that I also sensed the powerful presence of Jesus there.

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I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.

– Psalm 40:1-­‐3

I love these lines. They are my hope.

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Public Prayer In Troubled Times Finding Comfort within the Psalms

By Hughes Oliphant Old

Fumbling about in prayer comes easily enough in troubled times, even when these prayers are very important to us and even when they are offered in public.

When we are not sure what to pray we can always turn to the Psalms. So many of the psalms were used in public prayer in the worst of times. In times of danger and in the wake of wars and rumors of war, the faithful have again and again taken up the psalms and prayed through them. They prayed the psalms hoping God might have something to say to them.

Using Preformed Prayer That is one of the things that is so special about psalm prayer. It keeps our prayers from being monologues. The psalms, like all of Scripture, are God’s Word.

Sometimes when we pray the psalms we hear our own words, and sometimes we hear God’s Word.

Praying the psalms is a particularly meditative sort of prayer. The psalms act as a sort of ignition or starting motor to get prayers going. One might say they are the prayers of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 4-­‐25). They are God’s way of getting our prayers off the ground.

The psalms were first prayed in very concrete historical situations. These vents of long ago are far removed from our problems today, yet they often provide a parallel to the troubles of our own time. The psalms, to use a literary term, suggest a typology of prayer. A typology is a sort of metaphor; it reminds us of an analogous situation that throws light on the situation in which we find ourselves. A typology is never an exact parallel.

Metaphoric Reading We have to be careful when we engage in psalm prayer not to take this typology literally. Every time Israel is mentioned we should not imagine that the modern state of Israel is meant; the same way with Jerusalem or Mount Zion. The psalms speak of these things typologically. Types are patterns, spiritual rhymes and rhythms. Typology is a sort of spiritual poetry, and so since we have to be careful not to identify the Israel of biblical times with the modern state of Israel, we have to be equally careful not to identify America as God’s chosen people or the Islamic nations as God’s enemies. There are strong Christian communities in countries like Syria and Egypt, and there are plenty of Americans who have rejected the Christian faith and insist we are not a Christian nation.

Praying the psalms has always been a major component of Christian spirituality.

There are some real classics on the subject. Many people have read C.S. Lewis on the subject of praying the psalms. In his devotional book, Life Together, Dietrich

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Bonhoeffer spoke at length on the importance of psalm prayer. Another classic is Matthew Henry’s commentary on the psalms.

Learning from our Forefathers There is another prayer tradition that we might do well to revisit. The day of prayer and thanksgiving is a very definite biblical prayer discipline. Just as ancient Israel had special days of prayer and fasting occasioned by different kinds of disasters such as drought, plague, or war, so special days of prayer and thanksgiving were called when the community recognized that God’s blessing had been specially poured out on his people.

The American Thanksgiving Day we observe each year is just such a day of prayer and thanksgiving. We all know the story of how the Pilgrim Fathers called a special day of thanksgiving to mark the completion of their first year in their new land.

Sadly, we tend to imagine that this is simply a harvest festival, but it is really far more. If it were nothing more than a harvest festival then it would more naturally be celebrated a month earlier (as it is in Canada).

The fact that it is celebrated so late in November suggests that it celebrates the landing of the first colonists at Plymouth Rock. It is a thanksgiving for the founding of the colony. The uniqueness of the American Thanksgiving had never quite occurred to me until my student days in Germany. I suddenly discovered that in Germany no one celebrated Thanksgiving except a group of us American students. It is very specifically an American religious feast. Every year the president of our country calls for a special day of thanksgiving. It is this presidential proclamation which year by year establishes the date.

What the Pilgrim Fathers did so long ago is exactly what we find in the Westminster Directory for Worship. It speaks at considerable length of the calling of days of prayer and thanksgiving. In fact, it devotes a whole chapter to the subject.

There is a chapter on days of prayer and fasting and a chapter on days of prayer and thanksgiving. Such days might be called by the president of the United States, by Congress or by the governor of a particular state, or the mayor of a city.

Psalms as Thanksgiving In fact, a church might do the same thing to mark a particular blessing. A number of psalms seem to be prayers of thanksgiving for such special days. This is especially the case with those psalms that give thanks for God’s mighty works of creation and providence such as Psalms 78, 104 and 105. A responsive reading or a musical setting of one or more of these psalms might be an appropriate feature of a special thanksgiving service.

The worship of the Temple as well as the worship of the heavenly Jerusalem made extensive use of acclamations, or festal shouts, as some translations have it.

