You can find some exiting things happening in churches today. As a result of the dynamic shifts in cultural, sociological and technological trends that happen every day, we've seen unprecedented creativity in churches delivering the gospel message. There are movie nights, Web casts, Podcasts, video loops, television broadcasts, Saturday services, bigger and smaller church groups, post-modern services, even post-post-modern services are starting to take root. The past decade has brought about so much new "stuff," a person walking into a church who hasn't been to a worship service for a few years is likely to feel as bewildered as Dorothy when she stepped from her house into the Land of Oz. Even those of us who work in the church—it seems, we have to be very intentional about checking the most recent Macintosh computer blogs so we aren't out of the loop the following Sunday. Not only have we left Kansas, we have left the planet and stepped into a, very mercurial, world that covers everything from our forms of communication to, quite simply, the way we interpret life.

The challenging thing about all of this dynamism is that it encourages us to continually discover new forms of communication. And this is a good thing; we should always be students of the language of our communities. However, if we look at much contemporary worship today, I fear we may find that there is very little understanding of the communicational nature of God's house. God's house is a house of prayer. Jesus is the Text, and He is our worship leader. In the attempts to make God's house an exciting and relevant place to the culture, it is possible that God's purpose for His house can be subverted. We may be in danger of a different text being placed at the center, so that we are not preaching, teaching and singing the Text, but rather something else. Maybe you have even seen that in your own church community.

Is there a Text in today's church? If the Church is alive and a vital and part of the living body of Christ, then, you bet there is. There is one Text, who is the Word of the Father, who appeared to us in the flesh, is known to us through the stories preserved in sacred Scripture, and continues to make Himself present to us in worship when we gather in His name. It is He who is the Word, the Text at the center of our community. Other texts maybe informational, but The Text is transformational. Though we can easily get caught up in all the great communication tools available, it is the job of the leader of a church to get caught up in the only transformational Text and keep Him the center of our focus.

We are discovering new forms of communication all the time, but if we look at much contemporary worship today, I fear we may find that there is very little understanding of the communicational nature of God's house. God's house is a house of prayer. Jesus is the Text, our worship leader. In the attempts to make God's house an exciting and relevant place to the culture, is it possible that God's purpose is subverted? We may be in danger of a different text being placed at the center, so that we are not preaching/teaching, singing the Text, but something else.

Is there a Text in today's church? If our church is alive and a vital and part of the living body of Christ, then, you bet there is. There is one Text, who is the Word of the Father, who appeared to us in the flesh, is known to us through the stories preserved in sacred Scripture, and continues to make Himself present to us in worship when we gather in His name. It is He who is the Word, the Text at the center of our community. Other texts maybe informational, but The Text is transformational. Though we can easily get caught up in all the great communication tools available, it is the job of the leader of a church to get caught up in the only transformational Text and keep Him the center of our focus.

The House of Prayer
It wasn't that long ago, November 9, 1989, to be exact, that the Berlin Wall fell. The news reports of the time reported prayer meetings in Berlin, once small groups in homes had grown into much larger groups—as many as 300,000 were again gathering for prayer in God's house. These were the same structures that the East German government had attempted to convert into museums, a storage place for memories, but nothing alive or powerful in the present. However, the purpose driving God's house is not merely the memoralization of the past. There is one purpose and one purpose only, as stated by the Old Testament prophets and emphatically restated by Jesus Christ. In Matthew 21:13, Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem and doesn't like what He finds there—it has become too commercialized. He overturns the tables of the moneychangers and justifies His seemingly radical action by an appeal to Scripture: "It is written, My House will be called a house of prayer, but you have made it into a den of thieves."
The text Jesus is quoting here is Isaiah 56:7: "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations." And notice how He uses Scripture: to call the people back to the original purpose of prayer and worship and away from those cultural forces that distract them from that purpose.

Jesus is not stating a new purpose for his Father's house. He is taking what has already been said by God regarding the matter of worship and giving it new meaning in the present day. It is the same text, simply a different context. We don't need to think of the "den of thieves" too literally; the thieves and robbers are merely any other agendas that take us away from our full attention towards God. For, at least, while we are in His house, we owe Him His due, which is His full measure of devotion, praise and glory. Nowadays the tables being overturned would not be moneychangers and the merchants of doves and lambs for temple sacrifices, but those who are using God's house of prayer for their own agenda.

To God Alone
As the Torah demonstrates, God had a vision for the meeting place with His people. In God's House, the devotion and prayer was to be to God alone, and not to any cultural idols. We are to love God totally and live in a manner in which this love is made known in deeds and acts. It is a form of prayer that does not cease when leaving the house, but rather changes form.

