Bob Kauflin: We come into a meeting and we think, yeah, I want the music to be new, and creative, and I want it to be a certain way, and, if it’s not, if it’s the same stuff, well, I can’t worship God with that, but that’s where thinking that we need a certain type of music to truly engage with God is at its root idolatry.
David Zimmer: Hello, and welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine Podcast, my name is David Zimmer.
BK: My name is Bob Kauflin.
DZ: Bob, what are we talking about today?
BK: Well, today we are talking about a topic that I think will affect everyone who’s listening.
DZ: Well, great. [chuckle]
BK: As opposed to some of the topics we choose only affect a very select…
DZ: It’s hit and miss.
BK: Yes, people.
DZ: We just keep trying to be faithful.
BK: What I mean by that is we are gearing this podcast towards leaders, those who plan, those who execute the plans of a Sunday gathering, that’s our main audience, but we found out that a lot of different kinds of people listen to this, and we’re very grateful for that. And this is really a broader aim, a broader audience, this topic and the topic is “Idolatry on Sunday Mornings”. Which is kind of an odd title, but I’ll explain where that came from. As we were considering new podcast topics, and we have a lot in the works for the next season, we looked at my blog Worship Matters, which I don’t do much on any anymore, but a number of years ago, it was actually 18 years ago, I did a series on this, and as we were talking about it, we thought, you know what?
DZ: This would be a great title.
BK: This would be great.
DZ: This would be a great episode.
BK: Because when you think of a Sunday morning, you’re going in to worship the Lord and a lot of times we identify the singing as worship, which we’ve talked about how that is not biblical singing is a form of worship, but is not worship biblically defined, but that’s what we’re thinking, we’re thinking about worshiping God. And sometimes we come out of the meeting and think, “Yeah, I didn’t… It wasn’t the best, there were hindrances to me worshiping God.” So it might’ve been, the band wasn’t very good or…
DZ: Message was too long and what…
BK: Message was too long, I didn’t like the way the worship leaders voice did that thing or too many new songs, I couldn’t sing this morning, too many syncopated songs or the church is just too big or whatever, that we have all these reasons that the worship wasn’t good.
DZ: Yeah, sometimes disguised as preferences.
[laughter]
BK: Not very thinly disguised as preferences, that’s right. Well, those things may be affecting our worship of God, but in thinking about it, it seems that the most serious enemy of our worshiping God is what’s going on in our hearts. Rather than worshiping God, we are worshiping something else.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Which the Bible calls idolatry.
DZ: Yes.
BK: There’s a passage in 2 Kings 17:41. Where the writer describes what’s happening in Samaria. Now, Syria had conquered Samaria and taken the Jews out and replaced them with people from other nations. And it said, “So these nations feared the LORD and also served their carved images” So it’s describing a situation that existed when Samaria was resettled by the King of Syria, and it’s a situation that can potentially exist in our services today, we can fear the Lord externally. We can go through the motions, we can engage in what we perceive to be all the right elements of worship, singing, giving, praying, kneeling, listening to God’s word and actively be worshiping idols in our hearts, which is a situation we don’t wanna be in.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: I mean, Exodus 20, God says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” That means that nothing is to receive our heart’s affection and attention and adoration more than God himself, that’s what idolatry is. When that happens, that’s idolatry. And God is vehemently against anything that takes worship away from him, and it’s sobering that this is what can be occurring when we gather, we can be giving our hearts and our affection to idols rather than to God himself, and idolatry is a serious problem 1 John… John ends his first letter with, “Little children, keep yourself from idols.” So it’s a relevant problem today, but in the Old Testament, we’re told that idols enslave us, Psalm 106:36, “They put us to shame.” Isaiah 45:16, “And they ultimately conform us to their image.” Psalm 115:8. But we are to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, Jesus. That’s who God wants to make us look like. So we wanna find out what those idols are. And what we’re gonna do in this podcast today is talk about what kinds of idols might be present when we’ve gathered to worship the Lord.
BK: So let me put it like this, whenever we say that we need something to worship God, unless that something is Jesus or the Holy Spirit or the Word of God, it’s possible we’re moving into idolatrous territory, so whatever it might be, I need this thing, I need this kind of music, I need this kind… So we wanna talk about those things, and we’re not gonna talk about all of them, but hopefully this will stimulate your thinking as you gather with your church this Sunday, and consider, am I worshiping? Am I here to worship God or am I here to worship something else?
DZ: Right, it’s so subtle, right. Because we think, well, we have Jesus, we have the Word, we have the Spirit, we’re good in that department.
