Worship in the Joy of the Lord: Selections from Chip Stam's Worship Quote of the Week

By CICW Books

Worship in the Joy of the Lord is a curated collection of over 300 quotations on the deep meaning and purpose of Christian public worship designed to inspire, challenge, and equip worshipers and worship leaders to be transformed by the renewing gospel of Jesus Christ.

John D. Witvliet is director of the Calvin Institute of Chris

• Language: English
• Publisher: CICW Books
• Release date: Jan 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781937555184

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Contents

Title page

Copyright

Preface

Foreward

The God We Worship

What Is Worship?

Elements of Worship

Leading Worship

Music and Worship

Hymns and Poems

Times and Seasons

Suffering and Death

Life as Worship

Worship, Evangelism, and God’s Mission

The Problems and Possibilities of Worship Today

Psalm-Shaped Piety and Other Reflections

Acknowledgments

Title page

Worship in the Joy of the Lord

Selections from Chip Stam’s Worship Quote of the Week

Edited by

Calvin Institute of Christian Worship • John D. Witvliet

CICW BOOKS

Calvin College Press

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Copyright

© 2015 Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, 1855 Knollcrest Circle SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546. All rights reserved.

CICW BOOKS

an imprint of Calvin College Press

3201 Burton SE

Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

calvincollegepress.com

ISBN 978-1-937555-17-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-937555-18-4 (ebook)

LCCN 2015956677

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the permission granted by publishers, organizations, and individuals listed as copyright holders after each quote, which hereby becomes an extension of this copyright page. If any rights have been inadvertently infringed upon, the publisher asks that the omission be excused.

Cover image: Wet with Dew © 2008 James Fissel | Eyekons

Preface

It is our joy and calling at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship to find many ways to prompt [growth] in grace and in knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). This is particularly related to the communal and public act of gathering with God’s people for worship and proclamation, sung and spoken prayer, and celebrations of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Much of this growth happens in worship itself, as young and old, new and lifelong believers become immersed in the practices of a community, learning to listen to God’s voice and to respond in faith and hope. This growth can also be encouraged and strengthened all week long by pausing, even briefly, to reflect on some aspect of what we do as we gather with God’s people and to savor a particular aspect of God’s beauty and grace.

Our prayer is that these quotations will be used by individual worshipers as they prepare to join with God’s people, by choir directors and worship team leaders as they shape rehearsals, by worship planning groups and preachers as they reflect on their leadership roles, and by parents and teachers looking for ways to lead children of all ages into deeper expressions of faith and worship. May God’s Spirit use these quotations to encourage, challenge, and comfort us all in our worship of the triune God.

—John D. Witvliet

Calvin Institute of Christian Worship

Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Foreward

Infectious joy! That is what most of us miss when we think of Chip Stam. There was an amazing human being and image-bearer behind the Worship Quote of the Week. If you didn’t know him in person you missed spontaneous giggling, hugs, and handstands, even as he taught profound theological truths. He had a talent for clowning to keep groups alert, learning happily, and working hard. Chip was a masterful Pied Piper and could pull impressive skills out of the most nominal set of musicians by his intentional silliness, all the while demanding from each one greater musicianship and accuracy. He wedded the serious skills of his trade with that one-of-a-kind joi de vivre.

Chip was headed to Princeton for college but instead accepted the renowned Morehead Scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After marrying me and continuing graduate studies at Carolina, he welcomed two precious baby boys into the world and moved the family to serve as head of the Choral Department at the University of Notre Dame. There he conducted the Men’s Glee Club, Notre Dame Chorale, and at times the orchestra and instrumental ensembles, and added a baby girl to the family.

During his ten years at Notre Dame, (1981–1991), technology took a rapid move to the digital age. Chip took to the computer and the new cyber world like a fish to water. I can still see him in 1989 proudly carrying his Mac-luggable home on his back (it must have weighed nearly 20 pounds). He worked late into the night, carefully crafting his remarks for the Worship Quote of the Week emails and other projects. Chip worked so hard that sometimes I had to suppress the serious impulse to take a hammer to his laptop! Yet now I am proud of and thankful for the sacrifice of time and thoughtful energy invested in his writings and correspondences to edify the church.

