Voices In My Head Podcast Episode # 267: Forum On Worship As Spiritual Formation

Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James. This is another special episode that came to you from Lexington, Kentucky. We recorded it on a Sunday night, and I love this because the dynamic in the room— although you'll find that it's a little bit noisy because we recorded it kind of open mic in a room with, you know, like hardwood floors and then, you know, typical church walls with the stone bricks and things around us. And we were sitting in a round table area. Matt, who is a very good theologian, myself, and people from his church, people from all ages— we literally had toddlers there that are making noise in the background, and you're going to hear that, and that's just part of it. It's kind of like the church. We also had people that were up to and beyond retirement age and everything in between. Queen. And so it was fun to be able to have this conversation about worship and the role that it plays in formation. So it's a bit of a forum where they're asking some questions to me— Matthew is asking questions— and then I do my best to answer them. And we take some time to go around the table and get the perspective of the, the, you know, the lay people from the church too, people that, um, unlike us, are not necessarily trained in theology, but are people who really love God and have been part of the church and in their community. And they're from all walks of life, so you may hear some things that you agree with, you may hear some things that make you uncomfortable, but I think it's a good picture of the church. And, and when we come together, we come from all walks of life and from all different people. So we're going to have this conversation on the role that worship plays in our spiritual formation. And I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. So thank you for listening to Voices in My Head, and here we go.

As we get started tonight, one of the things that I want us to kind of have as a basis going into this is that perspective really does matter, what your point of view is, particularly whenever you're approaching any practice that you do. It's very easy to approach it with the eyes that you're you're typically practicing other portions of life. So an engineer would look at a particular practice with a set of eyes that see it one way, whereas a person who is an artist would look at the exact same situation and have a different way of viewing it. Whereas a person who comes to it from a scientist's perspective or from a, I don't know, a farmer's perspective, all these individuals, even even though they're looking at the exact same thing, are going to consider different questions first. And sometimes even individuals who are very, very close in their perspectives, especially as we're coming to this this evening, we're looking at the aspect of both worship and spiritual formation. I wanted to take the opportunity with having Rick here and to be able to pick his brain. We're looking at the aspect of worship I have the perspective of pastoral role, but he has the specific perspective of worship leader and worship pastor. And like I said, although those are very, very similar and very, very close, they are slightly different perspectives. And so there are those slightly different things that you'll see or pick up on. And so what we wanted to ask tonight was one significant question to sort of guide our conversation. Out of that we've got 3 other questions to sort of get us started in that. And I guess another way of looking at giving us a backdrop to put that question on. So our first question is this: In what ways does worship impact the spiritual formation of the person and the worshiping community? In other words, the practices that take place on any given time that we gather together on Sunday morning, or during the Easter worship services, or during a particular special worship service that surrounds a holy day. Those practices that take place in that community setting, in what ways do those begin to affect the way that we are formed as, as beings before God? And so in order for us to really answer that, we first have to figure out what do we mean by What do we mean whenever we're saying spiritual formation? What do we mean whenever we're talking about worship? And what do we mean whenever we're talking about who is the focus of worship? And so I'm gonna kind of put those questions before Rick and let him start in that conversation. We may— we'll have a little bit of back and forth as we argue— no, I'm just kidding— as we talk through these things and want us to have some space to kindly respond and to begin to brainstorm some of these things and to give you all some space to ask some questions through these as well. So Rick, go ahead.

What was the first question again?

First, start off by what do we mean in the Church of Nazarene in particular whenever we say What is spiritual formation?

Okay, well, what I think we mean is, at least what I think about what we mean is a set of practices, I think, along the way that help lead us to being formed into disciples. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with discipleship, and spiritual formation is interesting to me because We live in a society that right now wants to talk a lot about spirituality without talking about God, or spirituality without— actually even some spiritual practices without having any focus of the spiritual practices other than me. So you'll have things like, you know, find the inner voice or the inner self or things like that. And there'll be a set of practices, whether it be meditations or sitting and just listening in silence. And it's interesting to me because a lot of those are actually very similar to Christian practices, but they just aren't quite there, you know, they have a form of it. So I think spiritual formation for us in the church, and especially in the Church of the Nazarene, We do a lot of different things. I think over time we've done a lot of things by trial and error, but we're actually figuring out that there's a lot of connection to the ancient church that we had missed out on, and there's a lot of different practices that we do together on a Sunday morning that actually help us to live out a life of deep spirituality that actually seeks after God. So anyway, to me it's about discipleship. It's about a set of practices that lead us to becoming more like Jesus, to knowing Jesus more. So things like we do on Sunday morning, like giving praise, worshiping, whether it be in songs or testimonies or the word that we hear or recite together. The times that we take moments to confess sin, the times that we spend around the table together, both at communion but also in fellowship just around a meal, you know, those are things that I think form us as the people of God and help us to know God more as we know God with each other. So that's kind of a long rambling answer, but That's kind of what I think of when it comes to spiritual formation.

