Foskey & Everhard Talk About Worshiptainment

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If anything, I am not saying that people should buy the book Worshiptainment so that they can pull out whatever, chapter six or whatever, and get gospel fellowships, liturgy, and then do that thing.

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That's not what I'm asking for. What I'm asking for is that everybody who reads the book would evaluate their worship services and ask, why are we doing what we're doing here when we gather together to worship?

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Welcome back to Your Calvinist Podcast. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your

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Calvinist, and I'm thankful to have you on the show today, and I'm super excited to bring my guest in in just a moment.

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Many of you know him, Matthew Everhart, Pastor Matthew Everhart, a good friend of the show, good friend of mine, someone who

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I've come to know over the last two years and have just continued to grow to love his ministry, all of the content that he puts out on YouTube, and of course, just our relationship has grown, and I'm very thankful for that and looking forward to talking about his book,

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Worship Tainment, which I had the opportunity to do a pre -read of and to do a review of, and I really loved it and look forward to sharing more about it with you when the time comes.

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But before we do that, I do want to mention a few things about the show for those of you who are new. This show is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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Sovereign Grace Family Church is in Jacksonville, Florida, so if you're in the Jacksonville area, we would love for you to come and visit with us.

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Truth and Love Network. If you're looking for other podcasts like this one, you can go and find them at the Truth and Love Network.

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Also, we are partners with a ministry called tinybibles .com, and right now they have their tiny

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Finally, I want to remind everybody, we're doing kind of a weird push right now on the podcast. I said last

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Friday night on Friday Night Live, we're getting close to 30 ,000 subscribers, and that's a huge milestone for us here on the show.

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That would be a huge help for your Calvinist podcast and would just be a blessing to me to do that.

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All right, I'm going to bring in my friend now, Pastor Matthew Everhard, and we are going to talk about his book,

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Worship Tainment. Hey, Matthew, it's good to see you, my friend. What's up, brother? I haven't seen you since you defeated me in the podcasting tournament of a couple of months ago.

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Are you still rejoicing in your kingship over all podcasts? Yes, and let me say something about that.

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I actually have my first winnings. You do?

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Okay. I don't know if you remember, but that contest was if you won, you got a year's supply of cigars.

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Oh, I remember. Well, I got it, and I got my first set in, and I got a set of Pharisee cigars from 1689

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Cigars, which are the flavored cigars. I haven't smoked one yet, but they smell so good.

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But I made you a promise, and I'm going to hold my promise. I'm going to send you a couple of cigars because I don't smoke very much anyway, so I'm going to need to get your address.

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Remind me so that I can send some your way. Yeah, well, that's good. That's kind of why

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I brought it up. I was hoping you'd remember that. I was wondering, have any of these 1689

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Cigars made it into your Presbyterian character and some of your denominational videos yet?

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Have they been seen publicly at this point? Well, some of the ones I've used in the past, not the new ones because I just got them in, but some of the ones

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I've used in the past were 1689 Cigars. I always take the wrappers off, though, when I'm, you know, I don't, you can't tell that's what they are, but there's a few of them.

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But I did get something really cool recently. Pastor Wade from Beryl Baptist Church, I went up there to preach in Arkansas and he gave me a pipe.

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Wow. And I've never owned a pipe. Yeah. That's legit now, man. Now you're legit. So what denomination do you think a pipe would be the most appropriate?

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If I'm using a cigar for the conservative Presbyterian, you know, PCA is usually kind of that.

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What would a pipe would be? What about like a, what about like a CS Lewis type of character?

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Was he, was he not a pipe smoker? Cause if you don't have an Anglican guy, then that might be your, your angle right there.

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That's what several people have said. I posted a picture of me with the pipe. I said, who do you think this would be? And like nine, nine out of 10 people said

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I look like CS Lewis. That's the one. That's cool. That's cool. Speaking of that, and this is totally off the subject.

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I just want to mention it. People who'd notice I've been wearing ties on the, on the show lately. I don't,

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I don't, I didn't use to dress up for the podcast, but I do now. And the only reason why I do is because people have been sending me ties on what people say.

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And it all started cause there's these two ladies at our church who gave us, who gave me goofy ties that they find at thrift stores and I posted some pictures of them.

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So now people have been sending me ties as like, as just as a, as a thing. So this is a tie that I received from a, from a brother who watches the show from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

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It came in the mail and I want to thank that brother for sending me this. I know that seems like a weird thing to say, but I'm, I'm very grateful for, for people who appreciate the show and listen well enough to know the things that I, that I like.

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I like, I like cigars and I like ties. That's awesome. My, my, my habit is to wear traditional looking ties and then crazy socks.

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So I don't know how you go about that, but I have like crazy sushi socks and taco socks and cheese.

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I have a lot of cheese socks and then my ties are just like straight up Presbyterian. You know, what's funny is our worship team loves to do the sock thing and sometimes the worship leader will, will, will buy them all socks that they can wear and, and will, they'll take pictures with their feet, like in a circle to where they can see and they've got some with like hot sauce and stuff, you know, different types of just really weird.

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What's your weirdest socks? Well, I'll tell you this, I mentioned the sushi sock and that's like a thing for me.

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If ever I have a big day, like it's really going to be a good sermon or maybe, you know, something's going to happen. We're going to baptize somebody.

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I get excited. I put on the sushi socks and then I'm ready to go for that day. See that's the difference between you and me.