Vast experience, education, and exposure made it possible to leave us such a legacy. My respect for his mind and ability only grows with time. His understanding of music theory, masterful; his athletic ability, remarkable. A true competitor, he was demanding of himself and others, but I rarely saw him impatient or unkind.

Desiring to be of maximal usefulness to church leaders, Chip not only labored weekly to serve those reading the Worship Quote of the Week but also meticulously constructed a comprehensive index of all the quotations, with 2,000 years of Christian thought on worship. These millennia of history should steer us from the self-preoccupation of what makes us merely feel emotionally awakened to worship (in our present culture). Fads and feelings come and go, but Chip devoted his life’s work to the unchanging, incarnate Word of God.

No church—high or low, mega or meager, escaped unscathed by the 1980s rumblings of what would become known as worship wars. Chip spoke into this melee with calm reason and wisdom, pleading for the deference of love to unify believers. And he practiced what he preached. During his years at South Bend Christian Reformed Church (1981–1991), Chapel Hill Bible Church (1977–1981, 1991–2001), Clifton Baptist Church (2002–2011), and as a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (2000–2011), Chip planned and led a wide range of musical and liturgical styles. He taught and modeled how an expanding vocabulary or comfort zone could avoid church discord, enlarge congregations beyond homogenous profiles, and enhance corporate worship of the transcendent and immanent Creator and Redeemer God.

The 1874 Frances Havergal hymn text Take My Life and Let It Be became a theme song for our 36 years together as husband and wife. Chip certainly used his hands (stanza 1) in choral/orchestral conducting and playing guitar, his swift and beautiful feet on the podium and tennis court (stanza 2), his pleasing voice (and tremendously encouraging countenance) for his King (stanza 3), and (stanza 4), Chip offered his intellect (along with material wealth) that God would use every power as Thou shalt choose.

My prayer for this book is the same as that which Chip chose for our wedding, that Jesus our Lord would equip you in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight (Hebrews 13:20–21). To God alone be all the glory as he teaches us the joy of worship.

—Doris Stam

Durham, North Carolina

1

The God We Worship

It’s impossible to understand the meaning, purpose, and practice of worship without seeking to understand more deeply the One to whom we offer it. There is no better way to prepare for or plan worship than to contemplate the beauty and glory of the Triune God. Chip’s selection of quotes repeatedly calls us to turn the attention of our minds, hearts, and wills toward the God who created and now redeems the world.

Worship and Our Concept of God

Lord God, show us more of yourself. Let us see your holiness and your tenderness; let us know your power and mercy. Accept our worship not because of our faithfulness (for we fail so often), but because of the faithfulness of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen! —Chip Stam

Graham Kendrick

Our approach to God is conditioned by our concept of him, whether accurate or distorted. If we suspect that he is too busy with more important matters, as if we think there is a great queue in front of us, we won’t want to bother him. If we see him as a tyrant, watching sternly for any false moves, ready with a big stick to wallop us, we will come very warily! If, on the other hand, we see him as a soft and indulgent super-daddy, we may come presumptuously, blundering carelessly onto holy ground.

If, however, we know him by the revelation of the Holy Spirit and in our daily experience of him as a personal loving heavenly Father, and are acquainted with both his gentleness and his awesome holiness, we will run to him as children with open arms and yet deepest respect. The most important Person that ever existed loves you and me! The creator of the universe has revealed himself as having the tender heart of a loving father, and has by his Spirit made us his true-born children. He knows your name, he knows my name, he laughs and weeps with us! In him we have discovered that we are valued infinitely far above our worth. How can we keep quiet about such a God?

Kendrick, Graham. Worship. E. Sussex, England: Kingsway Publications, Ltd., 1984, 78–79.

God as Center

A.W. Tozer

There must be somewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say IS and make no allowances. Such a center is God. When God would make his name known to mankind he could find no better word than I AM. . . . Everyone and everything else measures from that fixed point. I am that I am, says God, I change not.

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by shooting the sun, so we may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when, and only when, we stand in a right position relative to God, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any other position.

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as he is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify him and to bring him nearer to our own image. . . . It is no use. We can get a right start only by accepting God as he is and learning to love him for what he is. As we go on to know him better we shall find it a source of unspeakable joy that God is just what he is.

