Perhaps one of the remarkable facets of Christian theology that the evangelical church in America has missed is that of the coming of the kingdom of God in the person of Jesus. It is with Christ's coming that God's kingdom breaks into this world and out of that breaking in Christ himself, the agent of creation, sets about the task of new creation.
Here is how Jeremy Begbie states it in Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music:
The vision is stunning and overwhelming, but the central pivot on which it turns is unmistakable: in the person of Jesus Christ, the Creator has re-created creation within creation, freeing it from all that thwarts it (even from death), and freeing it for a new future, thus giving us a promise within our world of that day when creation will be flooded with the glory of God and come to its final union with the Creator. (Begbie, p.197)
What a grand vision this is! God has stepped into time and go about the task or recreation from within.
This is what Advent and Christmas is about, "that God's unceasing love for creation has led him to come as a man in Jesus, on the cross to submit to the forces of destruction and chaos, and through the raising of Jesus from the dead, forge out of history's most evil event a resplendent and uncontainable glory." (Begbie, p. 197)
As such these great truths will be proclaimed in our worship this Sunday. The choir will lead us in our meditation with Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus", a text celebrating the incarnation of the Word of God and our confidence we can take because of the work he has done on our behalf. We also will hear from the jazz combo tht plays from time to time with a medley of well-known Christmas hymns. They will play Coventry Carol (see Matthew 2:16-18), Silent Night, and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. This medley traces a path from mourning and sorrow to one of great joy that we as God's chgildren can find great hope and solace in the work God is doing among us.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
12-7-08
Confessions of Worship Director
O.k., I know this is not what many people want to hear but I am going to lay my cards on the table. Christmas is a hard time for me. This is mainly due to the music of the season. For all the years I have been a musician (maybe 25 or so) I have played and sang the same carols and hymns for a month every year. This proves difficult for me because the music tends to become stale and lifeless.
Well, this Sunday I did have a "breakthrough" of sorts. As the Children's Choir led us in worship I was greatly refreshed and encouraged to have them lead us...lead me... in worship to start the Advent season. What a blessing this was! I was able to come to the hymns we sang with new "ears to hear with." It was very moving service for me and it is my prayer that it was for our people as well. I hope that this spirit of worship will carry through this advent season and on into Ephiphany and eventually Lent and Easter as we look forward to the celebration of the ressurection.
This Sunday we will look at what it meant for Jesus to take on flesh (i.e. incarnation) and more particuarly in light of John's baptism to which he submitted himself. One aspect of this that has impacted me this week is from an essay by Alistar Begg in a great little book called Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus edited by Nancy Guthrie.
I paraphrase Begg:
"It is not by diminution that he makes himself nothing. It is by an addition that he makes himself nothing. He has not ceased to be who he is. But by taking on flesh - by pouring himself into it - he constitutes a completely different entity. He who was somebody in his own right has become a nobody so that he might serve others."
Consequently we will close our service this week with the hymn this book is titled after, Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus. There is a new verse we will sing that is found in the Trinity hymnal.
Here it is:
Come to earth to taste our sadness,
He whose glories knew no end;
By his life he brings us gladness,
Our Redeemer, Shepherd, Friend.
Leaving riches without number,
born within a cattle stall;
This the everlasting wonder,
Christ was born the Lord of all.
O.k., I know this is not what many people want to hear but I am going to lay my cards on the table. Christmas is a hard time for me. This is mainly due to the music of the season. For all the years I have been a musician (maybe 25 or so) I have played and sang the same carols and hymns for a month every year. This proves difficult for me because the music tends to become stale and lifeless.
Well, this Sunday I did have a "breakthrough" of sorts. As the Children's Choir led us in worship I was greatly refreshed and encouraged to have them lead us...lead me... in worship to start the Advent season. What a blessing this was! I was able to come to the hymns we sang with new "ears to hear with." It was very moving service for me and it is my prayer that it was for our people as well. I hope that this spirit of worship will carry through this advent season and on into Ephiphany and eventually Lent and Easter as we look forward to the celebration of the ressurection.
This Sunday we will look at what it meant for Jesus to take on flesh (i.e. incarnation) and more particuarly in light of John's baptism to which he submitted himself. One aspect of this that has impacted me this week is from an essay by Alistar Begg in a great little book called Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus edited by Nancy Guthrie.
I paraphrase Begg:
"It is not by diminution that he makes himself nothing. It is by an addition that he makes himself nothing. He has not ceased to be who he is. But by taking on flesh - by pouring himself into it - he constitutes a completely different entity. He who was somebody in his own right has become a nobody so that he might serve others."
Consequently we will close our service this week with the hymn this book is titled after, Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus. There is a new verse we will sing that is found in the Trinity hymnal.
