The festival of praise was a great time for us to gather and celebrate several things:
- The growing young Christian population
- The nation’s prosperity and peace
- A greater unity between the
A festival in the OT, normally found in significant events like after a victorious war, or a construction of something grand for God, lasts for days, and is accompanied by great joy, dancing, singing, praising and basically – giving glory and thanksgiving to God for all that had happened.
Similarly today, we celebrate and give thanks for all God has provided: the reason why Don Moen fittingly started today’s proceedings with the song “Give Thanks”
However, I do realize that with the increasing number of youth population believing in Christ; amidst the celebration, we also need to educate and ensure the correct purpose is brought out.
For those who attended the Festival of Praise (FOP) for the first time, or have attended it for a few times and are unsure, or wish to discuss several issues regarding it; this article is for that purpose. To educate, discuss, clarify and ensure that a common understanding and even a correct purpose is met and delivered.
I believe it is paramount that as worshippers of the same church, we have a common understanding or sacraments, of worship, of thanksgiving, and of a festival to glorify God.
Please do not mistaken when I mean educate and discuss. Firstly, nothing is done wrongly. The intention of this festival is genuinely to glorify God, and I have no doubts over that; but there are things to learn from this episode in our lives, and more certainly, will be good if we can learn them together and understand each other before we move on to greater pastures for our God.
1. Expectations
Don Moen and Delirious? are 2 very celebrated international worship teams. I particularly enjoy Don Moen’s songs and repeatedly play them on youtube without feeling sick of it.
Phil Pringle too is a celebrated figure, and I myself subscribe to his newsletters. I like his entertaining yet enriching preaching and I certainly enjoyed listening to him live.
However, with all these excitement, all these celebrated figures attending this festival; where did our expectations before we came for this festival really lie at?
I’m not trying to suggest that we are here for these people, no. But sometimes, with an establishment of a particular event or activity, we tend to lose the purpose of the correct expectation. Did we really come here to celebrate what God has done in our lives, or to experience and encounter something different, or even to seek something we thought we could not find in our own local church, or worst still just to see these people.
It is a very dangerous area to trudge into, and fundamentally, it challenges the fact that God is omnipresent and even to the extreme extent of promoting idolatry.
2. Worship Teams
I enjoy having Don Moen leading worship because he is able to put and explain 3 components of worship into every song.
1. Encouragement
2. Verse and biblical meaning
3. Response through singing and instrumental worship
He simply is a man anointed by God for the music ministry, and I truly have no doubts more believers will be touched by God through his worship ministry.
Delirious? on the other hand is a popular evangelistic band. If you noticed, there is a significant difference of being a church music ministry worship leader and an evangelistic band worship leader.
Worship teams like planet shakers, hillsongs, Christian city church worship team are all dedicated worship ministries in their local church. There is a significant difference in delivery compared to evangelistic bands like Third Day, Delirious? to name a few.
These evangelistic bands are more “performance based”. They provide the gap between unbelievers and Christian music, evangelizing through their live’s responses via the song lyrics and their testimonies.
Therefore there might a certain culture shock when we experience Delirious?’s music for the first time. They might seem a little more like performing than worshipping, although their songs do indeed contain deep and even biblical meaning.
All in all, God works in ways we cannot see, and it is not in our ability to judge. But there is a reminder that we need to take note from this. For those performing servant artists chosen to play instruments for God or lead worship; today as we step up on stage: remember, that we should enjoy worshipping, and not enjoy performing.
3. Offering
Many churches are adopting a style of offering between the sermon and worship. And before the offering, the pastor provides a simple encouragement to the congregation, reminding them about the meaning of offering.
Many people view this as a pep talk to induce people to offer more, or to invoke the hearts of people with the word of God. The latter will be valid if the words preached indeed come from the word of God. While the former is subjective to interpretation and I reiterate our position not to judge, but to accept that God is in control.
The Pastor from Assemblies of God used Psalm 50:10-12 as a verse to encourage. It mentions that everything belongs to God, and God is not in need. He is like a rich friend that we have problem finding a birthday gift to.
He then used this story to transit from the biblical verse into his own theory: that whatever is precious to us, is precious to God. His theory and the verse he used has as little correlation as I can think of.
This statement is subjected to context interpretation and I will not discuss it. Rather, I wish to point out that from this juncture onwards, he related the third part of his preaching on this theory he conjured; treating it like it came from the bible.
A heart of discernment is something we should always pray for. But yet I do not fully agree that this is wrong. As a preacher myself, I do get misunderstood easily, and I do believe that a single message does not preach to everyone in the congregation. So I leave the teaching work to the spirit and stop this section here.
4. Speaking of tongues
Speaking of tongues is a common phenomenon in all charismatic churches. In every FOP, there will definitely be speaking of tongues. However in previous FOPs, the preacher will distant himself from the microphone while praying in tongues; this year is a little different.
Speaking of tongues was discussed by Paul to the Corinthian Churches. It is a gift from the spirit, just like any other gift that we receive from God. And the Methodist viewpoint is that not everyone will receive this gift. Just like how not everybody receives the similar gift of administration, or music.
As such, the speaking of tongues is not a necessary component is presenting our worship to God, or an ascertainment of our identity with Christ.