I'm curious from everyone else, whenever you hear that phrase spiritual formation, what is the— what's the first thing that comes to mind for you all?

The first thing that comes to mind to me is the way that we've formatted the way our spirit— or the way we do things spiritually. It's the formation of how we've come to where we're at. For instance, you get different backgrounds. I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, so I've grown in the Church of the Nazarene, where my wife, she was raised Catholic. So she's not for sure. So it's a different growth pattern in the way our spirits and stuff are formed.

Yeah.

Well, my brother-in-law, I love telling this story. My brother-in-law, let's see, I've been married 7 years now. And when I met him before we got married, he let me know pretty quick he thought anything to do with God was stupid and he was an atheist. And it was about 3 years ago now that he was baptized into the Catholic Church, went through all their catechism, made his confession of faith in front of the whole church. I mean, he's the one that leads us in prayer every time we get together now. Part of the draw to that for him, you know, as we prayed for him to really come into relationship with Christ, The Catholic Church for him was a place that he really connected with, and he went through like a year-long practice, you know, a year-long time of coming to do their curriculum every week together and learning all about the church, and then, you know, everything was leading up to his baptism where he could start receiving communion. And we went and worshipped with them a few weeks ago and God's really doing something very beautiful in a lot of Catholic churches right now. They call it the Francis Effect right now. That's what I'm hearing. We were surprised to walk in and hear them singing songs like, you know, "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back," and they've got screens up to let people know what book they're using, and you know, they got lyrics, and you know, they're singing Matt Redman songs like, "I need thee, oh, I need thee." I need you, oh, I need you, and all this stuff. So there's some similar and some different practices that we find, but it's funny, as they're opening up more to some practices of Protestantism, we're opening up more to some practices of Catholicism, and we're finding kind of a middle ground there that there is a lot of benefit to both of them. So, yeah.

Any others? As far as like what you think of when you think of spiritual formation?

Any images, did you say?

Or no, just any other comments.

Oh.

As far as like what comes to mind when you think of spiritual formation.

I think, I don't know. I think from a secular standpoint we think of it as somebody sitting on a mat with with their fingers touching and legs crossed, ahh, you know, chanting or whatever, but I don't know, there's a lot. We have a much different view, I think, of spiritual formation in the church.

So since we're trying to connect these two, there's two questions I want to ask, and I want to make sure that I ask them in the right order. If we're talking about connecting spiritual formation and worship, in what way does worship affect spiritual formation, and in what way is worship part of the practice of spiritual formation? Rick, how would you address that?

In what ways does worship affect formation?

Affect spiritual formation, knowing that there's more practices than just worship, and in what way is worship itself yourself part of that practice or one of those practices?

All right. Well, first I think I always want to define worship as more than music because usually anymore when you say worship it's relegated to a style of music, you know, like, "This is worship music," and I go to a lot of churches where I actually kind of shy away from calling myself a worship worship leader when I'm doing music, because I want to call myself a song leader or a praise leader or something, because I really want to try to help people understand worship is so much more than just the songs we sing. And everything we do from the time we walk into the door to the time we leave, those are spiritual practices that we're doing from the gathering to the scattering and the sending out. If I'm understanding the question right, there are a lot of practices that we do in church and also outside of church that gather around acknowledging the holiness of who God is, acknowledging that we are his people, giving him praise, taking a right posture before him. And so I think in what What we do on a Sunday morning is in a big way kind of what we're doing through the rest of the week every day of our life. We're supposed to be doing that. We're supposed to be living that way. And worship is misunderstood if it's not understood as being a verb. It's very much an action word and it's not something that we should as Christians just be spectators in. There's all kinds of movements and actions. If you're talking about worship specifically in the church and the movements that happen there, I just find it interesting that the church has always been very engaging from early on in all of the different senses. Of the body. Like there's different things that the church— we've actually given up a lot of them over time, but from the beginning the church engaged in taste. Like, you know, how often do you think of church as a place to go taste something? But really that was part of what the table was about. Or obviously our hearing, you know, we hear the word when we come together. There were things like smell that were engaged. We don't usually think about that one a lot. But there was incense that was there. It was supposed to remind us that we are in the place that's like heaven and there's this aroma of heaven that's around us. Whether or not you think aroma of incense smells like heaven or not, that was the purpose of it. But I've had, you know, we do visual things, we do, have I missed any of them? Did I do 4? Whatever, the senses, the touch that's there. A lot of that has to do with how we gather together. I said visual. Will cite. There's a lot that we do, have always done to engage in worship. I was talking with one of my fellow worship leaders the other day, and we were talking about how to engage our congregations on every level of the senses, and we were trying to think, is there a way that smell can be worshipful that isn't incense? Because smell is one of those things when you When you walk into a place, if it doesn't smell good, it turns you off pretty quick to what it is. Like, ugh! You don't want to sit next to the smelly person if you can keep from it. And yet, in a sense, sitting next to the smelly person is sort of the most Jesus thing that we can do. If you think about it like engaging in worship of Christ who did not keep himself away from people, but came close to the very heart of the dark places, and the hurt places, and the smelly places, and things like that.

