Having been raised an Atheist, I understand the power of unbelief – it can act as a religion in itself, and can be as world-view shaping as the most mind-controlling cult. Now, as a Christian, and a worship leader, I recognized one of the hindrances to passionate, full-personed (heart, mind, soul, & strength) worship: unbelief. Especially with youth, too often our personal faith is based merely on experience, or even merely “growing up Christian” - with no personal experience of God, or faith to call our own - and even the Bible is FULL of individuals who had radical experiences of God, who later – sometimes quickly – turned from Him. To truly worship God, we must KNOW HIM (experience) with our Heart, KNOW ABOUT HIM (apologetics/theology/doctrine) with our Minds, HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM (it is not enough just to have a spiritual experience once, and to mere like the IDEA of God – we must have a soul-level on-going spiritual relationship with Him), and actively WALK WITH HIM (walking out what we know is true). That is loving God with your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And we can only do this if our mind is on board, which is why there are such a thing as ‘apologetics’.
I once told a former house-mate of mine that I was speaking on “apologetics” – he said that he was very sorry. Maybe that’s you – you’ve never heard of “apologetics”. The original greek word that we translate into English as “apology” didn’t so much mean to “say you’re sorry” as much as to “make a case for something.” Apologetics is basically a Case for Christ – giving a reason for why you believe. Apologetics makes us ask the question, “How can I rationally defend my faith?” And as a worship leader, let me tell you this: you can’t FAKE conviction. If your mind isn’t convinced that God is real, and that Christ saved You, and that the Holy Spirit is present, it will hinder both your personal worship (honestly, “worship” will not be happening), and your worship leading.
2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” At first this verse seems to encourage argumentation, which seems to be in conflict with much of the wisdom of the Old Testament Proverbs which encourages NOT to be prone to argument – after a closer look I believe the second half of this verse clarifies it’s meaning – the ‘arguments’ and ‘pretensions’ that we are to demolish are ‘thoughts’ – ideas that take root in our minds, planted there by life in this fallen world. This verse encourages us to develop our critical thinking skills, so we can grapple with the ideas we encounter, and sift them like wheat – literally demolishing anything IN US - ideas, ways of thinking, and even images we may dwell upon - that acts to hinder our faith. This is truly what it means to “love the Lord with all of your mind” – giving all your thoughts to Him, and seeing which stand true — studying that we might know the truth, and seeking to think more “Christian-ly” about the world in which we live.
Secondly, let’s look at a handful of passages from Luke’s sequel; the book of Acts 17:2, 17, 18:4, 19 say as follows; “Paul…reasoned with them from the Scriptures”, “…he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day…”, “Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks”, and lastly, “He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews.” In every one of these verses, Paul is recorded as not giving just a simplistic Gospel message followed by an alter-call. Instead Paul put great time and effort into REASONING with non-believers. In Athens, in fact, he even uses a local “alter to an unknown god” to make a case for the truth of the Christian God. Another significant thing to note, however, is the centrality of the Bible to good apologetics; Paul didn’t just use fancy philosophy to convince people of the truth of Christ, but “he reasoned from the Scriptures.” It is important to remember that, even in apologetics, the Scriptures are central to what we do – if it is indeed true that “the word does not return void”, then we’d be foolish to begin elsewhere. Often, one of the things that leads us to doubt is that we are not in the Bible regularly, and when we are there, we do it merely as a chore – not expecting to meet God in its pages.
If God requires us to love Him with all of our “heart, mind, soul, and strength”, we should recognize the true Gospel appeals to the whole person AS A PERSON – not as merely a ’sales pitch’, which is what has too often occurred. Though the Scriptures require of us to “always be prepared to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15)our intent is not to merely win arguments – even with our own doubts – it is to lead ourselves and others to further see God’s greatness so we can better worship Him, and be better ‘worship leaders’ (in the broadest sense of the word) to a world that grows continually more skeptical.
Thinking back to not only my own walk, but looking around at the spiritual walks of so many of the youth worship leaders, musicians, and vocalists I work with on a daily basis, I think of the fire that so many of us had when we first met Jesus, which grows dim as personal tragedy and heartbreak hit, and we let ourselves grow skeptical. How can I expect to be used of God to set a room of worshipers aflame with passion for Him, if I, myself, am not on fire for Him?
As a way of holding my youth worship team accountable, and building them up in their own faith in Christ, I was begun a Bible study - which will, at first, be weekly, and will then move to bi-monthly - in which we will address our personal doubts, touching on different issues we encounter day-to-day which may lead us to grow skeptical. I will be sharing what we learn each week here on this blog under the heading “Apologetics as Worship Study”.
I hope you’ll drop by and chime in and join in on the conversation with us as we become more passionate worshipers through deepening our personal conviction of the truth of Jesus. Look forward to hearing from you.