Bay Area Theology Podcast
Theology from the Bay, for the Bay.
The Bay Area Theology Podcast features conversations that seek to discern and discover the presence and purpose of the Christian God at work in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bay Area Theology Podcast
Episode 6 - Worshipping God Covered in Cinnamon Dust with David Busch
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The most influential theologians in the church today are not the preachers; rather, it's the worship pastors and leaders.
In this conversation with David Busch, Minister of Music & Worship Arts at First Baptist Church of San Francisco, joins us as we discuss the significance of worship and music in the theological formation of the church. Our conversation covers biblical, theological, philosophical and practical elements of worship and how music functions in such a powerful way in the life of disciples of Christ.
Music and worship is often a hot topic issue, and can draw out a variety of opinions on almost any major and minor issue they contain. But David helps all who will listen with open minds and hearts to consider various ideas that God has helped him to develop over a lifetime of study and service.
Please join us for this next installment of the Bay Area Theology Podcast.
David is from Detroit, Michigan. Two things most people don't know is that he is shy and that he has played music in all but 4 states! If he could eat anywhere in SF, it would be a place that has a warm atmosphere with books and beautiful architecture accompanied by family and friends. (from FirstSF website)
To learn more about this podcast and more that we are doing, you can go to bayareatheology.org.
This is a podcast of Bayseed Collective. Learn more at bayseed.org.
This is Theology from the Bay, for the Bay.
You are listening to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. Theology from the Bay for the Bay. This podcast has been brought to you by Bayseed Collective. Learn more about it at Bayseed.org. In this podcast, we host conversations with local ministry and thought leaders on theology, ministry, culture, and life in the Bay Area with Dr. Cameron Schweitzer and Ricky Blaha. Everyone's a theologian.
SPEAKER_05That's right. Everyone. Hi guys. Welcome back to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. This is Cameron Schweitzer, the director of Gateway Seminary here in the San Francisco Bay Area, professor of theology. And to my right, I have a friend, Dave Bush, a fellow uh budding theologian and pastor at the First Baptist Church, not only of San Francisco, but all of California. That's true. And he uh serves there as is it associate pastor? I should have asked you. I have I have your title. Tell us your title.
SPEAKER_02The ridiculous title ever: Minister of Music and Worship Arts, comma, environs. Environs? Basically, environs, yeah. So, like, what does that mean? I am uh because you know it's only gonna take you a couple hours to put together the worship set every week. So we really need someone to oversee the four properties, including the 1906 building, the 1886 firehouse, the admin building, and the preschool. Um, so that way we can offer you a full-time job. Hey, you know what? I'm grateful for it. And it provides for my family, and it's uh made a way for my wife and I to raise three girls in a small Northern California town of Petaluma during the week, and then on the weekends, we get to be in cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, ultra-urban San Francisco.
SPEAKER_05And what neighborhood is your traditional remind me again?
SPEAKER_02We're in Hayes Valley, so we're right at the corner of Market Street and Octavia, where 101 hits use used to be a double decker superstructure there. They took it down in 89.
SPEAKER_05Wow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, I'm so excited to to have you here. Uh, we were having a conversation right before the recording started, at least when I did the official intro, and we're just gonna go back to that and then we'll sort of bob and weave as if we are a wide receiver trying to avoid a defense, you know, maybe like George Kill or something avoiding the Seahawks, but that failed. So we'll do much better than George Kittle. Hopefully, not tear our near ACL or what have you. Hopefully not. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Uh if I tear an ACL at a podcast, I have even more like health issues than I, you know, the exercise needs.
SPEAKER_04It also might be a great headline for people that are interested in knowing what happens here on the podcast. Right.
SPEAKER_05We we tore an ACL and celebrated the touchdowns before George Kittle. But yeah, guys, so uh what we were doing is we were talking about music and what music uh evokes in people. And Dave and Ricky are both uh well-trained musicians. They, you know, have practiced different instruments, they're both good singers. I I love listening to both of them play, but as someone who has no musical bone in my body, when I listen to folks like you talk about music and music theory, it it's always fascinating to me because, like I was saying, it's as if I'm looking at an impenetrable fog that I appreciate, but I don't really understand, or as we joke that it's like you're speaking Swahili, and then of course you do speak Swahili. You start speaking Swahili, and I don't even understand it. So it's just to go back to that, and today we're gonna discuss music, the theology of music and worship, and try to have an intertwined conversation with that and with your upbringing and how it got you to be the worship pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Francisco and one of the most beautiful buildings, I think, in all of California churches. So going back to what you were saying, you you you said that you found it interesting that I made that comment about an impenetrable fog.
SPEAKER_02First of all, I think ministers of music and senior pastors uh side plug someday I'm gonna write a book and it's gonna be a switch book, and the front one side will say senior pastors for dummy dummies, and then the other side will say music pastors or ministers of music for dummies. Okay, and they'll be for one another. But I feel like we so often forget that there are not people who are just instantly moved by music or instantly moved and and in like just intrinsically, they're able to grab hold of theology. And so that's what we were talking about. You said that you talked about this fog. I said, I want I'm so glad you said that because I feel like I want to talk about doctrine that way, especially Baptists and doctrine. Because if you come to bap uh Baptist circles and uh and even reformed circles, these ideas about Trinity, these ideas about um justification, sanctification, and like some terms or doctrinal like treaties that we just think, oh yes, these are important. I felt like the same impenetrable fog coming from a summons of God. Like, do you feel the Holy Spirit moving? I mean, we were memorizing scripture, we were learning the Bible, we were focused on the Lord and what does God, what does it actually say? I mean, everything wasn't just like a feel-good, like, you know, who stole my Honda should have bought a Hyundai. Um, that's a joke. Please don't be offended. Anyone who drives a Honda or who exercises gifts of the Spirit because the Holy Spirit is still alive, obviously, or else we have some real problems with our Trinitarian theology. But I just came into this kind of like the Baptist world. My best friends were two sons of a Baptist minister, and he would have conversations about God. And I love this man, but I just could not understand what he was saying. Like it was it was just a different world. And so, to my point, that fog for me with music was lifted because I think my parents educated me.
SPEAKER_05But if you said earlier that you were heading back after a service where you were afraid of the rapture, or like, what was that a fear of the rapture? Like, I'm looking for the rapture.
SPEAKER_02I heard Box air on the G strings.
SPEAKER_05To me, that that evidence is the way that you feel and think about music. Right. That's a different language to what I'm even beginning to approximate and speak.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So some of the so we had just heard about the rapture in church, and and on the way home, we had we're listening to classical radio, classical music on the radio on the drive back home, and box air on the G string um was played. And it was the first time I heard it. I was probably six or seven. Oh my gosh. I heard this and I just started crying, and I was just like, This is amazing. And my mom and dad were like, What is why are you was everything okay? I'm like, This is the sound that it'll be like with the rapture, and so like you know, we talked kind of the the physics or the the nuts and bolts of the air on the G string is this idea of flight that happens, not because the sound, the notes go higher and higher and higher. Um, there's an amazing violin piece called The Lark Ascending, where the violin just keeps going up and up like the larks do and they sing in the morning. But instead, Bach just holds out one F sharp. So he just starts there. Yeah. Like it opens and it's F sharp. What happens is down below it, you've got dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum. I don't have enough range to go there, but you have the bottom kind of drop out, and so it gives you the sense of like an eagle soaring where it's not even flapping its wings, doing all this, it's just one like continuous stroke, right? It just wings held out while everything else drops away below it. And no one explained that to me as a six or seven-year-old. It's just like intuitive, intuitive, just latched on. And I think we as Baptists, we can feel like growing up in Baptist Sunday school, Baptist ideas, these words, um, sanctification, propitiation. That's a great one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um expiation. Yes, these and and the meanings behind them are just as emotionally moving. Jesus made propitiation for my sin. I'm on her something inside my chest just opened up, right? Like I can't do it. I am so sinful, yeah, so sinful, even though I'm redeemed, just the desire for things that are not good for me, the desire to get involved in things that I should not be a part of. But Jesus more than paid, he propitiated for me. Um, but unless you have someone unpack that for you when you're young, it becomes a very foreign, very foggy world very quickly of like, oh yeah, that means this, and God is doing this for me. And somehow marriage is a picture of the Trinity. Now I'm a fraud. Like, yeah, so I do feel like we have to be, and I feel like the the difference is being willing to unlock things for people. So, like my parents would help unlock my emotions for me with music or help me understand. So, are they classically trained? No, my dad is a nuclear physicist, and my mom was like a stay-at-home mother who wanted to be a nurse and kind of became like a um, you know, amateur botanist with like uh orchids and things.
SPEAKER_04I just find it fascinating that as Assembly of God uh attenders or members that you were listening to classical music on the way home from church.
SPEAKER_05That's what made me think that they were like classically trained musicians because who's listening to classical music in the car with their kids unless they have done that themselves.
SPEAKER_02I will say that I feel like you know, parents make all sorts of mistakes, and you know, my poor brothers and sisters who are all older than me, except for one, um, they probably got most of the mistakes. But I did feel like my parents, what they did well is train up a child in their way, and when they are old, they will not you know strip them. Yeah. And so I feel like my mum and dad were really good at like identifying at least my gifts.
SPEAKER_05So they play classical music only with you.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I don't know if they did on their own, but they just they just exposed me to a lot of classical music. And uh the church I grew up in, the pastor loved music. Like I was playing violin when I was Michigan. So I grew up in There you go.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, what part have we talked about this? What part of Michigan?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'm from if if you're on the radio, you can't see me, but I'm holding up my hand as a true Michigander because it's how we use body parts for directions. Like your glove, the Michigan glove. Michigan glove, and I'm pointing, just follow the line of the thumb down to mid-palm and not quite the center, not quite the right. So down there's that's where Ann Arbor. Yeah, you're from Ann Arbor. That's where Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are at, and that's where uh University of Michigan and I was gonna say your dad is probably at University of Michigan, right? No, he actually went to Houghton College in uh New York, and uh the George Beverly Shays family helped my mom and dad get together because uh they got to when my mother wanted to visit or my dad wanted to visit, I don't remember who it was, but they stayed with the Shays um because they couldn't possibly stay in the same place back in the 40s. So wow, yeah. So I grew up in Michigan and adopted. I was adopted.
SPEAKER_05Were all of your siblings adopted?
SPEAKER_02No, so my mom and dad had they had their five children, and then uh but they my mother's real passion was children, and my father saw that. And I don't know if my father's passion was children, he loved us, but imagine kind of like the absent-minded professor. That is my father to a T.