So as a suggestion from now on as pastor, don't bathe, come to church naked.

No.

No, but maybe— no, but maybe part of our formation as Christians is understanding, you know what, maybe part of engaging Jesus is engaging that smelly person, you know. If we really think that we see Jesus in all people, maybe part of our mission and part of our worship today is to befriend that one that nobody's sitting next to. And it's hard. It's difficult. But that's also part of our discipleship, you know. And so I think that kind of thing carries over outside the church as well. And one way that I clearly have seen in my own life And this is a very personal thing for me. It's not a private thing, but it's a very personal thing when it comes to worship. I do Sunday worship, but I also do my own prayer time during the day, and I do a lot of memorization. So I'll memorize a lot of prayers, and then I'll come— almost like I do with the guitar, where you have to learn the music first, but then it starts to freely flow out of you. I do that with prayers, and so they feel very mechanical at first, or if I memorize Scripture. But then I find that when I really need those, those things start to flow out of me too, because I'm able to start praying them spontaneously. For me, that sort of corporate and private worship have come together in hospital rooms numerous times, including like in family members. When my grandma was dying, there was just moments where those prayers I had learned just started really flowing out. Like I didn't have any words to say, you know, in that moment. When we again found ourselves at a place, as I told you this morning, with the miscarriages and we don't know what to say and we just start praying, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures." And you get that line of walking through the shadow of death death, you know, you've got something in there. And the most— probably that I'll stop talking in a second, I promise. One of the most real things I've ever heard though about how worship has affected a person, I've gotten to know an artist a little bit named Andrew Peterson. He's a really wonderful songwriter and he writes novels and just does amazing things. And he has a new album out It's actually a 3-part album called Resurrection Letters. And so there's songs about the Passion Week before Jesus, as Jesus is going to the cross, and then there's songs about after the resurrection, and then there's another album that's about the effect of the resurrection in people's daily lives. And he has a song on one of those albums that's called Always Good, and it's a lament song. And it comes from a story of one of his very good friends. His wife and he, they, his wife had a baby and then the wife died within about an hour of having the baby. And said here he was experiencing the best day and the worst day of his life all at the same time in that moment. And Andrew said his kids were His kids are close with this friend too, and he said his sons were in the room after, actually as the wife died, and this man's there with his baby and there's his wife that just passed away, and they said he was just like chanting the words, "Always good, he's always good, he's always good, he's always good," you know, and just like weeping these words through that, but something had formed him you know, to do that. So Andrew Peterson wrote a lament song called "Always Good" and sang it at the funeral that was always about that, and it's about— to me, that's one of the most real images of the way that worship is supposed to form us spiritually, you know. I don't even think he felt that God was that good in that moment, but there was something about the practices that he had made such a part of his life of acknowledging the goodness of the Lord, that God would be good to him in the midst of all that, that's just, that's one of the most powerful stories I've heard in a very long time about how this kind of thing actually can shape us in those moments of life. But anyway, I'm done now. Somebody else talk.

I'm glad you used the word other than formation. Because when you guys were saying formation, it sounds very much like a theological term to me. And I wish you would have used another term that's more of a layman's term, like make, like what makes me, or remade, yeah, or, you know, what, what builds me of who I am. What part of worship would put in layer of —layer upon layer upon layer that would sustain me in that kind of situation. What part of worship would I build into my psyche, the core of who I am, that even when something is bad or when something is good, that I can hold on to and maintain who I believe in and who I love and who I care about. So formation is this kind of word up here that I can't grab a hold of.