Tozer, A.W. The Pursuit of God. Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1948, 100–101.

To Be Known by God

James I. Packer

What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him, because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort—the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates—in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me. There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow-men do not see (and am I glad!), and that he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. We cannot work these thoughts out here, but merely to mention them is enough to show how much it means to know not merely that we know God, but that he knows us.

Taken from Knowing God by James I. Packer © 1973 James I. Packer. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com.

The God I Want?

N.T. Wright

Left to myself, the god I want is a god who will give me what I want. He—or more likely it—will be a projection of my desires. At the grosser level, this will lead me to one of the more obvious pagan gods or goddesses, who offer their devotees money, or sex, or power (as Marx, Freud and Nietzsche pointed out). All idols started out life as the god somebody wanted.

At a more sophisticated level, the god I want will be a god who lives up to my intellectual expectations: a god of whom I can approve rationally, judiciously, after due consideration and weighing up of theological probabilities. I want this god because he, or it, will underwrite my intellectual arrogance. He will boost my sense of being a refined modern thinker. The net result is that I become god; and this god I’ve made becomes my puppet. Nobody falls down on their face before the god they wanted. Nobody trembles at the word of a home-made god. Nobody goes out with fire in their belly to heal the sick, to clothe the naked, to teach the ignorant, to feed the hungry, because of the god they wanted. They are more likely to stay at home with their feet up.

Can such a god really be God?

Wright, N.T. For All God’s Worth: True Worship and the Calling of the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997, 23.

God of the Christians

This quote is from the pen of Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century Frenchman and one of the foremost mathematicians of his time. While still in his teens he made discoveries in geometry and calculus. He worked out the theory of probability and designed the first mechanical computer. Today there is even a computer language named after him. The list of his scientific accomplishments goes on and on. Here’s what this brilliant man, also a noted religious philosopher, said about the Christian’s relationship to God. —Chip Stam

Blaise Pascal

The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of geometrical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the view of the pagans and Epicureans. He is not merely a God who exercises his providence over the lives and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship him a long and happy life.

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians is a God of love and comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom he possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and his infinite mercy; who unites himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than himself.

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), as found in Zundel, Veronica, ed. Eerdmans’ Book of Christian Classics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985, 61.

A Biblical Balance

John M. Frame

A biblically balanced view of worship must take into account both God’s transcendence and his immanence, his exaltation and his nearness, his majestic holiness and his unmeasurable love. This balance is not always easy to maintain. Churches that focus on divine transcendence are in danger of making God appear distant, aloof, unfriendly, unloving, devoid of grace. Churches that focus on God’s immanence sometimes lose sight of his majesty and purity, his hatred of sin, and the consequent seriousness of any divine-human encounter. To maintain this balance, we must go back again and again to the Scriptures themselves so that we may please God in worship rather than merely acting on our own intuitions.

Frame, John M. Contemporary Worship Music. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1997, 14.

The Trinity in Saint Patrick’s Breastplate

Alister McGrath, reflecting on a text from Saint Patrick

The doctrine of the Trinity summarizes the greatness of God, partly by reminding us of all that God has done. It encourages us to broaden our vision of God. Above all, it demands that we do not falsely limit God by insisting that he fits into our limited understanding. The Greek philosopher Protagoras argued that humanity is the measure of all things. Yet how can we allow God to be limited by the vagaries of a frail and finite human reason?

Patrick, the patron saint of my native Ireland, sets out a vision of God in the great hymn generally known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate. This hymn sets out the richness and the depth of the Christian understanding of God. The hymn begins by surveying the vast panorama of the works of God in creation—one of the great themes of Celtic Christianity. The wonders of nature are reminders that God’s presence and power undergirds the world of nature:

I bind unto myself today

the virtues of the star-lit heaven,

the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

the whiteness of the moon at even,

the flashing of the lightning free,

the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

the stable earth, the deep salt sea,

around the old eternal rocks.

The hymn then turns its attention to the work of God in redemption. It declares that the same God who created the world—the earth, the sea, the sun, moon and stars—acted in Jesus Christ to redeem us:

I bind this day to me for ever,

by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;

his baptism in Jordan river;

his death on Cross for my salvation;

his bursting from the spicèd tomb;

his riding up the heavenly way;

his coming at the day of doom;

I bind unto myself today.

