Each week, the Flourish team would like to recommend resources that will help you on your journey of Church Renewal. While we don’t endorse every single idea from every single resource we are attempting to cultivate a useful resource list for you.
Resource: Worship Matters, by Bob Kauflin
Background: Bob Kauflin is one of the pre-eminent creators of thoughtful, theologically-rich, musically-excellent worship songs in our generation. He’s also a good thinker and practitioner which is the particular reason why this important book is key to point out to the readers of this blog.
Take-aways: For people in the tradition in which I minister, there is special focus on God being the audience of worship. This is a good and right concern the recommenders of the book share with Bob. But it is not the only thing we should be concerned about when it comes to worship. We worship to glorify God in the midst of a missionary situation like what we find going on in 1 Corinthians 14:23-25. Contemplating whether our worship is sufficiently cognizant of that fact seems critical. Why? Research reveals that pastors that are commonly used of the Lord is seeing a church renewed are quite interested in music. Check out the linked article. You might be fascinated. Here is the nugget… Pastors with musical interest (not necessarily ability or proficiency but mere interest) better realize how a service “feels” to attendees especially newcomers or outsiders. A thoughtful pastor who embraces our missionary situation will choose to construct services that not only honor God but also have carefully chosen aesthetics. This must include (as Bob highlights) the manner in which all parts of the service are led. The goal (again following Paul’s missionary ethos in 1 Corinthians 9 and 14) is that a service would be crafted in such a way as to keep it from being unnecessarily jarring in its aesthetics for those who are not yet bought into Christ or His church. If we desire to see more churches renewed, it would behoove us to take Kauflin’s advice seriously.
Bonus content: You can experience Bob teaching on the themes of the book on the Gospel Coalition website.