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You can baptize in socks. Yeah. That's right. You don't have to get in the pool.

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That's right. Actually, you know what? I don't have to get in the pool either. We have one where I stand on the outside and I have to make sure

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I wear short sleeves, but I can baptize. So you don't even get in there. Okay, man. I don't know.

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I think John the Baptist was all the way in too. Right? Wasn't he? That's right. That's how we know he was a good Baptist. He was well, my friend,

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I am, I want to say, you know, and I say this not just because you are my friend. I really appreciated the book.

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I really appreciated having the opportunity to pre -read it and to hear you saying a lot of the things that I not only agree with, but many things that I've said, whether it's in the pulpit or whether it's in conversations with people and you know,

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I did the show church soup where I point out a lot of the silliness that happens and I see you write this book and I'm like, this is exactly what

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I'm talking about. This is the crazy stuff. This is the nonsense that has made its way into worship.

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It's made its way into the church. But what was the inspiration? What caused you to say, you know what, I want to sit down and write this, uh, write this book.

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Well, you know, worship is just so sacred and it's the center of what we do as Christians. And as a pastor,

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I spend a good amount of my time not only preparing sermons, but also preparing worship services. It's one of our greatest blessings and one of the most amazing privileges that we have.

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And so of course there's part of me that really wants to safeguard what it is that we do in worship. But honestly, there's been several times where I've just been downright provoked by experiences that I've had when

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I've gone to other, other worship services, even things in the past that I've observed, things that I see online.

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And we're to this strange place in our culture right now where the ridiculous is only out done by the absolutely absurd.

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And I just thought it was the right time for me to introduce a concept or reintroduce a concept that in reform churches we call the regulative principle of worship.

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So if I could just define a couple of things here at the beginning, first, what do I mean by worship attainment?

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Well, worship attainment is, um, technically it's a word called a portmanteau, which is when you take two words and you jam them together and you create a new word, right?

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So if I took a spoon and a fork and I smudged that together, I have a spork. And worship attainment is the combination of the word worship and the word entertainment.

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But when you merge those things together, you really don't get either very good. It's certainly not worshipful and the entertainment really falls short in a lot of regards too.

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So I consider worship attainment to be an ungodly amalgam of what we ought to be doing in worship mixed in with a heavy dose of worldliness, secularism, progressivism, and just downright

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Hollywood style entertainment. So I don't think very fondly of worship attainment. And then the concept that I wanted to reintroduce to churches that I think might be helpful is the concept called the regulative principle in worship, which is very simple.

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And basically it states that we should do in worship what God asks us to do.

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After all, commands us to do, I should say. After all, worship is about Him. Worship is of and for the glory of the

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Lord. And He's the one who instructs us what it is that He wants, how it is that He wants us to worship

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Him. And so this book is a simple call for all kinds of churches, not just Presbyterian churches, not just even

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Reformed churches more broadly, including our Reformed Baptist friends, but pretty much every church out there. Look at what you do and ask yourself, is this in fact what the

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Lord requires of us in worship? Absolutely. And I want to, for just a moment, for you to talk about how you would understand the difference between the regulative principle, which tends to find its home mainly in the

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Reformed camp, and what is sometimes referred to as the normative principle.

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And I know that that is within some Lutheran camps and other things. And I know you know the difference, but just for the sake of the audience, can you describe those two things and how those might be different ways of producing a worship service?

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So there might even be a third option too. So the regulative principle would be the most conservative way to regulate our worship services.

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In the regulative principle, we only do in worship what God expressly commands us to do by way of requirements or precept or example.

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So in the regulative principle, our worship services would be largely taken up in things that are ubiquitous in scripture.

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Things like prayer, singing, preaching the word, the administration of the sacraments.

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We think too of like blessings and doxologies and benedictions and all of those things we find plenty of precedent for in scripture.

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So the regulative principle would be the most conservative way to organize a worship service. The normative principle, which is used in some other churches, like you mentioned the

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Lutherans or perhaps the Anglicans, would be to say that anything is permissible as long as it's not precluded in scripture.

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In other words, you can do fairly much what you want to do as long as the scripture says, don't do that, then you're okay.

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And so to a lesser extent, I could agree with that principle, though I prefer the regulative principle. But then the third way, the third category would be to have no regard at all.

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And this is where I think worship attainment falls in as much as people are inventing things that honestly

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God is not pleased with, but really they're for our own pleasure, our own entertainment, possibly even to draw and attract pagans and secular people into worship.

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So that category I really would strongly caution against inventing forms of worship because they might be attractive to human beings rather than glorifying to God.

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Have you heard people who would be opposed to the regulative principle say things like, well, the

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Bible never commands us to have hymnals or the Bible never commands us to have air conditioning.

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I know we sound ridiculous, but these are some of the things that I have run into when discussing the regulative principle in conversation with other pastors and sometimes with people who are trying to say, well,

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I'm really not a regulative principle person and here's why. I'll sometimes point to these things and I've heard different ways that people would respond, but I want to kind of hear your thought on that.

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If somebody were to say that to you, well, you're wearing a robe in the

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Bible. I guess the Bible doesn't mention robes, but do you wear a robe when you preach? I do not, but I understand exactly what the question is.

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And here's how the Reformed have typically answered that question in the past. So we would draw a distinction in the regulative principle between what we call elements of the worship service and then the circumstances of worship.