This may sound strange to our ears until we realize that what is meant is such shouts as “Hallelujah,” “Hosanna,” or “The Lord reigns.” One of these festal shouts particularly was a shout of thanksgiving, “O give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever” (Ps 107:1).

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One thing I have often done for a thanksgiving service is set up a full, comprehensive prayer of thanksgiving treating eight to ten very specific matters for which we should give thanks, then I asked the congregation to respond after each of these prayers with that festal thanksgiving shout, “O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever.” Obviously my inspiration came from Psalms 107 and 136.

One point the Westminster Directory for Worship presses home is that a part of our thanksgiving should be expressed in the taking of a collection for the poor, that they, too, might rejoice. Feasting is part of thanksgiving, but this feasting should not lead to the excesses of gluttony, but rather to generosity and sharing. The remainder of a thanksgiving day, according to the Westminster Directory, is to be spent in act “of Christian love and charity one with another and of rejoicing more and more in the Lord; as becometh those who make the joy of the Lord their strength.”

Let us hope that the fighting in Afghanistan soon comes to an end. Let us pray the terrorist attacks and threats of germ warfare are stopped; then let us call special days of thanksgiving, that our prayers have been heard.

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PRAYING THROUGH WAR & WORSHIPING IN DANGEROUS TIMES

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Praying Through War

By Chuck Smith, Jr.

A sniper takes his position in a bombed out tower and sites his target through a rifle scope. He slowly inhales, then exhales as he breathes a prayer. “Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.” Slowly he draws back the trigger and takes out an enemy soldier.

Quoting Scripture prior to a “kill” seems like an odd quirk for the sharp-­‐shooter portrayed by Barry Pepper, in this stirring World War II film Saving Private Ryan.

But there is no doubt that many soldiers across the ages have prayed in combat.

Some have even learned how to pray for the first time on the battlefield. War is too brutal, too traumatic, too hellish to leave to humans.

What Should You Do? The question for pastors and worship leaders during the dark times we are now living through is what to pray and what do we teach others to pray in the event of war. The special circumstances that come from being engaged in conflict calls for a unique response from God’s people. In our public prayers—keeping in mind the fact that there are different points of view and attitudes about the purpose and justification of war among the members of our church—how should we address the struggles, ethics, and carnage of the impending conflict?

There is a list of standard responses that we already know all too well. No one needs to be reminded to pray for protection for our men and women on the frontlines. The ongoing petition for the wisdom of political and military leaders is likewise easily understood. And prayer is needed for civilians on both sides trapped in the midst of battle—especially the elderly, the infirmed, children and parents. We ask God to at least intervene enough to protect hospitals and schools.

But what may not be so obvious (and it is a tendency for God’s people to forget this principle at crucial times) is a special form of prayer called for in Scripture when facing the enemy: we are to “inquire of God.” Joshua and Israel’s leaders almost brought down disaster when they forgot to inquire of God regarding the Gibeonites (Jos 9:14). David, on the other hand, led a very successful campaign against the Philistines because he remembered to inquire of the Lord (2 Sam 5:19, 23).

So what does it mean to “inquire of God” and what is our purpose in doing so?

To inquire of God is to seek his mind on the course of human affairs. We make inquiry of him because we want to—we need to—know his will. How should we approach the prospect of war? With an attitude of certain victory or a humble dependence? Can we be certain our cause is just? God sometimes told Israel to disengage rather than to engage their enemy. If we do not inquire of God and listen for his answer, then we are likely to move outside his will. Being under enemy fire without God’s protection is the very definition of defeat.

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Warriors of Peace The horrors of war are so great, that even years after WWII and Vietnam, veterans still suffer a variety of physical and psychological disorders. Christians are peacemakers who constantly pray for peace. When we find our nation at war, we must also pray for a swift conclusion and a defeat of evil. But, most importantly, we need to inquire of God and do our best to listen to his response.

To go to God and seek his mind, will, and wisdom is to acknowledge that God has his own objectives in the affairs of men. We confess to him that our limited perspective may result in unnecessary cruelty and loss of life. We admit our dependence on God in the face of all things—whether a wanton act of terrorism or a desire for unwarranted retribution.

The church has a voice, one that we raise to heaven in all situations. But the church also has an ear that must be inclined toward God. We can sit in silence and wait to hear that “gentle whisper,” or listen for the voice of God in Scripture, or come together and dialogue to hopefully hear God speak to us through the diversity of our separate insights. It is the pastor and worship leader who can best train the church to listen.

Inquire of God, listen and then act. The closer we get to God’s mind on issues of war and peace, the better the outcome. We may not arrive at “the answer” or be able to resolve all our differences, but even uncertainty is better than a prayer thrown up for victory without trying to discover God’s will in the coming battle. In time of war, it is the responsibility of God’s people to turn their attention to him and then prepare as best we can to listen for his responses.