Yeah. And I tend to think of it almost like when I think of formation, like a potter is forming the clay, you know, like something that's reshaping. And I've never been able to make a clay pot. No, I haven't either, but sort of like being reshaped and being remade and being, yeah, built up. Maybe we could say growing into maturity, you know. Oh, I'm in trouble then.

Actually, whenever you said another word, the first thing that came to mind was, you know, you used the clay pot example, was molding, being spiritually formed. Fashioned or molded or developed. None of those are, I think, are going to be totally adequate. But one of the things that you bring up there is this idea of the imagery you use is this layer upon layer of being made, of being shaped, of being formed. And I know I'm going to slip back to that language because that is the term that I'm going to is most commonly used. That's a verb and formation is a noun. Yeah, of being formed, of being made into the person that you were. The phrase that A. Trey Downing, Ralph A. Trey Downing, always used, and I love this little phrase, where you are, you're in the process to be becoming what you were created to be, what God made you, and there's this movement towards that. And so one of the interesting pieces of that puzzle is that, and as we've talked about, there are practices, practices from hearing and responding to the Word to memorizing the Word to reflection upon God's Word, whether in written form or a message, meditation, whether we're talking about prayer, both privately or personally. Or in corporate settings, whether we're talking about discipleship groups similar to this, if we're talking about communion as a moment of being spiritually molded or formed, when we're talking about even— even godly conversation that challenges us and holds us accountable, moments of confession, moments of praise or adoration. Tithing is a spiritual practice or a practice of being spiritually formed and molded. Fasting, you know, we could go on down this list, but I want to go back to something that Rick said earlier to kind of move us into the next question that I want us to bring up is he said that sometimes there is this tendency because it's not as if though our world does not not see or acknowledge the spiritual side of who we are as beings in the world. As much as we sometimes will relegate thinking beings a little higher on the rung than we do as spiritual beings, we don't negate the fact that we're still spiritual beings. But he kind of said, you know, there's this idea of doing practices without focus. In fact, the image that immediately came to mind was this concept of this idea of, let's go build something. We're going to build because building is good. And so we're going to have Bill help us out because Bill's great with electricity and my wife will shoot me if I deal with anything with wires. So we're going to go out and, you know, Paul's going to work on the carpentry side of things and I'm going to work on some plumbing side of things and we're going to build a building. And so we'll get together and we all are going to meet on next Saturday and We all have all the tools that we need, we all have all the lumber and all the wire and all of the resources that we need, and so let's get to it, let's start building. So we start digging out a foundation and we start throwing stuff together and we get about, you know, I don't know, 2 or 3 weeks into the project and we're all frustrated with each other because even though we all agreed that we were going to build something, we never actually agreed on what it was we were going to build. And I think that part of what Rick had alluded to earlier is that as much as practices of prayer, scripture, devotion, meditation, worship, communion, tithing, fasting— and the list could go on and on, this is nowhere by any stretch of the imagination exhaustive— we can have all of that list of stuff to do, the process of building, but if we have no blueprint, then what are we building towards? So I guess my next question is, is how big of a role does it play— because I'm assuming the answer is going to obviously be that it plays a significant role— to first answer the question, who is the object of our worship, who is the object of our spiritual molding, spiritual being, being spiritually formed. I'll put it in a verb form.