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So elements would be the things that we actually do in the worship service, such as we have a time of prayer.

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We sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We preach the word of God.

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We celebrate the Lord's supper. We do a benediction at the end of the service.

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Now, all of those would be the actual elements. And here's where we're a little bit particular. We would say, yes, the elements themselves should be prescribed for us in the scriptures.

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Otherwise we shouldn't do them. But then the circumstances are those other things that attend worship that, of course, are not particularly commanded in the scriptures, such as the time that we're going to meet.

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Nowhere in the Bible does it say that you need to meet at 1030 versus 930 versus 11 o 'clock.

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Whether the service should include five hymns or seven hymns or 12 hymns, how fast a person should move through a book of the

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Bible as they're preaching through books of the Bible, who should pray, whether it be the elders that pray or the pastor that prays, and then things like the meeting place itself.

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Where are we going to gather? How long is the meeting going to last and such? So to that question, we would say, well, sure, there has to be some circumstances to worship, like we got to pick a place and a time, but there's where the freedom comes in.

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But as far as the elements themselves, we should be pretty careful to be doing what God expressly desires us to do.

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I know you may be able to just rattle these off off the top of your head, but I would be curious how close we would be on what elements are necessary as part of worship.

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And I think this is an interesting thing. The audience may say, okay, well, I'm looking at my church service. I'm looking at what we do.

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What are the regulated elements of worship? What are the things that must be done or are necessary to be done because they are commanded by God?

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So what would you say those things are? And I want to see if our list is basically the same. Sure. Well, first of all, let's just say this, that the

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New Testament does not give us an exact order of worship that we're supposed to have in our churches.

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If it did, then that would make most of this conversation a moot point, because I would assume we would all just try to follow that pattern.

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So there's no particular passage in the scriptures where we can turn to and say, here is the

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New Testament order of worship that Christian churches ought to follow precisely. So to some extent, we are inferring how we're going to go ahead and organize those elements in a worship service and what time we're going to devote to them.

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So for instance, should the prayers be longer than the sermon, or should it be the other way? Well, there's some Christian freedom there.

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But in the book, Worship Tainment, I do actually give a list of the elements of worship.

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And I do actually even give our full service that we have a gospel fellowship in the order in which we do things.

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Although the order can, of course, be modified, because again, there's no particular liturgy that's prescribed.

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Yet nevertheless, our worship service kind of follows a general pattern. We have a call to worship, which is where the ordained minister calls the people to worship the

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Lord. We have a time of confession of sin, which we think is very important, and every worship service should have some sort of confession of sin.

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We do have a time of singing, in fact, several times of singing. And we sing both traditional hymns, as well as the

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Psalms, which we can talk a little bit more about in a bit, because that's kind of a nuanced item there. We have an offering, we have the giving of a tithe and an offering.

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And then we have a preaching unit, which is usually one of the longer portions of our service, usually about 40 to 45 minutes.

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Some days we might have one of the two sacraments, either baptism or the Lord's Supper, with more singing and then probably a benediction at the end.

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So with that in mind, and a little bit of variation, perhaps, depending on the Lord's day, that's pretty much the order of our service.

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I might've skipped one or two things there, but how about you guys? How similar is that to what you do? Very, very similar.

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We have certain prayers that we do that are listed, as you said.

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We have prayers for confession, we have prayers for the prayer that precedes the preaching of the word, the prayer that follows the preaching of the word.

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We have the prayer at the beginning of the service, a benediction at the end of the service. And so all of those things are certainly present, and certainly we also sing.

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Now, our church is, I think, probably different in that we do the Lord's Supper every week, which is usually among Baptists, but it is something that we practice.

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And thankfully, I'm very glad that we are able to do that. Is that something that is common in PCA churches or not?

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It's some do and some don't. So for instance, there are a number of churches that would have the Lord's Supper every single

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Sunday, every single Lord's Day, perhaps in the morning or perhaps in the evening service.

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There's some variation there. Our church actually celebrates the Lord's Supper once a month. And that actually goes back to a controversy that Calvin had with the

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Geneva Council. In those days, Calvin was actually arguing for the position of wanting to have the

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Lord's Service more regularly, but he was getting some pushback from the Geneva Council, and it ended up something of a compromise.

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I think they ended up doing it quarterly or monthly. And that sort of set the tone for what a lot of reformed churches still do today, which is to have the

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Lord's Supper just but once a month. But in the Scottish tradition, there are other churches that celebrate the

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Lord's Supper only once a year. And so sometimes they would even spend a long time in preparing for the

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Lord's Supper and then they would treat it as more of a momentous occasion. So you see quite a bit of variance in the reformed tradition as to frequency of the

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Lord's Supper. Yeah, that's interesting. It would certainly be an event if you only did it once a year.

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And I've been challenged by people who say that doing it more frequently causes it to lose its importance.

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I push back against that and I say, well, things only lose their importance when we allow them to.

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Things such as kissing my wife, it only loses its value when I cease to recognize how valuable it is.

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I do it every day and it still should be valuable each time I have that opportunity.

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Not to compare communion with kissing. No, I take your point. I think that's exactly right.

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And I don't buy that argument at all for the same reason that I still preach every single

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Sunday. If somebody told me that I should preach less frequently to make it more special, again, I would reject that argument.

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Amen. That's a great point. When it comes to the subject of worship tainment,

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I don't want to overstep, but I do think that one of the biggest areas of conflict that I can see, and you talk about it a lot in the book, is the area of music.