BK: Yes, yeah.
DZ: Let’s work on all these other things.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: Let’s seek to be better at all these other things, or this actually makes me feel his presence more, or experience his presence more, and it’s very subtle how that twists, so I love this topic, I think it’s needed especially when you’re looking at what does the church look like now, just to the outside world.
BK: Yes, yes. Well, I just found, when I was writing this 20 years ago, 18 years ago, whatever, and even today that I’m so easily deceived, as you said, into thinking that things are okay, I’m here, I’m a Christian. I’m doing what Christians do on Sunday mornings, so things should be okay. So we wanna ask the question, are there certain things that we are valuing more than God, looking to God more, looking to them, more than God for satisfaction and joy on Sunday mornings? So first one’s pretty obvious, and that’s music, for a lot of people, music is an idol even on Sunday mornings now…
DZ: Well, and once you say especially because a lot of our churches, it’s 60% music.
BK: Yeah, a lot of music.
DZ: 40% preaching or maybe that’s changed but there’s so much of it.
BK: There’s a lot of it, and I think that’s partly a reflection of the value we give to music, so it’s hard to find in Scripture any place that says, well, you can’t, there should be this amount of music in your services. Music, a lot of good reasons for having music in our gatherings, and we’ve covered, a lot of them in this podcast. But God’s just not real clear on how much and who does it, and those kinds of things, so music is one of those things that we tend to have strong opinions about because it affects us so deeply, positively or negatively. And, we’ve had the worship wars in past decades, I don’t know if there’s so much an issue now. I mean, I think the contemporary music side is kinda won out, for a lot of churches it’s not even an issue, we don’t have a worship war, well, or we just have two services.
DZ: Yes.
BK: You know, here’s your traditional service.
DZ: Yes, yes, yes.
BK: Here’s your contemporary service, and in the long run, that’s gonna undermine the unity that the Gospel brings, but that’s another podcast, I think we’ve talked about that. [laughter]
DZ: We have talked about that.
BK: We’re not gonna do that. So, we come into a meeting and we think, yeah, I want the music to be new, and creative, and I want it to be a certain way, and, if it’s not, if it’s the same stuff, well, I can’t worship God with that, but that’s where thinking that we need a certain type of music to truly engage with God is at its root idolatry. And I can remember times, this would be in the ’90s when I heard a certain song, it was a smooth jazz song. Do you know what smooth jazz is?
DZ: I do.
BK: Okay, okay. Good. [laughter] Not everybody would, it just kind of bland jazz and I thought, this is what I thought, I thought that sounds like a worship song, I thought, what am I thinking? What am I saying? That sounds like a worship song, but I think people do that today.
DZ: Like that’s a category you’re saying.
BK: Yes, you’ve got pads.
DZ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BK: You’ve got a little acoustic guitar thing, that’s worship, I can’t worship unless that sound is there.
DZ: Yeah, or replace the pad with an organ or with a choir or…
BK: Yes, it can go the other way, that’s right, more traditional. But we start to think that music yeah it has… Or it has to be, ecstatically exuberant, passionate, people jumping around, that’s worship and, you walk into a room where people are singing from their hearts passionately, but no one’s jumping around. They’re, just kind of standing there singing, you think that’s not worship.
DZ: Yeah.
[laughter]
BK: No or I can’t, worship here because…
DZ: I can’t worship in this environment or.
BK: Yeah, so it’s good to ask yourself, have I made an idol out of music?
DZ: That’s good.
BK: So that’s the first, which leads into musical excellence that can also be an idol now it matters how we define excellence, and in some quarters, excellence is defined as skill, complexity, even sophistication, so four-part harmonies, edge out, unison melodies, orchestras, trump, upright pianos, full bands are much better than the acoustic guitars, and we become more concerned with making corporate worship bigger, better, more involved and we balk at the idea of someone without musical training, extensive musical training, instead of leading our congregational worship, and in the process, we lose sight of what makes our offering of worship acceptable in the first place.
DZ: Yes.
BK: Now, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t concerned with skill and excellence, how we play, whether we’re in tune, the songs we use, God commends skill and I don’t know if we’ve covered this on the podcast or not.
DZ: Well, we have, and I think on one of the episodes we talked about skill, you mentioned the Harold Best quote that.
BK: Yes.
DZ: How do you define excellence, what is that?
BK: Yeah, excellence.
DZ: Does that look like what everybody else is doing around you?
BK: Yes.
DZ: Does it look like it’s matching exactly the recording, we talked about that on another episode.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: But what is excellence?
