The worship team is much more than the ones on stage

On Sunday afternoon we had an end-of-year get-together/BBQ with many of  our home church‘s music, sound and multimedia servants, along with their families. It was a good group of about 40+ people, and a great time of fellowship and celebrating how faithful God has been to HBC over the year gone by.

I shared with everyone one aspect about the HBC worship ministry this year that’s particularly struck me. Although much of the worship ministry is public/corporate in nature, there’s so much more that goes on behind the scenes that most of the church family won’t typically see. Throughout the year, some of the most touching examples of faithful, joyous service to the Lord have been the less obvious ones. I’m referring to the quiet workers that contribute immensely to the worship ministry (and some aren’t even listed on the roster).

For example:

  • there’s the musician that makes every single practice, and sings so heartily because they can’t do so for the rest of the week when they’re with their unbelieving family
  • there’s the mum who tirelessly chauffeurs her son or daughter so they can make the 8:30 early morning rehearsals
  • there’s the singer that records a difficult alto part, then sends it to her sister-in-Christ to help her practise it for the Sunday service
  • there’s the camera and projector operators that serve joyfully, even though it sometimes hurts their eyes to squint at the screen over long periods of time
  • there’s the guy who pulls up straight from a 12 hour work day to set up the sound gear, and patiently waits till the end to pack it down again
  • there’s the wife or husband who manages the home and the children lovingly, and waits patiently for their spouse to return from a late practice
  • there’s the folk that meet upstairs each Sunday morning before each service, to pray and intercede to God, and ask Him to enable each person serving that morning

For time would fail me to tell of many other examples of quiet, faithful ministry. And I’m sure you have members like these in your church too.  One of the things I love about being part of the worship ministry is that, as members of the worship team, we’re uniquely blessed with the opportunity not just to sing praises to God and encourage others to do so, but also to minister to each other as brothers and sisters struggling along the same narrow road.

My hope is that all these “unsung heroes” will be lavishly rewarded for their service unto the Lord when he comes again to rule and to reign. But I’m so grateful that, for now, He’s left a whole bunch of humble and faithful servants here at HBC.

Can you think of any other examples of “unsung heroes” in your church?

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What you celebrate as a church: Kingdom People

Trevin Wax makes some really convicting points in this article. In it he describes a fictitious, but representative story of two Christians. They know the gospel, love Christ, but struggle to find a new home church that match up with their old church. An excerpt:

Rob’s Story

Rob grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the Deep South. His church believed the gospel and demonstrated genuine affection for the lost.

Even though the gospel was preached in Rob’s church, the deacons seemed to save their heartiest “Amens” for whenever the preacher went off script and started reminding them of all that set their church apart from the others in town. The preacher and congregation took pride in the fact that their church was traditional:

* Just gimme that “old-time religion” please!
* No need to project Bible verses up on some newfangled screen. (We actually expect people to bring their Bibles to church!)
* We like organs and hymns, and we refuse to dumb down our music for the 7/11 ditties you can hear on the radio 24/7.
* We dress up around here because we’re meeting King Jesus (and shouldn’t you wear your finest clothes for royalty?).
* Name the program you need and we’ve got it covered.
* From birth to heaven, our church offers an “old-fashioned” church experience in Southern Baptist style.

Rob went off to college in a big city and started looking for a church. He knew the gospel. He wanted to walk with the Lord. But in his new city, he had trouble finding a Southern Baptist church that felt like home. One week, he tried a church that turned out to be much too casual for his liking (they had a coffee bar!). Another church didn’t have enough programs to suit his taste. He found a church where he clicked with people and liked the preacher, but they had a screen, a drum set, and a singer with suspiciously shaggy hair.

Several months have gone by, and now, Rob is adrift. He feels disoriented. He sits down one evening and writes out a list of all the things important to his church experience. By the time he puts the pen down, he is frustrated that he can’t find “the right church.”

Thinking about it now, and reflecting on our own search for a home church a couple of years back, we did indeed fall into some of the same pitfalls.

Week after week, the churches emphasize and celebrate what makes them different from other churches. They celebrate their uniqueness — not the gospel uniqueness that shines light in a dark world, but a worldly uniqueness that would have us base our identity in stylistic distinctions between brothers and sisters.

Whenever we are formed within a context that celebrates certain cultural expressions over against other expressions, we begin to expect the wrong things from a church. So when the day comes for us to unite with a different congregation, our list of expectations is devoid of the gospel [emphasis mine].

It really was God’s grace that we didn’t go adrift ourselves and get disillusioned about not finding “the right church”, that ticked all our preferential boxes, that matched with all our distinctives.

I pray that we celebrate the gospel in a way that leads our church members to easily cross cultural divides because of the centrality of the cross. What we celebrate is just as important as what we believe.

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D.A. Carson:

“I have been teaching more decades now that I can count and if I have learned anything from all of this teaching, its this: my students…learn what I’m excited about. So within the church of the living God, we must become excited about the gospel. That’s how we pass on our heritage. If, instead, the gospel increasingly becomes for us that which we assume, then we will, of course, assent to the correct creedal statement. But, at this point, the gospel is not what really captures us. Rather, is a particular form of worship or a particular style of counseling, or a particular view on culture, or a particular technique in preaching, or — fill in the blank. Then, ultimately, our students make that their center and the generation after us loses the gospel. As soon as you get to the place where the gospel is that which is nearly assumed, you are only a generation and a half from death”.

God has been really good to us to put us in a church that celebrates the gospel!