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It seems like this is an area where if there's any place in the service where entertainment has taken a real foothold, it is in the music portion of the service.

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We're going to talk a little bit later about sermons and how they've become somewhat entertainment. I think the title of your, in fact,

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I have the title here. You call it a concert and a

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TED Talk, which is very indicative of what is happening in a lot of churches.

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But before we get to the preaching, let's talk a little bit about the music portion, because you tell a story in the book, and again,

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I don't want to give the whole book away. I want people to go get the book. But you do tell a story of you standing in a worship service and hearing, you know what

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I'm talking about, the story I'm talking about where you said you were there. You were experiencing it, and it seemed like a rock concert.

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Maybe I'm misremembering. No, you're right. I think by this point, a lot of us, most of us have probably seen

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Christian worship, quote unquote, that has taken on the entire ethos of essentially what a concert is.

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One of my biggest gripes here is not necessarily the style. I actually acknowledge that there are preferences when it comes to style.

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What really bothers me is when a set of professional musicians usurps the congregation's role in what is supposed to be the singing of the glory and praise to God.

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So we've somehow found ourselves in a position where many churches today have essentially, let's just be honest, a rock band that veritably entertains the congregation.

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The congregation may stand there. They may sway. They may have their hands up. But when you look around, they're not always singing.

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In fact, there's a lot of times where they're not singing at all, because it's that rock band that is leading the drive of the worship.

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And the people are merely becoming passive recipients of the worship, and that's completely wrong.

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Any style that basically cuts the congregational singing out or makes it negligible, in my view, is liable to the charge of worship attainment.

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The reason that we sing is that the congregation itself would sing out to the Lord. And so even in the volume of the cranking up of the speakers and the guitars and the amps and all these things, so as to overpower the congregation, it's almost like the point is that you can't hear the congregation singing because all of the momentum, the drive, the power is taken up in the performance.

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And you see this even as cameras are often panning on the faces of the worship leaders and their faces are emblazoned on the jumbotron, the ubiquitous jumbotron, which every big megachurch has nowadays.

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So my real gripe is that performance has usurped the role of the congregation.

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And we can certainly talk about the singing of psalms, which I think are important. But my, again, my real problem is that the congregational singing, the congregational participation has become passive and muted rather than forefront and crucial.

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ISKRA Sure. And I 100 % agree with you. I'll tell you something that our church did.

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I don't get your thoughts on this because this is somewhat, it was somewhat of a big deal.

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But when I became the pastor in 2006, our previous minister was a professionally gifted,

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I don't know if that's the right way of saying that. He was a professional and gifted musician and he was a concert pianist.

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And so he led the choir and he led the choir in much of a way that any church choir would have.

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I mean, they had books and music and parts and the choir did a great job under him. Well, I didn't have that skill set coming in.

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I couldn't take his place as choir director. I didn't play the piano. I barely play the guitar.

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You know, I just didn't have that skill set. But I bring this up only to say one of the things that was done under him, there was a lot of special music where it was one person singing or it was the choir singing to the congregation where the choir was sitting and passively listening rather than participating in the music.

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One of the early things that I did was I sort of moved us away from that rather than having a solo on Sunday or rather than having the choir sing on Sunday, I tried to move us toward a more congregational style.

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And people would say, why are we doing that? Why aren't we doing a special anymore? And I said, well, because I want us to all sing.

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And again, I'm not saying that having a special is wrong or having a person sing because I think there can be a devotional value in a person who has a gift to sing to the congregation.

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But I want to get your thoughts on that. Does your church have a choir that sings and do you guys do special music?

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And how is that incorporated into worship? We typically do not do that.

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We do have a choir that sings occasionally. And I would say at this point, seasonally. But we have to be a little bit careful here because on one hand, would it be wrong to have one person praying out loud and to have everybody else praying along in their hearts?

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Well, I think most people would say, yes, that's totally acceptable. And so you could reason that it's fine to have one person singing aloud while everybody else sings or prays in their heart.

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OK, so I don't want to draw a hard and a fast line there. And that's a good point. And that's why

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I clarify, I'm not condemning. I'm just saying that was our moving away from that. Right. I'm certainly not saying that that's condemning that.

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But go ahead. Yeah, totally agree. But largely, I would say that that can become the emphasis on the wrong syllable, if you know what

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I mean. That's the sort of performative oriented things where everybody is thrilled and enthralled with the performer skill and technique.

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I think that could become problematic writ large. So one example that I gave is

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I was at a worship service at a Reformed congregation, a Reformed church, and they had a seven minute saxophone solo of Somewhere Over the

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Rainbow, which I found myself sitting there wondering, what are we doing here? The skill of the saxophonist was amazing.

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But what in the world does Somewhere Over the Rainbow have to do with the worship of the true and living

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God? Ostensibly, it was while the ushers could take the offering. That was sort of the point. It was almost like filler.

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But again, I was wondering, are the people here awed by the skill of this musician, or are they awed by the goodness and the beauty and the glory of God?

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And I had my doubts as to whether the latter could be true, given the way that it was presented.

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So I would take those up cautiously. I have a friend.

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He's a professional music teacher and a wonderfully gifted singer and musician.

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And he is actually hired by some churches. And these are very progressive, very liberal churches.

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And he does this because it's his job. I don't want to get into his motivations or why he does this, but he does this.