BK: Excellence is becoming better than I once was, the process of becoming better than I once was that’s how you become excellent, it’s not being as good as someone else.
DZ: Yes.
BK: There is a certain level of skill that’s involved. And God commends skill. Saul didn’t look for anybody to play the lyre for him, play an instrument for him when he was with battling the things he was battling internally, he looked for one who was skillful in playing, 1 Samuel 16:18. 1 Chronicles 15:22, Kenaniah led the singing because he was skillful at it the NIV the ESV says, ’cause he understood it, 1 Chronicles 25, the musicians who led at the temple were all skillful, so God commends commands skill and excellence, but it has a purpose.
DZ: Yes, it has to be serving.
BK: And that purpose is to focus people’s attention on God’s wondrous acts and attributes, particularly as He has revealed them to us in Jesus. So the skill, the excellent, is not an end in itself, those are tools for edifying and encouraging the church, and so I wanna pursue excellence in a way, and we wanna appreciate excellence in a way that contributes to us knowing Jesus better. So as a musician, I might have to play fewer notes to allow more space for people to sing, I might have to sacrifice my ideas of musical excellence to make the truth more musically accessible to my congregation, so there are times when I will consider a certain arrangement of a song as more interesting, more excellent, requiring more skill than something simple, but playing something simple might make those words more accessible to the congregation.
DZ: Totally.
BK: And keep them from focusing so much on what I’m doing harmonically or instrumentally.
DZ: Right, yeah I actually just watched a clip of the bass player, Victor Wooten.
[laughter]
BK: Oh, Victor he is the man.
DZ: And he was talking about simplicity, and I thought That’s so ironic coming from him, ’cause he is just phenomenal.
BK: Wow.
DZ: But in the clip, he’s talking about technicality and skill is saying, “Come in and watch.”
BK: Oh that is excellent.
DZ: But the simplicity is saying, “No, no, no, you participate”
BK: Wow.
DZ: And I thought, wow that is a great perspective.
BK: That’s a keeper, that is really good. So if we idolize musical excellence, we are not gonna appreciate that, we are not gonna appreciate it when someone says, “You know what, I’m just hold back on what I can do, so the congregation can really come forth and we can do this together.
BK: Yeah, might not appreciate that, so that’s… It’s just a good heart chat.
DZ: It is.
BK: You know, both as a leader and as someone in the congregation, do I want the band? Like am I just so conscious of how the band is not as good as they could be every Sunday, or am I thinking that no matter how good they are, what’s gonna make their worship acceptable, their praying acceptable to God is the finished work of Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life died in our place to bear the punishment for our sins and rose from the dead, so that all our offerings could be accepted, no matter how good or bad, they are. So yeah, it goes both ways.
DZ: Yes.
DZ: Alright another idol I don’t know if it’s the number 3, its number three, I think tradition.
DZ: This is what we’ve always done, is that what you mean by tradition?
BK: Yes, yes. Every church, even those that claim to be non-traditional, have traditions, tradition is anything you do more than once, it starts to become tradition at least that’s what our children thought growing up, if we did something once, we had to do it the next year, that’s the tradition. I think we’ve only done it once. Tradition, I love this quote by GK Chesterton, from his book, Orthodoxy on tradition and just talking about the value of tradition. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors, it is the democracy of the dead.”
DZ: Wow.
BK: “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All Democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth, tradition objects to there being disqualified by the accident of death.”
[laughter]
BK: So He’s just brilliant.
DZ: Wow.
BK: So tradition can be right and bad good.
DZ: Yes.
BK: It can serve God’s purposes. I mean Paul talked about it in Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 says, “So then brothers stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter,” so he wanted them to follow certain practices, certain traditions that were good and right and helpful. But do our traditions today equate to the authority of Scripture no, they don’t and can we idolize our traditions? Oh, absolutely.
DZ: Oh for sure, and then once you put our liturgies in our tradition in that category?
BK: Liturgy is another category, so hold on there David, hold on.
DZ: A completely different category I get it.
BK: Yeah, these are just traditions things we do, way you start your meeting, the time you gather the number of songs you do. I remember… I was over in the UK a number of years ago and we were talking about what really matters in your meeting, and one of the people in the workshop said raise his hand said “We have a time when we gather the children in our meeting.” He said I’m having a hard time fitting in everything you’re saying, we have a time in our meeting about 10 minutes when we have the children come up and their meeting’s about an hour long. And I said “Well could that be changed? Could you do something? Well that’s just what we do, and I thought okay well.