Also, Paul mentioned in his letters to the
The gift of tongues is a personal intimate language spoken to praise and worship God. However, as mentioned, this personal language does not signify exclusiveness; which is what the church in
In this light, Paul encouraged the church to fully utilize the gift that God gave us, but not at the expense of stumbling our brothers, sisters or even newcomers in our midst. So it must be practiced with an important attribute that I will mention again: discernment from the spirit.
There are still certain issues I will love to discuss and hopefully we can learn from each other. But all in all, the festival of praise had been a great time of worshipping and I can’t help to keep thanking God for how He has really changed lives using such an incredible tool.
The sight of my brothers and sisters in Christ being touched by the spirit and weeping, lifting their hands to worship and surrendering their lives to God really encourages me. And I am convinced God will make greater use of this festival for His purpose.
I hope this article has been helpful to you in understanding and noticing certain viewpoints that might not be seen to you. We as Christians must be aware of the happenings around us, to prevent the bad from happening and to encourage the good.
All praise and glory to God. Amen!
3 comments:
quite a long read i must say...well, at least you break them up in parts..haha..though i didn't go for it, i find that as much as music plays quite a big role in our service today, the Word of the Lord cannot be taken over by it. Neither should the music be in such a way that we neglect the reason this music is present.
In singing, in listening, in playing of the instruments, we worship God. Remember, the music we play is to glorify God, and God alone. No one should be playing, singing or dancing to the beat of the music out of fun, out of showmanship, out of self-glorification. Sure, you'll be tempted to do it but look at yourself and think before you do any of it. Know the reasons why you're doing all that.
Yup, that's my 2 cents..=))
The FOP event had brought different people from different churches and for this i thought it was cool! For some reasons, we like to separate ourselves and thus this event had served the good purpose to unite all of us together.
Different combination of groups especially the worship teams to me was weird in the beginning but i began to see it being of a good intention instead. :) However, the event should hopefully not be performance-based. Coz if it was and it happens to be, than it can be really quite stumbling to especially the youths.
I personally enjoyed Don Moen's worship leading. For Delirious's songs, they are meaningful and sometimes thought-provoking but to me the music seemed to be more attractive than the words, thus i couldn't really worship but just see myself being exposed to a different style of bringing out songs.
As for the speaking of tongues, yes i agree that it's a gift and definitely not everyone is entitled to it, for each one have their own. The intention has to be right if not it just comes out stumbling and wrong. One of us actually commented that in the mist of it, she found it really distracting when she was praying.. Being aware of how and why the use of tongues is thus impt. :)
All in all, the scene of seeing a stadium filled(like the national day parade) entirely with people worshipping blew my mind away. It's amazing and encouraging.. :)
And lastly, i do recommend you guys to go for the event Streams Of Praise next year as well. It's ministering and moreoever, we come from a chinese church.. it's just a totally different atmosphere due to the language and culture. It surely brings us to a step closer to reaching out to the chinese in our mist. Chinese refering to people who speaks that language.... and yea my few cents too.
*huiyu
oh yea. I see many christians in one short.. I think FOP is good for many reasons.. one is to gather christians to worship and pray, another is to create awareness of christian events to non-believers, and the last for evangelistic purpose.
I think Don Moen's worship leading is the one that once u see the song lyrics, you know wad song u are singing and the words that u are singing. which i find it very "easy" to worship God using those songs. it's familiar, and for those songs that are not familiar, in just a snap, you'll know the songs u are singing are bringing out what meaning. I find myself going deep into worshipping God for those moments.
And for Delirious?, I personally enjoyed those time worshipping and praising God. I would say the songs are pretty profound,yes chim. But i'll use the first part of the song to read the lyrics, to know what is the meaning of the songs first, what is this song trying to bring out. In many youths today, we tend to just sing the song out without knowing the meaning of the songs, which i think is a rather risky way, for we dunno what we are singing, then this singing may be of a "zero" heart attitude in the end.
just a test: do u know what's "Mi Coravan?" yes: good for u. no: did u sing this line of the song? lol. no need to reply.. it's a test for yourself.
I always like Pst Phil's preaching. it's interactive, and it brings out the meaning of the Word in the context of today, yet it did not go off point. and for his preaching on FOP, it gave me new insights to the passage of Lazarus. some might find it hard to accept way he bring out the points (why is it so interactive.. so illustrative?) but i think we need to accept that there are many methods of telling God's word.. as long as most received the Word of the Lord, and it brings out the essence of the Word, I will say the sermon is good, the preacher is good in preaching, and the Word touches my heart.
I wonder what's your impression of the Television Ministry session when Pst Phil requested us to clap and cheer. Some might think it's so facial. some might think it's fun! some might think it's stupid, but i'll still do it. some might think it's so self-glorifying. Many of us have many thoughts about that. Personally, I tot it's really facial. However, when I think of how it can tell the world of God's glory, I will want to do it. it's a self-interpretation thing. sometimes we just need to leave our comfort zone and culture, to see another interpretation or perspective of that act. and when you have done that, you may see a positive view of that act.. away from that negative thoughts.
Stream of Praise is another event that huiyu and I went on friday. I would say it's also a very God-encountering session. a time to see christians who are like us, english speaking, yet using Mandarin songs to worship God. We should organise to go for it next year when they come for Asia Tour again. :)
okie that's my sharing/comment.. my 1 cent worth.. :p
-jingyi/germaine
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