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They hire him to come in and sing for them on occasion, and they have had him come to sing literally

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Broadway show music, like from Oklahoma, or if you just think of Broadway show tunes, and it's for the purpose of entertaining.

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And this isn't on a Friday night where they're doing something like an ode to Broadway or something.

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This is during worship on a Sunday morning. He tells me these stories, and I'm like, why are you doing this? But that's a whole other story.

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But that would certainly fall under the category of worship tainment. Would it? Oh, yeah.

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A hundred percent. And just to throw out an alternative here, worship tainment is not the way that Christians have worshiped throughout the ages.

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One of the things that I think Christians should recover is the beauty of a cappella psalm singing.

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Now, aside from my role as the pastor of Gospel Fellowship PCA, I'm also an adjunct professor at RPTS.

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I know it's a lot of acronyms here. The Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which traces its roots back to the

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Covenanter movement in Scotland, the Reformed Presbyterian movement of Scotland. These are your churches that exclusively sing the psalms and always a cappella without any instrumental accompaniment whatsoever.

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If you've never worshiped with the Covenanters before, you really should try it just because you'll be blown away by the sweetness, the authenticity, and the sincerity of simply the voices of the people of God singing back to the

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Lord the inspired word of God in the psalter. It's an extraordinary way to worship.

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And I wish people could recover the beauty of that because there truly is something powerful. And this is something that God's people have done throughout the ages.

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You don't need any technology. You don't need any skilled musicians. You're certainly not trying to entertain anybody because there's nobody up there doing the entertaining.

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It's the congregation singing itself. And what more beautiful thing could be sung than the psalms themselves?

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And if anybody read my book, Worshiptainment, and they got even one practical application out of the book,

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I would hope it would be that they might try singing the psalms and their worship services with or without instrumentation.

32:18

My RP friends would say no, but just singing the psalms would be a wonderful improvement on your worship services for sure.

32:27

I want to get to the psalm singing conversation because I have a few questions about that. And before we get there,

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I'll say what you just said, I 100 % agree with. I think the more we can sing the psalms and the more we can incorporate them, that's a wonderful truth.

32:41

I want to talk a little bit about exclusive psalmody in just a moment. But before we do that, my question about the use of instruments,

32:53

I have heard it argued that the regulative principle would demand the not using of instruments.

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And I have my issue with that. I preached on this when I was preaching through Colossians, when Paul talks about psalm, hymns, and spiritual songs.

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I actually addressed this in a sermon. If anybody wants to hear it, they can go back and find it. But I want to hear your thoughts on that.

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Do you tend to agree with those who would say instruments violate the regulative principle, or do you see them more as a circumstance rather than an element, an allowable circumstance of worship?

33:28

Well, you can feel my tension here, Keith, because I teach for a seminary that is

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RP and they do not use instruments. And so I have to honor that. And yet at the same time,

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I'm the pastor of a church that does use instruments. So my personal conviction on this matter is that instruments are permissible, but I understand the argument that the

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RPs and the covenanters make on this. They would suggest that the instruments that are described in, ironically, the psalms were actually for the use of the temple and the tabernacle time, and that those instruments are actually typological of the praises that God's people will bring to the

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Lord, either now or in heaven. And so since the instruments are not described as being used in the

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New Testament, the RPs or the covenanters take a conservative position saying that we should cautiously not use instruments because it seems to have been a mode in the old covenant times specifically for temple or tabernacle worship.

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So that's the position that they hold. And I disagree with that in as much as I think that the instruments are permissible for believers.

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But one thing I would say is that if you did worship without instruments, you might be surprised at how boldly your people do sing.

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It is a really beautiful thing to hear acapella singing because it's hard to argue that there's any more beautiful sound than the natural human voice coming together to sing.

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So I do use instruments at Gospel Fellowship, and I honor and respect the position of the covenanters on that matter, too.

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And I think that's very fair. And I've had this conversation with many people, and I truly do appreciate where I differ.

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I appreciate the arguments that are being made, and I love my brothers. And even in our disagreements, I would never say they're all totally out to lunch or anything like that.

35:29

I see where they're coming from. I just don't share the same conviction. But it is funny when you look at the history of the church, men who we really respect generally across the board, men like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who held that position that instruments were not at no place in the church.

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And I think he said something to the effect of, I would just as soon use an organ to worship

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God as I would use some kind of machine to worship Him. Like he compared using an instrument to a machine as a negative.

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And again, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing. I'm just saying it's interesting people that we would hold up in the past on many other areas, but yet we may disagree on that.

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But he was very convicted about that. And he led his congregation in singing. Here's a practical consideration,

36:18

Keith. Let's suppose that a hurricane comes through, a pretty realistic scenario for you down there in Florida, right?

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Suppose you did not have power for a particular Sunday. Could you still have worship is the question.

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Because there's a lot of churches today that are so fixated on the screens and the lights and the show and the instruments and the amplification and the technology that they would probably have to cancel worship.

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They would not be able to do worship in the way that they do it without power and electricity. But listen, believers have been gathering around the world for generations now in dark places, in fields, in barns, in sometimes caves if necessary, in remote hidden places.

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And they still have had worship throughout the ages too. Why? Because they did very simple, beautiful things like open up the

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Bible, preach an expository sermon, and then sing the Psalms or memorized hymns or spiritual songs to the

37:17

Lord. And if you run that thought experiment and you realize your church can't have worship without power, you're probably in a church that values worship attainment.

