Great Singing!

“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.” William Temple, Church of England

Dear Faith Congregation, Applegate Community, and Household of Faith Community,

This past Friday evening was especially encouraging to us as worshipers. We witnessed the blending of around 130 voices with the rich expressions of harmonies and melodies. After hearing from different ones about the intensity of the singing at our Good Friday service, I determined to write and continue in that same vein of praise and thanksgiving to God on how He facilitated the hearts and voices for the gathered people of God that night. Here’s what I heard from several:

“Wow. The acoustics brought the singing to life.”

“I sat next to ________________ (family name) and it was incredible. You want to learn how to sing, sit next to them.”

“Fantastic! May Jesus Christ always be praised.”

“The music was marvelous! I was transported by the beauty and majesty. Please let the flautists and accompanists know I was so blessed by it.”

“I had no idea that our voices would sound so rich in this room.”

“When we get together and sing like that, it sure makes for an encouraging time.”

“With the singing tonight, now we know what it is like in our church building to have more worshipers and more voices.”

Isn’t our God good?

To round out this brief note of thanks, I reference a few sentences below that I came across in my reading 5-6 days ago:

“Christian assembles have at all times and in all places read the Scriptures, prayed, and sung. The Christian liturgy was born singing, and it has never ceased to sing…The Church used music and singing in its worship well before it began to ask itself questions about why and wherefore, and such questioning was a first sporadic and empirical, connected with matters of discipline, devotion, and even polemics...”

A few sentences later, I read this:

“The first and most distinctive characteristic of singing would appear to be that of musical time. Singing places man before God as a creature existing in time.”

See the chapter, “Music and Singing in Liturgy” in the book, The Study of Liturgy by Jones, Wainwright and Yarnold Oxford Univ Press, 1978, pp. 440-441.

I am guessing we all see that music and singing in a worship context are to be praise. They also focus on the use of the Word for prayer, praise, confession and instruction. These things are true; however, I am struck by the Jones, Wainwright and Yarnold point that “Singing places man before God as a creature existing in time.” Interesting.

Singing shows God that He is God and we are creatures—His creatures! You cannot get more fundamental and basic than that! He is God. We are men and women. When we sing, we must make use of key signatures, timing, intervals, and volume. There’s submission involved. We submit as creatures to elements and applications of time.

In order to speak with musical expression of God’s God-ness and to show our creaturely-ness, we sing. And it all happens with air exhaling through our throats, bouncing around briefly within the small space of our cheeks and then forced out with rounded or sliced lips. Sounds rush forward for verbal chorus.

We show our limits with time and space; but within our limits, we get to praise our God and Redeemer. O for a thousand tongues—right?

Thanks be to God for this past Friday’s joint worship as congregations. We will treasure the worship for a good number of weeks ahead. Our voices became glory-filled vessels of claps, peals, laments, and tones. It was Good Friday worship—and the worship was good last Friday.

Sincerely, all for the praise of our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus,

Pastor Sumpter

Psalm 24

God is worthy of praise as Creator, Redeemer and King

God summons the whole earth to offer a sanctified cacophony of praise to the Lord. But the Bible gives special attention and zeros in on the praise of men coming from His own covenant people. He dwells in the midst of His own, and He is especially enthroned by their praises. Jerusalem is the city of the King. The King is their right hand of victory—for their defense and shield.

 

Psalm 24 depicts the festive procession of the Ark of the Covenant to the gates of the city of Jerusalem, and we can mark the geographical movement in the psalm from location to location.

24:1 The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness.


24:3 Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD?


24:6 Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be
       lifted up, your everlasting doors!

David’s servants and the Levites and priests, along with his solders and the great throng who lined the streets leading to the city gates fixed their praise on the LORD who is Creator (vs. 1). All inhabitants of the globe should yield their praise. The parade of the Ark moved upward, climbing the hill. As the procession goes along, the question is asked, “Who is worthy to ascend the hill, to line the streets, to follow after the Lord’s presence to top?” 24:4 answers: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol…” Those near to the LORD must be washed and made pure. He as Redeemer provides this washing. Last, at the top of the hill, the Ark of the Lord is about to enter the city gates. Had men lost hope about God’s triumph? Had the anticipation of victory died out? Had the length of the wait for the return of the Ark lulled to sleep Jerusalem’s city dwellers? Wake up! God is faithful! 24:9-10 “Lift up your heads, O you gates! Lift up, you everlasting doors! And the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts. He is the King of glory.”

