Taking every thought captive

Google CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed on Charlie Rose Friday night (6 Mar 2009) talking about Google and technology. He gets down to reading about 42:00, and I’m glad he shares my concerns about reading books versus learning via Google.

(HT: John Dyer & Nicholas Carr)

John Stackhouse has some wise words of advice to Christian worship bands (Christianity Today, 2 Feb 2009) which resonated with me. I accompany worship regularly in my own church, and have for well over 30 years,  so it would appear we are of the same generation. I thought it was just me that found it distressing when the band blocked out my ability to hear what my brothers and sisters were singing, but it seems I am not alone.

If I could add one more thing to an excellent article it would be this. Congregations should be more sensitive to the words they sing. I was brought up in a church where we sang in hushed tones about the agonies of the Lord on the cross. But increasingly I hear congregations gulder* how they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, or how silently our Lord suffered. Perhaps they’ve become so accustomed to the universal excessively amplified “worship” it’s impossible to think about the words. It’s so refreshing to visit a congregation where they sing words sensitively.

Of course, that such sensitivity need not be quiet. I vividly remember returning to the church I was brought up in for a Bible study workshop and being asked to accompany the singing of the hymn “And can it be”. The congregation was about 200 strong, predominantly men. Within a couple of lines it became obvious that the piano was not needed. I doubt that anything other than the first note had been heard. It was pointless to pretend that I was accompanying the worship, so I abandoned the piano to join in wholeheartedly with that vibrant singing. I can still feel the pulsating sensation in my chest as I write. It was electrifying, and not an amp in sight. But it was sensitive. How else could one sing

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

but with gusto and volume.

So my additional plea to John Stackhouse’s five would be for congregations to sing with sensitivity to the words, and accompanists to encourage that with variation in volume.

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* For those who live outside the cultured North of Ireland that’s insensitively loud speech.

Commenting on Matthew 13: 53-58, William Barclay says,

“There is a great lesson here. In any church service the congregation preaches more than half the sermon. The congregation brings an atmosphere with it. That atmosphere is either a barrier through which the preacher’s word cannot penetrate; or else it is such an expectancy that even the poorest sermon becomes a living flame.” (p. 92)

What a responsibility for every congregation.

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William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, Chapters 11-28 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, [1957] 1975)

It is commonplace to describe the period between Malachi and Matthew as the four hundred silent years. They were nothing of the sort. Yes, there was no new Scripture, but God was not silent, he still spoke. His people had his Word (the Old Testament). If God was silent it can only have been because they had stopped listening.

And what of our own day? It is no more silent than then. We have God’s Word (now the Old and New Testaments). God still speaks.

Al Mohler applies this forcefully to preaching:

I fear that there are many evangelicals today who believe that God spoke but doubt whether He speaks. They know and talk about the fact that God spoke in the Old Testament but think now that He no longer does so and that they must therefore invent new ways to convince people to love Him. But if you call yourself a preacher of God’s Word, and you think that all of God’s speaking was in the past, then resign. I say that with deadly seriousness. If you do not believe the God now speaks from His Word–the Bible–then what are you doing every Sunday morning? If you are not confident that God speaks as you rightly read and explain the Word of God, then you should quit.

But if you do believe that–if you truly believe that God speaks through His Word–then why should you substitute anything else in place of the expository preaching of the Bible? What is more important for your people than to hear from God, and how else is that going to happen unless you, like Ezra, open the book, read it, and explain it to them? Just as in Deuteronomy, this is a matter of life and death, and far too many pastors who deeply believe that God does speak have abandoned His voice in Scripture. (pp. 58-9)

That pulls no punches. Those of us who preach need to take this seriously. And when we take it seriously, so, too, will congregations.

God is not silent. He still speaks, as ever he spoke. The silent years have been over since he said, “Let light be.”

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He is Not Silent: Preaching in a Postmodern World (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008)