37:30

Yeah, you reminded me, and this has been 20 years ago now because I remember

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I was at a conference with Ligon Duncan and R .C. Sproul and a few other guys.

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It was a Ligonier pastors conference back in the day. And I believe it was

37:47

Ligon who said this. It may have been one of the other speakers, but he said, if it couldn't be done in the catacombs, it's not a necessary element of worship.

37:58

Totally agree. That's awesome. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah, if it couldn't be done there, it's not necessary.

38:04

Yeah, that's right. And I think that is a good rule. So in regard to the

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Psalms, I would like to say, as I've already said, I love to sing

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Psalms in worship. I love to incorporate Psalms into our worship. And I know our history, it's not as common because, truth be told, we've struggled in some of the areas of music in our church because we have had a diversity of leadership in that area.

38:38

And currently, I'm sharing the leadership with a deacon because we had a man who was and he was in the military.

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Jacksonville is a big military town. We have a big Navy base here. And when he retired from the military, he moved back to Michigan to be with his family.

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So we lost the person who had led worship for us for two years, and he was very musically inclined.

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And now we're back to me and this deacon who are sharing the responsibilities. We're trying our best to do a

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God -honoring worship service. We're trying our best to—and we do. We have a group of people who are very lovingly coming alongside of us to help us do that.

39:12

We have a couple of ladies who play the piano. We have a lady who's very gifted musically who helps us. We have a couple of men who help.

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And so we have a group. But if I were going to want to incorporate more psalms—and this is the question

39:24

I wanted to ask you and wanted to do so in a way that was congregationally powerful and relevant and helpful and useful.

39:34

I don't even know if I'm using the right terms. What resources and recommendations would you say?

39:41

Here's the direction I would go if you would give me that advice and to anyone who might be— Yeah. Can I go on a rant for just a minute?

39:50

The floor is yours. All right. So in the book, I discuss three kinds of churches as it relates to psalm singing.

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You have your exclusive psalm singers. Those would be those churches, and there's very few of them.

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Most of them are in the RPCNA denomination that only sing the psalms. They are exclusive psalm singers.

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That's all they sing. They don't do hymns. They don't do praise songs. They don't do worship anthems. It's just the psalms.

40:17

Then you have churches like ours, Gospel Fellowship PCA. We would be an inclusive psalm singing congregation, meaning that we sing psalms, hymns, and some spiritual songs, which are loosely praise choruses.

40:35

And then you have the third category, and this is the category that I don't want you to be in, and that would be the excluded psalm group.

40:43

And that would be those churches that do everything but the psalms. They do not sing the psalms at all.

40:48

I think that's a real problem. So I didn't really discover psalm singing, but for maybe 10 years ago, psalm singing was introduced into my life, and I was blown away by the concept.

41:00

So what psalm singing is, and let me just describe the process, you take the psalms of the

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Hebrew Old Testament, and obviously they have to be translated into the language of the singer, which for us is going to be

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English. But even still, you can't just take up your King James Bible or your ESV, take it out and try to start singing it because it's not written in meter.

41:22

Meter is the cadence that the words follow after, and all good songs, hymns, and spiritual songs have some kind of a meter or a cadence or a rhythm to them, right?

41:32

So what you have is a psalter like this one that I have right behind me. This is essentially a hymnal in that it's a book filled with songs.

41:41

If you open it up, there's music inside. But all of the contents are the 150 psalms of the

41:48

Old Testament that have been translated into English and then put into rhyme and meter so that you can very naturally and easily sing them.

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Now, this is my favorite psalter right here. This is produced by Crown and Covenant Publications.

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It's called Psalms for Worship. And one of the reasons this is a brilliant psalter is because not only are the psalms faithfully rendered and translated and put into meter and rhyme so that you can sing them, but this particular psalter did something very wise in that it used the tunes that most

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Christians already are familiar with. So if you grew up singing hymns at all, your

42:29

Amazing Grace or your Be Thou My Vision or O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, you name a hymn, that hymn has a tune, right?

42:37

And so in this psalter, they were very careful to use the kinds of tunes that congregations know.

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Almost immediately, they just know, oh, I know that tune. They may have never sung that psalm before, but when they know the tune, then it's easy to begin singing that particular psalm.

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So what I would say you should do is you should invest a little bit of money in getting some psalters into your pew racks or under your chairs if you have them, and then begin using the ones that have the most familiar tunes to them so that when your congregation takes up the psalter, they don't have to struggle with unknown words and unknown music.

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That's hard. That's really hard to do. But if they know the music and they're like, oh, I know that tune.

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Maybe they don't know the name of the tune, but they know the tune. And now they're concentrated on singing the words of the psalter.

43:29

That, I think, is the sweet spot for congregations that haven't done psalm singing in the past.

43:36

Well, you've sold me. I'm going to go buy that as soon as we're done because I've wanted something like that.

43:42

And I think I may get one for myself and for the deacon who I work with so that we can look at it.

43:49

Let me ask you this, and I know we want to talk about worship tainment in your book, but as far as that psalter,

43:56

I think we might be promoting two books today. Yeah, that's great. In it, does it say this song is sung to the hymn of O for a

44:08

Thousand Tongues or does it say that in the back? Where's that at to where you can access that information? Okay, so it takes a little bit of savvy to use this, but not too much.

