Reflections on the Cross - Good Friday 8:30pm

My song is love unknown,

my Saviour's love for me;

love to the loveless shown

that they might lovely be:

but who am I,

that for my sake,

my Lord should take frail flesh and die?

The evening of Good Friday is the great dramatic pause in the Easter narrative. The events of the day are over. The angry shouts have died away. The body has been laid to rest in the tomb. The Passover has begun. The men and women who stood at the foot of the cross and witnessed the death of Christ have returned to their homes, uncertain and fearful, none with the slightest idea of what will happen next, early in the morning on the third day.

In the quiet of the evening of Good Friday 25^th March 2016, we are going to gather at the Church of the Good Shepherd to reflect on the events of that day and what would happen next. Mike Cain will take us through the gospel writer Luke's narrative of the final moments leading up to the death of Christ, the choir of the Emmanuel church family and friends who sang at Christmas will sing the chorale 'O sacred head surrounded' from Bach's Matthew Passion, the chorus 'Surely he hath borne our griefs' from Handel's Messiah, and the hauntingly beautiful and ultimately joyous 'Solus ad victimam" by Kenneth Leighton and we will sing four great Passiontide hymns together.

Join us on Good Friday at 8:15pm for 8:30pm at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Bishop Road, BS7 8NA for this quiet, reflective, candlelit service. Friends, neighbours and colleagues especially welcome. Coffee and hot cross buns served before the service.

Lord of the cross of shame,

set our cold hearts aflame

with love for you,

our Saviour and our Master,

who on that lonely day

bore all our sins away

and saved us from the Judgment and disaster.

How should we sing?

This is part 3 in a series of posts on why and how we sing - you can read part 1 here, and part 2 here

If we were to take the words of the great 18^th Century hymn writer John Wesley to heart, then the answer to this question would be 'lustily and with good courage!' The preface to his Select Hymns of 1761 includes the following 'Directions for Singing':

• Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.
• Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but strive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear melodious sound.
• Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

All good, practical advice, and if we paid closer attention to it our singing would sound all the better! But the Bible's 'directions for singing' are less concerned with the sound of our voices and more concerned with the 'sound' of our hearts and our minds. When we sing, we're to do two things:

1. Engage our hearts

Some people get very emotional when they sing. Others don't. Some people wear their proverbial hearts on their sleeves. Others keep their proverbial (and literal) hands in their pockets. But whatever our emotional repertoire, there is no excuse for dry and dispassionate singing. Here's why:

• The content: In Colossians 3:16, Paul urges us to sing the word of Christ '...with gratitude in your hearts to God'. The word of Christ conveys the most profound truth that will ever leave our lips. We are to let that truth travel from our heads to our hearts and awaken the deepest gratitude. Could we ever be so hard-hearted as to be unmoved by that truth?
• The audience: Ephesians 5:19 says we are to 'Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord.' We sing to an audience (in fact, a dual-audience: the Lord and his people) that is foremost in our affections. Why would we ever be content to sing to him or his people absent-mindedly or without feeling?

2. Engage our minds 

In 1 Corinthians 14:14-15, Paul says 'If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind. I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.' You'd think that to be caught up praying in tongues would be a amazing spiritual state in which Paul would want to stay as long as possible. Amazingly, he says that if he finds himself in that state while meeting with fellow-believers, he deliberately re-engages his mind. Paul turns our thinking on its head. We think the spiritual thing is to indulge in the altered emotional state of an ecstatic moment. Paul says the spiritual thing is to re-engage the mind. In the same way, if we find our minds are disengaged while singing (whether caught up in emotion or simply with thoughts that are miles away) we are to check ourselves and re-engage them. We're to be quite deliberate about this. We're to pay close attention to the words we're singing.