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Worshiping In A Dangerous Time

By Brian McLaren

I have lived most of my life in Maryland, the place where the “one-­‐shot sniper” and his accomplice were caught. I expected to feel relieved after the arrest, and I do, a little, but not as fully as I thought. I guess the feeling of danger comes on strong, all at once, but it takes time for the feelings of safety to gently settle in. The church I serve is in Montgomery County, now famous because seven of the sniper’s 13 victims were shot here, including the first and the last.

Cedar Ridge Community Church, like all the churches in our area, gathered to worship three times during the sniper’s 22-­‐day killing spree, and the experience of worshiping in a dangerous time was different, as you’d expect. Five words come to mind as I look back over these three weeks; anxiety, repentance, hope, connection and humanity. One hopes that experiences like this will be rare, but in case they aren’t, in case we’re all entering an extended dangerous time, perhaps it’s worthwhile sharing my reflections.

Anxious Moments How would you preach during a time like this? Would you address the situation, or continue with your planned series? If you did address the situation, what would you say? Would you talk about promises of God’s protection, or about the opposite—our vulnerability to death and our need to be prepared? Or maybe about violence, evil, hatred? What kind of music would you choose? Songs about confidence, trust in God, having no fear? What about songs that express fear (if we have any in our repertoire)?

If the killing spree had gone on longer, our worship and arts pastor and I would have planned a whole service devoted to helping our people process the experience.

Thanks be to God, it’s over. During our three weeks living in sniper anxiety, in our public prayers, we addressed the situation in prayers and acknowledged it in passing in the sermons.

If we had needed to plan that special service, I would have focused on anxiety. I would have talked about how Scripture both tells us we need not fear (Psalm 27: 1,3; 46:2, 49:5), and yet contains honest accounts of people who are afraid, who express it openly, and give us a window into their soul’s struggle with anxiety (Psalm 55).

Through this experience, I’ve realized how powerful anxiety is, and even though many of us, when there aren’t snipers present, don’t feel intense anxiety regularly, many of us do—with an ex-­‐spouse who may at any time take our children, or a relative who is near death, or a mentally ill loved one who may cycle out of normalcy at any time, or a rebellious teenager who may do who knows what next, or a son or daughter in danger in the military or in a foreign mission field. Our shared sniper experience reminds me that anxiety is the background music for worship for all of us some of the time, and for some of us all of the time.

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The effect of this anxiety on us at Cedar Ridge was to subdue the normal vibrance of our worship. Somehow, it just didn’t seem right to rejoice with normal exuberance when some of our neighbors were grieving and when we all shared an unpredictable but real danger.

It struck me that some of us in leadership may develop a kind of addiction to being “upbeat,” and that we may not know how to acknowledge with the wise writer of Ecclesiastes that there is a time and season for everything, which means there are times to sing loud and clap and celebrate, and times to sing softly in more reflective, less jubilant tones. And perhaps times to not sing at all.

Repentance Over these weeks, the shock and grief of September 11, 2001 have come back to mind quite often, along with the special concern over anthrax that we in the Washington, D.C. area experienced in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. It’s been a hard couple of years (much less hard, of course, than many of our brothers and sisters elsewhere experience year after year).

Then, as now, I know that some of us felt a desire for revenge rising inside us. Too many times, we preachers and worship leaders can capitalize on that desire for revenge, baptize it, perhaps especially true when the perpetrators are of another religion.

If our response breeds arrogance and superiority (as if there haven’t been plenty of “Christian kooks” who have done terrible atrocities, including Hitler, who called himself a Christian and frequently spoke of God), if our response deepens our prejudice and constricts our love and respect for others, we’re in greater danger from sin within our own souls than we are from bullets in parking lots or gas stations.

It seems to me there’s simply no place for either revenge or superiority for followers of Jesus. It is simply not permitted for us to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. But we must resist the desire for revenge in times like this.

What do we do instead? Jesus tells us to look in the mirror, to focus on the planks in our own eyes when we’re tempted to obsess on the faults of others. And so this becomes a time for all of us to think about the ways we engage in sniping in less dramatic ways: aggressive words, subtle gossip, nursed grudges, cherished prejudices. Instead of reaching for the narcotic revenge, we reach for the pure water of repentance. We realize that the evil in two men that has stolen security from us all over these last weeks is also in each of us, and we rededicate ourselves to walk in the light of the Lord.