SPEAKER_05I mean, he is That's kind of scary though, if he was a nuclear physicist. Like, that's not the absent-minded professor.
SPEAKER_02I'm like, uh oh, what happened to the absent-minded about fathering until the later part of his life. Okay, not about physics and no, because I mean, this is the guy that worked on the Star Wars project, you know, your uh match point recognition for your thumbs stuff. That was originally a top secret CIA project and for the New York uh police department. Okay, because they were trying to find a way to sort through millions of fingerprints. So it used to be that you had to show the, you know, a person had to look at each of those and compare it. So, you know, that kind of stuff was dad. Um, holography, uh uh radio spectrometry, uh looking at pictures of atoms exploding, trying to do cold fusion, which they just like got like a minute and a half or something over.
SPEAKER_05I heard that that they're trying to do cold fusion now and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02I was really excited when it happened. I called my dad. Um, he passed away this past December, just a couple months ago. But before that is when this breakthrough happened at in, I think uh over in Europe. And uh I'm like, Dad, they got this many, they got like a minute and something, or whatever it was. And uh we were we were both geeking out about it. But yeah, he was he was very, very astute and well respected in his field, but he was a churchman and he also thought like I need to support, I need to, you know, lay down my life for my wife, and she loved children. So they raised over 300 foster kids.
SPEAKER_04Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02And then um towards the end of that period, um, they started doing like so they did medical emergencies and terminal children. So all all of my siblings and I and my sister have you know held little babies who had heart problems. Some of us held children as they died. Like, how do we do this? Well, we just love them, we hold them until Jesus holds them. Wow. So as a child, that's all you need. You don't need to know more than that. All of a sudden, you know what to do, you're empowered. And so, you know, my dad is this amazing scientific mind genius, but my mother was like a genius with children, with exposing children to the gospel and just loving people without making it be a Christian thing. So, into that environment, my sister and I came. And was your sister adopted? My sister was adopted with me, my younger sister.
SPEAKER_05Were you are you siblings? We're half siblings.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. And um, so yeah, so you can imagine when I held my first child in my arms, like just like how intense that was, like to have my own blood. So that's that's the environment we grew up in, and I mean And they basically gave you exposed you to classical music.
SPEAKER_04They saw a leaning in that direction, gifting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I guess I constantly sang and would walk around with a tape recorder and like making up songs, and they're like, Well, let's teach this kid violin.
SPEAKER_05Dang that sound like my son.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So so that's what we did, and our church was great. We had huge like cantatas for Christmas, Easter. I I still can probably sit down and transcribe most of those, every part, every orchestral part. That's phenomenal. It's just wow, and and the pastor would let us be involved. Like, so you you got a little, you know, I was eight years old playing um Handel's Messiah. You know, the violin part from So did you learn violin or piano first? Um, I was not allowed to play piano. I only played violin because my mother wanted me to be the world's best violinist, which I'm sorry to say I did not beat that. Um I would only want to do it for her, but um, I couldn't do it. Um, I was very, very good as a child though. Do you still play now then? I still play. Um I took a little bit of a break. Um, I'm actually in a couple weeks I'm starting back up with the San Francisco Civic Symphony. Uh Civic Strings, actually. And uh yeah.
SPEAKER_05So when did you start playing piano?
SPEAKER_02So when I was 17 or 18, I just really wanted to lead music. Yeah. And um, I'm like, Lord, if you'll just teach me how to play piano, then I will always give you the credit for it. And so I knew enough about music, like scales and the importance of you know, practicing and learning, knowing your instrument and how things work. So I would just start during lunchtime. There was an empty uh band room that had piano in it, and I got permission to go in there and because it had to be secret, because it was kind of I was really rebelling.
SPEAKER_05So mom would have been very mad if you should know you're playing piano.
SPEAKER_02I'd I probably she was fine with it, but you know how as kids actually weird ideas you had, yeah. I just think like this was like this was not allowed.
SPEAKER_05Wow, what what a way to rebel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Playing piano secretly. Well, I resolves were smoking pot and their moms and no, you know what?
SPEAKER_02I did listen to rap music when I was really mad at my parents, or they would make a decision that I thought was like unfair. I would go up to my room late at night and and like dial in the rap stations coming out of Detroit and and I would just listen to them. And uh sometimes I could understand it, but and often they're talking about things I knew nothing about, living the life of white privilege. We were talking about like life on the streets in Detroit, and um, you know, but I would just listen to it like, yeah, I'm rebelling.
SPEAKER_05Like why boys in the suburbs listen to hardcore gangster rap?
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, I I was just a mess. So yeah. So you started teaching yourself piano? Yeah. So my gosh. Yeah, I felt like the Lord just showed me how it worked and how to do things, and um, and then I would ask when there would be a pianist who was really good, I would ask them, like, oh, show me what you did there. And so did you then end up learning how to read music later? Or I I knew how to read music for for violin and for voice.
SPEAKER_05And is that the same thing as piano? Is that the same kind of music?
SPEAKER_02So treble clef in piano goes into your right hand and bass clef goes in your left hand. On violin, treble clef goes into your left hand. So sometimes I'd be playing piano and I would be I ended up playing both hands the right the treble clef.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's funny.
SPEAKER_02So uh so you know I've never really achieved uh the split brain that you need to really be a good pianist. So I I can fight my way through reading sheet music. If I can hear it, then I can usually play it. So like I once figured out like uh most of the first movement of the Greek piano conscious on A minor by just listening to it and like experimenting with it on the piano and figuring it out. But like I will never be a concert pianist.
SPEAKER_04So I know that some people, and this is something that I face because a lot of the people that I've worked with, a lot of the musicians that I've worked with over the years, uh were classically trained, and but then if you give them chord sheets or you give them something to work with that's more abstract than death, uh you know, definite, um, they just have a hard time playing by ear or playing by chords. Like how how did that work for you? Were you like it's it sounds to me like you just said like if you put some sheet music in front of you could work your way through it, but generally speaking, you could figure it out without right.
SPEAKER_02So if I have violin or if I'm singing, I can just read it spot on. That's not a problem. Um, as it should be, shouldn't be, because I spent a lot of years of my life learning all this stuff. But I maybe this is uh nod to again my Assemblies of God's roots and African American church roots where a lot of people are African American? No, no, but um one of my brother-in-laws is African American and some of my nephews and nieces are.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02And um But you went to a black AOG church? No, I went to a very white assemblies of God church, but you know, I lived in southern Michigan and um near Detroit, where there was large concentrations of black people and black church and white church, and my black friends that you know, one of my best friends in high school was was black, and you know, we'd make jokes about if God is really moving in a black church, it gets quiet. And if God's really moving in a white church, people start hollering.
SPEAKER_05That's so funny.
SPEAKER_02And you know, so as kids, you just make these you you're picking up things in the world and trying to make your own set of like observations, and so but growing up, I would hear like you know these choruses, you know, we make fun of like it's a four-chord song or whatever, and it just repeats the same six lines all over over and over and over again. But you know what? That while that might not be great for transmitting great theology, it's really great for developing a musician's sense of what's coming next. You begin to recognize patterns when there's simple patterns. One of my favorite uh hymns, Wonderful Grace of Jesus, Matchless Grace of Jesus is what's it called? Yeah, Wonderful Grace of Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Wonderful grace of Jesus on that G, you've got like this fully diminished chord. G sus ba da da da da da. Well, you know what? That it's great if you can read music. If you don't know music, every other like syllable in this is a mindfield of where do I go next? And um, but with like choruses for young minds, is oh now we're building up to we're gonna sing the chorus now, or it's gonna be like a my we're going to do a minor sixth, which is kind of that uh deep dark tone or whatever, like I only do dark ominous tones. And um, so I think that was helpful. African American church, a lot of times things are learned by row, and it's very complex harmonies, very under-appreciated musicianship. I think now in the last 20 years, it's been much more appreciated.
SPEAKER_05So, would you start playing music because in the African American churches?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I would play um when I had a chance to go to friends' churches, I'd play there, play at Romanian church. Was it violin or piano? Usually violin, or I'd sing like African-American um gospel choirs, like things like that.
SPEAKER_05So then that was a part of your music development, was being in the black church, in addition to the AOG church.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but not as much, and it wasn't, you know, probably as much as my family even knew that I was going to black church. Um, I was blessed to grow up in that environment. Like at the time, our church was the the most musical it was ever in its life. Just so many opportunities, and a pastor who was willing to to let things not be perfect so that people could learn. That's great.
SPEAKER_05Do you feel like so the AOG church was using music well?
SPEAKER_02I feel like that AOG church was using music.
SPEAKER_05That's what I'm asking. Your AOG church was using music well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And that pastor, because he had a he had a passion for people to be able to worship Jesus and a passion for people to have informed worship. I mean, we still talk there's still things like someone give a word in tongues and then be a translation. But he would always say what we just heard was some what the Bible tells, and read the scripture. This is called this, and now we're gonna wait because we need to have a translation where we can understand it and know what the Lord is trying to tell us. And then you will feel in your heart whether or not this is a word from the Lord for you, or it's correct, or it's wrong. And then we could talk more about it after the service. And he would just very Very calmly explained things. And I've been really blessed to serve under senior pastors like that, both in A.G. circles and Baptist circles, my whole life. So my first um pastorate I served here in uh in California was at a little church in San Rafael called Church of the Open Door. And Pastor Mike Riley there was just so calm when things like this would happen or when there would be like I don't understand this, or you know, just uh explosions in the church for whatever it could be like. Even if it was an unhoused individual who was, you know, suffering the effects of either mental illness or like some drug thing, and they'd come up and drink all the communion cups or come with a knife, and he would just calmly explain things to the people. I feel like, you know, we're we're talking about music and theology, and I I feel there has been so much pressure to have a good, amazing show or amazing sermon, or to sound smart, or to have the pithy that we forget how important it is to just explain what's going on. Yeah. And just to take the time to say, you know, to even just explain the table. How important is that we explain the Lord's Supper and take the time to find a really nice and winsome way to say, if you're not a Christian, then this isn't for you, you know, and to say that we would like to not just turn this into an empty religious expression. Yeah. You're still welcome to process with everyone, you're still welcome to ask for prayer, you can just walk with everyone and ask for a blessing. Um, you know, or you could remain seated. You had that freedom. But I feel like that's one thing when we're talking about theology and worship. For so many years that the the cry of past senior pastors was lead amazing worship musically. Make the Holy Spirit show up and do something. That's right. But don't open your mouth to try to say anything. Yeah. Worship pastor, shut up. And there was a really good reason that so many senior pastors were fearful of their worship leaders or their worship pastors opening their mouths. They wouldn't know what they'd say. Oh, because I mean, we're feeling for the 95% of us are feeling emotional. Like, I just feel that like and we we need that, but like, why do you feel that? Feelings follow actions. Yeah, actions follow informed consent to that action, informed reaction or act ahead of time. You're right. Multiple languages are fighting like to say this is not correct. But I think it's right that senior pastors were scared about what would come out of the mouths of many worship leaders or worship pastors. Because what was what was emphasized since the 70s was mucal musical prowess. Are they able to move a crowd? Yeah. Can they get people excited? And even though this is really good, it was still not explainable very well. Are they spiritually in tune with the Lord? Do they have is their spiritual walk powerful in a way that other people can see and want to emulate? And so yeah, I think that's a great thing for someone to have, but that's kind of like how do you get that? Well, that's kind of like Elisha asking Elijah, well, what's Elijah's response for that when he wants that double portion? He says, You have asked for a difficult thing. It always reminds me I was teaching a class in uh at the seminary when uh Gateway was in Mill Valley and it was Golden Gate Seminary, teaching a worship class for for uh worship pianists. And uh I had all these students and they were like, we want to be able to play the worship piano just like you. And the next question, because I asked them, like, what do you want to get from this class? And then the next question was, uh, is there any way we can reduce the amount of uh practice time that's required for this class?