It's only by engaging our minds that we truly engage our hearts

Music is immensely powerful. It can move us to joy or tears. It can make us think we've had a supernatural experience, or bring about an altered emotional state that makes us susceptible to choices we'd not otherwise make. In the emotional roller-coaster of sung worship, how can we ever know that what we're feeling is authentic? The answer is to engage both mind and heart. To engage the heart but not the mind is to have joy without truth (which is false joy). To engage the mind but not the heart is to have truth without joy (which is pitiful). But to engage both heart and mind is to be exactly where the Lord wants us to be: rejoicing in the truth.

Why do we Sing?

This is part 2 in a series of posts on why and how we sing - you can read part 1 here.

We'll never get this right until we get a bigger question right: why we gather at all! Thankfully 1 Corinthians 14 makes that purpose clear. In the exercising of spiritual gifts when we gather, there is one overriding purpose: that the church would be 'edified' (built up). 

Paul states this purpose several times - 

• In 14:2-5, in the gathering he prefers the edification of the church to the edification of the individual believer. 
• In 14:12 he urges the Corinthians to 'excel in gifts that build up the church'. 
• In 14:17 he wants 'the other man to be edified' rather than simply have an individual believer give thanks. 
• He sums it up in 14:26, 'What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.' 

If the purpose of the gathering is to build up the church, then we need to make sure that our singing (just as much as our praying and our preaching) is the sort of singing that builds up the church.

How might our singing build up the church?
Singing great songs with a great band in a great crowd can sometimes feel very encouraging. But what if the crowd is small, the singing is thin, and the music is off key? 1 Corinthians 14 gives a bigger and better answer that works whether we're in a crowd of 10,000 or a crowd of 10. It says the church is edified as the word of Christ is heard clearly and understood. 

Paul emphasises intelligibility several times. 

• In 14:9 he asks, 'Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying?' 
• In 14:13 he urges people to pray for their 'speaking in tongues' to be interpreted.
• In 14:19 he says, 'I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.' 

If the church is built up as his word is heard and understood, then we need to make sure that our singing (just as much as our praying and our preaching) serves that process.

What does this mean for what we sing and how we sing it?
1 Corinthians 14 encourages us to prioritise. 

First, all sorts of activities done in all sorts of ways may be spiritually beneficial, but we're to set some of them aside or do them in better ways when the church gathers. So while we might enjoy listening to all sorts of Christian songs when we're alone, when we gather we'll prioritise particular songs in which his word is heard and understood so that the church is built up. 

Second, we're to prioritise other people's spiritual welfare over our own. In 14:16-17, Paul rebukes the worshipper who is lost in an ecstatic moment but is ignoring his or her fellow worshipper. 'You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified!' So we'll want to sing the sorts of songs that will help them (and in a way that will help them) rather than the sorts of songs that will help us. This approach embodies the other-person-centredness of Christ himself. And while it may be counter-intuitive, it works. Instead of having 100 worshippers in a room each seeking their own moments of private communion with God, for each person you have 99 others seeking that person's spiritual welfare. If we were to take this seriously, the impact could be dramatic!

Why and how we sing - some help from Colossians 3:16

We've spent the last few Sundays at Emmanuel Bishopston and Westbury looking together at what the Bible teaches about church. Last Sunday we looked at Colossians 3 (listen back here if you missed it).

Over the next few weeks Richard Powell, who heads up music at Emmanuel Westbury, is going to be blogging some thoughts on the part played by music and singing in our gatherings. For starters - here are Richard's answers to three common questions, working just out of what we see in Colossians 3:16

Why do we sing?

In Colossians 3:16 we are urged to ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God’. In the original language, the two halves of this verse are more closely related, so that the psalms, hymns and spiritual songs are the means of teaching and admonishing. It reads something more like, 'Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratitude in your hearts to God.' 

As we heard on Sunday, the ‘teaching and admonishing’ of 3:16 is the same as the 'admonishing and teaching of Colossians 1:28, where Paul says, ‘We proclaim him (Christ), admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.’ The purpose of teaching and admonishing one another is therefore that we become more like Christ. Since, in 3:16, teaching and admonishing is to be done through psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, it follows that one of the great reasons we sing is to help each other become more like Christ.

How do we decide songs what to sing?

