Charismania

I'm writing this from a fairly frustrated position.

Today I was visiting with some people and we were talking about worship. Some concerns were brought up that in our church, we sing a lot of songs with the words "I" and "me" and "my" in them, instead of the old hymns that focus on God. I am sympathetic to this concern. There are many out there who think that provided you use the name "Jesus" and get a few facts right about Him you must be worshiping the right Jesus and you spend all your services altering the lighting and singing one line over and over again to get people into an emotional frenzy and call it "worship."

However, I am just as concerned when I hear people rail on such experiences as if emotions were bad things and shouldn't be strongly engaged in worship. I believe this stems from a misunderstanding of what worship is and is something I believe my church is suffering from. I think my local fellowship doesn't have it clear why we spend 25 minutes of our Sunday morning singing songs to God. "If you asked 100 people in our church what worship means," a fellow member told me, "You'd get 100 different answers."

While an overstatement, I think that worship is rather ambiguous to us, and as a result we're suffering with the "worship wars" where one side wants this and the other side wants that and on the endless debate goes.

At this point I'm not going to lay out a thorough explanation of worship. John Piper does it as well as I've read anybody do it in his chapter Worship: The Feast of Christian Hedonism (Click to read) in Desiring God. This student cannot begin to dream he'll surpass his teacher in terms of clarity, simplicity, and warm truth. He defines worship in this way: worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth. If you disagree, you might read the link to seek answers to your questions.

But I will at least bring up some misconceptions.

I was explaining how our emotions ought to be engaged in worship. Otherwise, why don't we just say our songs? Doesn't Paul in Ephesians 5:18-20 relate the filling of the Spirit by speaking to each other using singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord? Do not the Seraphim endlessly repeat the same lind over and over again, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD God Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory"? Couldn't it be that we should be affected with truth and if our hearts are not somehow engaged in when we sing, we are worshiping in vain?

The people to whom I was asking these things are dear friends of mine whom I love as a brother and sister in Christ. And yet my friend looked to my parents and said, "Is he getting Charismatic?" in a joking way. I realize it was a joke, and he wasn't being ugly about it. Yet I was frustrated that emotions in worship = Charismatic. Start talking, in earnest, about the wonder and awe and majesty and might of God... and start saying that people ought to feel the weight of glory... and you'll be labeled a Charismatic?

Those psalmists were sure Charismatic, weren't they?

I'm tempted to post the message as is, but I want to add a closing remarks. Not all Charismatics are shallow thinkers, though I do not identify myself with the movement for theological reasons. It is discouraging to me that in response to some shallow and undisciplined people we sacrifice genuine, rooted, heartfelt affection to God and our Savior who redeemed us so that we would exist forever to praise (i.e., enjoy!) the glory of His grace. We're just missing the point, folks.