Here it is:
Come to earth to taste our sadness,
He whose glories knew no end;
By his life he brings us gladness,
Our Redeemer, Shepherd, Friend.
Leaving riches without number,
born within a cattle stall;
This the everlasting wonder,
Christ was born the Lord of all.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Children's Choir Leading Advent Worship
This Sunday, November 30, the children's choir will be leading all three worship services. This will be a very special Sunday as we kick off the Advent season. The children will be leading the responsive readings as well as teaching the congregation two new songs for the season.As we begin our service, we will spend some time meditating on a quote from Martin Luther:
Truly it is marvelous in our eyes that God should place a little child in the lap of a virgin and that all our blessedness should lie in Him. And this Child belongs to all mankind. God feeds the whole world through this nursing Babe. This must be our daily exercise: to be transformed into Christ, being nourished by this food. Then will the heart be suffused with all joy and will be strong and confident against every assault.The children will lead us through a call to worship that invites us all to come to Christ as children and to rejoice that "His power establishes His rule."
One of the new songs that we will be learning is called "Glory Be to God." There is a line in that song that I find absolutely astounding! The text is adapted from Charles Wesley, and in the second verse he writes, "Emptied of His majesty, He comes in human form. Being's source begins to be, and God is born." What an amazing thought, that the source of all existence condescends to have a beginning with us.
We will also be singing a traditional Christmas favorite, "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," but the third verse may not be as familiar as some of the others:
Come, Desire of nations come,That is the great expectation that Advent brings, that the great Desire of nations will come to the nations, conquer the power of the Serpent, and begin to restore the image of God in us!
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the Woman's conquering Seed,
Bruise in us the Serpent's head.
Adam's likeness now efface:
Stamp Thine image in its place;
Second Adam, from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
The last song that the children will sing is called, "Rejoice." It is a call to all creation, all the world, and all the church to rejoice together in all that it means for Messiah to come.
Pray for the children as they sing and lead worship for all three services, and pray for the Church as she anticipates the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Messiah. May God continue to shape us and mold us by the power of the Word, to stamp His image in us.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Prayer for the Persecuted Church
Please join us Sunday, Nov. 23 for a Worship and Prayer Service for the Persecuted Church. It starts at 7:00pm and will go to 8:30. This is an opportunity for us to lay aside our usual agendas and come together to lift up our brothers and sisters around the globe who suffer much for the cause of Christ.
Sunday 11-23-08
Philippians 2:12 - 18
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.
The response to last week's sermon was quite impressive. Many people have expressed the impact it had upon their lives and wanted Ruffin to continue this theme. Therefore Ruffin will be going to this passage rather than returning to Matthew.
There is much in this passage that is encouraging to us as believers and I just want to make a couple of observations on my part. (Ruffin will certainly do a fine job of exegeting this passage for us Sunday!)
1) We are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. This is not a call to obtain salvation through our works but rather a continual call to obedience that is the outworking of our sanctification.
2) The reason we can do this (#1) is because it is God who is working in us and through us to achieve his goals. We know that he will not leave this work unfinished. He will bring it to completion (1:6.)
3) Because of this we should not be about complaining or grumbling because God is in control. What a joy that should be to us! Because of what God has done is doing in us we should therefore shine like the stars. How can we do otherwise? ("Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? Certainly Not!" - Rom. 6:1 - 2.)
These are the thoughts that have guided my preparation for worship this week. You will notice that as we enter our corporate worship Sunday that many of our songs and readings pick up these very ideas. Our meditation also carries this idea. It is quite lengthy but I think appropriate for our worship this Lord's day. Here it is below so that you may read it before hand and meditate on it prior to coming to worship:
God makes the unfruitful fruitful by the power of His Spirit, he puts down the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty; and in all these acts within history he fulfills his promises…what is new is that this God takes human form. He himself experiences the pitiless depths of poverty, humiliation, and dying abandoned by God. But what we see when the horror comes to its ultimate end is that it was Light and Life and Love itself that allowed itself to become poor and humiliated and to die in forsakenness, in order to plumb all the depths of the human lot, including the fate of the sinner, and to rescue it and keep it safe in the divine life.
– Hans Urs von Balthasar
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me.
The response to last week's sermon was quite impressive. Many people have expressed the impact it had upon their lives and wanted Ruffin to continue this theme. Therefore Ruffin will be going to this passage rather than returning to Matthew.
There is much in this passage that is encouraging to us as believers and I just want to make a couple of observations on my part. (Ruffin will certainly do a fine job of exegeting this passage for us Sunday!)
1) We are called to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. This is not a call to obtain salvation through our works but rather a continual call to obedience that is the outworking of our sanctification.
