The Sandwich King

For the Institute Of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephens University. Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

The Psalms encourage us (perhaps command us) to sing new songs to God (1). It’s not because he is bored with all the old songs we were singing, but because he wants us to reflect his image to a world that is dark and dying. A world who has lost touch with his image, and can no longer hear his voice.

Jesus has come and everything is different. He came, he saw, and he… well he won the victory. He defeated death, hell, and the grave. He inaugurated the beginning of his kingdom and the end of Satan’s. The world is changing. It’s like a river swiftly flowing toward the sea, constantly changing, yet steadily flowing towards it’s predestined course. As we jump into this mighty river, we are swept along with it. We get to paddle a little to the left or a little to the right. We can paddle with the current or just drift, or we can fight it and wear ourselves out and eventually succumb in the end, exhausted. Ultimately we are all headed towards the same destination… the fulfilled kingdom with the King reigning as Lord over all.

Because we are his imagebearers we are bound to create. Either we will create new songs, new expressions of worship, or we will create new ways to sin. When we use our imagination to worship we are fulfilling who we were meant to be. We are free to use tradition, but we are not bound to it. Of course if we do a “new” act of worship long enough it becomes tradition.

Just as the river is always changing as it’s water is flowing, it is always still the same river headed on the same course. If it stopped moving it would be a stagnant pond. And this is like our worship, if we stop creating and expressing in ways that only we can articulate then our image reflecting ability grows dull and lifeless. God wants us to live life to the full, and we accomplish that by embracing the things that we love to do, and they are many and diverse.

God is complex and diverse in his unity. And in order to worship him we offer both complex and diverse expressions of worship. And just as he is eternal, so too our expressions of worship have no end. I foresee that we will never run out of ways to honor, worship, and reflect his image.

(1) Wilt, Exploring Our Roots: The Contemporary Worship Movement (Inside Worship)