SPEAKER_05I want to be like you, but you've asked a very difficult thing.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. You cut to the chase there, and that's exactly what the what my response was. And I said, Well, you just need to turn in our Bibles to second Kings. Kings. Yeah. And um, I said, We need to read this. This is exactly the word I have for you guys in response to these questions. And and I feel like this is maybe if you're a worship pastor and hearing this, please get some freedom from this. And if you're a senior pastor hearing this, please offer this freedom. But each of us is a different person. There is no one in this world who will ever be me. Thank God. There's no one that'll ever be you, there's no one that'll be any of us, right? And the the road that God gave us to get where we are today, if we have anything to offer the kingdom, there were prices we paid. There, and and and that is the message of that second Kings uh, you know, Elijah's response is that it's not that he had to be in the exact place, but if you want to have someone's mantle, you've got to live their life. And that's what he said, if you're with me when I am taken. Because then it says he from that moment on, you never saw Elijah without Elisha. So it's like it's kind of like, okay, so now you really want to do this life? Okay, so you're gonna live it with me. Like, this is how we go to the toilet, this is how we cook our meals, this is how we walk, this is how we, you know, everything.
SPEAKER_04It's a great uh framework for apprenticeship. I mean, obviously, I'm sure that that's probably been written on somewhere, but just that idea.
SPEAKER_02It has to have been. If it's not, please write it. Yeah, right. Right. So being fearful of what somebody would say because they didn't have the training. So this is a big push that we should be educating, and we've talked about this at uh especially at this uh uh I shared about this at the count at the big conference you guys just did on Nicaea. If the main thing that forms theology is not someone's preaching, but what they're singing, then we really need to be educating our uh worship leaders, our ministers of music in the gospel, in how to communicate the gospel in how to communicate and teach doctrine.
SPEAKER_05I believe that for a long time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so that is the and again going back to that fog. We don't ever want the fog of not knowing the language, not knowing the culture, not knowing the lingo to get in the way of people getting the beauty of Christ. Getting the beauty like I feel like I was like, I had a salvation experience to become a Baptist. Like, like all of a sudden it made sense to me, like, believers' baptism, of course, you should make this decision in obedience to Christ, not because all my friends were doing it, or because I got to the end of my confirmation classes, or I got to the end of Christian education, or whatever.
SPEAKER_05On that, like a question I've always wanted to ask someone like you, who's you know, a well-trained musician, you've been doing this, I think 30 years. How do you walk that line between music as a means of worship and spiritual edification? Like I was praying earlier, that's one of the greatest gifts God has given God has given to man. And it's a means that like opens up our soul and our hearts in a way that's unique. So, so using it as a tool that rightly will edify spiritually the person and give glory to God, and knowing how music, elevated forms of music, the the way you play notes, and the things that you could talk about that like heighten emotion, right? But it's it's doing it in a way that encourages spiritual growth and and spiritual truth, right? How do you walk that line between that and music as a means of manipulation?
SPEAKER_02Ooh, that's such a good question.
SPEAKER_05Because that goes back to earlier what you were saying about like the whole thing through the 70s and the 80s of like, you know, put on a good show, make people feel a certain thing.
SPEAKER_02Because it music does.
SPEAKER_05Because music, unlike we were joking about me being odd in the brain, music can can elicit things and draw things forth from people. So it can either be a a tool for good or a tool for evil. Right. So how how do you think about music and perform music in such a way that it's a tool for edification and not a tool for manipulation?
SPEAKER_02First of all, everyone has, whether or not you feel like you have or not, has some sort of response to music. There's a big difference in Bond to come, wow, wow, and my father is bigger than your father, you know. Those two all of a sudden, even if we took all the words out of that, dunno no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Very different things are happening there, uh psychosomatically, in our in our ears, in our the way that we're putting patterns together. And every culture has different things they attach onto those sort of musical cues. So, as far as how do we use music to emphasize or or accentuate or heighten the gospel message, our worship response to what God has already done. Um, a couple things there that are like, how do I know that this is worship and not like an emotional thing or manipulation? I feel like you when you are wanting to serve the word, you want to do it's it's kind of like a bride on the on the wedding day. A beautiful bride's dress does everything to to accentuate the bride. If if the bride, if all they ever talk about on the wedding day is the dress, then the dress has failed. And so it's so there there's one thing with music is like if the music is so amazing that all you can talk about is the music after the service or after the concert or after whatever it is, there's some problem there. So that would be maybe one like clue that there's a problem.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think it's interesting. Um, so uh a way that I've thought about it, um, and I've taught this with my worship teams that I've that I've uh worked with is that if you take general revelation, like we look at the world around us, the way that God made it, it's intended for us to uh, I mean, we're held accountable to God, according to Romans 1, just on the basis of creation. So general revelation points to us, reveals to us uh a creator. Um, and I would say that the skills of a musician are part of that general revelation. The way that God has made us in his image, the way that he has uh wired us, uh, the ability to uh hone our skills, to develop our skills in such a way to be an excellent musician is part of that general revelation of God. Um, I would and what I tell people is like that's fantastic. So if I'm doing a concert and it's a classical con classical music concert, if I'm doing like uh a bunch of secular music I've written or whatever, that's fantastic. Show off, like let the image of God just be on display in that particular moment. Uh, but when we're in church and special revelation is in front of us, the revelation of Jesus Christ and all that he has done and all that he is, the the he is the um he is the the prize of all that is, um, then everything else comes in submission to that, uh to his to his presence, to the revelation of who he is. And so I, you know, I tell people same same sort of thing. If you go away from a worship service, people are just like, man, that musician is awesome, or that music was great. And I and I think there's just honest, there's honest mistakes where people are just like, I what they want to say is I've been so blessed by the glore, the glory of God, but they attribute it to a musician. That's I mean, that's again they don't have the language to know how to say that. They don't have the language to say, but I think but I think that if over and over and over it's a musician that's praised, it's their skills that's praised, if it's their gifting that's praised. I tell our musicians, if I had the best musician in the world in any particular instrument on our team, I hope that they would be so good and work so hard to become invisible that Jesus is accentuated in that in that he is seen above all, that he is felt above all.
SPEAKER_02I think that's really good. I think the converse of that is a great uh is a great uh litmus test for senior pastors. Um, I say senior pastors because ultimately the worship in the church, what happens in the church as far as worship is the senior pastor's responsibility. Yeah. Even if he hires a worship pastor or worship leader, and uh so worship leaders and worship uh pastors out there, please come underneath the authority of your senior pastor. Your life will get so much better. I have worked with four succeeding better and better pastors. They've all been amazing. And have I agreed with everything they've said or done? Never, but I agree with a whole lot of it, and I love these men, and they have given up their lives for the church, and it's been a privilege to help make the vision that God's put in their heart for the kingdom come to pass. So please do that if you're a worship pastor, invest in the relationship you have with your senior pastor, invest in being a really good uh person at implementing other people's vision. A great clue for senior pastors and for worship pastors, but there's something a little bit amiss, is if a musician or if you are gone and everyone's like, it just wasn't the same. I didn't feel right here. Yeah, it didn't feel right, it wasn't the same. If you ever hear that, although your heart wants to rejoice, like I'm really making a difference. Well, you know what? The church has existed for 2,000 years without you, just fine. And the Holy Spirit has touched and changed people's lives and kept his word true and kept music happening in the church despite the Reformation and Calvin, and through him and through Lutheran and uh Luther, and there, you know, there's so many different things that happen there with you know, we should get music out because it's taking away from the Lord, anyways. I don't want to go down that track. But as far as how do we make these choices, how do we make like music really become amazing, be all it can be for the Lord? Um, I do think you have to be good at your craft. Like one of the things that's just blessing my socks right now is like my blessing my socks off is CC Wine's kind of resurgence of CC Wineins. And what's that?
SPEAKER_05Or who's that?
SPEAKER_02So CeCe Wine's gospel singer, um just she was she and uh part of the Winin' family, they're just a musical family, uh like a dynasty of amazing church musicians who've been in many different genres of music. But CC and BB, BB and CeCe Wine's were a group like in the 80s, 90s, and then she kind of stopped, and she, her husband, they raised their children, and now like she's a grandma, and she's back singing like the same sort of stuff that she always does. But she and Whitney Houston were really, really tight friends, and like they sang on the Grammys together, they they collaborated on a couple different things and stayed friends their whole lives. She's saying it was she as talented as Whitney Houston. Oh, I mean she's incredible.
SPEAKER_04She's incredible. Like, I will say to your point though, uh, I don't know if you saw it, it was like I think it wasn't the double words this last year. There's a reel that went around, and the guy talked about you got CC'd. You got CC'd.
SPEAKER_02He was like when she takes your song and makes it even more powerful and more anointed than what you did, right?