Hope When we feel grief over the evil that runs through and among us, it is important not to give way to cynicism or despair. God has not abandoned God’s creation, nor has God abandoned humanity. In the midst of our worst times, God gives us rich promises of better days to come. It was in times of anxiety that Jesus came preaching a new regime, a new kingdom. It was in times of national decay and defeat that prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah wrote prophetic poetry full of hope

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beyond judgment, with dreams of a day when swords and spears would be fashioned into plowshares and garden tools, when people would never study war any more.

I feel a need to reassert that hope. In fact, in the aftermath of our siege of anxiety, I finished a song that attempts to celebrate that hope. It will be an artifact of these days for me:

“This Dream” We have this dream God has planted in our hearts Like a seed that is watered with our tears and hope and prayer…

That all of the guns and the tanks and the bombs and The land mines and the bayonets and the bullets, bombs and knives Will be melted down and gone from our lives.

From the guns and from the tanks we’ll make swing sets and park benches.

From the bullets we’ll make trumpets.

In the bombshells, we’ll plant gardens.

So open your heart and don’t let it harden…

Clenching fists will stop their fighting. Hugs and handshakes reuniting.

Shouts and violence will be silenced.

Smile and hear the children’s laughter.

God’s kingdom is coming and this we seek after.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD… Come, let us not train for war anymore Let us walk in the light of the LORD.

It strikes me as we worship in a dangerous time that we need more songs like the old protest song, “We Shall Overcome,” songs that express hope in the Lord.

Making Connection But even in our hope we need to be careful. I may be in the minority on this, but I don’t believe that being a Christian is supposed to make us less connected to our non-­‐Christian neighbors. I think the reverse should be true. I don’t find it attractive or spiritually “right” to gather with God’s people and celebrate that we have hope while others don’t.

Nor do I believe it is theologically correct or pastorally wise to try to reassure people that we have some special exemption card from danger because we believe in Jesus. (If anything, I think the reverse is true, that we have special vulnerability to suffering because we follow a man who chose to suffer rather than inflict suffering.)

Instead, as we worship during dangerous times, we need increased compassion for our neighbors. After one of our services, a member of our congregation who is a teacher at the school where the young boy was shot came up to me and told me what the mother of that boy is going through. Stories like this have to bond us with our community in dangerous times, something that I know must please God in the midst of so much sadness and horror.

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It’s not a time to glibly “look on the bright side” when so many have died and so many are grieving, but it’s worth noting that this trial has brought us all together in a new way here, perhaps the way New Yorkers felt after 9-­‐11. This sense of connectedness is a good thing, especially for Christians who sometimes become so preoccupied with their church home and their home in heaven that they forget about their home on a certain street in a certain neighborhood in a certain town or city, which is the place God has placed them to serve and love right now.

Humanity Perhaps the deepest word that comes to mind as I reflect on worshiping in this dangerous time is humanity; humanity and frailty, vulnerability and limitation. This story has gripped our nation and even the world because it touches our common humanity: our common desire for safety, our common love for our children and our common desire to protect them, our shared vulnerability as humans with fragile neuro-­‐biochemical brains to insanity, our common dilemma of loving freedom but wanting enough control to protect our safety so we can enjoy our freedom (which can come under threat from too much control).

This intensified sense of our humanity will stay with me for a long time, even though the crisis is over. It adds richness to some familiar words, which I’ll paraphrase slightly: “for God so loved all humanity, that he gave his one and only Son…”

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GRIEVING: A BENEDICTION

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Prayer Acquainted With Grief

By Kenn Gulliksen

My mom died in 1986 shortly after my dad’s fatal heart attack, so I’ve been thinking about them both, looking at a few old photos. I had given Dad CPR after finding him unconscious and not breathing on the floor of his bedroom. He survived two more days, and then died on a Sunday morning. I was in the middle of teaching my Sunday message when my wife stood in the back of the auditorium, weeping and holding the hands of our two youngest children. I immediately understood Dad was with the Lord.

We all face grief. We may be intellectually prepared, especially in the case of an elderly parent, but we’re never quite emotionally prepared because emotions are spontaneous. I had no clue how much the loss of my father would rock me, but in the process, I came to see that God uses crises, including grief, to reveal more of himself to us. When loss is great enough to cause grief, only God can come and be for us what loss took away. In the Old Testament, God revealed himself with new names as his people had need.

A week after Dad died I found myself at the piano writing a song of worship as I saw God as my real Father in a way I never had before. I think that’s the best way, the Biblical way to process grief. Like David did so often in the Psalms, we hurt, we groan in soul and in spirit, we pour out our hearts, feelings and questions to our Father, then we choose to worship. Broken. Humbled. Tender. Deeper.

