Our last post concluded by looking at how we seek to center the order of our worship services around the gospel story of Jesus Christ. We turn now to look at why we seek to order our services this way.
Why do we follow the story of the gospel in our order? The simple answer is that’s how we are best edified and formed in Christ. To help explain this we need to look at a brief description of how the human mind and body work.
As we said in the introductory post, God created us to worship and everyone worships something even if they do not worship God. They may worship their self, someone, or something. But the reality is that we were all created to worship. At WBC we seek to lead you to worship Jesus Christ. We hope that everyone reading this has seen their need for a savior and are following Christ by faith and seeking to trust in Him alone to save us from our imperfect condition.
Since we were created to worship, we are primarily people of desire and imagination, not just creatures of intellectual thought. Certainly thought and intellect are a huge part of who we are, but at the heart of us is a desire to be loved and to love. The way we work out these desires is in our imagination not just in facts or information. Our imagination allows us to put facts and information into action. This is how we process content.
It is very important that we get our content right by having it be biblical and centered on Christ. But it is just as important that we relate to our biblical content in ways that are solidly centered on Christ. For example, studies have shown that people who have suffered an injury and experienced brain damage have often lost the ability to form their imagination. It has been proven that they understand all the facts and information of things, but because the part of their brain that allows them to imagine (how they would put facts into motion) has been damaged, they have lost their ability to control their motor skills and in most cases cannot walk or talk.
The part of the brain that is often damaged in these case studies is key to us in this discussion on worship. This part of the brain is called the corpus callosum. It is a bundle of fibers that runs along the center of the brain, connecting its right and left hemispheres. Most of us probably know that the left side of the brain likes order and words and deals in logic. The right side is non-verbal and sends our body signals to make expressions and emotional feelings. The corpus callosum is the part of the brain that makes the left and right hemispheres communicate with each other and work in integrated harmony. For us as followers of Christ, this is the part of the brain that will allow us to put the information of our beliefs into practice. The corpus callosum works best through imagination, and as Christians we don’t just need to know information we need to have our imagination formed so that we can do more than just believe facts. Forming our imagination includes forming our perception, motor skills, intellect, passions, affections, and our desires. If we can form our imagination with the gospel, our body can then walk in Christ-centered attitudes, habits, and actions that exhibit the fruits of the Holy Spirit. (Peace, love, joy, kindness, patience, self control and long-suffering).
This may be a new idea in the church, but it is a reality that the world understands better than we do.
For example, marketing strategies of the world seek to target our imagination, not just give us information. They understand that we primarily desire to be loved and to love others, so they tell us a story about what they want us to love or what makes us feel loved. They may put up a picture of a new piece of clothing that looks good to the eyes so we imagine ourself in it, and we feel better about who we are, or we imagine that if we have it, someone else will love us more. This kind of marketing prevails almost endlessly in every industry, and the content is not really the issue. The things they are selling might be biblically good or worldly bad, but for the sake of this discussion, the point is that marketing targets our imagination, and it works. Social media is also a big player in this discussion. Many of us religiously interact with our smart phones and tablets and, whether we think about it or not, this is forming our imagination. This media tells us stories that we pursue or reject. Again, it’s not that the media is bad, but the fact that formation is happening. For example, if you follow some of your friends on Facebook while they are on vacation, you imagine yourself there with them on vacation. We do this without even thinking about it. Because of the creativity of Facebook, you are placed into their story, and as you follow them your desires are being formed by your imagination. This is true whether you want to admit it or not. It’s likely that you could then find yourself actually planning and going on a vacation. There are many other illustrations that can be used here, but we need to move on.
This idea of forming our imagination is also a biblical one. The bible is constantly talking about loving God with our heart. There is an exhaustive list of passages that we do not have space to list here, but it is a very common idea in the scriptures for us to have the “desires of our heart” or the “meditations of our heart” centered on God. In the culture of biblical times the word “heart” had a different meaning than it does for us in our time. When we think of the word “heart,” we most likely think about the organ in our body that pumps our blood. In the bible, the word “heart” means, “the hidden center of one’s being,” the place that we fix our eyes on. The things we pursue. In our time, this “hidden center of our being” is called as our imagination.
How do you form the human imagination? As you can probably see from some of the illustrations above, the best way to form our imagination is to use story.
What does all of this have to do with worship?