On Palm Sunday, Jesus rides the donkey down from the Mt. of Olives in order to reach the road to head up the hill into Jerusalem. The crowd takes off their coats and puts them down as a red carpet. The King is processing. Who is this King of glory? Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD. Hosanna! “And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, ‘Who is this?’”

From the earth to the hill to the gates of the city, the name of the LORD is to be praised. He is the LORD mighty in battle.

G. Mark Sumpter

Launching T-Shirts at Halftime

Formality in worship

PCA Pastor Jeff Meyers, while writing about the propriety and significance of calling-garb for the pastor, comments on formality in worship. He persuasively wows the reader; he reminds me of the T-Shirt Cannon guys at halftime. Good, fun stuff.

“Since for Americans there is often an in-built negative reaction to any mention of formality in worship, let us turn briefly to Hebrews 12 and Revelation 4-5. Hebrews 12:22-24 describes a New Covenant (contrasted with the Old Covenant worship of vss. 18-21) corporate, Lord’s Day worship service. When the church gathers on the Lord Day she enters into heaven (by faith) to worship God with all of the angelic host and departed saints. It is as if the roof of the church building is torn off when the pastor calls the people to worship. Notice that the worshipers are all organized around the throne of God. The worship service does not merely provide an opportunity for private devotional experiences. The church is a ‘city’ and a ‘joyous assembly’ or ‘festal array’ (v. 22). The word translated ‘festal assembly’ denotes an assembly of people gathered for a celebration or festival. Later, when we are privileged with the Apostle John in the book of Revelation to peek into heaven, how is the worship conducted? What kind of worship is modeled for us in heaven? There are all kinds of liturgical lessons to be learned here. I only wish to highlight one aspect: the heavenly service is liturgical and formal. According to Revelation 4-5, heavenly worship is a formal, coordinated activity. There are cooperative, formal responses by groups of worshipers. Everybody responds together with the same words. There are no individual displays of spirituality. Angels, elders, and creatures respond antiphonally with responses that must have been learned! They have been trained. There is a pre-arranged form to the worship. They have rehearsed this event, and they are dressed accordingly (Rev. 4:4). In other words, heavenly, Spirit-guided worship is liturgical and formal (1 Cor. 14:26-33).”

G. Mark Sumpter

Scoring Points for Traditional Hymnody

What’s great at Christmastime can be great 48 other Sundays

At the Christmas season, traditional hymnody—it’s words and musical genre—scores big. For about 30 calendar days, traditional, even some really old, hymnody rebounds in worship-life and society. People show that they actually like the old stuff.

Maybe this is one way to be more strategic in recruiting worshipers from within the contemporary side of the evangelical and reformed. It’s time to do a little CARPE DIEM. Here are some good vibes at Advent, musically speaking.

Generations Hold Hands: elementary age kids, very young children, 14 year olds, 25 year olds— goateed and lip piercings to-boot—stand next to 69 year olds, those still sporting wire frame bifocals, and they’ll work their way through five lines of #221 Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming. If you look close, they’re holding a hymn book too. They appear dialed in with gratitude. Carols bring about the pleasant wrapped-up gift of the church being the church—young, old, wide, narrow, rich, and poor. Knuckles and high fives.

Sweat on the Brow is No Biggie: At Christmas we don’t mind having to work at our singing. In our worship age, when we’re told about KISS—Keep It Simple Songwriter, at Advent we’re not afraid of fancy notes, awkward beats, and funny syllables. “The shepherds at those tidings re-joice-ED much in mind…” How odd. I wonder if Chris Tomlin uses re-joice-ED in contemporary expression? At Christmas, that doesn’t scare us, and that’s good. I still struggle with the line in O Come All Ye Faithful, the one, “very God, begotten, not created.” I have to work at this line every time we come to it. The timing with the syllables freaks me. But our willingness to work at freaky beats and syllables is good. We see that people don’t mind going over and over a tune to get it right. Maybe once Christmastime is over we can make use of our willingness to be patient and work on singing skills. If people are showing that they’re not afraid of elbow grease, let’s go for it. Whistle while you work—on more difficult traditional worship music.