Well, it seems like it should be obvious in church that God, God is our focus, you know, of our worship, the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, in our Christian worship, and yet there's a There's a lot of churches that have kind of made their identity on just being sort of a self-help church. I don't want to name any names, but there's plenty out there. If you walk into any sort of Christian bookstore, if you can find one anymore, you actually will find several of these on the shelf. They sound a lot like just regular self-help books. You're good enough. And you're smart enough and doggone if people like you type thing, you know. But there's a sense in which it has to be something directed at— while we are a part of worship, it has to be directed at someone other than me or it's not going to do us any good, you know. Because I've proven time and again I'll form myself the wrong way every time, you know. And if we don't allow God to be the one that— is the one that shapes us and molds us and grows us and creates something in us, I don't think it's gonna be strong. But as a worship songwriter, I'm always struggling against this, and I struggle when I go to places and I hear a lot of new worship songs, sometimes old worship songs too. Sometimes things in the hymnal hit me the wrong way. I'll be like, wow, that's really bad. That's not even true, I don't think, at times. A good example, I can't even think of the name of the song, and it's probably best, but there's a bridge of this worship song that's pretty popular right now, and it just says, you're never gonna let, you're never gonna let me down. Oh Lord, you're never gonna let, you're never gonna let me down. And it just repeats again again, "Lord, you're never gonna let me down, you're never gonna let me down." And I always want to be cautious about things like that. For one, you really made the focus of the song about me and what you're gonna do for me, first of all. And then I always hear that phrase of like, well, maybe he won't let you down, but what are you expecting God to not let you down about? Because depending on the answer, like, he's gonna let you down on some things if you your priority is wrong, if you haven't been shaped towards asking for the right things. If your expectation is, "God, give me a million dollars. You're never gonna let me down. Oh God, you're never—" It's like, well, yeah, he's probably gonna let you down. I was thinking of being rich. I want to be rich. But there's been a lot of worship music, and I think thankfully because I'm a part of writing a lot of— with a lot of great people who are doing very serious work writing music for the church. We take this very seriously. I think there was— there has been a real change in helping us write songs that are a lot more focused upon Him than upon me, you know. And I notice a real power in worship songs that we sing. Speaking of the focus, if you look through the lyrics, even just read them them sometimes and notice which ones are really like making God the topic of the song versus ones that make me the topic of the song. I sometimes can feel that there's a lot more power to the songs that are making God the focus. You know, like you can almost just feel it even in reading the words and you'll find a lot more nourishment in those things. So yeah, I obviously It should be obvious to us that God is the focus of our worship. That also maybe would bring us to the other thought. We also have a lot of music that maybe presents a false picture of God, even if it does focus on God. And we have a lot of what me and my friends call Jesus is my boyfriend songs, you know, because every song, if you just took took Jesus out and changed it to your boyfriend or girlfriend, it would be the exact same thing, like you hear on a pop radio station. It's actually a term in the industry we use, we call them Jesus is my boyfriend songs. So we're trying to steer away from an image of that for a God that is more transcendent than that, and a God that is actually much bigger than what my boyfriend or girlfriend could do for me. Me, you know, in those type ways. So the focus of it does make a lot of difference when it comes to worship, for sure.

What does it look like then when our practices become a greater focus than the actual purpose of being spiritually formed? That is to say, whenever I spend do we spend more time focusing on, okay, I need to start praying more regularly and so I'm gonna have my prayer time at this time, this time, and this time, and I'm gonna read this much Scripture in the morning, this much Scripture in the afternoon, and I'm gonna make sure that I never miss out on this small discipleship group, and the actual practice becomes a greater focus than the purpose? Or is that a pitfall at all? Are you asking me, or is that for everybody? That's for everybody.

Anybody? I think if you put the practice ahead of the purpose, you miss the purpose and you start just doing it because you have to. You're not doing it because you want to or because you know that it glorifies God. You're doing it because because you have to and you get burnt out on it real quick.

Either that or we go back to what we talked about last week. It becomes your identity as opposed to it being where your identity truly sits so that you're asking people to look at you by what you're doing as opposed to what—

It comes back to that. Me. What am I doing? It's me instead of him.

And there can be this place to where even a good-sounding title, for example, man, that person over there, he or she, they're just, man, they're a solid, awesome prayer warrior. They just, that's the, that's who they are. They're an awesome prayer warrior. As opposed to that's a person who is a child of God. They're being formed, remade in the image of Christ versus they're known for doing that discipline, that piece of being spiritually formed.

And I think we have one spiritual formation that is ahead of the other. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but we tend to focus on that one spiritual formation and we forget about the other ones. We forget that not only do we need to pray, and we become real good at praying, but you also have the word that you need to be in and you have other things that you need to be doing, but those take the back burner because you focus so much on one that then it And again, how long is that going to last before you get burnt out? Before you're like, "Oh man, I'm praying so much that I don't see anybody else praying like me." And once again, it's back on that me. I'm praying so much that, well, I didn't see Joy pray today. I didn't see, you know, and it's like— And if that becomes the focus of our worship, then we miss the point entirely.

I was just going to say, I wonder if it can be both/and, because I'm wary of letting the practice become God itself. And yet at the same time, I know that I need some sort of sort of practice so that I don't fall away from it, you know, and it helps me. And an interesting thing to me, very recently I had a couple of friends of mine, a couple of really sweet ladies, they're actually Muslims, they live in Springfield where I live, and I had them on this podcast that I do on an almost weekly basis. And I asked them to clarify and clear up some things about Islam, you know, because there's a lot of false statements being made and a lot of true things, and it was just good to talk to them. But one thing that really impressed me about— I mean, I'm serious, it really impressed me— was their commitment to praying, to the point not just that they pray, but if they're on a trip, they have certain times a day they do it, and they pull the car over and they stop on the side of the road if they need to. If they're on an airplane, they have to stop. I don't know too many Christians that have that kind of a commitment to their prayer life, that have said, "You know what? I'm committed to this and I'm gonna do it." Like today. I admire that. But again, if we're not careful, we can spend those times and think that we're maybe earning our salvation by doing that or something.