The world is full of stories and media forms that seek to tell you what is true and good to pursue as a vision of the good life. Several years ago, MTV started reality TV, and now most networks have embraced this and seek to give a story that forms you of what they want to call the “real world.” But there is only one real story for this world to follow and that is the gospel story of Jesus Christ. The church needs to embrace the story of Jesus in worship so that we are all edified away from the wrong stories and formed by the one true story of the gospel. This is not to say that the gospel is the only good story, but it is certainly the foundational story that serves as a compass to gage all other stories.
We not only need to be restor(y)ed so that our imagination is centered on Christ, we also need to repeat the story of the gospel from week to week.
Studies have shown that children often need stories to be repeated in order to help them form their mind in integrated ways. If a child is throwing a tantrum in reaction to a upsetting event, they are showing that there is confusion in the balance of their corpus callosum. The most effective proven way to deal with this is to retell the story of the upsetting event over and over again until the story forms their imagination in way that allows them to process their body into the right behavior. Certainly this is good information for parents, but this is also key for all of us who are children of God. We all have struggles in our life of faith with Christ. Even as adults we are faced with upsetting events and a constant thrust of the wrong stories that need a consistent washing of the imagination with the story of the gospel.
All of these ideas are not just scientific or conspiracy theory. This idea of retelling the gospel story in worship is also a biblical one. Allof the passages in the bible that talk about the worship in the temple show us that they were centered on telling the story of the gospel of Jesus. For example, in 1 Kings chapter 8 we see that the sacrifices of the temple were focused on the worshipper coming to worship and seeking atonement for their sins that was represented by the blood of bulls and goats. This blood was a foreshadowing of the blood of Christ. Once the sin offering was made, there was an offering of praise (or ascension) as well as a peace offering. The praise offering assured the worshipper of the grace of the gospel, and the peace offering involved a meal that celebrated the gospel of Christ which is a foreshadowing of the Lord’s Supper. There is not space here to develop this further, but these sacrifices were all a picture of the gospel that were repeated every time worship happened in the temple. Other passages to consider here are Leviticus 7:16-21, 9, Nehemiah 8, Isaiah 6, Deuteronomy 5, 2 Chronicles 5-7, Joshua 24, Romans 11-15, 1 Corinthians 11-15, and Revelation 4-21.
What does all of this have to do with where we are going in worship?
We hope to create a culture in our congregation that considers, understands, and embraces the ideas that have been unpacked in this post and in the last few posts as a whole. We hope to be people who are worshipping God in ways that are centered on the traditions of Christ and not the traditions of man, as well as people who understand that forming our imagination with the gospel of Christ is key to our spiritual formation and how we become mature disciples.
Consider these words from James Smith, a Christian professor:
“We have wrongly assumed that Christianity is primarily a ‘message' and is only defined by content. Along with this comes the assumption that forms are basically neutral containers for the message, selected on the basis of taste, preference, or cultural relevance. When this happens we begin to approach Christian worship as an event for disseminating the message and look for forms that are fresh and relevant. For example, we might distill the ‘message’ in a ‘mall container,’ a ‘coffee shop container,’ or a ‘rock concert container.’ Such strategies are inherently ‘intellectualist,’ because they reduce the gospel to a propositional ‘message’ and they miss the formative power of the forms themselves. The forms of the mall or coffee shop are not just benign containers that carry any content. These forms are already ‘aimed and loaded’ with complex rituals and practices that carry a vision of the good life. So we might think that we are making Jesus relevant, in fact we are unwittingly teaching worshippers and seekers to treat Jesus like any other commodity they encounter in the mall, because the formation of the mall unconsciously trains us to relate to the world as consumers. Unfortunately, because the church remains fixated on content and ‘messages,’ it fails to see what’s really at stake: our imaginations. The world understands this and the power of story to form our imaginations. Why should the devil get all the best stories?”
