BERNARD SHUFORD

“Worship” musician extraordinaire (regular readers of bernardshuford.com will understand the irony here…) Paul Baloche has released a new album today. 

I like Paul.  I like the new album.  I like his focus on music that truly glorifies Christ and the Cross. 

I debate the idea of a certain kind of music at a certain time on Sunday being “worship”, but I love the idea of a guy spending his time writing songs that can be used to worship God in real and honest ways. 

My conundrum here is multifold.  I love to sing songs that are classified as “worship songs”.  I love to play them.  I love to sing them with others.  I believe them to be wonderful songs. 

Yet. 

When we call Paul Baloche a “worship songwriter” but relegate Fanny Crosby and myriads of others to the obscurity of “the old hymns”, I believe we terribly miss the point. 

Is it possible that all music is worship music, just with different targets?  Do not love songs, in a basic form, worship the lover?  Isn’t this issue somehow connected to worship music?  Aren’t there heartstrings being tugged?  Are they the same strings? 

When I sing “And Can it Be”, I guarantee you it’s worship.  “A Might Fortress Is Our God”. 

Am I advocating a return to old hymns?  Yes.

Do I support the use of new music? Yes. 

So, what’s the point?

I don’t know.  Something is wrong with how I’ve seen this, and I’ve lost my passion for worship in a musical form.

I want that passion back.  But I MUST know that it’s real, or I won’t trust it to be real passion.  I refuse to fake it. 

When I sing a song of worship, I refuse to act as though I’m worshipping God simply for the sake of inducing audience emotion.  Or soliciting compliments. 

To use the words “let’s enter into a time of worship” seems painful to me, largely because of this statement but not it alone…

“We’re always worshipping.  Sometimes, though, we stop worshipping God.”

Worship – “All to Jesus, I surrender.”  The surrender, not the singing. 

We worship God when He is the MOST important thing, to the exclusion of all others.  When He is second to nothing – not to our bank accounts, not to our cars, not to our families, not to our churches, not to the music, not to the drums, not to the preacher, not to the potluck dinner, not to the color of the carpet. 

To claim to be “in a time of worship” when I have not submitted such a huge portion of myself and my life to Him AT ALL is a farce, an insult, and a slap to God’s face.  In effect, I say this – “I haven’t given God the first consideration today, but I’m now going to enter into a time of worship, where I will sing and shout and tell Him how great He is.  That will be my worship for today.”

This easily becomes legalism. 

That bothers me, too.  I can never be good enough to be in the presence of God.  Only the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ as my covering can allow me to worship Him at all. 

Yet, I must ask, where is my heart?  Is my heart truly “on God”?  Is the desire of my heart to follow after Him? 

Those days in Atlanta spun me upside down in ways I still don’t understand. 

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There’s something at a very deep level bothering me about “corporate worship”. 

It started at Promise Keepers 2008 in Atlanta, which was my first experience with large-scale “worship” in a while. 

I can’t put my finger on it. 

It has something to do with the leaders being expected to perform in a certain way. 

It’s not that the leaders are doing anything wrong.

It’s more that congregations expect worship leaders to make it easy for them to worship, and if they don’t do it right, then the congregation doesn’t know how to worship. 

So, as congregations, we do whatever the leaders lead us into, and we learn to do whatever it is that the leaders do.  That’s not to say that what they do is wrong.  I love the songs.  I love the leaders.  I love the music.  But I don’t think it’s “worship”. 

Singing songs that celebrate Jesus, celebrate salvation, and glorify God is an OUTGROWTH of worship.  It’s an ACT that we do BECAUSE we worship God. 

I’m unconvinced that “worship time” is the right language. 

Suffice to say that I’m very unsatisfied with the idea of “worship” equalling “singing a certain song in a certain way.” 

Worship is a life. 

Bothered. 

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• Karma
• T
• K
• Mom and Dad
• my church
• my job
• my friends, both “real” and “virtual”
• the Bible
• salvation
• music
• the ability to make music
• coffee
• Mountain Dew
• our new pastor
• you
• and a million jillion other things

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I have become increasingly private in the past couple of weeks.

I don’t really know why.

If anyone has missed me, I’m sorry.  If not, I understand.

I’ll be honest.  There are just way too many messed up areas in my life for me to be writing stuff for the WWW like I’m some kind of authority.

Perry Noble, Pete Wilson, Carlos Whittaker, Anne Jackson, Tony Morgan, Steven Furtick, any other uberblogger you might know of… they obviously have it all together, even though they are very “real” with things they struggle with.  I appreciate their honesty.

But there’s so much more presumption of victory, of confidence in “being right”, of having some type of feeling of moral high ground, of some kind of authority, to their writing than I feel in mine.

I struggle with sin.  I struggle with doubt.  My days often have more low than high.  I serve as a leader in a church but feel totally hypocritical when I encourage folks to be strong because I so rarely am.  I feel the same when I pen a Bible study here on the blog and yet I have a hard time spending time in the Word on any sort of regular basis at all.  I’ve lost the inspiration to even play music, let alone compose.  I feel like a walking joke, most of the time.

Somewhere, somebody is saying “there’s that hypocrite Bernard, who claims to be a Christian but doesn’t know his Bible from a hole in the ground.”

The result of this is that I feel a bit more of the call of a hermit than I did.  I feel much less desire to share the thoughts of my heart with the world at large.

I once blogged in the hopes that somebody would notice my wonderful writing and tell all their friends, which would quickly result in me being famous.  Of course, I didn’t ADMIT this, but it was, at some level, true.  But it was a wrong motive, entirely.

I’ve blogged as an exercise in getting myself to write.  I’ve blogged in the process of getting to know some people.  I’ve met some marvelous folk on the web.  I love to write.  (Most of the time…)

But various events, circumstances, and situations in my life have really stolen my interest in satisfying the urge to tell the world what I’m doing.

The exhibitionist sometimes longs to feed the voyeur, but then he realizes his need for privacy is what makes the voyeur wish to intrude.

I don’t have the persona that is required to be a successful blogger, I’m convinced.

So.

What now.

I don’t know.

In a way, I’ve almost given up on a good few things in my life.  I won’t break that down, because I’m not sure I can, but that’s kind of where I am.

If you want to know more about me, Facebook is probably the best source, even though my posting there has greatly decreased.  Greatly.

If you think I’m an interesting guy and you just want to know how I’m doing, there’s a contact link on this page, or you can send me a Facebook message.

I’m not going to do any more “physical fitness” posts that sound like I’m some kind of trainer or guru.

I’m not going to do any “spiritual fitness” posts that sound even remotely like I know what I’m talking about.  I promise that I don’t.  I’m just fighting to follow Jesus.  I don’t know if Calvinism is perfectly right or if Paul Washer knows what he’s talking about.  But I’m not going to deal with that here.  It’s too personal.

Any ramblings I do about things I think will probably be somewhere on the web much more privately.  Maybe under some new name.

Bible study probably won’t be blogged here.  To blog a Bible study implies that the writer has knowledge and authority.  I have neither, even though I hope to gain more knowledge.  Quickly.

I’ll post here.  Some.

I’ll probably come back and really blog, sometime.  Maybe.

Love,

Nard

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