All y’all worship together, but worship alone, too.

Steve Brown:
All y’all worship together, but worship alone, too. Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you’ve suffered too long under a do more, try harder religion, Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free. Steve invited Pete Alwinson to teach us this week. Pete is a former pastor, founder of ForgeTruth.com and the author of Like Father Like Son.

Steve Brown:
You know, that’s what we do in the south. When we say y’all, that’s one thing, that’s a small group, or maybe even one.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
But when you say all y’all, you mean the whole bunch.

Pete Alwinson:
I learned that when I did my internship in Birmingham, Alabama.

Steve Brown:
You found that out.

Pete Alwinson:
I’m from California, they called me a Yankee there, and I, what? Alright, okay.

Steve Brown:
Okay, we’re talking, that’s Pete Alwinson, and you’re used to him coming in on Fridays, and we’ve done it for years. And we answer questions, but I ask Pete because there’s so much talk about worship, and we’re going to connect it to the Psalms and to the Scriptures. There’s so much talk about worship and division about it, I thought it’d be great if Pete would teach us on that subject of worship. And so, he said he would do it, and that’s what we’re doing here this week. We’re talking about worship and the Psalms. And if you were listening yesterday, we said a little bit about the worship wars. Maybe we ought to, maybe we ought to revisit that and say a little bit more. Does, do you find yourself getting angry at certain kinds of worship?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, I really don’t. I’m amazingly tolerant of different styles of worship. How about you?

Steve Brown:
Same thing. You know, you and I both get in a lot of different venues, where everything is sung from Bach to the Blues Brothers.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And if we got upset when it didn’t fit our proclivities, we’d have to give up half of our ministry.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s true. That’s true. And now, both of our ministries, through Key Life and Forge, we interact with people cross denominationally, so I can be in a very traditional service. I find though that when I’m in a real traditional service, I miss the drums. I think it’s syncopated, give me a great hymn, but I like the pace of the more contemporary, even though I was raised with real conservative worship, traditional worship.

Steve Brown:
Did you know? And we’re both reformed and you knew that we’re going to bring that up. But that Calvin was criticized for the music in Geneva?

Pete Alwinson:
I didn’t know that.

Steve Brown:
Do you know what they called the music?

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
Geneva jigs.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh my goodness. He was,

Steve Brown:
he had a beat

Pete Alwinson:
yeah

Steve Brown:
It wouldn’t be Geneva Jigs today. It would be very traditional.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
But in those days, it was fairly radical.

Pete Alwinson:
And the worship of the Hebrews, they’re very expressive people. So, we know there was lyres and timbrels and dancing at times, and drums

Steve Brown:
and tambourines

Pete Alwinson:
all that stuff. So, David played the bass, I think, or maybe an acoustic guitar, I’m not sure, but I would say in terms of the worship wars of this, of today, probably one of the greatest areas is just the sound level, because most churches have moved more in a contemporary way. There are still some very traditional churches, but most churches have moved in contemporary ways. It’s the sound level that has caused a lot of people in the last five to eight years, a lot of problems.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And that can be fixed. You don’t, it doesn’t have to be so loud that it drives everybody, or if you’re old like me and wear hearing aids, just turn them off.

Pete Alwinson:
Take those suckers out. Or, and the other thing is lights in worship services. A lot of older people say, why do we need the lights going around or the smoke machines. And so, those are some of the side effects of worship. But the bigger idea is, really are what ought to go on in worship. Let’s talk about the elements, what on a Sunday morning worship, when the church is gathered, what elements Biblically ought there to be? Well, there ought to be the praise, number one, the praise and honor and glory, given to the triune God. Right? I mean, there has to be praise. Your prayer yesterday was just dynamite and it was incredibly worshipful, it was theocentric, it was God centered.

Steve Brown:
Really?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I wonder if Jeremy recorded that so I could listen to it.

Pete Alwinson:
I hope so. You could pray it every morning.

Steve Brown:
I didn’t know it was that good.

Pete Alwinson:
It was great.

Steve Brown:
I kind of feel good about it.

Pete Alwinson:
And your voice, with your voice was, you know, you have this combination.

Steve Brown:
I wish you would talk about how good looking I am. I’m tired of being a pretty voice.

Pete Alwinson:
I know, just always the voice, you know. But you emphasize the attributes of God and attributes are what we know to be true about God. And you talked about who he is more than what he did, has done for us, but both are very appropriate in worship.

Steve Brown:
And that’s part of worship.