Repeat what you said right there. Right.

And in actuality, it's not that at all. It's kind of like fitness, which I've learned a lot more about in the last few years because I lost a bunch of weight and I figured out how to eat better and things like that. The practice of learning how to do it is what helps me me to keep doing it, you know, in a sense. But yeah, it's the practice itself. I kind of lost my train of thought a little bit, but there is a certain practice to a lot of the rhythms of our life. But if we get out of those rhythms in the long term, if we get out of those rhythms in the long term, it can have a bad effect. So I know now that if I— I know where I was going now. I know now that if I If I get away from those practices I've developed, eating better, exercising more regularly, I'll go back to— the 50 pounds are gonna come back and, you know, things like that. So it's something we hold, and, you know, doesn't mean every now and then you can't have some ice cream. You just don't want to make that your every night, you know, routine to do. And so the practice can change from time to time, but—

well, and If we go back to the illustration that we used earlier of the building and the blueprints, if we came back together on the next day and we said, hey, our building without a blueprint didn't get us anywhere because we're all building different buildings. But then we decided, hey, what if we all shared the same blueprint? And then we all said, yep, everybody's got a copy of the same blueprint. But yet we no longer practiced the actual practices of building. Nobody did any Nobody did any electrical work. Nobody did any foundation work. No one did any carpentry. No one did any plumbing. We just said, hey, we got— all of us have the same blueprint and we all want to see the same building built and we all have unity on this. This is the building we want and we agree wholeheartedly. But we gave up the actual practices of building. It doesn't get us any farther along than when we were all about practicing the practices of building. But didn't have a blueprint to work with. It does require both sides of that. You actually have to have blueprint in hand, you actually have to have practice in hand. One of the stories that Jesus tells whenever he's with his disciples, and he talks about this instance where two people go up to the temple to pray. When they go up to the temple to pray, he says, Jesus says that one is a Pharisee and one is a tax collector. And he says that first there is the tax collector and he kind of stands off to himself. He has kind of his own little space that he has. He's cleared out some area around himself. And he stands up, he puffs his chest out, and he begins to tell God his this litany of practices. He begins to tell God, you know, of how he tithes, of how he prays, of how he does everything right. But in the process of doing everything right, he gets to this point in his prayer where he says, "And Lord, I just want to thank you. I am not like this guy, this tax collector. Thank you, Lord, for making me not him." And then he goes on and he says, "And then you have this other gentleman who has separated himself off from the others, but not in the purpose of being seen or pride, but rather in the purpose of humility. He is in a position of humility, he is more humbled and downcast, and he beats his chest and he cries out to God and he asks for forgiveness. But the point being is that both of them Both of them are participating in the practice of prayer at temple. Both of them are coming before God, approaching him, and seeking his face in that practice of prayer. But Jesus then asked the question, which one of these two walks away justified? Which one of these two actually found formation through the practice of which they were a part? And one could actually argue both of them were formed by the practice, but one practice sought the self and self-promotion, whereas the other practice was seeking after God and found humility and found transformation in their personhood. Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2 reads this way: I appeal to you therefore, brothers Brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. No longer be conformed to this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern that which is the will of God, what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect. I want to kind of close out with this question. Excuse me. Not with the cough. And it's one that Rick shared with me earlier this afternoon, but I want to ask it in this context. I want to have an opportunity for Rick and for all of you to sort of respond to this for a moment. He asked it this way. He said, "If a person were to worship alongside of us for the next 15 years," with the practices that we have here at Calvary? What kind of person would we form if they were to practice worship with us for the next 15 years, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday? What person would we be forming, molding, shaping? One like us. What would that look like? What have we been formed into? Is it what we're shooting for?

Well, we'd hope so. But doesn't mean every one of us are formed the same either. And I don't— maybe we shouldn't be all the same.

No, I definitely don't think I don't think it needs to be a cookie cutter, but by all means I would hope that our common place of worship forms common realities among us. And I'm kind of, I guess I'm asking what would those common realities be?