[laughter]
BK: Alright then, end of discussion. We were in Australia not too long ago, and we were learning that there is a tradition in the church and this is not to there are no easy answers to this, but there’s a tradition in the, a number of the churches there where the time you meet is segregated by age group, so the families meet in the morning and then the young adults meet at night, and so if… So a lot of churches have two meetings, to accommodate that, it feels like a tradition.
DZ: Yeah, well and isn’t there a lot of comfort in that? I mean for people they feel like well it’s comfortable.
BK: Yes.
DZ: How would I get out of what we’ve always done?
DZ: Well I think that’s one of the benefits of traditions is that they do and C.S. Lewis made this point, that they help you think about what’s important like an old shoe.
DZ: Yes.
BK: You have to think about your shoe, you get a new shoe, you put it on and say “Oh that feels so weird.” No. Comfortable shoe you just put on and then you go about doing what you are meant to do.
DZ: Yes.
BK: That’s how traditions service well.
DZ: Yes.
BK: But Jesus said Mark 7:8 “You leave the –” he was talking to the Pharisees, “ –you leave the commandment of God and hold with the tradition of men.” So every generation is responsible to ask to examine whether or not the traditions we’ve inherited…
DZ: Yes.
BK: Or are seeking to establish are biblical and really help people exalt in God’s worthiness and works. And I would say that the complimentary idols of familiarity and comfort are often revealed in the words we’ve never done it that way before.
DZ: Yeah yeah. Well said.
DZ: Which sounds so we’ve never done it that way before.
BK: But what it it can be revealing an idol and not these aren’t always deep issues, I mean just at Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville not too long ago, we had a tradition a tradition of always welcoming our guests in the middle of the meeting, and it was just we had done it for decades and we had people stand up at different times and then Covid happened and it was, it just some things changed but we always did it there. And we realized that you know that may not be the best thing to do, we have a pastoral prayer and then a welcoming giving of offering receiving offering and then this welcome you the welcoming of guests, giving of offering and then the announcements. And then the guy gets up to preach and it just was there was about 10 minute gap between the prayer and the guy getting up to preach, we thought maybe we could close that. And I remember us talking about it and there was like some I don’t know, should we do this? But we’ve changed it and you know what? It’s great.
DZ: It really is great.
BK: That’s right, you’ve experienced it.
DZ: I’ve seen both sides actually of that, which I think is rare to be in a church and see a tradition consistently.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: And then it change, but if you have an hour, an hour and a half that’s a significant change.
BK: Yes.
DZ: And I’ve loved that change, it gets you right into the sermon.
BK: Yes, we’re trying to close that gap that is not, well you know we were following the traditions of man and disobeying the commandment of God.
DZ: Yes.
BK: It’s not that so much but it does relate to are we using the meeting for the purpose that God intended it?
DZ: Yeah, could this be more efficient too? Isn’t that a…
BK: Yes, yeah, yeah. So that we can do the things that we think God’s telling us to do.
DZ: Yeah, great.
BK: So tradition, it’s just it’s we don’t… In examining our meetings we or our hearts we don’t have to change everything but we can examine everything, except for the obvious things that scripture has commanded, singing praying, preaching, greeting. I mean those things we are called to serve one another as we gather and we’re not talking about those but we are talking about just ways we’ve done things that we’ve never really asked questions about, it can be an idol, it’s something we value, if we lose that we’ll lose God’s presence or if we lose that we’re disobeying, God.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Okay, one more and then I think we’ll have to do this into two podcasts. The next idol last one for this podcast is just creativity. Creativity is great, aren’t we grateful that God is the creator, and he has given us the gifts not to create in the way he does but to be imaginative to do things in a fresh way. The Bible displays the creative nature of literature, the different genre, you have apocalyptic you have historical you have poetry, you have wisdom, you have narrative, you have what I’d say you know devotional you have songs all those things that’s creative. God put that in his word, and newness can be a wonderfully eye-opening thing, we hear something in a fresh way.
DZ: Yes.
BK: But it can also be an Idol and churches have been built on the idol of creativity.
DZ: Totally, the progress.
BK: We are not like the church down the street, and I would say if you’re going to a church because it’s not like the church down the street and those reasons aren’t like scriptural reasons I mean my church preaches the gospel that church down the street doesn’t. Okay, that’s a good reason to go. But if it’s more oh no they’ve got a coffee bar, they’ve got lighting that’s like amazing, they’ve got there’s something new happening every week, I just never know what’s gonna happen there. Remember one pastor saying the goal of our service was to make sure that people never knew what to expect, that’s not a good goal for your gathering, they should know what to expect to a large degree.
DZ: Yes.