44:17

So here's our hymnal right here. This is the old Trinity red hymnal that every good

44:23

PCA congregation has, right? So when you open it up to any hymn, if you look at the bottom, the name of the tune is given there.

44:33

And then in the back of the book, there's also an index of hymns and their tune titles. Sometimes a tune is used multiple times for multiple hymns.

44:42

The tune called Darwall is used in a number of hymns in the Trinity red. So what you do then is you take your blue psalter and you simply look up the name of the tune and then which songs are put to that particular tune.

44:57

Then you can just sing that song. And what I'll do often is I'll sing a hymn as the first hymn, and then

45:05

I'll do the song that has the same tune as our second one. And people already know it.

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So they're ready to sing that particular one. So that's a really easy way to do it. Now you can get genius.

45:17

Yeah, it is genius, but it gets even better because also hymns and psalms have what's called a meter, which for lack of a more technical term is the count.

45:30

It's the count of the beats, right? So as long as the meter is the same and you can see what the meter is right after the name of the tune, you can do any tune to any psalm as long as the meter count is right.

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And so in that way, you can actually do different tunes to different psalms if you want to, and that's totally fine.

45:51

So if you want to print up the lyrics to one particular, you want to sing Psalm 85, let's say, but you really want to sing it to this particular tune, as long as the meter matches, you can switch the tune up and you can sing it that way too.

46:03

So there's a lot of different ways that you can actually arrange these psalms. But this particular Psalter does the best job, in my view, of helping new psalm singers be introduced to the singing of the

46:14

Psalter. Well, I know you are a YouTube content creator. You're awesome and you do this a lot.

46:21

Have you done a video on this? Because if you have, I'll be happy to link it below. Yeah, I have, and I'm going to do some more in the future.

46:30

It's been a while since I've talked about this, but probably if you just went to my channel and looked up Psalm singing or Psalter, you'd probably find a few videos there.

46:38

Good deal, because this is all very helpful. Again, for the person who is now leading worship, I need as much information as I can, so thank you.

46:48

I do want to move on because we're coming close to the hour mark now, and I want to give us plenty of time to talk about the other portion that I think tends to fall toward worship tainment, which again, we could talk about the eccentricities, and you talk about this in the book, crucifying

47:05

Batman on the bat signal. That's ridiculous. I had that in a church soup episode, so yeah, that's outrageous.

47:13

But when we talk about the sermon itself as an aspect of worship tainment, as part of this, it's easy to beat up on the musicians and say, okay, some of these guys want to be rock stars and there's that.

47:26

But there are pastors who want to be rock stars as well, the whole preachers and sneakers thing.

47:32

Have you seen the preachers and sneakers website? No, I have not seen that, but I have a feeling

47:38

I'm not going to like it, right? You will not. There's this guy who started cataloging all of the outrageous things that pastors were wearing.

47:50

I have a hard time saying stage. I always say chancel, but in these churches, it literally is a stage.

47:56

It's not a chancel, and the sneakers that some of these guys are wearing, $1 ,200 sneakers, $1 ,500 sneakers, and he just started cataloging it.

48:03

It ended up becoming a book, and the book is called Preachers and Sneakers, and it just talks about the eccentricities and craziness that are happening in worship.

48:13

But you mentioned something. One of the titles, you said the rise of the pastor influencer.

48:22

And recently, Josh Bice put out a post, and a few people sent it to me because his post said, we're not celebrities.

48:38

We're not rock stars. We're not da, da, da, and he had this whole list, and at the very end, it said we're shepherds, and I agree with it.

48:45

But two of the things that it said, we're not podcasters and we're not influencers, and somebody sent it to me, and they said, hey, wait a minute.

48:51

You're a podcaster. Does that mean you're wrong? And some people have even said, you're an influencer because you have a podcast and people watch it, and that's a term that is used.

49:01

Matthew, and I mean this, I don't like that term necessarily, but you're a podcaster.

49:09

You're a preacher. You're also a YouTuber. Are you an influencer? Well, yeah, obviously,

49:19

I don't like that term at all. I do think of podcasting as a form of evangelism in terms of broadly putting out the gospel.

49:28

I make it a point that every single video I ever do is explicitly Christian, teaching the things of the word, either sermons or theological content, and on the rare occasion, some cultural or societal commentary, but always from a distinctly

49:45

Christian point of view. So I don't like that term any better than you do. I would hope that if there's a sense that I influence people, it is towards solid

49:55

Bible believing and Reformed churches, and of course, towards the good things of the gospel.

50:01

But that notwithstanding, I don't have objections to people doing evangelism in creative ways, let's say.

50:09

But when it comes to the worship service itself, there is something beautiful and distinct about gathered

50:15

Lord's Day worship. And here is where I just want churches to do what they've been doing for 2000 years, which is to preach the gospel from the word of God.

50:28

And my concern is simply this, preachers, I think, don't really believe, many of them, that the word of God is powerful and interesting and actually able to change hearts.

50:42

And so what they do is they come up with new fangled ways to present the material, even in gathered

50:49

Lord's Day worship, in such a way almost to avoid the responsibility of simply expositing the word.

50:56

It's almost like, brother, if you trusted that the word of God was more interesting than your personal story or your cultural anecdote or your movie illustration, you'd probably actually improve your preaching because the word of God is interesting and it is powerful.

