Light First, Then Heat: What Worship Leaders Today Can Learn from Isaac Watts

This excerpt from Douglas Bond's new book on Isaac Watts is a needed reminder for those who lead God's people in public worship:

Watts understood that "our passions are intensely directed toward material things but are hardly moved by the most important discoveries of faith." He was warring against the stale lifeless singing in worship in his youth, and he rightly wanted to see emotion and passion, as we do, in sung worship. He knew that passions "are glorious and noble instruments of the spiritual life when under good conduct." But here is where Watts is a counter voice to many well-meaning worship leaders today: he knew that passions "are ungovernable and mischievous energies when they go astray." He grasped - and so must we - that it is the business of church leaders both "to assist the devout emotions" and "to guard against the abuse of them." Centuries before the invention of the electric bass, Watts warned church leaders: "Let him not begin with their emotions. He must not artfully manipulate" their passions and feelings until he has first "set these doctrines before the eye of their understanding and reasoning faculties. The emotions are neither the guides to truth nor the judges of it." He argued that since "light comes before heat...Christians are best prepared for the useful and pious exercise of their emotions in the spiritual life who have laid the foundations in an ordered knowledge of the things of God."

In the very best of Watts' hymns, he combines both emotion and knowledge. But for Watts, it is always light first, then heat. The feeling of wonder, the emotion of profound gratitude, the escalating thrill of adoration and praise always follow the objective propositional exploration of the doctrines of the gospel. For Watts, the doxological always follows the theological....We know this not because Watts said so. Watts discovered it from divine revelation. Hebrew poetry in the Bible can be deeply passionate, even erotic, and the Psalms are rich with thrilling emotion, but it is always light first, then heat.

--Douglas Bond, The Poetic Wonder of Isaac Watts  

Cosper on "Why Do We Sing?"

Mike Cosper reminds us that singing is a gift of a creation with formational effects in this article from The Gospel Coalition site on Why Do We Sing?

At its best, congregational music is a marriage of truth, beauty, and action. Songs that are clear and comprehensible to a congregation, loaded with biblical truth, are set to music that "paints" that text emotionally. By singing with the church, I'm putting truth and beauty into action within me. I'm confessing the truth as I experience its effects. I am "speaking the truth in love" with the church, which as David Peterson points out, is not a reference to interpersonal confrontation, but communal confession. We speak the truth in love when we join our voice with the church, singing together of who God is and what he's done.

In singing, the whole person is engaged. In congregational singing, the whole person is engaged and united with the community around us. This practice takes on its greatest meaning in the church, where that unity shapes and reorients a covenant community to the story of the gospel. When the church sings a lament together, the words and music share the sense of sorrow and anguish of those who are suffering. When they sing a celebratory anthem, the music helps them emotionally taste hope and victory.

It is dangerous to pursue the emotional effect of music without rooting it in the content of God's Word. But it's also dangerous to pretend that music's emotional effects are unimportant or dangerous in themselves. To be stirred by singing is to be human, and it's a means of grace to God's church that such a gift is so easily accessible. You don't even need rock band, or a pipe organ, or a guy with a faux hawk and an acoustic guitar. You just need a song and a reason to sing.

Click here to read the entire article. 

Biblical and Theological Foundations of Worship

During Sunday evenings in September, we at First Baptist Church will be having a teaching series on The Biblical and Theological Foundations of Worship with guest speakers Paul Clark, David Dockery, Chris Mathews, and Ben Mitchell.  Each session will begin at 5:00 PM.  The schedule and topics are below:

September 8      Dr. Paul Clark, "Worship Renewal and Music Ministry"

September 15    Dr. David Dockery, "The History of Worship"

September 22    Dr. Chris Mathews, "Selecting the Songs We Won't Sing"

September 29    Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, "The Gospel and Worship" 

Audio will be made available on the church website for those unable to attend.   

2 New Books Related to Worship

Here are two new books related to worship that I look forward to reading:

Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel, Mike Cosper

Is it singing? A church service? All of life? Helping Christians think more theologically about the nature of true worship, Rhythms of Grace shows how the gospel is all about worship and worship is all about the gospel. Mike Cosper ultimately answers the question: What is worship?

Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, James K. A. Smith

How does worship work? How exactly does liturgical formation shape us? What are the dynamics of such transformation? In the second of James K. A. Smith's three-volume theology of culture, the author expands and deepens the analysis of cultural liturgies and Christian worship he developed in his well-received Desiring the Kingdom. He helps us understand and appreciate the bodily basis of habit formation and how liturgical formation--both "secular" and Christian--affects our fundamental orientation to the world. Worship "works" by leveraging our bodies to transform our imagination, and it does this through stories we understand on a register that is closer to body than mind. This has critical implications for how we think about Christian formation.

A Brief Definition of Worship

A.W. Tozer's brief but apt definition of worship:

A meeting where the only attraction is God.

To read more of Tozer's thoughts on worship, I would recommend his Whatever Happened to Worship? A Call to True Worship.