SPEAKER_04He was like, I sang the song, I wrote this song, and then it went, it did okay. And then when she did it, everyone's like, Oh, you should hear the song that CC'd uh did. And it was like, he's like, I got CC'd. He's like, Bethel got CC'd too with goodness of God because when uh they she came out with it last year, they were like, Oh man, the goodness of God is fantastic.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, like on that point, and this is the the phrase you just used, this is again helping me unpack this idea that I've always been fascinated with. And that that phrase you use is very much like an AOG charismatic phrase that was anointed or they're anointed. So someone's like, Oh, that song was really anointed. What does that mean? And and how that's such a good question. How do you ensure that the again that what when someone says that's anointed, there's there's the way you can go like where that's an emotionally manipulative, that's a statement of one's emotional feelings, right? Versus like this is spiritual, like the spirit moved in that in a special way, says that it was anointed by the spirit. And again, that gets to the question of music as manipulative means of emotional manipulation versus a means of spiritual blessing. So again, like how how help me think through that. Like, how how do you ensure that as a worship leader you're anointing things in the right way?
SPEAKER_02Right. So I I feel like, first of all, I mean, if we go back to CC, there is a presence for people who have known the Lord a long time. You know, it's like they could they surely you've been in the presence of Jesus. Like they could tell that people have been in the presence of Jesus. You spend time with Jesus, you become discipled by Jesus, you become more like Jesus. And there are people that you visit and you come away with them, and you're just like, I just feel like I've spent an hour with Jesus. And I think in the AG world, that's what they're aiming for when they say something's anointed. It's like the Holy Spirit was moving through, just like you just said, like it was something that God used to touch people. And so when someone has like uh, or like Elijah and Elisha, like when someone has lived a life of listening to the Lord, of paying attention to the Lord, yeah, there is that effect on them no matter what. Everything they're gonna do is gonna be like that. If you work in in a cinnamon on a cinnamon farm, you're gonna smell like cinnamon. Everything you do, no matter what you touch or cook, or it's gonna have a little bit of cinnamon. I hope you like it.
SPEAKER_03That's a great illustration.
SPEAKER_02Hopefully, that is happening as we're spending time worshiping Jesus. As a worship leader, as a musician, if you're spending time with music, using it as a way to say, Lord, I love you, Lord, I acknowledge that you are king of the universe. Thank you for my place in this order, which is down here and you are up there. Thank you for the fact that you are the redeemer and I am the sinner, in a way that really understands that without being in guilt or shame, and without thinking, Jesus is my Gandalf, you know, or you know, magical thoughts. That will affect the way you sing I surrender all.
SPEAKER_01And you know, there's a correct way of all to Jesus, I surrender all to him I freely give. All those of us are right. Oh, I love that song.
SPEAKER_02It's an amazing song. Most of us lie through our teeth when we sing it, but it's an amazing song.
SPEAKER_05But it's supposed to be a confession of what we hope is the case.
SPEAKER_02That's exactly right. And so let's make this a prayer. Again, this is back to the teaching element. We're gonna sing words that we hope to be true, and we want the Holy Spirit to make them even more true as we sing them as a prayer.
SPEAKER_05Is there a way, even as you say, I love to hear you sing like you're such a nice voice and melodic. So, is there a way that you think you could do I surrender all musically in a way that it is more anointed spiritually? And is there a way that you can do something like that's wrong and would detract from the truth of those words?
SPEAKER_02Sure. And so we're gonna do that right now. And those of you who are listening on the podcast, I just rolled up my sleeves because I'm ready to go. You mean to pull the keyboard out? No, violin. No, but but what that's that's a very common hymn. And if you're a new Christian and you don't know the hymn, I'm sorry that you haven't learned it. But you you can look you can look it up and find a bunch of different arrangements of it. And so there's just the just breaking it down. There is the words to that that are very powerful. There is the music, um, which is you know, there's it's a set melody. But what if I take a second and I don't just think about okay, my breath or whatever. What if I take a second and just forget that I'm in this room, even with you guys, even though I love you, um, and I want to be here. What if I take a minute and just think about all the things in my life that I really do need to give to the Lord? If I take that moment and then I do it again, I don't know if there'll be a difference, but all to Jesus Surrender to Him. I freak That's as much as I'll do, but that was moving, man. That was hard for me. I'm thinking about some weight loss things. I'm thinking about some things with my kids, something with my wife. There's things happening with our church and people I care about around the world. And as a leader, I want to sound good. You know what I'd love to do is I'd love to be able to just be amazing at that song.
SPEAKER_01I'd love to just surrender to him. I free give and I you know, just go for it.
SPEAKER_02That couldn't get up there, but but so that's distracting.
SPEAKER_04That's just like me trying and trying, trying. Well, I wasn't saying not it is, but I would say I think there are moments where the and depending on the context, depending on what environment you're in, right? That might be appropriate. Well, and I think it also matters how much cinnamon is on your fingers.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That is totally true. Spiritual cinnamon I'm spending with Jesus, the more time I'm spending with my craft, the more time I'm working on piano or working on riffs in my voice, where they can happen without me going, oh God, oh god, help my riff get just right, the more natural those things are, the more tools I have to work with, both spiritually and auditorily, vocally, you know, uh mechanically. And um so the goal is to, you know, the goal of any pract practicing or practice with the S or with a C is to have freedom. So you you limit yourself into this world of practice, yeah, spiritual practices, fasting, prayer, reading scripture, sitting underneath good teaching, being transparent, accountable. I, you know, I led worship the other day, and this is uh just an example. It's not true. Well, probably at some point it is, but and I r really thought I did great. It was all about me, and you know. In in coming to a brother or sister and being like, wow, I was really full of myself. So the more we can do that, then I think we have more cinnamon to work with. But I love that too.
SPEAKER_04And I just want to to to just follow that just a minute more. I think that uh a lot of times it also is just being authentic to who uh God is, who you are in God's working out in your life. I too have been leading worship or music for 30 years, and I can tell you that 10 years ago, if people or even you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, there are things that I do now. There's ways that I lead now that are different than the way I used to do it. But when I was doing it then, if I do it the way I do it now, it might have been inauthentic, or it might have been trying too hard, or it might have been me being someone else than who I was at that moment and in that time. So I do think that there is kind of like a sanctifying uh process that is happening in in all of us that we could say, you know, you've developed in this way. I've seen this development. And in some ways, I guess what I'm trying to say too is when some when you get up there to lead on a platform in a in a in a church service, you want people to feel like that's really him. You know, that that's really like he's not somebody who I don't know him to be like he's changed.
SPEAKER_02Well, and that and that doesn't matter what the genre is, right? Like there's things, there's times that I'll tell our church which is very multi-ethnic, but we're not hugely African American. In fact, I wish I I don't know if I could say I wish that we were more so because I miss that from my childhood. But I do love our African American brothers and sisters when they want to share or participate in our service because it reminds me of elements of those cultures that I just have always loved. But sometimes there's a gospel song and we don't have the right musicians for it. And I'll be the church is like, this is the song we want to sing. And um, I'm like, we can do it, but it's gonna sound different. And they're like, Well, what makes gospel music so special? And here I'm a white guy talking about it, so I'm very like treading with like fear and trembling. But you know, the price that was paid for gospel music to be so amazing was slavery, huh? And genius that was suppressed. What do you mean? You weren't allowed to learn as a slave, you weren't allowed to have actually often had any access to music, and so they they learned a uh uh number system for uh doing notes and for doing their harmonies, very secretive, kept underground. Their worship was in all these all this oppression that happened to them, the gift that was given in the middle of that oppression was gospel music, and and of so of course you're you're wondering why a group of white people trying to sing African American music and Negro spirituals, like something sounds hollow. Well, you know what, you have not paid the cultural price, and so yes, you may be able to have the chops to sing gospel, you may be able to get the right notes or the right chords, but you didn't pay the price as a person.
SPEAKER_05So it's sort of like when you just sang a beautiful I will surrender, that when you pause and thought for a moment, and like I felt the emotion seep through. You're saying it's the same thing, that authentic emotional engagement with who you are in that song.
SPEAKER_02I think so. Now, as far as like the the the nuts and bolts of it, with am I manipulating or am I being a vessel the Holy Spirit can work through? Yes. A couple questions would be what is my goal? So do I want the people to love the sound? Do I want people to lose their minds? Yeah, or am I wanting people to grasp the gospel more firmly? Um, another one would be if I do this big run, um, so do I want to uh in his presence daily live nothing? I surrender all into the chorus, or will it help them to know we have a high note if we go daily? Will that help them know? Will it will it serve to move not just the music but the people that are worshiping? Will it help them give them a jumping off platform to really um, you know, I could I could play it very different. I could freely live. Oh, oh I and CC One is actually in one of her uh albums back years ago. She does a gospel version of I Surrender All, where she does this kind of like backgrounds jumping keys, it's amazing. But if you were in the congregation you didn't know was coming, you'd be like, I just lost, you know, I don't I don't get to surrender because they just did something crazy. And as a musician, you're like, that was awesome. How did they do that? But as a worshiper, you would be like, Oh, wait, wait, wait. If you grew up in African-American tradition, you'd be like, Okay, I know where it are, we just go for it. But if you grew up like in a very um, like we're following the notes on the page and we're doing it right, and um, and that's what is right, um, and why did you do a key change without like it being written? That would be very disorienting for you. Yeah, even in that thing, I guess as a worship leader, it you have the more freedom, the more that you recognize that different cultures of people and different even generations of people think different things are important in worship. One of the things that's really important in gospel music is the yes and idea of like, okay, we're going here now. So, or the call, call and response is built in. I say Jesus is Lord, you're gonna say amen. Or I'm gonna say God is good, you're gonna say it got all the time. But one of the things in European um European ancestry cultures is this kind of supreme and in Baptist cultures is supremacy of the word, yeah, all throughout everything. So if we have a written, if we have it written out that we're gonna sing holy, holy, holy, that matters to us. Not only is the triad beautiful because then we see the Trinity, um, holy, holy, holy, and it becomes one, three and one, but we're doing the service of doing the hard work of following what's written. That's very important to us. Um, and so then we can be offended by a big change instead of so so as a worship leader, you need to know the culture. If you're working in a multi-ethnic culture, you have to help explain the culture, the musical culture, um, in a way that doesn't take away from the service. So you don't get to like make this big like treatise on the different ways different cultures of people worship. Um but you should be thinking, how can I help different generations, different cultural expressions, different languages? One of the things I I teach our worship leaders is um you need to remember with every song that there's a big chance that whoever sing it in the in the pew on Sunday morning, English is not their first language. So not everybody has that problem, you know, or opportunity, however you want to look at it. And so even though I like we just mentioned Wonderful Grace of Jesus, which I love that song, it's a great hymn, and it probably needs to be sung more at our church. The main reason we haven't done it is because it has multiple moving parts. And even if you speak English, wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus, deeper than the mighty roaring sea, something like a fountain, something like a mountain, all sufficient grace for you and me, you and me. Deeper than the sum of my transgression, deeper far than all my sin and shame. Magnify the holy name of Jesus, or magnify the holy name of Jesus, praise his or whatever it is. Like these are tongue twisters, even with someone who grew up speaking English. Yeah, and bigger words. Oh multi-syllable. Yeah, yeah, and and um just and and then there's and then on top of all that, you've got opposing counterpoint lines written into the hymn for each of the different voice parts. So do I love it? Yes. Is it anointed? Yes. Is it absolutely the wrong song sometimes? Yes. And so I think some of the anointing comes from that that idea of anointing, quote unquote anointing, is when we can have ideas that help support each other, music that helps support the like onomonopoetically, what's happening? Anomanopoeias are words that sound like what they are. Oh, okay. Whoosh, a swish.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the how does but how's music onomonopoeia with like the words? Help me understand that.