Use the Principle of Reinforcement: If you go to the malls and over to the hospital, and turn on the radio, and attend the Christmas programs...and—even open a Hallmark Card, you’ll get reinforcement of traditional hymnody-like carols. The principle of reinforcement should cue us. Pastor, Worship Leader: do you want a shot at seeing your people grow in their singing? Discipleship centers on familiarity, recognition and re-play. Once again—here’s hope for traditional worship music. Finding ways for traditional hymns to be piped into ears and hearts is key. If God’s people hear it enough, they’ll grow to love it. Christmas proves this.

If only it was Christmastime every Sunday.

G. Mark Sumpter

Getting the Gospel Right and Then Some

When the Church Goes Her Specious Way

From the late Vaclav Havel (written in 1978): “Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side. It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo. It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class. The primary excusatory function of ideology, therefore, is to provide people, both as victims and pillars of the post-totalitarian system, with the illusion that the system is in harmony with the human order and the order of the universe. . . ”

This quote, relayed by OPC Pastor Roger Wagner just after Havel’s recent death, stirs. Below, I do not discount the importance of a Christian’s understanding of Havel’s societal and political assessments—his fine assessments and comments I will add, but I pitch a point or two with respect to ideology as a specious way of relating to the church. The church, too, sports herself all things political. The traditionally reformed, confessional church must be aware of how she can situate herself in the grip of the deception per Havel's commentary.

Let’s do some work.

First, church history shows us that ideology is spelled g-n-o-s-t-i-c-i-s-m.

Cultured

Abstractions Needful, But There’s More

I first started to learn something about being cultured, as we would call it, around the Sumpter dinner table; this is what I remember as a young kid.

My folks would talk about being cultured. They aimed very practically by speaking, for example, of the pleasure and blessing of the Japanese violin players who were downstairs in our home; these young men were housed with us, the members of a Japanese symphony orchestra. This happened in Anchorage maybe at some point back in 1969, maybe ’70. Cultured—it’s having an interest in classical music, even more, supporting it with your presence at performances. That meant going to the West High auditorium to listen to the rapid saw-work of the bow on the strings. It was OK. For my folks, it was culture.

Later my experience—again speaking practically with an example—involved eating at a dinner table. I’m thinking of remembering and heeding that flatware, fairly finely arranged spoke of being cultured. The forks set on the left, spoon and knife on the right, and so on. I was scared at the home of Dick Stites, my coming, future father-in-law. The forks were noticeably on the left. I thought—but when do I pick it up? Do I use my knife to help get the peas in place? As a high school boy, I was scared because my home resembled 60-70% of the time the dinner table in the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It was be a hog or get hogged—I was reared with three other big, knuckles-dragging-to-the-floor older brothers. We were nasty boys and squeaky fat.

So I was scared when I was invited to the Stites home. Likely, as I remember, it was not on the very first dinner with the Stites family, that I boo-booed a biggie by keeping the Pork Chops serving fork at my plate. Bad move and embarrassing—and not cultured. I showed irresponsibility around the table, an absence of table mindedness. My wife remembers. Yes, now a family joke; but I remember it as a want of art.

How does a kid growing up in this experience interpret the world around him? Fear it. Resist it. Resent it. Make fun of it. Harden myself against it. Decide that it’s for sissies.

The Gospel has grabbed me by the lapels the past 3-4 years. For some reason, God decided to give me a lesson in art, culture, life and liturgy in a most unusual way. Last month while at the Library of Congress at the Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C., I got a lecture from Shirley MacLain. Let me mention it here.

While doing my tourist thing, waiting my turn for a tour, a library assistant urged me to meander over to the exhibit of Gershwin and Hope—George and Bob, that is. Can you spell c-u-l-t-u-r-e? Spell a-r-t (music)?—expression, rhythm, syncopation, lyrics, meter, mannerisms, an audience and context.

It grabbed me—of all things!—while surveying the pictures of Bob Hope and his dotted history of entertainment. The survey of pictures and memorabilia turned to a theological discourse. It’s Shirley MacLaine’s remark: Politics that are void of the insight of art—its compassion, humor and laughter—are doomed to sterility and abstractions. (1972)

Substitute the words, The people that are void…

Substitute the words, The churches that are void…

Substitute the words, The families that are void…

MacLaine nailed me.