Well, hopefully, in all this, you know, worship and discipline, if we go back to The two great commandments. I think as long as we are living up to those two, then we're doing all right. Maybe a better way to phrase that is, does a person who worshiped with you look more like Jesus than if they had not worshiped with you? You know, after 15 years goes by or— That's a good question to ask of I mean, we're evangelicals, so it's a good question to ask of the evangelical church in America, you know, which a lot of us have been, you know, many people have gone for 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years to the same church. And I think our goal is to be more like Jesus in all that we do, is allow Jesus and the Holy Spirit to move among us. And I think it's a It's maybe a haunting question a little bit to ask if our churches have really availed themselves to Jesus as much as they've availed themselves to a lot of other things. Because we see a lot of Christians that are living lifestyles that don't really look a lot like what we see in Jesus, you know, and we see it en masse. But then again, we see a lot of people who I think do as well. I just found out that they asked that question last year at a conference I was at. It was a pastors' conference, and they just had said, you know, basically that whole idea: if a person worships with you for the next 15 years, what difference does that make in their lives? What kind of person have they become as a result of worshiping with you? Hopefully we've become disciples of Jesus. I mean, hopefully. God help us, please. They're sticking around with us for 15 years. We must be doing something right. Yeah, that's true. Two things.

I think it makes us hold a mirror up to ourselves and look at ourselves very critically about who we are when we think about about somebody sitting next to us. But you also said something that I'll throw a wrench in there. Okay. It's that you said, uh, we need to— I think a lot of times when I look at who Jesus was and how he lived, I know a lot of people who call themselves Christian that wouldn't want to be around him. Yeah. Because because he availed himself to a lot of people, which would have applied to that tax collector, a lot of other people. And when we, we would have to make sure whoever we, we avail ourselves to everybody, that other people think we can't pick and choose. Who we avail ourselves to and who we love, who we reach, and who we— we can't put those walls up between us and them. Amen. And so I think it amounts to doing a self-inspection to make— what are we? And him being careful about how we interpret what that means. Definitely. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it tells us a lot about what we as a church— I don't just mean one church, I just mean we as a church— what we think about who Jesus is by what our churches look like a lot of times. And the kind of people we accept or don't accept, or the people we choose to be with. I'm increasingly convicted about like, you know, if we're really supposed to be living out the kingdom of God and we pray this prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, the Lord's Prayer, and my friend, I'm a friend with a Jewish rabbi in Springfield and I walked in last time I went to visit him and he was teaching his people the Lord's Prayer in the synagogue, in the temple rather, and he was saying this is the most Jewish prayer in all of the Bible, is the Lord's Prayer that Jesus taught. I said, but we don't pray it because Jesus taught it. He said, but it's a good prayer and we should pray it. Which is very interesting, but in that prayer we have, you know, we pray this very little prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Thy kingdom come means every tribe and nation and tongue and every person. I think when we look at our churches, at least in America, we see a lot of— I know this Sunday morning, I think there was only white people here that I saw. Tonight there's definitely more, and I'm grateful for that. But more often than not in Nazarene churches I go to, it's almost always with the exception maybe of one or two people, it's not a very diverse kingdom. I think we have a lot of work to do with that as the church. Just even finding out what that means. How do we, as the kingdom of God, learn to be people who reach out more? Because a lot of times we worship quite differently, you know, in different cultures and stuff, and yet that might be part of our worship too, is learning how to accommodate others that aren't like us. And as you say, I loved what you said there.

It was one of the sweetest things you can hear in our church on Sunday morning. I mean, it is the sweetest thing, are those little children who already know the Lord's Prayer. Yeah, I sat— one of the couple families that sat behind us, their little girl For 3 years I've been saying the Lord's Prayer, and I heard Preston this morning. I heard Preston saying the Lord's Prayer, and it tore me up because he's just a little fella. Yeah. And I mean, you talk about the most precious sound in the world when they are saying the Lord's Prayer. Yeah.

My son who is 5 Every night when my wife lays down with him to put him to bed, they say the Lord's Prayer. He asked us at dinner the other night, "What's kingdom come?" You know, he asked that thing. Trying to explain that to a 5-year-old, I'm like, "Ahh, let me think here. That's a big question." We're going to talk about formation. Yeah, you don't use those kind of words. Thank you for your question. Thank you for saying that. Gosh, that's beautiful. There's nothing more beautiful than when our children, you know, they're entering ahead of us, I believe. There's something that we lose of that when we get to be adults. You know, Rich Mullins, the late Rich Mullins, he had a song called "Growing Young." And in that song he talks about salvation as really just the idea that we're growing young again. That we are becoming the children of God. That's, that's a beautiful way of putting it.