For example, marketing strategies of the world seek to target our imagination, not just give us information. They understand that we primarily desire to be loved and to love others, so they tell us a story about what they want us to love or what makes us feel loved. They may put up a picture of a new piece of clothing that looks good to the eyes so we imagine ourself in it, and we feel better about who we are, or we imagine that if we have it, someone else will love us more. This kind of marketing prevails almost endlessly in every industry, and the content is not really the issue. The things they are selling might be biblically good or worldly bad, but for the sake of this discussion, the point is that marketing targets our imagination, and it works. Social media is also a big player in this discussion. Many of us religiously interact with our smart phones and tablets and, whether we think about it or not, this is forming our imagination. This media tells us stories that we pursue or reject. Again, it’s not that the media is bad, but the fact that formation is happening. For example, if you follow some of your friends on Facebook while they are on vacation, you imagine yourself there with them on vacation. We do this without even thinking about it. Because of the creativity of Facebook, you are placed into their story, and as you follow them your desires are being formed by your imagination. This is true whether you want to admit it or not. It’s likely that you could then find yourself actually planning and going on a vacation. There are many other illustrations that can be used here, but we need to move on.
This idea of forming our imagination is also a biblical one. The bible is constantly talking about loving God with our heart. There is an exhaustive list of passages that we do not have space to list here, but it is a very common idea in the scriptures for us to have the “desires of our heart” or the “meditations of our heart” centered on God. In the culture of biblical times the word “heart” had a different meaning than it does for us in our time. When we think of the word “heart,” we most likely think about the organ in our body that pumps our blood. In the bible, the word “heart” means, “the hidden center of one’s being,” the place that we fix our eyes on. The things we pursue. In our time, this “hidden center of our being” is called as our imagination.
How do you form the human imagination? As you can probably see from some of the illustrations above, the best way to form our imagination is to use story.
What does all of this have to do with worship?
The world is full of stories and media forms that seek to tell you what is true and good to pursue as a vision of the good life. Several years ago, MTV started reality TV, and now most networks have embraced this and seek to give a story that forms you of what they want to call the “real world.” But there is only one real story for this world to follow and that is the gospel story of Jesus Christ. The church needs to embrace the story of Jesus in worship so that we are all edified away from the wrong stories and formed by the one true story of the gospel. This is not to say that the gospel is the only good story, but it is certainly the foundational story that serves as a compass to gage all other stories.
We not only need to be restor(y)ed so that our imagination is centered on Christ, we also need to repeat the story of the gospel from week to week.
Studies have shown that children often need stories to be repeated in order to help them form their mind in integrated ways. If a child is throwing a tantrum in reaction to a upsetting event, they are showing that there is confusion in the balance of their corpus callosum. The most effective proven way to deal with this is to retell the story of the upsetting event over and over again until the story forms their imagination in way that allows them to process their body into the right behavior. Certainly this is good information for parents, but this is also key for all of us who are children of God. We all have struggles in our life of faith with Christ. Even as adults we are faced with upsetting events and a constant thrust of the wrong stories that need a consistent washing of the imagination with the story of the gospel.
All of these ideas are not just scientific or conspiracy theory. This idea of retelling the gospel story in worship is also a biblical one. Allof the passages in the bible that talk about the worship in the temple show us that they were centered on telling the story of the gospel of Jesus. For example, in 1 Kings chapter 8 we see that the sacrifices of the temple were focused on the worshipper coming to worship and seeking atonement for their sins that was represented by the blood of bulls and goats. This blood was a foreshadowing of the blood of Christ. Once the sin offering was made, there was an offering of praise (or ascension) as well as a peace offering. The praise offering assured the worshipper of the grace of the gospel, and the peace offering involved a meal that celebrated the gospel of Christ which is a foreshadowing of the Lord’s Supper. There is not space here to develop this further, but these sacrifices were all a picture of the gospel that were repeated every time worship happened in the temple. Other passages to consider here are Leviticus 7:16-21, 9, Nehemiah 8, Isaiah 6, Deuteronomy 5, 2 Chronicles 5-7, Joshua 24, Romans 11-15, 1 Corinthians 11-15, and Revelation 4-21.
What does all of this have to do with where we are going in worship?
We hope to create a culture in our congregation that considers, understands, and embraces the ideas that have been unpacked in this post and in the last few posts as a whole. We hope to be people who are worshipping God in ways that are centered on the traditions of Christ and not the traditions of man, as well as people who understand that forming our imagination with the gospel of Christ is key to our spiritual formation and how we become mature disciples.