2) The reason we can do this (#1) is because it is God who is working in us and through us to achieve his goals. We know that he will not leave this work unfinished. He will bring it to completion (1:6.)
3) Because of this we should not be about complaining or grumbling because God is in control. What a joy that should be to us! Because of what God has done is doing in us we should therefore shine like the stars. How can we do otherwise? ("Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? Certainly Not!" - Rom. 6:1 - 2.)
These are the thoughts that have guided my preparation for worship this week. You will notice that as we enter our corporate worship Sunday that many of our songs and readings pick up these very ideas. Our meditation also carries this idea. It is quite lengthy but I think appropriate for our worship this Lord's day. Here it is below so that you may read it before hand and meditate on it prior to coming to worship:
God makes the unfruitful fruitful by the power of His Spirit, he puts down the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty; and in all these acts within history he fulfills his promises…what is new is that this God takes human form. He himself experiences the pitiless depths of poverty, humiliation, and dying abandoned by God. But what we see when the horror comes to its ultimate end is that it was Light and Life and Love itself that allowed itself to become poor and humiliated and to die in forsakenness, in order to plumb all the depths of the human lot, including the fate of the sinner, and to rescue it and keep it safe in the divine life.
– Hans Urs von Balthasar
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Worship 11-17-08
This week we welcome back our pastor, Ruffin Alphin. He and his daughter Anna Friedrich have returned from Kenya where they worked with Street Child in the slums of Kibera. We will be hearing from him this week on his trip but also on our lives and responsibilities as Christians to be the light and salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13 - 14.)
Our Call to Worship this week is from Psalm 103. We will not be reading the entire Psalm this week so I encourage you to read it as it is a great psalm of hope and encouragement. We will pick up the theme of God's goodness to us as his people and that we should bless the Lord for all of his benefits to us. It is easy in these tumultuous times to not see God's goodness but just as the hymn "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" teaches us that behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.
In light of this we enter into the musical portion of our liturgy with "Thy God Reigneth!" and reflect upon God's goodness to us in our personal lives and that our trust in him will never fail because he will never fail us or his promises. We will also proclaim the coming of his kingdom and that we, as his children, desire to see it consummated. This is the logical outgrowth of his work in us and among us that our faith not remain focused upon our individual experiences, as crucial as they are, but that we see the expansion and growth of the church universal for the benfit of all people and his glory.
Hence, we will then read from Philippians 1: "I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."
Our lives as Christians should not be marked by a self-centered privatized religion but rather we should let God be our guide and vision as we live and move in our respective families and communities. This is part of the fruit of righteousness that Paul is exhorting us to. We will close this portion of our liturgy with the great hymn "Be Thou My Vision."
In addition to this, Suzanne Wolvin will be leading us as well this week as we pray for the persecuted church. She will sing a great song by Sara Groves called "When the Saints." On Sunday Nov. 24 at 6:30 we will be hosting a night of prayer for the persecuted church.
Our Call to Worship this week is from Psalm 103. We will not be reading the entire Psalm this week so I encourage you to read it as it is a great psalm of hope and encouragement. We will pick up the theme of God's goodness to us as his people and that we should bless the Lord for all of his benefits to us. It is easy in these tumultuous times to not see God's goodness but just as the hymn "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" teaches us that behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.
In light of this we enter into the musical portion of our liturgy with "Thy God Reigneth!" and reflect upon God's goodness to us in our personal lives and that our trust in him will never fail because he will never fail us or his promises. We will also proclaim the coming of his kingdom and that we, as his children, desire to see it consummated. This is the logical outgrowth of his work in us and among us that our faith not remain focused upon our individual experiences, as crucial as they are, but that we see the expansion and growth of the church universal for the benfit of all people and his glory.
Hence, we will then read from Philippians 1: "I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."
Our lives as Christians should not be marked by a self-centered privatized religion but rather we should let God be our guide and vision as we live and move in our respective families and communities. This is part of the fruit of righteousness that Paul is exhorting us to. We will close this portion of our liturgy with the great hymn "Be Thou My Vision."
In addition to this, Suzanne Wolvin will be leading us as well this week as we pray for the persecuted church. She will sing a great song by Sara Groves called "When the Saints." On Sunday Nov. 24 at 6:30 we will be hosting a night of prayer for the persecuted church.
Welcome!
Welcome to the Westminster Reformed PCA worship blog. In this blog we will post items related to our worship at Westminster. Our purpose is to encourage members and attenders of WRPC in our corporate and daily worship. Check back each week as we post new info on our upcoming services and other things we find helpful in our worship and work as WRPC and the church at large.
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