Who is church for?

If you were to boil my disagreements with Perry Noble and NewSpring down to a single issue, it would be over the answer to this question.

Here, in order, is how I would answer the question.

1. God. As God began to reveal himself to his people, one of his early steps was to create a house for himself. Not only was God to have his own house, but he was very particular about how it was to be built and how people were to act when they visited it. From Deuteronomy 12:4-5:
   

   You shall not act like this toward the LORD your God.

   But you shall seek the LORD at the place which the LORD your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come.

   When I built my house a few years ago, I was keenly interested in adapting the plans and monitoring the workers who were constructing it. Large sections of the Old Testament are devoted to God’s detailed instructions on how the tabernacle and, later, the temple were to be designed and outfitted. God designed his house so that he would enjoy inhabiting it. It had to be just so before he would move in. From Exodus 40:34, after Moses had completed the tabernacle:

   Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

   If you visited my home, I would expect you to act in accordance with the customs and rules in my home, and if I visited yours, one of the things I would be trying to do is to figure out your rules. Who sits in what chairs at the dinner table, for example. In an analogous way, God expects visitors to his house to act in accordance with his rules. Deuteronomy 12:8:

   You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.

   Outsiders and unbelievers especially were not be be a standard for behavior in God’s house. Look at Deuteronomy 12:30-31.

   Beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?’

   You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods.

   God also expects his own people to come near with respect. Leviticus 22:2 (and many others):

   Tell Aaron and his sons to be careful with the holy gifts of the sons of Israel, which they dedicate to Me, so as not to profane My holy name; I am the LORD.

   Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 also reminds us that church is not primarily for us, and that that understanding should affect our behavior:

   Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are doing evil.

   Do not be hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the presence of God For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few.

2. Believers. By his grace, God opened his house to his family to join him and enjoy him. The Psalms often refer to assemblies of believers who gather to worship God. Psalm 149:1:
   

   Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the saints.

   It’s interesting to note that the label of Christian was given to describe believers who gathered in church. From Acts 11:25-26:

   And he left for Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch And for an entire year they met with the church and taught considerable numbers; and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.

   Christians and church are inseparable. Christians were defined in part by their attendance in church.

   Church is also necessary for preserving the saints in their faith. Note the progression from preaching to discipleship to church government in this passage from Acts 14:21-23.

   After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

   When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

   Paul tells Timothy that proper behavior is expected in church, which is to be so honored because it is essential for understanding truth.

   You will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. (1 Timothy 3:15)

   The church is given to us as a venue to worship God, and as his venue to teach, bless and discipline us.

3. Unbelievers. Although church is not created for unbelievers, it does not exclude them. Paul instructs the church on the proper use of tongues by telling them to consider whether unbelievers will be there. From 1 Corinthians 14:22-25:
   

   So then tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers; but prophecy is for a sign, not to unbelievers but to those who believe.

   Therefore if the whole church assembles together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad?

   But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an ungifted man enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all; the secrets of his heart are disclosed; and so he will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you.

   Although this verse is sometimes misused to justify turning churches into virtual pagan temples, note that Paul assumes that unbelievers are not a regular part of church. The repeated use of the word if shows that church is not lacking anything if they are not in attendance, but neither should they be excluded.

   Paul also assumes that if an unbeliever is attending church, they are quite likely about to be saved and begin to worship God. These are not seekers Paul is talking about; they are people ready to be turned inside out by God.

   The reason they’re in church is probably because God has drawn them there. We know that they’re not there of their own volition to seek God, as Romans 3:11 makes clear.

   There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.

The reason this matters is because our understanding of the purpose of church will affect the way we behave in it and how proper our worship is when we’re in it.

(Tomorrow we’ll look at what Perry Noble and his friends believe about this question and how it affects their worship.)

How to pray like a Pharisee

A week or so ago, we were looking at Brad Cooper’s gun-assisted sermon on how worship is a weapon. Although we were rudely interrupted by the Gary Lamb news, a couple of things in his closing prayer warrant a few more bullet points.

In his exposition, he criticizes existing worship styles.

In our evangelical culture we have neutered worship, and we sing empty, superficial posturing.

Then he comes to the prayer:

God, I pray for this culture, that, Lord, we would recognize the potential we have as worshippers of you. That we don’t just sing songs to sing. That we don’t just sing songs because people have done it for hundreds of years. That we don’t just worship you because it’s a sacred cow that people just always constantly do. That it’s not boring, that it’s not weak. God, I ask and beg you for forgiveness for the fact that we have worshipped in a neutered manner in churches all over our world for years.

Now, some un-neutered questions:

• What is sexual worship? If neutered worship is such a bad thing, what is its opposite? Does this explain Perry Noble’s interest in little blue pills? Is this why it’s a good thing to have condoms and sex magazines in church?
• Is worship not sacred? We’ll be doing it constantly in heaven, so what’s wrong with starting now?
• How can worship ever be boring? We’d only worry about that if worship was all about us, or if it was supposed to be something useful to us. You know, like a weapon.
• How does God forgive you for someone else’s sin? Since Cooper obviously doesn’t engage in neutered worship, how is he in a position to ask forgiveness for someone else’s sin? (Leaving off the fact that he hasn’t explained why it is something we need to beg forgiveness for.) The effect, given that the repentance is not being offered on behalf of anyone in the room, is to announce how great and righteous his own worship is. It’s the kind of prayer that Pharisees specialized in. From Luke 18:11:
  

  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men-robbers, evildoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector.’