I have been given to abstractions—that is, there in abstractions, there is life, truth, help, hope and meaning. She got me to thinking, “I’ve been a Christian, a pastor, encompassed by the stranglehold of abstractions and it’s been a life of sterility.”

I’ll try to write more on this. But I have learned the Gospel is not about mere abstractions. Just look outside—God invites us to his art room: mountains, plains, rivers, rolling hills, hay fields, checker-board farmlands, ocean deeps—and the constellations, hosts and dancing of the shooting stars. He is the Artist. He is cultured.

Each Sunday, at my home church, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. It’s dinner time. Flatware, words of welcome, a minster who serves, cup, bread, trays, persons to eat. The Gospel gets down to a shared meal. The abstractions of preaching become taste and see. I am so very thankful for holding, tasting, seeing, smelling, swallowing truth. The head alone can take only so much.

Teach me, Lord, teach me of the necessity of the artforms and culture. I want to be cultured.

G. Mark Sumpter

How Worship Liturgy Helps with Parenting

A Lord's Day Handbook for Practical Parenting

Wise parents search continually for help and encouragement, for counsel and guidance, and maybe we've been overlooking a glorious gift from God that is right under our nose each Lord's Day. Fathers and mothers are sitting on the proverbial gold mine with lessons for nurture and training from public worship.

Just as the force of gravity provides energy—pulling objects toward the ground, whether we've planned it that way or not—so worship provides energy for parental nurture. By faith, this energy can be harnessed for godliness, for world-and-life-view training for our children and youth.

Worship as Dialog

Perhaps you've heard of the dialogical principle of worship. Parents, you might explain it to your children as the friendship principle of worship. God speaks to his people, and then we respond. Like two friends, God and his people take turns speaking and listening through the parts or elements of public worship. He welcomes us and tells us who he is and what he has done…(for complete article)

G. Mark Sumpter

Getters, Not Givers at Christmas...Hmmm

God's Giving of His Son Provides the Necessary Reminder: Man is First a Receiver, Then Second a Giver

In re-reading a part of his book, The Lord's Service, PCA pastor Jeff Meyers tells of the first-priority for man to remain a dependent receiver.

Pastor Meyers writes about public worship, “We have been told by well-meaning teachers, even otherwise Reformed theologians, that it is downright wrong to come to church in order to get something...Most of [the authors and teachers] define worship as what the people of God do, the work they perform on the Lord's Day, specifically the adoration, praise, and honor that they ascribe to God. This notion must not be permitted to go unchallenged. It is only half of the truth, and the second half at that. First, and above all, we are called together in order to get, to receive. This is crucial. The Lord gives; we receive.”

Meyers keeps our theology straight on this. He notes that there's a Pelagian camel's nose getting under the tent if we thoughtlessly affirm that man is first to give to God. Does man have strength to do this? Does he have ability to offer something to God? We're to keep the focus on God: He gives.

Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 4:7, “What do you have that you did not receive?”

To elaborate, I found this quote at Michael Gorman's blog. It's from the Methodist Will Willimon. It's excellent application:

“I suggest that we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story—the one according to Luke not Dickens—is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.

We prefer to think of ourselves as givers—powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are. Luke and Matthew go to great lengths to demonstrate that we—with our power, generosity, competence and capabilities—had little to do with God’s work in Jesus. God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn’t think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was to receive it….

The first word of the church, a people born out of so odd a nativity, is that we are receivers before we are givers. Discipleship teaches us the art of seeing our lives as gifts. That’s tough, because I would rather see myself as a giver. I want power—to stand on my own, take charge, set things to rights, perhaps to help those who have nothing. I don’t like picturing myself as dependent, needy, empty-handed….

It’s tough to be on the receiving end of love, God’s or anybody else’s. It requires that we see our lives not as our possessions, but as gifts. Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace, wrote John Wesley a long time ago….

This is often the way God loves us [referring to God's promise to King Ahaz of a baby, not a bigger army---Isaiah 7]: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. With our advanced degrees, armies, government programs, material comforts and self-fulfillment techniques, we assume that religion is about giving a little of our power in order to confirm to ourselves that we are indeed as self-sufficient as we claim.

Then this stranger comes to us, blesses us with a gift, and calls us to see ourselves as we are—empty-handed recipients of a gracious God who, rather than leave us to our own devices, gave us a baby.”