SPEAKER_01So, so like holy, holy, holy.
SPEAKER_02We just created a chord that's three notes in one chord. That whole song, holy, holy, holy, old 100, is trinitarian in the music, the music is all about the truth. The words are all about the trinity. Obviously, yeah, yeah. God in three persons, bless the trinity. But what actually happens in the music, it's spelling out a trin a triad the whole time through it. I didn't know that. And so there's that sense of it's on a mana poetically, a better easier uh example. It's it reinforcing the text.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my savior, waiting the coming day. Jesus my Lord. And then what happens?
SPEAKER_02Up from the grave he arose, right? That's an onamana pia. It's a it's a musical sound, like what the words are saying.
SPEAKER_05Oh, so down in the grave is that low tone, right? Elevated, he rises. Right.
SPEAKER_04And the rest of that song, the chorus, is up there and high and triumphant. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Anytime it talks about or or often songs that talk about my sin, my shame, it's low. But then Jesus rescued me and it's high. So there's these ways of supporting it musically. And so then, as a as a musician, as a worship musician or a worship pastor, my sense is musically, how can I do all I can to set the person in the pew free to give their all vocally and to really stimulate their mind, their hearts to really examine. Sometimes the most anointed thing you can do is just stop everything and say, Are we telling the truth? Are we seeing lies? Are we telling the truth? Don't do that often, please. But when I have a musician who's like, I'm not sure what to do here, uh I'm always asking what will help the congregation either sing more assuredly or think more clearly about the Lord. And so sometimes that is a big swell. If you're gonna do um Easter's coming, right?
SPEAKER_01Christ, the Lord is risen today. Ha ha ha ha hallelujah.
SPEAKER_02That's a lot of notes for one note or for one uh word, right? So often what we'll do is we'll just do the melody line. The whole band plays the the melody line, so it's pretty thick. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. And then we'll just you know what, we don't want you to worry about it, so the organ will be like drown you out, loo oo yeah, right? Just like like we are sorry about the pounding sounds, but like the organist comes in like just huge, right? And also the choir will just maybe we'll do one voice and then we'll have the choir. So I guess to your question of what's the difference between anointing or anointed or manipulative and and mean yeah, it versus manipulative. It's the anointing that breaks the yoke. What is the anointing? Originally, the anointing was a physical symbol of God's holy presence in a person's life, and so and that enabled them to do something, enabled them to be a king, enabled them to be a priest, it enabled them to go into battle, right? That the anointing was used as a marker that you belong to Jesus, and then with that came authority, came the provision to do what you were called to do.
SPEAKER_05Do you think there can be a genuine spiritual anointing in music if there are no attending words?
SPEAKER_02This is like saying, what if someone's never said the name Jesus but they've had a vision where he says, This is who I am. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like is music revelatory? That's my question. Is is is music in itself revelatory without words?
SPEAKER_02It's revelatory, but again, it's general revelatory.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, like Ricky was saying earlier.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I thought what Ricky said was awesome. I think that music is revelatory. You find out things about yourself. Like, that's why you start crying when you hear a song. Even without words, sometimes you can start crying. You're like, why is that song why is that song sounds sad?
SPEAKER_05You feeling musicians.
SPEAKER_02Well, and again, this is why it's so good to think like as a worship pastor, as a senior pastor, what am I addressing all the different types of people in this worship set? And I think that's why it says we pray in the spirit and we pray with understanding. We have to the Holy Spirit is doing stuff in us that we do not know, and probably think God in many ways, and also praise God in many ways. We do not know the sort of divine things that God works in us as his life replaces our life, his perfection replaces our imperfection, his righteousness for our filthy rags, right of striving. So I've had moments where that's happened where I know something's happening, I don't know what's going on. And again, I think analogies to childhood are always good because we all recognize it. But when there's an adult conversation that you know is important, but you can't tell why, right? Your parents are having a conversation and you know not to get involved. And it doesn't have to be a heated conversation, it could be uh just something you know is important, but then but then if they have if they tell you this is what's happening, the reason we're so somber or the reason we're so excited is mom's pregnant or grandma's dying, or we have to sell the house, or our country just went to war, or whatever it could be. As a child, you can pick up on there's something happening, but you're so grateful when someone includes you then in the conversation to tell you as much as you're able to grab, this is what's happening. And so I think in uh worship when we're talking about anointing or manipulation, manipulation manipulation wants you to keep going, wants you to achieve an end that you've decided for them to get to. Whereas anointing gives you a path forward to whatever the Lord wants to do. Let's say you want to have you want to do a service or renew your wedding vows or something, have a really and you want it to be this amazing worship service and with your whole family and all your friends and all the people, you and your wife and and everything. Well, uh if you're like David, I want you to come do this, you and Ricky, then I need to know like like it's really important for me to know that like how like who are the people in your family? And are they musicians? Do they speak English?
SPEAKER_04Do they, you know, I want to ask you this, uh, maybe to think through the answer to this question uh in this way. When you're thinking about your congregation and you're thinking about everybody who might be there, um, I think sometimes because you know, America, Western world is so individualistic, right? Oftentimes we can say, Did it connect with this person or this narrow group of people? Right. But I do think that like for one person, there might be a connection that is made to one person who uh say does have like like I would say let's take your parents for example for example. So your mom, you said your mom was kind of like this genius when it came to children. Right. Your dad was a genius when it came to uh science. There might be things that connect with your dad in a worship service that your mom would just go right over your mom's head. Right. And there's gonna be things that would have connected with your mom that your dad wouldn't it wouldn't have moved him at all. Right. But there is something about being able to say um what's most important is what happens corporately and collectively rather than what happens with this individual, this individual, this individual, this individual. Right. I I'm just curious what your thoughts are because I'm hearing you say this, but I do think that as uh worship leaders, as even as pastors, as we think through things like what our what our calling is, what our goal is, um, I think we ought to be able to say, I'm thinking broadly to the entire congregation and not just to I'm hoping to hit you know this sliver of people or this is my target group, and I'm I'm not really thinking about anybody else. And I do think that as a congregation, as maybe those of who are listening, you know, to this um to this conversation, I think as a com as if someone goes into a worship service saying there was only one song that really connected with me, but meanwhile, the rest of your congregation or a chunk of your congregation is being moved by one of those other songs or multiple of those other songs, I do think that there is a sense in which as a congregation, we like even with what what Cameron is doing right now, what you guys feel or what you feel doesn't happen to me, but we're learning from each other. We're learning how to be able to interact and engage with whatever is happening in those moments from one another. Can you get emotionally affected by music by itself without words? Yes. But I do think that it has limits because I do think there are things that I hear that really move me, but it doesn't necessarily capture, and I think this is what you were you were actually saying earlier. It it doesn't actually capture for me without the connotation being made for me, like the Darth Vader theme. Like I'm not gonna think of Darth Vader on my own without having watched the movie or seeing that scene, but I do think that when I see Darth Vader walking through the smoke and coming through the doors and you know, whatever, I'm gonna say, Oh yeah, that's exactly what it makes sense that they go together.
SPEAKER_05Yes, and this is the whole general revelation. I didn't use that illustration. I don't think you hear dum dun dum dum. Is that the song? Dun dun dun dun dun dun.
SPEAKER_02That's right. It was it was the dark ominous.
SPEAKER_05But like if I played that for Malachi, my four-year-old, he wouldn't say, Oh, that's Darth Vader.
SPEAKER_04Like he'd probably start marching though.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but like so so that wouldn't like that alone wouldn't lead him to Darth Vader's coming. Right. But like you then know you learn who Darth Vader is, his character, like, oh, it makes sense that then goes like that fills that, like that space is filled by that object.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I do think again, I think music gives us a general revelation of something. Yeah, we don't know what, it gives us a good music causes us to question. So da da da du. We want to go there, right? So, but we don't know what there means. What did we just do? Did we just win the lottery? Do we just like close the door? Da put the pasta in the pan, or you know, or whatever it is, right? It's we know it's an ending or something. We think it's something that's kind of being wrapped up or buttoned up or something. We we're not sure.
SPEAKER_05But further revelation has to come.
SPEAKER_02It has to, for the worship musician, something more has to come.
SPEAKER_05And that's where words and and and and music. And instruction. Instruction, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And I do think that that's also like a tell-all as well, when you when the words show up, and if it doesn't match the music and what's going on, you're like something's not right.
SPEAKER_05So you're to use your point other, then it would now that I'm thinking about this with the musicians, like it would be odd to have a song that's like built off Psalm 51, like confessing your sin. Right. And it's like at a high level.