We don't choose them randomly! Nor are they simply the musicians' favourites! Colossians 3:16 says that we are to ‘let the word of Christ dwell in us richly' as we sing. In view of this, we try to choose songs that reflect the content of the sermon. So we ask ourselves questions like, “What might it be helpful to sing before the sermon? What might prepare us to hear the reading and sermon more clearly? Last Sunday, one of the verses that came early in the reading was 3:12 'Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved...' So before the reading we sang the song 'Loved before the dawn of time' to dwell on the truth that we are 'loved, chosen, hidden, cherished'.

Similarly, we try to anticipate where might our thoughts be at the end of the sermon. What might we want to say to each other or to God in response to what he has said to us? Is there a song that helps us to say those things? On Sunday, as we learnt from Colossians 3:9-17 that the purpose of church is to help us become more like Christ, after the sermon we sang the hymn 'May the mind of Christ my Saviour', a prayer that as people look at us they would ultimately see Christ. In the song 'Holy Spirit, living breath of God' that followed it, our prayer was that 'in unity, the face of Christ may be clear for all the world to see'. Mindful of the three times in Colossians 3:15-17 we are urged to be thankful, we ended the service with 'Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King'.

What part can the worship leader play in this?

The New Testament says nothing about a role of ‘worship leader’. Paul, for example, does not impress on Timothy the importance of appointing skilled musicians to every church for which he is responsible. This silence is very odd if (as is sometimes said or implied) worship leaders are vital to our engagement with God. In fact, we don't need 'worship leaders', if by that title we mean someone who leads us in making an offering to God, or who leads us into the presence of God. In the light of Christ's once for all offering of himself, the nature and purpose of our gathered worship has forever changed. Christ has forever taken us into the presence of God, and we do not come and go from his presence or he from ours depending on what songs we sing, how we sing them, or who is at the front leading us. I will say more about both of these things in later posts.

But Colossians 3:16 says that we are to ‘let the word of Christ dwell in us richly' as we sing. So the worship leader is not to conduct an offering, nor to mediate the presence of God, but to minister the word in song. Like every other leader, they are to help us to hear, understand and dwell on the word of Christ. They have the unique privilege of doing that in song, harnessing music in all its beauty and using it as a vehicle to deliver the word of Christ.

Want help getting the Bible open with a friend? Read on...

Ever felt you were missing out? One by one, more and more of my Christian friends are starting to read a gospel one-to-one with a friend or colleague, with the simple aim of introducing them to Jesus. Deep down, I'd love to be doing that too. I'm pretty sure that if only my colleagues read Jesus' words for themselves, they'd completely change their minds about him. But I'm nervous of how they'd react if I suggested it to them, and I just can't see how I'd ever get started.

So I'm planning to spend some time with someone whose enthusiasm for this sort of thing is infectious. I want to ask him how to get over that first hurdle. I want to hear how he goes about it and what material he uses. And I want to hear his stories of how, time and time again, over many years, he's seen God calling his friends and colleagues to faith in Jesus, by the simple act of reading a gospel with them.

On 13th June, we have a not-to-be-missed opportunity to spend an evening with Richard Borgonon, an insurance executive in the City of London, quizzing him on why he has found this to be so effective and why he now spends half his week in sixteen one-to-ones. He's co-authored some material that he talks about below. This material has proved so popular it is now being sold around the world and being translated in Chinese.

One other thing. In January, we decided that the 2014 Bristol City Centre Talk series should come from John's gospel. In choosing John's gospel for our apologetics talks, it seems we weren't alone. We've since heard of a recent university mission, and a new Tim Keller book 'Encounters with Jesus', both based in John's gospel. And Richard Borgonon's material? A set of one-to-one studies based in... John's gospel. Funny that.

So join us on the evening of 13th June and hear how God has enabled Richard Borgonon to put John's gospel in front of his friends and colleagues, and how Jesus has walked off those pages into their lives. Spaces are limited so please contact me at richard.powell108@gmail.com to reserve a place.