Consider these words from James Smith, a Christian professor:
“We have wrongly assumed that Christianity is primarily a ‘message' and is only defined by content. Along with this comes the assumption that forms are basically neutral containers for the message, selected on the basis of taste, preference, or cultural relevance. When this happens we begin to approach Christian worship as an event for disseminating the message and look for forms that are fresh and relevant. For example, we might distill the ‘message’ in a ‘mall container,’ a ‘coffee shop container,’ or a ‘rock concert container.’ Such strategies are inherently ‘intellectualist,’ because they reduce the gospel to a propositional ‘message’ and they miss the formative power of the forms themselves. The forms of the mall or coffee shop are not just benign containers that carry any content. These forms are already ‘aimed and loaded’ with complex rituals and practices that carry a vision of the good life. So we might think that we are making Jesus relevant, in fact we are unwittingly teaching worshippers and seekers to treat Jesus like any other commodity they encounter in the mall, because the formation of the mall unconsciously trains us to relate to the world as consumers. Unfortunately, because the church remains fixated on content and ‘messages,’ it fails to see what’s really at stake: our imaginations. The world understands this and the power of story to form our imaginations. Why should the devil get all the best stories?”
In response to this very interesting quote, consider Luke 19:45-46 where Jesus responds to the people of His day who brought the shopping mall into the temple instead of focusing it on a prayerful telling of His gospel story.
“When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Hopefully, we can all begin to see the importance of focusing on forming our imagination in worship and the role that story plays in this. We do not want to become people who only relate to God with a bunch of separated facts of information and beliefs that are not put into practice. If we do not use the story of the gospel as the over-arcing way that we worship, then this is exactly the kind of people or order of worship that will form, simply because that is what we are telling people to imagine even if we don’t consciously think about it or say it with our words. We need to recognize this and begin to approach worship with more than discussion about contemporary or traditional preference debates. Such strategies are shaping us into the wrong people. We have to do better than this. Our hearts and the hearts of our children are at stake.
As we think about creating a culture in this church that thinks about worship in this way, we want to include some of the training material that we give our worship team members that highlights the culture we are trying to create in the WBC Worship Arts Ministry team so that these things can spill over into the congregation.
Vision for Our Team: We, as the people of God, gather to tell, receive, and join in the story of the Triune God.
Distinctive: We hope to tell the story of God in rich beauty to inspire the Christian imagination. We develop a collaborative community of humble artists putting the story before the artist. We invite the people to be priests in the story.
Strategy: We seek to develop artists and craftsman to tell the story of God with beauty and imagination. We develop teams of servants, not superstars. Production supports the story; it does not drive it.
Values: We value excellence and not perfection. We value feedback. We are lifelong learners.
In conclusion, we need your help in the area of worship. Please give us feedback so that we can all learn together. One of the ways we would like for you to communicate with us is by participating in a survey on worship. Click here to give us your thoughts. Also, please contact our worship arts pastor Jay Trull at 972.937.9590 or jay.trull@waxahachiebible.org for more information or discussion about worship at WBC.
“When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Hopefully, we can all begin to see the importance of focusing on forming our imagination in worship and the role that story plays in this. We do not want to become people who only relate to God with a bunch of separated facts of information and beliefs that are not put into practice. If we do not use the story of the gospel as the over-arcing way that we worship, then this is exactly the kind of people or order of worship that will form, simply because that is what we are telling people to imagine even if we don’t consciously think about it or say it with our words. We need to recognize this and begin to approach worship with more than discussion about contemporary or traditional preference debates. Such strategies are shaping us into the wrong people. We have to do better than this. Our hearts and the hearts of our children are at stake.
As we think about creating a culture in this church that thinks about worship in this way, we want to include some of the training material that we give our worship team members that highlights the culture we are trying to create in the WBC Worship Arts Ministry team so that these things can spill over into the congregation.
Vision for Our Team: We, as the people of God, gather to tell, receive, and join in the story of the Triune God.
Distinctive: We hope to tell the story of God in rich beauty to inspire the Christian imagination. We develop a collaborative community of humble artists putting the story before the artist. We invite the people to be priests in the story.
Strategy: We seek to develop artists and craftsman to tell the story of God with beauty and imagination. We develop teams of servants, not superstars. Production supports the story; it does not drive it.
Values: We value excellence and not perfection. We value feedback. We are lifelong learners.
In conclusion, we need your help in the area of worship. Please give us feedback so that we can all learn together. One of the ways we would like for you to communicate with us is by participating in a survey on worship. Click here to give us your thoughts. Also, please contact our worship arts pastor Jay Trull at 972.937.9590 or jay.trull@waxahachiebible.org for more information or discussion about worship at WBC.
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