G. Mark Sumpter

Unfashionable, Four

When the church says to the world, “Hey, come up to God's high ground...,” we do this for the purpose of keeping the line of the applications of God's standards clear in order to press home the very matter that God has standards.

We don't want to de-fang the witness of faithful worship. Biblical worship has the teeth that the world is spiritually hungry for. People are spiritually hungry, but the reason for their hunger is because they continue to refuse to eat the food God has prepared. We need to serve up God's meal that meets man's need.

We must not shrink back from saying that the church's call is to have her worship culture out in front and center. Every church has a culture. Is it a biblical one?

Worship cultures are inescapable. And also, every realm of society has one---education, entertainment, business, neighborhood support groups, the medical community, volunteer clubs, athletic groups, charitable organizations, etc, etc, ----everyone has a culture (language, dress, rituals, forms of protocols and rules, leaders and followers, mission statements, etc, etc.).

The church is chiefly the organism to set the standards of her own culture that informs and transforms others. Every other sphere of society---relative to the home and to the state must take their cues from the church. She is at the center of God's witness. She needs to be different for the very purpose of being God's city on a hill; and to be His salt in the earth.

G. Mark Sumpter

Unfashionable, Three

Back to the matter of the church being a mimic to the world----back to the point relative to Paul's evangelistic methodology and missionary strategy: Our greatest downfall in making attempts to relate to the world happens while having well-meant intentions and sincere applications of practice, but lowering the bar of exacting discipleship.

Exacting discipleship is about being torn away from self, getting rid of self. First and foremost it is to tear self away from self in that we're to remember that we stand before our holy God.

For some examples with respect to public worship,

1. When we lower the bar about dress and clothing in worship and we say casual dress is OK;

2. When we lower the bar about suitable propriety in worship of the body's posture of standing, sitting or kneeling, and we say bar stools, lawn chairs and coffee bars are OK;

3. When we lower the bar on the primary means of the physical ear being what God over and over again addresses as the priority entry-gate into man for gaining His people's attention; and so we lower the bar and say it is OK to start making the physical eye disproportionately more important than the ear, so we have mini-dramas and skits, dialogs for sermons, and the like, and such things are OK.

In these cases, we lower the bar and right away, almost automatically, surrender our witness to the world. This is the primary danger of lowering the bar in the name of relating to the culture. The worldly culture already has her dress, posture and eye-gate interests. Why would the church want to mimic the world on like matters? When we do, we surrender God's moral high ground.

G. Mark Sumpter

Unfashionable, Two

I see public worship as the dominant, most important application and expression of ways and means to relate well, and to relate righteously, with the world. I think of the predominant and repetitive exhortations to Israel to be who she is in the world as a faithful worshiping people. The world is a worshiping community--either for God or against God. When God's people worship well, they both mimic the world and subdue the world.

G. Mark Sumpter

Unfashionable, One

In order to properly get in touch with the world, to be in it, to be like it, and to be immersed in it for witness and ministry's sake, the church is NOT to allow the isolated texts of Scripture about Paul's missionary methodology to drive our application. For example, when Paul had Timothy circumcised--Acts 16:3 or when Paul spoke of himself as being like those without the law--1 Cor. 9:21, I am not convinced that these texts ought to be the ones that should chiefly characterize our mimic and likeness unto the world. They may at times be the things that we do--and they might at times be the attitudes that we show forth. But I do not see them as the dominant orbit around which our relating to and our witness to the world spins. I do not see these as the dominant points of mimic from Paul. We, today, for some reason are enamored with these texts; we are given to using them as tell-tale dominant paradigms from which to derive or give shape to our ability to be in the world in a righteous way. I'm not persuaded of their dominant role.

G. Mark Sumpter

Part Time Pop Christian Culture Scholar

We’re glued to the tube. We look and listen with interest. We, of the evangelical and reformed wing, take note of the popular Christian in the culture. Bono from U2 interviews with Christianity Today yet another time about world hunger and the church’s impotence, and like three heads on the park bench that slowly turn to watch the obese granny bend over to give her toy poodle a treat, we stop, stare and hold our breath.

Next it’s Andy Pettitte, presently a pitcher with the New York Yankees, who speaks into the microphone in the post-game wrap-up and we listen for the favored morsels of testimony, "The Lord Jesus gave me the overpowering curve and other stuff tonight."