We are thus invited to reflect upon the history of Jesus Christ: his incarnation, baptism, death, resurrection, ascension and final coming on the last day. These powerful ideas do not displace the belief that God created the world, and may be discerned in its wonders; it supplements this, by focusing on another area of the power and activity of God. All these, Patrick affirms, are the action of the same God who created us and redeems us through Jesus Christ.

Yet the hymn has not quite finished; there is another aspect of the activity and presence of God to be surveyed. Again, this is not to be seen as an alternative or substitute for what is already believed; it rounds off the full and authentic Christian vision of the character and power of God. The same God who called the universe into being and redeemed us through Jesus Christ is also the God who is present with us here and now:

I bind unto myself today

the power of God to hold and lead,

his eye to watch, his might to stay,

his ear to hearken to my need.

The wisdom of my God to teach,

his hand to guide, his shield to ward;

the word of God to give me speech,

his heavenly host to be my guard.

The hymn thus affirms that the one and the same God created the world, entered into our world and redeemed us in Christ, and is present as a living reality at this present moment. No other account of the nature and activity of God is adequate to do justice to the Christian witness to God, and no other doctrine of God can therefore be thought of as Christian.

McGrath, Alister. Glimpsing the Face of God: The Search for Meaning in the Universe. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002, 106–108.

Rejoice in God

John R.W. Stott

Christian exultation in God begins with the shamefaced recognition that we have no claim on him at all, continues with wondering worship that while we were still sinners and enemies Christ died for us, and ends with the humble confidence that he will complete the work he has begun. So to exult in God is to rejoice not in our privileges but in his mercies, not in our possession of him but in his of us.

In spite of our knowledge that for Christian people all boasting is excluded (Romans 3:27), we nevertheless boast or rejoice in our hope of sharing God’s glory (Romans 5:2), in our tribulations (Romans 5:3) and above all in God himself (Romans 5:11). This exulting is through our Lord Jesus Christ, because it is through him that we have now received (the or our) reconciliation (v. 11).

It seems clear from this paragraph, then, that the major mark of justified believers is joy, especially joy in God himself. We should be the most positive people in the world. For the new community of Jesus Christ is characterized not by a self-centered triumphalism but by a God-centered worship.

Stott, John R.W. The Message of Romans. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994, 147–148.

Christ, Our Mediator

Ron Man

God accepts and delights in our worship, not because of our efforts or our artistry or even our spirituality, but because of the Son’s continual offering of worship in our place and on our behalf. He gathers up our imperfect expressions of worship into his own perfect one. It is not the excellence of our worship (quality, quantity or form) which makes it acceptable and pleasing unto God, but the excellence of his Son, with whom he is eternally well-pleased (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; 2 Peter 1:17).

Man, Ron. Proclamation and Praise: Hebrews 2:12 and the Christology of Worship. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2007, 59.

The Worthiness of God

Mark Labberton

The core of a biblical theology of worship is the worthiness of God. Christian worship is only possible as our response to the glory, power and love of God as revealed most clearly in and through Jesus Christ. The gift of God’s revelation enables humanity to worship.

We can trust by faith, in clarity and in mystery, that the Word who was in the beginning has now been made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14, King James Version). Allowing the remembrance of God’s revelation to shape daily life was a challenge for God’s people throughout the Bible. At one point, the prophet Isaiah wants to help Israel recalibrate life in light of the God they worship and serve. Their tendency, like yours and mine, was for their vision of God to shrink. That’s why Isaiah longs for Israel to recall once more the vision of God as he really is:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

and spreads them like a tent to live in;

who brings princes to naught,

and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the ends of the earth (Isaiah 40:21–23, 28).

Worship is about this God and for this God. But our human tendency is for our vision of God to be small and petty rather than stretched to the heights and magnificence that he deserves.

Worship is to be the one activity that sums up the scope of our lives. . . . The hope we are offered and are meant to offer others is that the gospel of Jesus Christ fundamentally alters the context in which we live. As we allow worship to do its transformative work in our lives, we can stay where we are and yet move into the places where the heart of God dwells.

We urgently need to recover a comprehensive