Music has always been associated with prayer in God's house. The Psalms— Israel's WOW songbook representing the best of the best compiled over 1,000 years of history—mentor us in dialoguing with God in His house. We learn through the praise and crying out found in the Psalms that God is good, and life can be very tough. Regarding what we call hymns of the faith, it is from Augustine that we gain the saying, "He who sings, prays twice." Augustine points out that the text of praise embedded in the music itself is a confession of praise to God. As well, a person who sings is both singing the confession and loving the one to whom he sings. "In praise," Augustine says, "there is the speaking forth of one confessing: in singing the affection of one loving." Thus we can characterize a hymn as an intelligent love song to God. A text that is often directly supplied by God—straight from Scripture. Through music, God's speech, embedded in writing, is made alive again via the voices and instruments of the performers.

The Word Is Alive
Recently, I was at a conference in Honolulu sponsored by Hawaiian Island Ministries, which featured a variety of teachers concerning God's house and bringing glory to Him. A delegation of 20 leaders from the church in China was with us as well. At a speaker's luncheon, several members of the group came forward and shared a song from their church. I didn't understand the words, nor could I determine if the music was contemporary or traditional, but I did understand the smiles as the song, directly from God's Word, was sung with gladness.

What made the modern hymn writers like Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley so controversial was that they stepped out of the use of Scripture as the text for song and used their own skills as poets to construct "hymns of human composure." In our era, the text of these writers has achieved the near status of Scripture. The fact is that these poets, and thousands of others that both followed and preceded them, were brilliant interpreters of the text. Their hymns, and the tunes to which they were set, achieved the Augustine standard. As the congregation sang them, they prayed twice.

One wonders what the text of the prayer as the disciples, in obedience to the Lord's command to tarry in Jerusalem until filled with power, could have been. Most certainly they were singing psalms and recounting the stories of Jesus. We are told in Hebrews 8:1-3 that the worship leader in heaven is Jesus. As Jesus told the Pharisees, You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me (John 5:39 NIV).

Going Astray
The point is that in our era, the technology of communication and all the various creative and listening devices has taken center stage. Perhaps even to the point of technology trumping the Text. It is not unheard of for a worship leader to spend 20 hours putting all the editing touches on a 3-minute worship video vignette, or a similar amount of time with pro-tools generating the perfect background music. Becoming media literate takes time and may even draw us away from the Text, or even worse, become the Text. In a strange and tragic twist of irony, the story of Jesus we are sharing becomes a sub-text to the story of the manner we are telling the story. The problem is the audience for our worship is not God, but rather the audience becomes a god. This is a basic distinction between secular forms of entertainment in other houses and the use of performing arts in God's house. In God's house the performing arts work for transparency. The purpose of the music is to serve the community in its active listening and dialogue with God. It is His Speech that generates faith.

Eye on the Ball
There are a lot of books being writ¬ten today about God's house. One famous Christian Author and trend prognosticator is predicting the end of God's house. He sees very critical times indeed for Christian communities. Making predictions about the future shapes, sizes and forms of God's house may give us who lead in God's house of prayer a good inventory of what we are presently doing. But the prediction of the end of God's house is a radical postmodern idea. I would even submit that modifying the term "church" with "emergent" or "post-modern"—or contemporary or traditional for that matter—takes the eye off the ball in terms of the essential purpose to which God's house exists. What is the distinction, one should ask, between an "emergent prayer," or a "traditional prayer" or a "post-modern prayer"? The essential question to ask is not what is the style? The question is who or what is the Text in God's house? Or: Does God's House have a prayer in the 21st century?

Let me warn you that re-centering God's house as a house of prayer is a radical notion. If you are part of an existing Christian community, re-discovering the foundational prayer of your group will bring renewal and reform. There are elders in your community that know the prayer. Your function in devotional arts is to assist them in listening to God. The irony of 21st century technology, and the activity that surrounds its use, is that devices created to enhance our hearing can actually provide more distraction.

As leaders of our communities, we must be careful guards of the Text. It is time to take inventory of the "text" that we are using in the House of God. The "text" includes not only what we are saying but the way we are saying it, as well. We need to understand that some of our "traditions" or "procedural knowledge," often sub-conscious or transparent to us, may be speaking louder than The Text. Jesus re-established the purpose of God's house, and we have the witness of the centuries of believers to the on-going prayer from generation to generation. Those who choose, create, or otherwise adapt and lead the songs of prayer for the Community have a dual responsibility. For those who sing, pray twice!

"For he that singeth praise, not only praiseth, but only praiseth with gladness: he that singeth praise, not only singeth, but also loveth Him of whom he singeth. In praise, there is the speaking forth of one confessing; in singing, the affection of one loving." – St. Augustine

Reprinted with permission from Worship Leader Magazine (May 2006 issue, vol.15, no.3, Chuck Fromm)

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