Jubal’s Jottings

I recently read a book and had a conversation that both disturbed me. Without knowing it, they strongly reinforced each other. The book was Revolution, another of George Barna’s highly insightful studies. Revolution identifies a new, growing type of person of Christian faith. There is good news, according to Barna. These Revolutionaries are very committed to their faith. They strongly desire intimate worship, conversations about their faith, intentional spiritual growth, servanthood, investment of their resources, spiritual friendships and strong expression of faith in their homes. Sounds good, doesn’t it? In those terms, yes, it is good. So, what disturbs me? These same people are NOT finding genuine opportunities to pursue their lives of faith inside the walls of the local church! They are in many cases leaving the church in order to follow their faith! How is that possible? From a worship perspective, listen to these statistics. Barna’s study found that 8 out of 10 believers do not feel they have entered into the presence of God during a worship service. If that wasn’t enough, ½ of all believers say they do not sense that they have experienced a genuine connection with Him during the past year! Further, only 1 out of 4 believers say that when they worship God, they expect Him to be the primary beneficiary – most say that THEY expect to get the most from the experience. Those are just the findings on the issue of worship! Think about those stats sometime! We should lose sleep over those findings! Those of us involved in worship ministry should take up the challenge to change those numbers! It sounds like some real worship experiences and understanding about the true focus of worship is seriously missing!

So, now about the conversation I had. It was a small-talk kind of thing around the office. In the course of the discussion one person said that they meet with a group of seminary students and their spouses from time to time – numbering a total of about 20 people. In that group, all studying theology and the like, NOT ONE was planning to enter local church ministry! NOT ONE! That should cause a little lack of sleep, too! No doubt they are going to have profitable ministry lives doing some great things, but not from within the church. You would think that the ideals of these Revolutionaries would find a great home in the church, but apparently not. Barna’s conclusion is that the church should seek these people out, find a way to hear them, give them a place to live out their spiritual growth in the context of the church. If the church does not do that, Barna maintains that those who primarily express their faith through the context of the local church will decrease by ½ by the year 2025! That’s huge!

So, Jubal, play a sad song…or maybe it should be a song to sound the call of battle!

So, the other day I spent some time in our new and most interesting hymnal collection. Thanks to the family of Robert H. Mitchell, we were given this marvelous gift of Dr. Mitchell’s library. 9,000 books is a LOT of books! About 7,000 of those are hymnal - all shapes, sizes and eras. Included are hymnals from 210 different people groups as well. Anyway, as I was wandering down the aisle, my eyes fell on something called the Olney Hymns. What’s the big deal, you say? Well, thanks for asking! The big deal is that the Olney Hymns was the first place that a certain famous hymn was printed - Amazing Grace. Also, in that same hymnal for the first time were Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken and How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds. But, back to Amazing Grace. So, there I was with an original copy of this book in my hands…(by the way, there were FIVE editions of the Olney Hymns together in the collection!) I noticed that in the original, there were SIX verses to Amazing Grace, and one of those verses was NOT…”When we’ve been there…” There were two other verses there that I had not seen before. Maybe you haven’t either. Here they are…

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.

Uplifting words, huh?

Anyway, that sent me on a search about “When we’ve been there…” It has been attributed to someone named John P. Rees is 1780, but I soon discovered that there are some sources that question that. Anyway, it’s now there in place of the original verses.

AND, I also found out that the primary tune that Amazing Grace was sung to in Great Britain was named Hephzibah. If anyone knows where I can a hold of that, I’d like to see it!

Well, Jubal, that’s pretty amazing stuff, isn’t it? Can you play me a little Hephzibah, please?

I’m a musician, not a theologian, but I do enjoying taking a look at the original language words in the scriptures that are translated into certain English words. One of those words is “shachah.” - the most used Hebrew word that is translated as “worship,” in the English. The literal meaning of shachah is “to bow or prostrate.” One notable place shachah is used is in the account of Abraham taking Isaac to sacrifice him, found in Genesis 22. As Abraham and his traveling party arrive at the designated location, Abraham tells his group to stay where they are while he and Isaac go to “shachah.” So, they were going to “bow down?” They were going to worship, to sacrifice…a VERY solemn event, to say the least. Now you know how it all came out, right? God provided a lamb caught in the brush for the sacrifice, though Abraham had been willing to sacrifice Isaac as his act of obedience…his worship.

So, if that is an account of a worship experience, how does that relate to our worship experiences today? I don’t see a lot of “shachah” in the worship services that I attend! How about you? Sacrifice, bowing…those are the root of shachah. Let’s have more opportunities for effective body language in our services of worship…bowing is one of them used often in the scriptures. One author said that if we studied worship carefully, there would be a lot less strutting and a lot more bowing…Less Wow, More Bow.