• Is Cooper more important than these kids’ parents? Of the many reasons I wouldn’t recommend NewSpring’s youth group, the most important one is the lack of respect it gives to parents. When Cooper asks forgiveness for the old ways of doing worship, he is quite clearly referring to worship that happens in other churches. The people in his audience are high schoolers, so if they have attended other sinfully worshipping churches, it would have been at the initiative of their parents, many of whom probably still attend those churches. Cooper is telling his kids that their parents have led them into sinful worship.

Cooper got the message about worship as a weapon wrong in the first place, but his self-righteous repentance for sins he doesn’t commit, though his congregation’s parents do, is as aggressive and destructive as the weapon he cradles.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

A few people around these parts have been insisting that gross errors of misapplying Scripture, as we saw with Noble’s teaching on Simeon, happen so infrequently at NewSpring that we need not be concerned. That being the case, here’s something else they can be unconcerned about.

Brad Cooper posted the sermon he was preparing when we last saw him with an assault weapon. I took a quick listen, as can you here.

His basic point was that worship is a weapon like his gun. (By the way, whoever thought it was “excellence” to open a meeting of high school students with a slow-motion video of a guy spraying bullets, then walking out on stage with the gun? Stupid, stupid, stupid.)

Cooper used a passage from 2 Chronicles 20 in which Judah faces the prospect of annihilation from an overwhelming enemy, and, led by Jehoshaphat, asks God for deliverance. God tells the people that he will save them. In a part of his response he says,

The battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow march down against them…. You will not have to fight this battle.

For most of Cooper’s sermon he reads and applies the story faithfully, but when he comes to the concluding application, he gets it all backwards.

When the men … begin to sing and give praise to God, it was a weapon. …When they started praising–and notice[d?] that praise and worship is a weapon–God starts blowing up the enemy….

Here has been my prayer all week–that God would have some spiritual land mines out here where you’re standing tonight, and that as you rightly praise God, he would start blowing up your flesh, … that he would start blowing up and sending artillery back into your home where you’re facing this struggle, … that it would start sending grenades back into your schools….

As we worship tonight, that’s what our focus is going to be.

Worship is a weapon.

Worship was a consequence of victory, not the cause of it. It was a reaction to God’s power, not the reason for it. It’s a distinction that makes a big difference. The weapons in 2 Chronicles were all God’s; nothing the people of Judah did had anything to do with how God (the battle was his, remember) fought the battle. Cooper is supposing that worship is the cause of victory, which is why he advocates that his congregation engage in assault worship after his sermon.

Note his intended focus in worship–our problems. It’s worship inverted. We focus on ourselves and tell God to do good stuff for us.

Even so, narcissistic worship is still worship, just of a different god.

Can we use just anything in worship?

Gary Lamb opened his service with a new song from Montgomery Gentry last weekend. Here are some of the lyrics:

There’s one in every crowd,
brings the party in us out,
good time Charley with a Harley, whiskey bent and hellbound,
he’s got the next round, but he always drinks for free,
there’s one in every crowd, and it’s usually me.

He’ll bum a light and steal your girl,
then laugh at you for gettin’ all upset.

He’s a hard drinkin man’s man,
and women love him when they can.

Lamb is using the song in a series called Party, which supposedly describes the reaction in Heaven when a sinner is saved.

Gary, this is not an appropriate song to use to describe that holy event. The character in this song is unconcerned about going to hell, steals women from other men and laughs at their misfortune, and an adulterous drunk.

How does this have any relationship to your worship of God?

Wait, never mind. I think I know.

Worship song triggers high school evacuation

Try this thought experiment.

If a high school teacher came across the lyrics from NewSpring’s worship band handwritten in a student’s locker or desk, would the school have to be evacuated?

If you didn’t see them the first time, here they are:

I’m here to battle, baby. I dance to kill.

Time to go all in.

Move to kill ‘em all.

Annihilation of the enemy. Wrath pours down when I move my feet.

They can scratch and claw, We ain’t backin’ off.

I’m serious. Wouldn’t you have to call the police and get everyone outside ASAP?

Let’s have the Bloods and Crips lead our worship!

First we had an endorsement of premarital sex.

Then we had profanity directed at God’s house.

Now, NewSpring’s youth group maintains its momentum with murder and hate in a tirade seemingly plucked from the hymnal of the Bloods and the Crips.

Youth pastor, Brad Cooper, highlighted his band’s performance of a song whose lyrics are so violent I’d be ashamed for someone to find it on my iPod, let alone offer it in God’s house as worship.

Here’s a sampling of the lyrics:

[You] Don’t wanna step to me unless you plan on losin’

I’m here to battle, baby. I dance to kill.

Time to go all in.

Move to kill ‘em all.