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– William

Extol him, all peoples! Planning for a bilingual service

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging recently. December is a particularly busy season of ministry at Howick Baptist, not least in the worship ministry. In the previous two weeks, Craig and Simon have faithfully led worship for two very contrasting services. And this week, I have the privilege of leading the music team for a combined service with our brothers and sisters from the Evangelical Formosan Church.

We did the same thing around this time last year. When you’re singing the same praises to God in both English and Mandarin, it really feels like a slice of heaven!

HBC Service Redux: 21 November 2010

Here’s our weekly recap of the Sunday service at my home church. This time, I led the worship service while Peter preached from 1 Timothy 2:3-6, carefully explaining through some quite tough gospel dilemmas. We concluded the service by taking communion together in remembrance of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Order of service

Call to worship: In light of the Pike River coal miner incident, I tried to acknowledge the fact that we don’t worship in a vacuum but in real life, where there’s troubles, difficulties and events that sometimes just make it difficult to focus on God on a Sunday. This is what I said:

I’m sure many of you have been listening to the news to try and find out the latest about the 29 miners trapped in the Pike River coal mine. I don’t know what you were thinking this morning as you walked in, whether you’ve been wondering where God is in all this. And you may have your own trials, you might even be finding it hard to think of reasons praise God right now. It’s a difficult truth to grasp at the best of times, but we worship a God who is sovereign, who is in control.

Let’s remind ourselves then, as people reconciled to God through Christ, we have so many reasons to praise God!

In Psalm 147 it says: “Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praise to our God… he heals the broken hearted, and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. The LORD lifts up the humble; he casts the wicked to the ground. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre!”

Well we’ve got more than a lyre this morning, we’ve got the voices of Howick Baptist here — let’s stand together and sing to our amazing God.

The funny thing is, I had prepared a completely different call to worship beforehand. but once the mining events that transpired became apparent, it didn’t feel as appropriate. I guess it always pays to be keeping up with current events. In any case these miners are still very much on my mind even today…

1. Indescribable by Laura Story. Much of the beautiful imagery in the lyrics about God’s authorship over creation comes from the book of Job, where God responds him in a declaration of His sovereignty. He asks Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.” (Job 38:4) “Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons, or lead out the Bear with its cubs?” (Job 38:31-32). So it’s actually quite fitting therefore to sing in response:

“All-powerful, untameable, awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim You are amazing God!”

2. Salvation Belongs to our God by Adrian Howard and Pat Turner. This is a firm HBC favourite, from the 1980’s. The words are taken straight from Revelation 5, in the scene where multitudes worship the Lamb who was slain (i.e. Jesus Christ), saying: “Praise and glory wisdom and thanks, honour and power and strength be to our God forever and ever, amen!”

3. Come Thou Fount by Robert Robinson. An older hymn that speaks so strongly of God’s sovereign grace for His people. To help the younger congregants, we used a modified version which used another line in place of “Here I raise mine Ebenezer” (which is   an obscure, not well-understood reference to 1 Samuel 7); and changed a few words like “hitherto” and “fetter”, which people don’t really use today.

4. Grace Unmeasured by Bob Kauflin. A newer song by Sovereign Grace Music that do a really good job of presenting the gospel from the perspective of God’s amazing, undeserved grace.

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 1:3-24. Francelle read out one of the passages that speaks of God’s sovereign grace and mercy to believers, redeemed in Christ.

5. Oh the Mercy of God by Geoff Bullock. The words from this song are pretty much drawn from Ephesians 1, and also Colossians 1 in speaking of the divinity of Christ. It’s got a rousing chorus where in response to the gospel, we get to sing:

“To the praise of His glorious grace! To the praise of His glory and power. To him be all glory, honour and praise, forever and ever, and ever, Amen!”

How can you get more God-centred than that!

Sermon: 1 Timothy 2:3-6. This is definitely a sermon to rewatch and go over again. Peter revisited the text from last week and tried to work through a number of gospel dilemmas, apparent contradictions in scripture regarding salvation and Jesus’s work on the cross. As Peter holds a moderate Reformed position (he explains it in the message), many of our songs this morning were deliberately chosen to emphasise and support the sovereignty of God in His work of salvation.

6. Salvation’s Song by Stuart Townend. We played this for the church as they contemplated the cross and took part in communion. They’re beautiful words that work well in helping to remind us of the sacrifice Jesus made to pay for the sins of the world.

7. All I Have Is Christ by Devon Kauflin. A profoundly moving way to finish, by singing through the gospel:

“And as I ran my hellbound race
Indifferent to the cost
You looked upon my helpless state
And led me to the cross
As I beheld God’s love displayed
You suffered in my place
You bore the wrath reserved for me
Now all I know is grace…”

Once again it was a great morning of worship. I didn’t feel too confident about some aspects earlier on in the week, and my voice deserted me for a bit on Saturday – so it’s in times like these you really learn to trust and rely on God’s strength, not your own.

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-William Chong

HBC Service Redux: 14 November 2010 (summary)

Simon Newbould led the worship service, while Peter preached from 1 Timothy 2:4.

1. Come Now Is the Time to Worship – Brian Doerkson.

2. Resurrection Hymn – Keith Getty and Stuart Townend.

3. All Is Well – Robin Mark.

4. Rejoice – Simon Newbould. Simon wrote this one about a month ago and the church have quickly picked it up. It’s easy to sing and the words pretty much proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

5. How Deep The Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend.

Sermon – The Mission Heart of God – Peter Somervell. In this evangelistic sermon, Pastor Peter preaches the good news of Christianity, explaining and proclaiming the truth that God desires all people to come to the knowledge of.

6. Jesus Thank You – Pat Sczebel.