After A While..A Thought

After such a long break from posting here I would be very surprised that many would be checking back.

It has been an incredibly interesting year since I last posted. For all intents I have retired from truly pursuing a professional career in music. The occasional "gig" is still happening and I have begun to look at Logic again and see what I was in process on when I took a break, but ultimately there are no plans for anything significant.

The one constant is leading worship at my local church, and I do hope to continue doing that until I am no longer relevant - hopefully many years from now.

As I reflect on this past year and all of the interactions I have had with different leaders within different churches, my main concern is still around the lack of biblical grounding in our opinions on worship. I largely do not care about style conversations, liturgy conversations, or tradition conversations, either positively or negatively, until I hear the "calling" to any such an approach from someones interaction with the bible. Why do worship? How do we organize? What standards on skill and personal walk do we value and enforce? There are many more questions to answer.

To me, if one has a desire to lead worship in a church, I think that desire should be formed from a passion to fulfill what scripture has asked us to do in that area. What is God's heart on the matter?  If we are not able to articulate that passion clearly and succinctly with a spiritually discernible authenticity, what are we doing again?

Simply Worship

A brief thought. As so many of us continue to think about what worship is, I wonder if we have become too intellectual and abstract in our thinking.

For instance, if I want to create a chocolate bar (a noble goal), I would go through a creative process of thinking about the flavour I wanted, how it would be put together and held together, how it would be packaged and produced. All of that would take time, planning, creativity and execution. There would a simplicity to it though, because through the whole process there would not be much room for error. The bar would either taste good or not. It would hold together or not. It would fit in the package or not...etc. By focusing on what I am trying to accomplish, making a chocolate bar, I simplify so much of the process.

I think an area that needs improvement in many churches is defining worship simply. Again, this might take some work, time, creativity, planning, but if we do not have a simple picture of what we would like it too look and "taste like", it quickly becomes cerebral. Terms like "having a good heart" need to be defined in connection to a pragmatic thought that it should be good. How do you know if the packaging fits if you don't know what you want to put in the package?

If one creates a simple picture, and develops a reasonable plan to achieve it, it becomes simple to see if we are achieving the goal. I do realize there is the other problem, the picture is well defined but there is little appetite or ability to execute the vision, but that is fodder for another post.

Posted via email from Cliff Cline

Great Time At the Well

Over the past two years I have been helping a friend launch a new service at the church he pastors in Toronto. It has been a very interesting experience as I have had the opportunity to implement a strategy for church worship that I believe strongly in. The strategy aligns with my philosophy, derived from the Bible, that worship should be done excellently (see Psalm 33:3) In essence instead of hiring one worship leader we have been bringing in four excellent musicians, one of which is a worship leader, every Sunday. You can imagine, it is a great experience, and solves a common issue with start-ups or small churches: poor music.

Yesterday was another amazing day playing with my friends Eric and Rick and my old friend Kevin Birch. Playing music at a high level is inspirational in and of itself, and I think the effect of great musicality is often lost in the philosophy of worship in the church in general these days. Too many churches value participation over excellence at the expense of properly informed views on Biblical worship. Please note I am referring specifically to the musical expression of worship, but excellence should apply to all our offerings of worship to God.

Although I receive a fair amount of criticism for this view, it should be noted that I do not hold this view vacuous of other Biblical truth. I believe in the importance of the heart and spiritual maturity of leaders, but all cannot be covered in one post. What I think can be agreed on by all those involved in this service is that the out-workings of the philosophy have been reflected to the benefit of this church service plant within a church. In essence, the music is a non-issue every week. Although it is excellent, it simply facilitates worship, does not hinder, does not create debate, it simply serves the church. The musical competence creates a loving barrier to those that might want to hi-jack the worship agenda with any other. We simply worship in spirit and truth with excellence. Who can really criticize that?

Posted via web from Cliff Cline