Why are we so enamored with the center-stage Christian speaking into the culture? Maybe it’s because we sympathize with them and the anti-Christ pressure they feel in their places of limelight. They’ve earned their stripes, we think. What they have to say is well-forged, well-tested, and tried and true. They’re in the trenches of the real battle. "Listen in fellow Christian," we say to one another, "their life counts." Or maybe we pay attention to the commentary of the testimony and verbiage of Christian witness via the popular Christian personalities of entertainment because we measure success by such persons and their standards. They’ve made it big, and we want to make it big. Big? How? They are talented at what they do, we long for the same talent. They’ve worked their fannies off, we wish we had their energy. They get handsomely rewarded monetarily, yes, there’s seeming security when carrying around a few Gs in the pocketbook. They have a following, we wouldn’t mind the attention. They have a stage with a little glitz for speaking for Christ, and ours is almost altogether obscure. When a Christian makes it to the World Series or the Olympics, or sings mezzo-soprano with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, we pay attention to their walk and talk. They are in some way our teachers, and we want to be like them.

Should we take our cue from such Christians? We’re grateful for the popular teachers, but a faithful cue can be found close, right at home. There’s biblical reinforcement for the witness of the obscure life of Joe Christian Plumber. What’s the reinforcement, the equipping we need? It’s public worship, not public testimony. The world is, as Reformer John Calvin argued, the theater of God's glory. The heavens do declare the glory of God and the firmament does show forth His handiwork. The world is His theater; we can see the work of His hand, in additional to the wonders of creation around us, in the variety of persons, popular Christian ones at that. But in scripturally-mandated worship He’s the Actor within a theater of the public assembly of His people. It’s not near as lime-light fancy.

But listen to Mike Horton:

"Imagine the worship service as a magnificent theater of divine action. There is the pulpit, lofty and grand - this is God's balcony from which He conducts the drama. Beneath it is the baptismal font, where the announcement, 'the promise is for you and for your children' is fulfilled. Also prominent is the communion table, where weak and disturbed consciences 'taste and see that the Lord is good.' That which God has done to, for, and within his people in the past eras of biblical history he is doing here, now, for us, sweeping us into the tide of his gracious plan...

God has promised to save and keep his people through the means he has appointed and through no other; the ordinary means of grace are limited to the preached Word and the administered sacraments; God's rationale for these means is made explicit in Scripture. There are many other things that are essential for Christian growth: prayer, Bible study, service to others. However, these are not, properly speaking, means of grace but means of discipleship.

…God is savingly present among us through Word and sacrament. We need props to strengthen our faith, but we dare not invent our own, as Israel did at Mount Sinai, when Aaron's lame excuse for the golden calf was, "You know how the people are." Only in glory will we no longer need faith, since hope will dissolve into sight. There will be no more promises, no more anticipation. But for now God has given us his means of grace to ensure that the method of delivery as well as the method of redemption itself is his alone. Here in the wilderness God has given us both the preached Word and the visible Word (baptism and the Supper). Here is God's drama, the liturgy of life, in which God acts in saving grace and we respond in faith and repentance. Even our architecture is to be conscious of this mission to proclaim God's method of grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, delivered in the church alone, through the means of grace alone. Donald Bruggink and Carl Droppers offer a charge that could apply to any Reformation church: 'To set forth the God-ordained means by which Christ comes to his people, the Reformed must give visual expression to the importance of both Word and Sacraments. Any architecture worthy of scriptural teaching must start with the Christ who calls men unto himself through the Word and Sacraments.' In the divine drama, the 'set' is not insignificant."

See Horton’s chapter, "Setting the Stage" from A Better Way, Baker Books, 2002.

The popular witness of the Christian via countless marketplace and entertainment venues, made visible and attractive in many ways by various stories, ads, and wear, have a place for effective testimony, but they work on us causing a shrinkage of the priority and importance of public worship. God has His theater for His own attention-getting witness. He comes to be Actor each Sunday when Christians gather. He tells His own wonders through their praise, prayer, reading, teaching and by meeting with them to host His meal. Such a corporate testimony makes outsiders stop and take notice (1 Corinthians 14:25). It is God’s primary witness before the watching world. Psalm 8 has it, "Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength, because of Your enemies, that You may silence the enemy and the avenger."

G. Mark Sumpter