We dig them trenches so they be trippin’

Annihilation of the enemy. Wrath pours down when I move my feet.

Fall in all my new recruits. Now you’re in my troop.

They can scratch and claw, We ain’t backin’ off.

I have developed low expectations when it comes to NewSpring’s worship, though they keep surprising me and lowering the bar in new and creative ways.

(Note to commentators, before you huff and puff about taking the song out of context, you might want to defend BCoop’s boastful post, the point of which is to present his so-called “dirty” song out of context. Where does he show off the songs that actually worship God?)

I once criticized Cooper for describing his worship as BAMF.

Perhaps he was right.

Behold the awesome power of age

For the last few months my church has been incorporating a testimony of God’s goodness from one of our members as a part of our worship service. They’re not necessarily the testimony of their salvation, but of times that they’ve seen God’s hand during trying moments in their lives.

Last week and this, the “witnesses” have been people well advanced in years (I hesitate to guess ages, but probably 70s or 80s). All testimonies are worth hearing, but the effect of these two senior saints has been something even more. To hear someone who has lived so long in the Lord’s care means a great deal. They’ve been tested by life, yet they retain the joyful assurance of his providence. That’s reassuring and encouraging to younger believers.

David added the perspective of advanced age in his own account of God’s goodness.

I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.

For some, this is a bug

For others, it’s apparently a feature

“We don’t think there should be any barriers to hearing the good news of Jesus,” said Nick Charalambous, NewSpring’s web campus pastor. “We know people are living more of their lives online every day, and we want to offer them an option to learn how God can transform their lives with joy, hope and purpose without their having to visit a church.”

It must be nice, to do church without having to go to church and meet, you know, Christians who make you feel uncomfortable.

The writer of Hebrews is so yesterday.

Not forsaking our own assembling together, as the custom of some is, but exhorting one another; and so much the more, as ye see the day drawing nigh.

The Greek word translated as assembling is episynagoge. It means that Christians are to physically assemble together in one place.

You might recognize the root synagogue in there. In other words, Hebrews tells us to go to church–the building with people in it, not the website.

Is it OK for us to disagree now?

NewSpring’s worship leader seemed quite down on himself on Sunday. He acknowledged that he has payed his dues to Satan, and seemed to think he’s going to hell.

I know NewSpringers don’t like bloggers always finding things to disagree with their leaders on, but would this be an appropriate time to point out that he’s probably wrong?

UPDATE: People who complain about playing Highway to Hell to open an Easter service are told that they can’t criticize unless they’ve seen and understood the song in the context of the whole service, notwithstanding the fact that NewSpring itself is proud to display the song out of context. Look at Brad Cooper’s page or Tony Morgan’s site (who posted two versions of it); all they show you from the entire service is the H to H song. They obviously think it’s the coolest thing they did that morning.

Has anyone seen them showing off videos of the other parts of the worship service to the same extent as this one?

You can see how this could get confusing

An inspiring pop culture leader says this is how you do it.

I wanted to create a stage persona for myself that allowed me to really speak about anything I want… So I can be a storyteller, I can be jokey, I can be corny, I can be a little vulgar, I can be a lot vulgar. And I’m not afraid to go anywhere to get the point of [the message] across, even if I have to just blabber like an idiot.

The inspired Preacher says this is how you do it.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.

Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.

As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.

There’s just so much conflicting advice.

In which he embraces seeker-sensitive services

I was listening to a podcast of a sermon by Sinclair Furguson this evening and was struck by the truth of his insight into seeker sensitivity.

All biblical worship is seeker-sensitive worship. The question is, who is the one seeking the worship?

The Father seeks such [us?] to worship him.

Put in other words, all biblical worship should be seeker sensitive to the One who seeks that worship from his creatures and from his children–the Lord Himself.

And it is so fascinating, if tragic, to see what shock appears in people’s faces when one says that the really important thing about our worship is not that it pleases me, but that it pleases Him.

That God and his Word has told me not simply how I may be justified, but how I am to worship him. That my pleasure in worship is not the goal of my worship, but a byproduct of the pleasure of the God that I worship.

Now that’s preaching.

Listen to the whole thing if you can. It’s the Strange Fire sermon that you’ll find here. The Scottish accent makes it sound even better.

Indecency in church

No, this is not from an MTV set.

It’s worship at Newspring Church.

This doesn’t (or shouldn’t) require much commentary, but there’s a verse that head pastor Perry Noble, who wasn’t a part of this service, loves to titillate his audience with, though he appears not to have grasped the point of the passage.

Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Your camp must be holy, so that he will not see among you anything indecent and turn away from you. (Deut 22:24)

Besides being good public hygiene, the point of the regulation is to emphasize the holiness of God. Our sin and refuse are incompatible with his incorruptible nature. God demands holiness.

I’m sure that sometime in the series the preacher is going tell his congregation that they should not corrupt themselves with illicit sex because our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Which is true.

But if our bodies deserve respect as God’s temple, how about God’s temple as well?

What’s on stage here is execrable and indecent. And it’s not just in the camp, it’s in God’s temple.

Bury it. It stinks.