Pete Alwinson:
And I think in church, that’s one thing we need to see in church is a God centered, a theocentric, a Christ centered worship. And that ought to be reflected then in our singing, in our prayers, and in our preaching. And in our singing in particular, because most people think that worship is just singing. It’s not.

Steve Brown:
No.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s way more than that. But I do think if we have a tendency to err in the modern church today, and I don’t have any particular church in mind here, it’s that sometimes our songs are so, let’s get technical, let’s call them anthropocentric, human centered prayers about what I want, what we want, about what God could do for us. And then in our songs, we often sometimes have love songs for Jesus. And this affects in my world as I interact with men a lot, because no man wants to sing about how much he loves, falling in love with Jesus. We have to be careful about some of those.

Steve Brown:
I never thought about that way.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. So, worship does have gender issues involved in it.

Steve Brown:
We don’t, too often the church is kind of like a performance where people applaud when it’s a good performance and they smile when it’s a bad one. But it’s not a performance for us.

Pete Alwinson:
No.

Steve Brown:
It’s a performance for God.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And so, let me throw that back then and say, is it appropriate in our worship services to clap after you’ve sung just this really wonderful worship song or praise song.

Steve Brown:
Well, I think it’s appropriate as long as you remember who you’re clapping for.

Pete Alwinson:
See, I think that’s the issue.

Steve Brown:
We’re not clapping for the musician, we should be clapping for the God who is worshiped.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s exactly right. And so, some churches actually say, let’s give a clap offering to God.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, they actually put it that way. And I think that worship, I think Hebrew worship in the Old Testament was very expressive. I think worship in the early church in smaller groups was also very participative and expressive as well. And there probably were even way back in the early church, a lot of Amens and praying together with one another.

Steve Brown:
You know, talking about worship wars and then we need to move on or we’re not going to get through all the stuff I want you to teach us. But we’re family and we don’t sit down and talk about these things very much. I think if I were still a pastor, I would talk more about being family. And that means that no part of the family gets exclusive decisions about what we listen to on the radio. Sometimes we listen to classical music, and sometimes country and western, and sometimes rock, sometimes metal. Because we’re family, and if we could understand that as the people of God, there would be less anger.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right, there really would be, and I think that what we need to understand is that we, worship is every week, together, corporately at least, and that’s why in Hebrews it says.

Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.

As is the habit of some, we need to continue to be together because there is that corporate sense of encouragement and joy, as well as a strengthening of our faith, as we come into the presence of God together. I’m looking across, I see you and I see my friends over there and they’re worshiping. And it’s like we to get, I’m not the only one that believes this, or if I’m having a crisis of faith this week because of a trial. Your faith can bolster my faith and as we sing together, as we become more God focused and we, and more gospel centered as well as what Jesus has done for us, then we can go back out into the world and continue a life of worship. And I think that’s what we have to remember is that all of life is worship. It’s not just the Sunday morning, and that’s what the Romans 12:1 and 2 talks about.

Steve Brown:
And that’s what, at the beginning of the program, I said worship together, but do it alone too.

Pete Alwinson:
Do it alone. And I think that that was, that didn’t get through to me early on when I was being discipled as a new Christian. I understood I was supposed to have a, what we called a devotion time or now, I call it with our guys, a daily appointment with God, a DOG. And so, where we read the word, where we connect with the Father, where we remember who we are as the deeply beloved sons and daughters of the most high God. But also that component of worship needs to be there.

Steve Brown:
Let’s talk about that tomorrow a little bit more.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah We’ll start off with that tomorrow.

Steve Brown:
You said that too often our worship is what is it, head?

Pete Alwinson:
It is so often, Evangelicals worship God with our head and our will but not our hearts.

Steve Brown:
Okay, do it with your heart and you think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Steve and Pete, all this week, we’re in a special series called It’s All About Worship. And I trust you’re enjoying it as much as I am. More with Steve and Pete tomorrow, hope you will join us for that. So, wow, here we are, just two weeks from Thanksgiving. Are you feeling thankful? Well, how about content? Well, if you’re like most folks, including me, you’d do just about anything to find peace and contentment. Well, Steve addressed that challenge in a message called How to Be Content…Not! If life is scary right now, if things are hard, I think it will give you the encouragement and comfort you’re needing. To get that message on CD for free, call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE, that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to order that. Or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for the free CD called How to Be Content…Not! And finally, if you’re blessed by the work of Key Life, would you help share that blessing with others through your financial support? Giving is easy. Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or simply pick up your phone and text Key Life to 28950, that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Just text that to 28950, then follow the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.