SPEAKER_01Have mercy on me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, oh God. That would be very odd. It's like but I remember the song growing up, I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. And it was like this, uh almost like this waltz of some sort of this like roller skating thing. And it was like you're singing about seeking deep in sin. And obviously the song ends up um, love lifted me, love lifted me. It goes that direction, which is kind of what you want is you want that cheerful feeling. But the very beginning of the song certainly doesn't uh doesn't match that. I remember hearing, I don't know if you knew who Rain and Gibbs were, they were opera singers, professional opera opera singers, but they change the whole setting of that verse when it and and it sounds very deep and ominous, and then they get to the chorus and it's right. Yeah, there are some things that just don't that just don't match. And I think what's interesting, I'd be curious to know your thoughts on this. Uh probably about a decade or maybe a decade and a half ago, and you we'll notice it now is pretty common. But um, when you would watch movies before that, you would have uh movies like battle scenes, or you'd have different things like that that have big, chargy, like Hans Zimmer sort of punchy music and like battle-sounding music. There was all of a sudden there was a movie that came out where in the middle of the battle scene it went to like um people were still fighting in real time, but then all of a sudden it went to this very symphonic, very slow sound. It's like it was almost like it was like the dissonance between what was actually happening, and then like there was this like almost like a transcendent orchestral sound that kind of changed, and you're just like it's almost like it it reached in a deeper, less shallow part of who we are. And it's like, yes, I'm I'm in the middle of the struggle, but all of a sudden it's like, what is happening? Like, is the world falling apart? Is is you know everything coming to an end?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, when I I know the exact things you're talking about, and in those movies, you're caught up in the actions when you Have kind of a battle sounds and the battle music, and then when it goes to just like that's supposed to be the sudden battle's done, yeah. Then you're like or someone's about to die. The cost of war. Right. Or like you're it just like it's this big seismic shift, right? And again, like, is you know, if we're gonna talk about worship, is that an anointing thing? Again, I think anointing always has to serve a purpose. So whether or not it's something musical you do, or training you do, or teaching you do, the other day we did a bunch of songs because we're in the middle of a series on sin and guilt and psalm, you know, the psalms leading up to uh as we go through Lent leading up to Palm Sunday and Easter, Good Friday and Easter. So one of my worship leaders had picked like three songs that were not just like Jesus shed his blood for us, but just like there's a fountain filled with blood. I love that song. There's um nothing but the blood can wash away my set, nothing but the blood of Jesus. I mean, and it was just like a lot of blood, the it was the bloodbath. And it was like Kill Bill. And I I was like, this is so these songs are so important. This is so good. For some reason I hadn't looked at the set very well. Um normally I like scrutinize every set, and I'm just like I think through every possible scenario and I try to go through it with each of my worship leaders. Like, how could this be misinterpreted? How could this support the sermon better? Um and I realized I hadn't said anything. So the pastor had gotten up, done the call to worship, and now we're gonna worship, stand and sing with us. And we should have just the music should have swelled and we sing, and the music kind of swelled, and I held up my hands and down. And I said, We have a set of worship today, songs that we're choosing to sing about God that remind us of our relationship with him and what he's done for us. I said, We're gonna sing a bunch of songs about the blood of Jesus. And here's where this comes from. And I explained the sacrificial system, and and I and I was crying out to the Lord during the prayer right before the pastor introduced time to stand and sing. Because I'm like, I need you to help me make this brief, Lord. And to make it clear, then it was like as we got into the songs, you know, older Christians, some of the older Christians were kind of like, What is he saying? Wait, why is he saying this? Of course we know this, but other people like, you know, and especially some of my younger people were like, Oh, and the kids were like, Oh, and then we sang about it, you could see kind of anamana, not an anomanopoeia, but the eureka moments for them where they're like, Oh, that's I get that now. So there's a fountain filled with blood drawn from Jesus' veins, sinners plunge, lose all their guilty sains. So it's like, my freedom is from the blood of Jesus, and or nothing but the blood of Jesus. So it's like, you want to strive, great, but you know what? It means nothing. The only thing that means anything is what Jesus did. But if you're a new person in church and you hear all these songs, you're like, is this chucky or like you're just like this is scary. Like, I'm not into the slasher.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the things we take for granted as Christians are fascinated with blood.
SPEAKER_04I say that when when I'm leading the Lord's table, and I know that I know that there's visitors or people that are new to Christianity in the service, and I'll say, This might seem really weird when we say, This is my body which is broken for you to do this in remembrance of me. This is my the blood. Like, who are these people and what are they doing? And there is kind of like this weird uh uh there's this strange element to who we are as believers and why this is symbolic for what we believe.
SPEAKER_02Well, I think that's why we need the pray in the spirit and pray with understanding, you know, preach in the spirit and preach with understanding, instruct and instruct, you know. Yeah, so uh manipulating, trying to finally put a button on this question, but we're circling the dream, and I really this is really what I'm keen on. Manipulating leads to an emotional response that you either the the congregants or you feel like you can have a sense of satisfaction that you created. Using all your gifts and whatever anointing the Holy Spirit gives you to support others' worship should lead to people being more caught up with Jesus, more focused on him and more worship of Jesus. Yeah. So that would be the the big difference.
SPEAKER_04A follow-up question to that though, for you, I would say, and I think just hopefully helps cap it cap this off as well. Is emotion in worship bad then? Um and where does where is the place of emotion? Because I grew up in a church where uh if people were to express feelings emotionally, physically, um, it would have been frowned on, it would have been you know looked at as negative. And yet you go into some cultures and some churches, and emotion is like all over the place.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's that would have been your experience at an AOG church, right? That like if there wasn't intense emotional expression, it would have been like, what's wrong with you? Is the spirit not here? Do you not have the spirit?
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_05And then I wonder too, like how much of that is cultural versus theological versus spiritual.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I think theologically the correct order of operations in worship always begins with God.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then worship is our response to God to God. First, though, it's our response to what God has done. Yeah. So I think, you know, when I do classes on like what is worship? We start with Genesis, right? In the beginning, God created, and then what does he do at the end of each day? He says it is good. So all we can ever do as humans is copy our creator. And so, um, so our our creator worships, he called what was good good, and that is so then we do the same thing. What is the ultimate good, the source of all that's that's good? God, and so if we want to worship God, we declare that he is good, he is righteous, he is all the things that he is. But so we have this response to what God has done because we don't know him yet, and then eventually we get to know him through the blood of Christ, etc., and salvation, and then we can respond to him directly. So the order of operations for emotion then is God does something, we respond. So we may respond by by then choosing to remember all that God has done. Thank you, God, for my life, for my wife, for my children, for salvation, for whatever it could be. As we remember all these things, there is going to be emotion tied to these things that matter to us. Or if we're looking at God Himself specifically, thank you for every lash of the whip on Good Friday. Thank you for every drop of blood. Thanks for for taking care of your mom. Thanks for telling your do we dare say best friend? Telling the disciple that Jesus loved, giving him something to do with his grief. Take care of my mom. You know, these are emotional responses that come as I begin to choose to respond to the truth of who God is and what he's done. I'm just thinking about like when Jesus says, Tell John this, the lame walk, yeah, the blind sea, this is his cousin. Yeah, he knows he's gonna die. They're cousins, like they they probably like went on vision trips together. Yeah, they compare they compared prophecy stories. Yeah, you know, it's like this is gonna be great someday, you know, when you're king and I'm your your herald. And so when we begin to think about what God has done, like, God has saved me from my sin, then we have a response. But then manipulation then is how do we get the response without going through all the work of responding and honestly wrestling with who God is and what he's done. And to me, like a shortcut.
SPEAKER_05Can music without words have a revelatory effect as we're thinking about anointing and can there be good anointing and you know emotional manipulative stuff in music? Because what I'm trying to get is like in my head, it makes sense how there would be false anointing or like manipulative stuff if if there's if one, like you just said, there there's no introduction with truth of revelation into a response we're supposed to have. Like we think of all those popular songs, I do this, I'll do this, I'll do this for you. Like I'm gonna do something. It's good unless it's it's bad, it's not unless it's a response to something. But then on the other side, like when we're to me, it makes sense to say it's manipulative, like when when it's not based in truth. And so to me, as a thought guy, like that that's what what my area is. Like, I I I deal with thoughts, and I that's my that's it's a mind thing for me. So it's very easy for me to understand how music can be manipulative, like if it's based on wrong doctrine, right, if it's not introduced correctly. And so that's that's how it makes sense to me. But I'm wondering, is there a way where you think it can be manipulative, even if it's like there is a fountain filled with blood? Or holy, holy, holy. You see what I'm asking?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. So and and that again go goes to the the motives of the person who's that's the thing I was gonna bring up. It can be total motives, like but again, also like even little tiny things. So great song, so many people loved it. Michael W. Smith covered it, a bunch of different people dead. You live to die, uh rejected and alone. Like a rose. Yeah, trample on the ground. Yeah, above all. The song is above all, yeah. That's very manipulative. Now it's like like you did this for me, and you know what? Jesus did die for you, but you know what he thought of above all? The Father. Yeah, and his glory. Yeah, I mean, for the for the joy awaiting him, you know, and he he took the fall because that was what they had decided in the Godhead that would happen before foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that line, you took the fall and you thought of us above all.
SPEAKER_02Right. That's that's very manipulative. That's like, I want I want you to like have this like, you know, you're you know, you love me the most. I'm the center of his story. Right. And and and and so that would be like a a thing where like some really, really careful theological work would have made an already really beautiful and meaningful song even better and more true.
SPEAKER_05If this one word, a couple lines change, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, when I let it, I used to say he and praise his name above all. I would just like change that thought of me. I'd change it. I didn't ask permission, but you know.
SPEAKER_05To me, it's like the the song that was popular for years or reckless love. I just other than that one line, like that's a great song. It celebrates the sovereign salvation that God has accomplished. So I would just change out to like I I forget the like the the sovereign love. Because to me, like there's something so wrong and manipulative about teaching people that God's reckless, right? Or teaching people that you know he thought of us above all.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I think that we do have to be careful though. The other side of that is um, I'm sure there's things that Elijah or Elisha or John the Baptist or Peter or Paul said out of having lived with Jesus. And the ones that we know about where they made mistakes and they were corrected, we can read in the scripture. But I'm sure there was things they had that weren't quite crafted exactly right in the moment. And so I don't want to just, you know, say that that song is trash or whoever does it is that's not a good thing, or uh the even reckless love. Like we didn't live the life that that person lived with Jesus to come to that place of being like for them to sing this. And you know, part of singing is like opening up your soul.