BK: You’re not gonna bring on something totally new for them. So maybe it’s you know the lighting, the stage set up, a video clip you know affects creativity is not our goal in worshiping God, it’s simply a means to display the glory of God in Christ more clearly.
DZ: Yes.
BK: That that’s… It’s not something we do. Creativity isn’t something we do, it’s a way we do something. So new forms of media or communication can give us a different perspective causing the truth to have a greater impact, but creativity can’t make the gospel better, can only make it clearer, that’s what creativity can do. Someone said what you win them with is what you win them to. So if we’re going to a church because of the creativity or if we’re seeking to draw people to our church because of the creativity that is idolatry, that will be what people worship that will be what keeps them, that will be what people long for. And that is not the church that that Jesus came to build.
DZ: Yes.
BK: If we walk away from a time of corporate worship more affected by the creativity that we saw or the creativity that we led in than Jesus Christ who came to be our Savior or we think that the Word of God is is old news that’s idolatry. I remember when we planted Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville CJ said early on, “this is the same things Church. You come back here next week you’ll hear the same thing,” you will sing about the same thing, what God has done for us in Jesus Christ is what we have to offer you and you’re not gonna find something different here, have we changed some things? Yeah but that creativity has a purpose and we want that purpose always to be displaying the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, so creativity has limits.
DZ: Yeah. I was just gonna say that I that was the question I had, how do you put parameters and limits on creativity? Because we live in an age that’s, that is so multimedia and I mean so many churches now are on Instagram and reaching people.
BK: Yes, yes.
DZ: And so it’s…
BK: It’s good.
DZ: We’ve talked about multimedia in the past, I remember was an episode with Devon talking…
BK: Technology.
DZ: Technology, and and so how do you put those parameters on your meetings.
BK: We should do a podcast on this, but in lieu of that I’m just gonna give you three…
DZ: Right, perfect.
BK: I was thinking have we done a podcast on this? I don’t know, we’re in the sixth season and so there’s a lot of ground that’s been covered, but more ground to cover yet!
DZ: Yes.
BK: Think of three, the first is edification. 1Corinthians 14 Paul says about seven times he used the Word for building up edifying, that’s a goal primary goal of our meetings. So whatever we’re doing creatively has to edify.
DZ: That’s good.
BK: It has to build up people into Christ not just into an experience which we’ll talk about the next episode but build them up into Christ build them into his Word that’s what creativity is meant to do not just be a spectacle in and of itself.
DZ: Yes, because that’s self-serving.
BK: Yes.
DZ: You’re looking outward.
BK: Yes exactly right. Second limiter would be, love for others. So just because I as a creative love creative things, doesn’t mean that everybody else around me does as a musician, oh yeah I love creative things and I can use that in in sparing ways in a Sunday gathering to draw people’s attention to the Word or to the lyrics we’re singing those kinds of things. But I can’t just let that be the only standard, my standard is, “Am I loving the people around me?”
DZ: That’s good.
DZ: Am I concerned for what their limits are or what their preferences are? And as someone going to a church I… There are a number of churches that develop a kind of an age bracket that’s very small 10 years maybe in our 20s, 30s or maybe you know our 60s, 70s I dunno. Ideally your church is gonna be a mixture of generations and that be why, because that shows that your unity is not based on your musical preference, your clothing style your, the stores you shop at. It’s based on the fact that Jesus is the Savior and he’s saved us, and he’s joined us together and God has made us a family through him, so love for others. And then the third limiter would be just the gospel, is the gospel clearer because of the creativity.
DZ: Good.
BK: Or is it more obscure?
DZ: Yes.
BK: Is it vaguer? ‘Cause that’s what happens in songs sometimes is we get so creative about what Jesus has done that it’s hard to say exactly what he did do.
DZ: Absolutely.
BK: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that’s pretty clear, so that we might die to sins and live to righteousness So those are three limiters I can think of and.
DZ: Those are great.
BK: Creativity is a gift from God.
DZ: Yes.
BK: But it’s never to overshadow or distract from or negate God’s mercy that he’s shown to us in Jesus Christ revealed to us in his word those are the things we wanna keep pressing for putting in front of people making clear in our gatherings. And all these things we’ve talked about music, musical excellence, creativity, traditions, they can all be good. But when they become idols as they often do on Sunday mornings they end up fighting against what we’ve gathered to do.
DZ: Yes.
BK: So we just hope this has made people more aware of those things.
DZ: That’s great, thank you Bob. And thank you so much for listening, we’ll see you at our next episode of Idolatry on Sunday mornings part two.
