Your treatise on worship has so impressed me, I would like to continue it privately, if you are interested. Please contact me at

jlparks@yourinter.net

Many thanks.

I know of at least 2 instances that this happened to groups and one of them did tell the church in question - mainly trying to track down the person who wrote the check. From that point on that church had checks made out to the them so the groups they invited would not suffer if someone wrote a bad check.

Unfortunately everyone in a church or that comes to a concert doesn’t always do the right thing.

And that third point may well be the key to understanding our different (though, I suspect, very sincere) approaches to worship. When I worship, my model is the worship I see in the book of Revelation. I believe that is a picture of what we will be doing for eternity. And I believe our lives on this earth are a dress-rehearsal for eternity.

In heaven, the picture seems to be saints falling down in humble adoration. They are not there for “a personal experience with” the holy God. I do not see any mutuality in that image of worship whereby God gets something out of it and so does the worshiper. Worship in the book of Revelation seems to me to be very much one-way. It appears to me that in heaven, worship comes FROM man and TO God.

The question might be asked, “and what does the worshiper get out of his worship? Where’s the mutuality?” To the best of my knowledge, that is a question that is not addressed in the book of Revelation. It is not appropriate. God is God and he owes us nothing.

Unless I have misread, God RECEIVES the praise and the worship and the honor. Man, in the immortal words of Charles Wesley, is “lost in wonder, love and praise.”

So, in worship, in anticipation of worship before the throne for eternity, I seek to decrease: to be lost in worship so that God gets all of the attention and all of the praise. I think the very best worship would be if, after the fact, it were to dawn on me that I didn’t notice that I “personally experienced” anything. All of the experience was his.

It is entirely possible that we are saying something very similar but just expressing it differently. But quite possibly not.

I really do worry that worship defined on the basis of personal experience (”with” or “of” or “from” or anything else) is a kind of spiritual narcissism.

With that attempt to answer each question as clearly as I could, I withdraw from this whole discussion. There are some really funny stories about love offerings and sound systems in this thread. I want to enjoy those and not engage in any more attempts to explain my understanding of New Testament worship. If God is pleased with your worship, that’s all that matters. And if He is not, that’s between you and Him. As Paul said in Roman 14, “Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls.” I will not judge you or your worship.

And, by the way, this is a text that some of us need to keep in mind when we are voicing our opinions about the artists we talk about here. I’m sure there is nothing wrong with saying that we enjoy (or don’t) certain groups and soloists. But to go so far as to pass judgment on their salvation or their calling or their motives, that would seem to be the province of God and it would behoove us to leave it to him.

And that, Tommy, et al, is my “personal” opinion.

There was this one place we went to 2 years in a row that was a campground /pavilion outdoor singing - in August, beside the Cumberland River, under huge, bright lights. We couldn’t sing for swallowing the bugs. It was awful. This became known as “Bugfest!” My sisters would ask - “are you booking us at BUGFEST this year, Bubba?” The last time we went I was introducing the group and when I turned to intro my youngest sister there was a HUGE bug on the side of her head and she didn’t even know it. I knew she would have a conniption fit if I told her! So, I just let it sit there while we continued. It finally flew away but not before other people had noticed it and started waving at her trying to tell her. She thought they were “getting happy” and that “revival” was about to break out. I started laughing and she thought it was “getting in the Spirit”, too! It was hilarious.

Another time we went to this church that about insisted we use their house PA system. Against my better judgement we relented. The Pastor then told us that his teenage son would run it for us and that “he really did a good job and wanted to be a recording engineer one day.” This is back during the days of Cassette tapes - and we had all our soundtracks sequenced on the tape where all you had to do was start and stop it. Sound check went ok, so I felt better about this “kid” running the sound.

The time finally came to sing and I nodded for him to start the tape, and waited, and waited, and then started ad-libbing while we waited, and waited, and waited. I’m looking at him wondering what’s going on and he throughs his hands up in the air signalling that he doesn’t know what’s wrong. The rest of the group is standin there trying not to look nervous amd one of them starts talking while I go back to the sound booth to see what’s going on. Everything is turned up, the tape is running, but nothing is coming out - it worked during the sound check. THen I look over and he has been running the tape alright - he pushed down the Play button AND THE RECORD button when he started the tape and erased 2 and 1/2 of our tracks before i reached over and stopped the tape.

Needless to say, that was the last time I trusted someone elses system and teenage wannabe engineeer. I think he later became a cop!

But, it was a good laugh. Good memories!

These are the groups that I have watched and listened to at least one time live. I bought a CD from each one except for the mother, daughter, son in law group and The Hoppers. The others seemed to me to be very sincere, honest and vocally pleasing to the ear. Yet you guys have trashed all of them at one time or another. STOP! It isn’t worth it! Too many lives are being destroyed WITHOUT you doing this, much more with you doing it. STOP! Shouldn’t you be portraying the one that you are following? Or, are you?