SPEAKER_05I know that's a window into who they are and what they've thought and felt.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. And so we want to be sensitive to that and and honor that, but also always as a worship pastor or senior pastor, we want to be calling our people to see the Lord more and more and more clearly. And so where there is, you know, opportunity that's not um demeaning or um trashing somebody to bring even more clarity, we want to take that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think in that sense, I think there's a heavy pastoral responsibility that you can you don't have to just throw the song out. You can use the song or you can approach it in a particular way. Because I I I've not I've actually I know that there's there was been a lot of discussion about that particular reckless love in the past, and he gave an apologetic for his writing of that song. And I do think that, like, for instance, if you take um, I know Tim Keller wrote the book Prodigal God, and that that title itself is very provocative, you know, because no one's looked at it that particular way. But the idea would be that the father in that story of the prodigal son was very reckless, like he was inappropriate for him to hike up his garments and run out and meet his son. And so there is a sense in which like reckless love can have like uh can take us in a direction or a different place that may not may not be fitting. But I think that if it's explained well and led well, then I think it could actually lead us in a in a in a better place. Like I think I think the example that I use is the story of Jesus uh at Simon the Pharisee's house. Uh he's invited into Simon Pharisee's house. He wants to have a good theological conversation, but then this woman of the city comes in and she starts weeping, she's weeping. She is washing Jesus' feet with her tears, she's wiping it with his hair, her hair. And Simon thinks, man, if he knew what kind of woman she was, he wouldn't let her touch him. And Jesus, knowing what he's thinking, says, Let me tell you a story. You know, a man was owed, you know, had two debtors, a great one, a little one. Both were forgiven. Who loved, who loved the master the most? Well, and Simon answers, the one who is forgiven the greater debt. And he said, Since this woman, since I came into your house, uh, you did not greet me with a kiss, but this woman's not stopped kissing me since I've been in this house. Since I came into the house, you did not offer to wash my feet. This woman has not stopped washing my feet uh since she's been in here. So the one who's uh been forgiven much is love love much. And there's not that's not speaking to levels of forgiveness. Right. It's speaking to the reality that she understood what it meant to be forgiven, and he was the one in whom her forgiveness was found. And so I do think that there is a sense in which um, to your point, you were saying, you know, earlier that there's an order of operations. Uh it started with her coming to the reality, the the reality of her guilt and her sin, understanding her forgiveness, and then her emotional, uh dare dare I say, inappropriate response that Simon was calling her out on of worship to the one who had forgiven, uh forgiven her. And Simon obviously didn't get it. He was he was it was completely out of his understanding of who was in his room or who was in his space, right, and uh how he what would have been appropriate uh having Jesus in his presence.
SPEAKER_02Well, you just said there uh just reminded me of something, and that is that that is why uh the order of operations is one of the reasons we see so many Baptist churches, reformed churches, people that had let go of any sort of liturgy returning to the idea of a call to worship. Yeah. Because during the 70s and 80s, let's start with this power. I mean, we have to also remember in the 70s and 80s, what was happening with music was part of a huge cultural revolution, right? Yeah. The sense of freedom, the sense of being actually really saying what we really felt about the war, about our parents, about God. This was all part of the 70s and 80s. And then the 90s was kind of that finding your voice and who you are and all this stuff. And the problem with that, though, is then the church wanted to start with this sense of freedom, and you know, and so they started with this big musical ramp up to the sermon. Well, there was nothing to be singing about yet. We didn't know anything about it exactly. That I think was manipulate, you know, emotional manipulation. And I think most of the pastors from that time that are still around see that and would say that. But, you know, that's why when we start the service and we say we're gathered here together as the assembled corporate body of Christ to celebrate who Christ is. And if you're here and you don't know who he is, he's God, he's whatever we're gonna say for the call to worship. And then we tell them something about God. We call them to remember, we call them to engage in the idea of who God is, and then what is our response? We're gonna give you this vehicle of response, which is worship.
SPEAKER_05What do you think of Brian Chapel's Christ-centered worship?
SPEAKER_02It's a great book. I'm trying to remember it off the top of my head.
SPEAKER_05I mean, that that book when I read it in college like fundamentally shaped how I thought about as a Lord one of future pastor, senior pastor. Like this, I'm gonna want my music guy to like think about the structure of it.
SPEAKER_02That's this whole thing, right? It's this whole argument. It's like if you're not putting Christ out there for them to worship, don't expect anything to happen. Yeah. And if you're not telling them, like if and then if you're not going to inform them on the way that Christ should be worshipped, then you know, that's onus is on you.
SPEAKER_05So I think it's sort of like what Bob Coughlin says in worship matters, is like so often worship guys or gals that have like a de facto, they have a de facto liturgy, but they think in terms of music and emotion, like, oh, we got to do this sort of fast song first to get people up, and we got to do a slow song to make them somber, and then a fast song to pick them up again. And that's sort of the emotional manipulation.
SPEAKER_02So one of the things that I do and just my method of of teaching worship leaders or leading myself is I always tell them that the main thing of this service is going to be the word of God. It may be preached, it may be prayed, it may be sung, but it has to be the word of God, which is ultimately Jesus. And we're going the Holy Spirit has kept his word all these years, and it's gonna be preached, and he's gonna work through it. And so, what can we do musically, service creation, content creation, tech-wise to support whatever it is? So there's been a lot of songs about forgiveness and my sinfulness and the blood of Christ, and you know, um because I I say, is there a way that we can musically underscore or contrast? Obviously, if it's gonna be like specifically on adultery, there's not a whole lot of worship songs about adultery, but there are worship songs so you can contrast, you could sing about the holiness of God, you could sing about um for the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth, you know, you know, something that helps people lift their eyes up from this whatever the cultural milieu may say about sex and holiness and uh marriage and and and adultery and just kind of whatever, but something that kind of elevates things back to what they should be could be a good contrast to then what is going to be preached. So we start with that and we try to serve that. So then we look and say, is there anything that here that is gonna make the message unclear? So have we picked a song they're gonna clearly talk about um the Jesus' death and he did it out of submission to the Father? We're gonna do above all. Well, that's gonna be a little bit confusing. Yeah. And then I always ask, where is Jesus in the service? So where is Christ in the service? And how can people see him? How can people respond to him? How can people access him? Another question I I often will ask worship leaders to answer for me before they lead is where is this confusing for people? Where where do they need to hear from you? Where do they need to hear from the senior pastor? Sometimes it's only the senior pastor who can explain things in a way that people feel comfortable about. Not and again, this is not manipulation. If if you're trying to make people feel good about something that's a little bit off, then that's definitely manipulation.
SPEAKER_05But that's where sometimes, and this is where you'd push back against like that we would say non-theological worship sort of thinking that says, well, no, you can't stop the flow of the song as a talk. Like that ruins the flow, like that ruins the vibes.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_05And you'd say that's definitely wrong.
SPEAKER_02I would say that is definitely wrong. However, don't use being theologically correct as an excuse for your poor preparation musically or theologically. Don't use it as an excuse for not praying for God to move in a powerful, mighty way. Don't use it as an excuse to not ask God to let there be a miracle that happens in the service. Largest miracle of all being if someone's heart submits to the Lord out of sinfulness and becomes someone becomes a Christian. Um, other miracles I'm also open to, but resting on like, well, we explained it well. So there. Yeah, yeah. And I know that's not what you're saying. No, it's not, but that's the flip side of what I'm saying. It is, and I don't want us to do that either as Baptists. I think as Baptists, often we can fall, we tend to err in that direction.
SPEAKER_05Well, that's where I've been to like churches and with two very good musicians in the room. I mean, I've been to churches, like, yeah, they're singing the right songs, and it's like theologically sound and beautiful, but like they're terrible. Like they're terrible musicians, or the singers are singing out of key, or like they're up on like I think of this one lady who's like an older lady sitting up on stage and she's just like looks somber and angry.
SPEAKER_04I think the challenge there though, I would say, because I grew up in a uh my summers I spent in Michigan as well. My grandparents had a uh dairy farm on the other side of the mitten. Um and uh near near Kalamazoo. Oh Kalamazoo, yeah. And uh I you know, I I I helped with music uh every you know, every summer in a little old country farming church, you know. And um those people sang heartily Uh, I think they've deeply loved God, but I mean, it was all that you know the pianist could do to to get through the hymns, and it was all that, you know, the person leading the song do to lead the hymns. But I do think that there was something like you were talking earlier uh about someone who's seasoned, someone who has a relationship with Jesus, someone who like you could feel like when you're with them, you're like, man, this person's been with Jesus. And it was something about being with a lot of those people um who are working the ground or who are uh who are out there um caring for creation and um and and just coming together and praising uh praising Jesus. There's something about that. I'm not saying that that diminishes like everyone should just say, Well, it was okay for the old country church, I'm not gonna practice music. I'm just saying that there there are appropriate levels of people who you can you can look at and say the um the lack of skill, the lack of ability is not a distraction to worshiping Jesus because of of who's in the room, uh because of what's going on in this place. On the flip side, I do think to your point, you show up at a church and you're like, yeah, we could just like we do this, we can you we can manipulate the sound system, we can, you know, employ these pedals, and we can just get up there and do Jesus karaoke and you know, put anybody in front of a mic, and we're gonna be okay. And it's like, uh I think we've got to be thinking through this a little bit more, working a little harder at trying to make sure that you know what we're that we realize what we're doing and what we're what we're being called to to do in the body of Christ here.
SPEAKER_02And I I think balance is also like you're kind of bringing a word of balance, and I think that's really important. Like often you're you've got a senior pastor at a church startup or whatever, who's wanting to have better musicians and be able to provide those congregations. Yeah, right. And so they finally, you know, they finally get somebody that has talent. And and I wanted I want to just go into the world of theater for a quick second, uh, for my illustration here. And that is uh Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep. So Anthony Hopkins is an amazing, amazing guy and amazing actor, and can really become whatever. But I had a cannibal actor, man. I had such, well, that's to my point, right on the nose, Cameron. I had such a strong reaction to him being C.S. Lewis. I was so offended. I'm like, why didn't they have my dad play C. S. Lewis? He was so much more like C. S. Lewis, even though he's a terrible actor and blah, blah, blah. Like, I was just so offended. Was that when you were a child or a child? This is I think I was 20 in my 20s or something when the movie came out. And um, I was talking to my wife about it. She's like, because your dad can't act. And and Anthony Hopkins can, no matter what he does, he can't, it is his gift to become that channel. Yeah, and so I say that because and then I think of you know, Meryl Streep, who you know, people say plays their lives better than they can, right? Whatever Meryl Streep's ideas about God are, if she came to your church and her assignment was to become your worship leader, she'd do a really good job. She would do an amazing job because she has a gift. That is her gift, that is her. That's a great point. And so if you are a senior pastor and you have a gifted worship leader, quote unquote, musically, theologically, it all feels good, then you had better be in up in their space, up in their face, in their life. Hey, how's your walk with the Lord? How's your marriage? How's your character? How are you doing with do you struggle with porn? It seems like you never struggle with anything. What do you struggle with? Yeah. Are you terribly insecure about what are you insecure about? And then if you want somebody to answer that, if you're a senior pastor, you better share about what you're insecure about. Or else they're just gonna shy you on like they've done every other part of the life because they have this one thing they're good at. One of the areas of my life that is the most life-giving, um, that I'm really excited about right now, is my discipleship group that I have with two other guys in my church where we tell each other everything. You know why I'm excited about this? It's gonna sound arrogant, I'm sorry in advance, but I've been a gifted musician coming from a privileged place in life who happened to be decent at theology. I'm in my 50s, I'm kind of at the top of my game. I have enjoyed an amazing life, but I'm very insecure. I struggle with sin, I have pride, I have these issues, and I need people to get in my face about my character and challenge me to be the man of God I've been called to be, to whom much is given, much is expected, and you know, much will be required. And so there is that need, it's on the converse of that. If you're at a church and you've got great people who love the Lord who are committed, get them training. Yeah, but you know what? Harold kind of plays the guitar, but he kind of stinks. Yeah, Harold, you're willing, no one else is willing. We're gonna get you lessons. And Harold's gonna be like, Thank you, Jesus, or his wife will be like, Thank God, or whatever. So, so that idea of balance, wherever you are, wherever, whatever you have at your church, don't just like be thinking like, oh, thank God we finally got a musician, or thank God we've got things that are theologically correct finally. It's not fair, but you're the senior pastor, and it's your job to steer the ship and follow, you know, follow me as I follow the Lord. So you're gonna have to get down and dirty at some point with every with every level of certain. I mean, everybody in ministry has got to clean toilets at some level. Everybody has got to do the hard work of saying, I'm a sinner in these areas, and expose your sin and bring it into the light, so that not just for your own sake, but for the sake of the people you're discipling, right? So they realize this is how we do it. Many people don't know how to live a transparent life because they've never seen it. Everything that they've been shown is uh that's also part of worship is being who we really are before who God really is.