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith ... may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet 1:6-­7 NIV)

Our Father in heaven, In this brief moment we come to thank you that you understand and redeem grief!

We thank you that your invitation to come boldly to the throne of grace to find help in time of need is always open.

Lord Jesus, you were a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief on earth, so we know you completely understand us in our grief and sorrows.

We thank you, Lord, for the Holy Spirit who intercedes for us with groans too deep to be uttered and with grief so raw it screams.

How we praise you for that invitation to pour out our hearts, our feelings and fears and questions, to not need to edit or perform or even make sense—but to come.

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Most of all we thank you that we find help at your throne in our time of need—we find you.

Even as our faith is tested and our ownership of faith itself is challenged, we thank you that the end of grief isn’t only comfort, but finding more of you.

We thank you that you fill the place of loss with more of yourself.

And by faith we know you are working it for our good and your glory.

Father, in all our grief enable us to lament until we’re empty and exhausted, then fill us with your Spirit that we might offer genuine sacrifices of praise to your glory.

Fulfill your greatest purpose and intent in our sorrows.

Enable us, even in mystery, to enter into the fellowship of your sufferings.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

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AFTERWORD

Since these articles were first published, some in the wake of September 11th, some after the earthquake in Haiti, We have been deluged with both opportunities to praise God for his saving mercy and seasons of intense grief over natural disasters—tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods and fires—endless wars and rumors of wars, senseless murders, and the everyday devastation of cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, gang violence, drunk drivers, suicide, sexual trafficking, abuse, pornography, layoffs, or the passing of loved ones from “natural causes”—an endless litany of often terminal stops on life’s journey.

Since both the joy of deliverance and the cry for it are part of the landscape of a world and its people not quite yet in full possession of its already covered redemption, how shall we then live in the face of relentless grief? How can we get past it ourselves, and also be a voice, a heart, a hand of comfort to our friends, coworkers, community, and to the stranger among us?

We hope these stories, reflections and cries of and for worship will direct you to the One who is the source of all comfort. That it will leave you encouraged to talk with your Father about your experiences, your feelings, your needs, your loss…honestly. Search the Scripture to find out how the people of the book experienced and dealt with grief. There are some great and yet not always “good” examples: Cain, the children of Israel (corporately) and individually, Leah, Rebecca, Hannah, David, The Shunamite woman, Jeremiah, Hosea, Jonah, Mary the Mother of Jesus, Peter, Judas, and Jesus himself. Sometimes grief is met with astounding miracles, and sometimes it appears that death has won. And though we know that someday we will shout with exultation, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.

(Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”), presently we experience the “now” of God’s defining victory, but still wrestle with the “not yet.”

Sometimes we can only cry out to God for help us through the next minute, the next hour, the next day. Ask him for the next incremental step. And when we don’t have the heart or energy to read or ask or pray, we are left with the one-­‐word prayer that God always answers: “Help!”

Always, we may ask God to tune our eyes and ears to the grief, need, or loss, we may be experiencing—or in denial about—in own lives. But also the grief he wants us to answer in others’ lives, whether with our time, prayers, worship, or physical labor. Sometimes what is needed most is a listening ear. There are occasions where we need to find one, and at other times, we need to be one. Sometimes the most urgent requirement is cash or food or practical resources. May how we spend our time and money reflect our worship as much as the songs we sing. We always have the opportunity to ask God to specifically show us how to comfort those who grieve, or need—or both—in our lives. Even when the person we’re asking about is ‘us,’ and the desperate need is ours.

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Other books from Worship Leader (new titles added monthly)

Art & Architecture: Use in Christian Theology and Worship / Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old Jewels for Worship Leaders: 52 Devotions from the Psalms / Dr. Mark D. Roberts New Media Technologies in the Service of Worship / Edited by Dr. Charles E. Fromm New Song: The Sound of Spiritual Awakening / Dr. Charles E. Fromm Song Stories: Vol 1/ various authors Song Stories: Vol 2/ various authors The 7 Greatest Worship Texts: What Scripture Says about Leading / Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old Webber on Worship: Vol 1 / Dr. Robert Webber Webber on Worship: Vol 2 / Dr. Robert Webber Worship, Preaching & The Ministry of Prayer / Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old

PLUS series on Doxology as the Theology of Worship Doxology as the Theology of Worship Worship as Invocation Worship as Proclamation (Release date: May 2013) Worship as Wisdom (Release date: June 2013) Prophetic Dimension of Worship (Release date July 2013) Covenantal Dimension of Worship (Release date July 2013)

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