Well, and I think that's the thing. Too many, too many people in the church have forgotten that, that Jesus's one thing that he said was not hold the children back, let them come. And we as a church— and I'm not talking about this church, I'm talking about the church in general— we forgot that if we just step back and look at how kids act, how do kids act today? I mean, granted, there's a lot of issues in culture today, but we have kids that know no, no skin color. They know no ethnic background. Yeah, but isn't that what Jesus called us to. Yeah. And I think the church has forgotten that on some levels. Yeah. Because like you said, you go to a Nazarene church and it's predominantly a white church.

Third spill of the night. Hey, it's Trinitarian.

So I mean, you know, and that's the thing. I think that's one thing we have to do to get back to our roots is to remember that these kids are how we should act. Yeah. You know.

Well, you know what? Would you say that? I love having these toddlers. I love having these toddlers in the room tonight because yes, they spill things and they make messes and they get a little noisy. Noisy, but that's part of life in the family. And we've forgotten that the family of God is the family of God from all ages. And I hope that, you know, one thing growing up in the church, I gained so much from like Sunday night testimony time that I didn't even know I was gaining from that, hearing the old saints of the church tell these stories to me. And I didn't even know they were telling me the stories, in essence, you were talking about testimony this morning. There's a sense in which if we separate too much, that's a real problem because our children are a part of that. I love what you just said. I love having them in here. I really do because I'm away from home for a week and I miss my son already. It's only been one day, so.

Excuse me.

He was good. You got hungry.

One of the things I like is the kids, and I remember when I was a kid, I would be shaking like this, you know, getting up in front. But I love the kids doing the scripture verses and the singing and everything.

And that's something to look forward to coming to church.

And some of the older ones, Or the younger ones are seeing what the—

or some of the younger ones are seeing what the older ones do, and they want to do the same thing. And that's great. That's why it's fun to see new Christians too who don't know all the Christian language and stuff, because they don't know how to act yet. And it's so awesome to see, you know, like when I say they don't know how to act yet, they probably know how more how to act than we do, you know.

They're not as— I think one thing that hinders those of us who've grown up, we get constricted, we hold back, and we don't let out the spirit. We don't show that enough like we should.

So sometimes Jesus— when you're an old Christian, sometimes Jesus cuts you loose so much good.

Yeah, we did have a Black lady.

She was the one with the walker.

You're right, we did, we did actually.

Another Black lady was, was the one that invited her to come to the church to begin with. Christine. Christine. Yeah, Christine got a boyfriend.

He goes somewhere else.

Yeah, well, you know what, she got a boyfriend. I definitely didn't mean to pick on the church about that. It's just something I see a lot. You just didn't see our teenagers.

I don't have a lot of teenagers.

Well, no, I saw them tonight and I know about that, but I see wherever— I travel to a lot of churches and I see when I worship in places that have a lot of diversity, there's a real richness there that I miss when I come back to my church and I just think— I'm actually not picking on anybody about it, even my home church. It's just the truth, and it's just something I think we need to work on in becoming disciples. There's a lot more richness to be found, and I think it's something that we can really benefit altogether from. Now we're up to the Gospels. We're up to the Gospels. For spills. We might have to wrap this up. They've been so good though, honestly, for an hour to sit here and have this conversation.

They are really good kids, I will have to say.

Woo! It's good stuff. But this goes back to one of the things that we have, and I've had this conversation, I know yesterday in class, and I've actually had it so many times in the last week, I can't remember where I had it at. Witch time. But one of those things of being spiritually formed is being reminded that you are not spiritually formed in a bubble, that spiritual formation takes place corporately. And one of the things that we can do the worst is say, okay, now this age group, you go over here and do your thing. This age group, you go over here and do your thing. This age group, you go over here and do your thing. There are times for that, and appropriate times times for that, but if it's constantly that, if there's never any place besides corporate morning worship where you have a small group that includes toddlers as well as adults, then we forget that, wait, wait, we're all being spiritually formed by these conversations. We're all being spiritually formed by prayers, and we may or may not realize how much Preston is picking up on the phrase. It's awesome to hear kids praying the Lord's Prayer, but after it's said enough times, he's going to hear it and catch it in one of these conversations that, wait, it matters to them too when I pray the Lord's Prayer. And that's part of that being formed process. That matters as well.

Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll Visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for "pair booking" agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. Amen.