SPEAKER_04I was just gonna say that I what you're speaking to is being a worship leader on the platform and off the platform. Yeah, like everyday life, people seeing your life in a pattern of worship so that when you stand up to lead them, yeah, there's a consistency.
SPEAKER_05It's not like it's Meryl Streep who walked on today, it's like that's a performance. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Even though it'll be such a good performance, you're like whatever.
SPEAKER_05But and people might say it's anointed, right? But it's emotionally manipulative.
SPEAKER_02Right. And I, you know, I just want to have a shout out like David Thompson, my pastor I grew up with, Mike Riley, Church of the Open Door, Ryan Blackwell, First Baptist Church San Francisco, and now Ben Day, the senior pastor now who I serve under. These guys have modeled what it looks like to be a transparent leader who gets involved in every level. I mean, I just I cannot tell you the esteem I have for these gentlemen and the impact they've had on my life. My dad was an amazing man of God. He did, he came from the greatest generation and he did not know how to do that. He prayed for our family every day. One of my favorite memories is crawling up underneath him as he was kneeling on the couch and hearing, feeling his breath on the back of my head as he would just praise the Lord and pray for every person I felt like in the world. But so, yeah, so we we have to have that.
SPEAKER_05So I think what's really important with what you guys are highlighting is two really gifted worship leaders, is that contrary to what I think a lot of people think as it regards, you know, a lot of people listen to this might be leaders in ministry or aspiring to be leaders in ministry. Like you said, some of them are like, I just need someone to play. Right. Can they just play? But you're highlighting, even as I would want to highlight myself, that the question you have to ask before can they play is do they, you know, to use our association or do they have cinnamon dust on their fingers? Do they do they have the dust of the spirit? But to this point, like, no, what matters most is character. And then I want to bring it back to end our conversation with this uh of theology, that you made this statement in your so what matters most about a worship leader is their character. Do the do they match the the like what the a godly man should look like and not just performatively, right? But then second woman or a woman, right? Yeah, thank you. Or second, and most uh with that then is like, how's their theology? Can they articulate truths well and soundly and biblically like a pastor should? Because now to your point, that's where I want to end, with what you did at the theology symposium, even what you wrote in the chapter that you sent me, that will be in our book, True God from True God, and was something that made uh Ryan Rippe say, Wow, I can't believe he said that. As a senior pastor and theologian, your comment that the most important theologian in the church is the worship pastor. So I want to end with that, like talking through why it is that the worship pastor, more so than the senior pastor or the teaching pastor, and more so that the song than the sermon, why that has the most important theological training apparatus, or why that is the most important theological training apparatus, the iron-sharpening theological iron, so to speak, more so than the sermon, and more so than even the senior pastor. That's a controversial statement, but I agree with you.
SPEAKER_02So music shapes the culture that we live in our it shapes our worldview. Amen. Sermons address problems inside of that worldview. Sermons give you solutions to things inside of the worldview. They give you clear clearer glimpses of who God is and a specific thing. But people don't remember sermons as well as they remember music. Music has been a gymnotic device since the time of our creation. We've used music to help us remember, and that word means remember. And even right there, I'll just point that out. Speak that way from the pulpit, like as we're leading worship, if you want to use a term, like I just used the term gymnotic, I didn't probably say it right, but it means something that helps your memory. So you can use terms, justification, and then just say what they are. Yeah. What people sing is what they believe. So you know, if I'm if I'm gonna sing wonderful grace of Jesus because we just keep singing it, or if I'm gonna sing Ice Surrender, whatever it is that we're singing, that's gonna keep coming up in my life. Um, a great, a great example is the idea of the the old hymn, I'll fly away. The idea is when it's all over, we finally get to get out of here. Well, there's a reason we don't ever sing that at my church, because Jesus comes back and redeems the earth. And so I don't want my church to have the mindset that our goal is to just get out of here, because that'll lead to other subtle theological shifts. It leads to the idea that other people don't matter as much, that the world doesn't matter, that and all these things could have little bits of truth because it's your relationship with God that it ultimately determines whether or not you know him for all eternity or whatever, and the world will burn and then be remade or whatever it says in Revelation. But it's saying something theologically at a very base principle um that will shape the way people view God and view the truth about him, no matter what's preached. And so yeah, so that theology, even that one simple little old chorus or hymn, I'll fly away, totally changes how my people view eschatology. Oh yeah. So that's what I mean when I say the worship leader is is the most important theological curator of the church. And we've you know, all the songs that we've talked about, the little things are different, they they definitely paint different pictures of God and um create different questions. Yeah. So if you're working, if a senior pastor is offended by what I'm saying, first, I apologize that I've offended you, but hopefully you'll use it to work with your your worship leader to help create environments where then the things that you teach about are answering the questions that the theological statements your worship is creating. You know, you you can create a landscape that people then can thrive and grow as they try to be disciple to learn about Jesus.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, senior pastors, you can't you can't sort of just delegate the quote unquote music part of the worship service to your worship guy or gal and think, oh, I'm done with it.
SPEAKER_02No, yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's like more so than ever, you really need to engage with what they're doing and the songs they're singing and the music settings they're arranging because of the theological formative power that music has.
SPEAKER_04Right. That's what that's the way I say it is I say um that uh music as a tool of worship is formational. It forms us, it forms what we love. That's why I I have a book that's called You Are What You Love, and it's all about worship. It forms what we love. That's what worship and music has a power to do. Uh in some sense, sermons are primarily informational. Uh, but to your point, it addresses a problem. Uh, it's informational in the sense that it gives us uh it gives us ideas, it gives us um linear thoughts, um, and and and we are to love the Lord our God with all of our mind, that's part of it. So preaching is part of the formation, but I would argue that preaching is part of the liturgy of worship. Exactly. And the liturgy, the liturgy is formational. And so if we are just relying on the sermon to disciple people and make people into followers of Jesus, we're gonna be uh deficient. Uh we're gonna have we're gonna be we're gonna have areas that we're gonna miss. The overall liturgy of worship is formational, it shapes us into who we are and what we are to be. And if the primary command, you know, given to us by Jesus is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then we ought to take a lot of care and pay a lot of attention uh to what's shaping us.
SPEAKER_02And I would say that the liturgy, worship, and music as a tool of it is well, and what you just said is so good because um, and even if we have to cut something out, leave it the same. Because the idea that you know I'm a worship pastor, the one thing I really love about my title is that I'm a minister of music and worship arts. It's a mouthful, but there's a difference because it's musical worship as opposed to preached worship or the Lord's Supper as worship, yeah, or giving as worship, or whatever else, other element of the service, right? And so, you know, we've really talked a lot about musical worship today and leading that element of the of the church and the service, which is important, but the whole service is worship. That's right. That's right, that's good.
SPEAKER_05That's really good. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. Uh, I'd like to do this again. I was thinking we need to do this with Jeff Mooney when he comes. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah, so Jeff Mooney is uh teaching Old Testament for us here at Gateway. He's a professor of Old Testament theology at CBU, but he was a jazz-trained pianist before he called in ministry. And so where he's trying to do a lot of his writing now at the end of his career is that has he stepped back from the pastor to do a lot of work on worship and theology. And you guys would like to have the best conversation.
SPEAKER_02Because if you don't invite me to see this guy, I mean, at least we can go to lunch. I don't have to be on the podcast. I just want to.
SPEAKER_05I mean, he said on this point, and it stuck with me ever since I was 20 years old, and I I was in the internship with the church. He said, Look, guys, talking to guys want to be future preachers, no one's gonna hum the three points of your sermon on their deathbed. He said, They're gonna be humming how great they are. And it's like, that's like it gives me chills to think about like that. That's so true that you want to be having people sing songs, and this was his line, that they can sing on their deathbed. And that's why the worship leader is so important.
SPEAKER_03The last thing I did for my mom when she died was sing her a song. That was the last thing I said.
SPEAKER_05So you didn't preach her a three-point sermon. So, anyways, guys, thank you for joining us on the Bay Area Theology Podcast. We'll have more conversations to come. I hope you're edified and encouraged as I was. Thank you, brother, for being with us.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, David. Thanks for having me, guys. It was super fun.
SPEAKER_05All right.
SPEAKER_04See ya. Thanks for listening to the Bay Area Theology Podcast. If this conversation encouraged you, be sure to subscribe, follow, leave a review, and share this episode with someone else who would benefit from it. You can find more episodes, resources, and information at Bayarea Theology.org. That's BayareaTheology.org. If you are interested in learning more about the Bayseed Collective or helping support the work that we are doing, go to Bayseed.org. That's B A Y S E D.org. At Bay Area Theology, we believe that healthy ministry begins with healthy theology. Our hope is to cultivate thoughtful conversations that strengthen the church here in the Bay Area and beyond. This has been Bay Area Theology, Theology from the Bay for the Bay.