51:13

And it's only when we begin acting like it's not that I've got to somehow make it more creative, more interesting, more entertaining to people.

51:19

Otherwise, I'm going to lose them. Brother, that's not right. And that's why we start seeing things like summer at the movies where it's like, okay, well, they're not going to come if I preach an expository 45 minute sermon on a text from a text.

51:33

So what do I have to do? I got to use the Barbie movie or I got to use the latest James Bond flick or whatever.

51:38

I got to make some cultural references to this movie so that my people aren't bored to death. Well, that's a problem.

51:45

That's a big problem. And the problem is really in one's doubt that the word is sufficient.

51:51

What do you think about that? What's your take on that? You know, I have a lot of thoughts about it.

51:57

And the one that really comes to mind the most is one of the books that helped me early on in preaching was by Steven Kreloff.

52:07

And I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He's a pastor and he's become a friend, you know, much like you.

52:14

It was a man I respected, reached out to, had an opportunity to talk to and now has become a friend. It's a blessing that God gives those opportunities.

52:22

And Steve is an older minister, but he wrote this little book called Expository Preaching. And he said in the book, he says, men, preaching is this.

52:31

You read the text, you explain the text, you apply the text, and then you move to the next text, right? Like it's all about what the scripture says.

52:38

And I remember that sort of revolutionized the simplicity of my preaching. It's about what this says.

52:44

The text doesn't mean what it doesn't say. So I just need to teach what it says and explain what it says and in some way make an application of what it says.

52:53

An application I find to be the hardest part sometimes because it's the spirit ultimately who's going to apply the text in the heart of the believer.

53:00

But as a good pastor, we should point to how this is applicable. But at the same time,

53:06

I see so many men who want to make their sermons, they want to make them, as you said, entertainment.

53:15

They want to make this a show. They want to make this something that it's not.

53:23

And I'm actually going to say something that's going to sound really weird. You know, Andy Stanley, you know what his objection to expository preaching,

53:35

I don't know if you heard that years ago when he said, I don't like expository preaching. It's cheating, he says. He said, yeah, he said, it's too easy.

53:41

Yeah. Now, a lot of guys came out and said they were angry and they were said, oh, well, expository preaching is not easy because, you know, you have to study and that is true.

53:52

It's not easy because you do have to keep your knees under your desk for a substantial amount of time to produce a really well done expository sermon because it takes study.

54:02

Yeah. But in a way, Andy was kind of right in this sense. If we just did it

54:08

God's way, it's the better way. It's the easier way because when you have to be creative every

54:13

Sunday and create an event every Sunday, that's not about the text, but it's about your creativity.

54:20

It's no longer elevating the word of God. It's elevating how creative can

54:25

Andy Stanley and his team of, you know, creative content people come up with a sermon.

54:32

And he does have a team. He mentioned that recently and a thing that he's got, that he has his sermons basically written by a committee.

54:40

Yeah, that everything you said, I totally agree with, you know, if I got two compliments on the way out of the door and one person said, pastor, that was an awesome sermon.

54:49

And the other person said, pastor, that was an awesome text. Like I'll, I want the second, the second thing to be said, because that means as a pastor,

54:58

I've done my job. I've got out of the way and I've showed them what the word of God says. And they saw something in there that was powerful and convicting and relevant and applicable to their lives.

55:10

If somebody tells me it's a great sermon, it's like, okay, I know what you mean. Thank you. You know, I appreciate that. Thanks for the kind words, but it could be that they really liked the way

55:19

I delivered it or they liked my stories or my illustrations. And anytime somebody remembers my story or illustration, but they don't remember what the point is.

55:28

I know I failed as a preacher and check this out. You know what, you know what passage I'm preaching this

55:33

Sunday? Hmm. I'm preaching Daniel 11. And I don't know if you remember that text just off the top of your head, but that's like, it's this, it's about the, the war of the

55:47

Kings of the North and the Kings of the South. It's a very difficult passage to try to find application to like, it's just like, what am

55:57

I going to do with this text right now? Just make it about Russian Ukraine. Yeah.

56:03

Yeah. I could do, I could do newspaper theology like that, but it's like, you know what? It's probably, it's probably going to come across as much more powerful because it's so unusual as a text.

56:16

And that's, I think the beauty of expository preaching is when you preach through a book and you let the book say what the book says and you get out of the way.

56:26

Those are like the best. Those are amazing. You know, there's a tendency to try to skip the hard and the obscure passages and just go straight to the ones where the application is obvious and the people know them fairly well.

56:38

But I've, my experience is that the weird, the hard and the obscure texts, the people often really enjoy those, those times in the word, because the word just surprises us and overwhelms us in so many different ways that we didn't see it coming.

56:55

So who knows what's going to happen on Sunday? But I got Daniel Levin in front of me and I didn't figure out what to do with it.

57:03

You know, recently I had a friend, a mutual friend of ours, Steve Spinnenweber, who's a pastor, a

57:11

PCA pastor here in Jacksonville, Westminster, Presbyterian church in Jacksonville, Florida. And he had taken a

57:16

Sunday away from his congregation and visited with us. And he didn't tell me he was coming. He just, he just showed up, which is, it's interesting when you see a pastor, you know this person, you love and respect this person.

57:27

And he just happens up on your door on a Lord's day morning. And I always jokingly say, cause

57:32

Steve, Steve to me looks like a young Burt Reynolds. He's got this big mustache, you know, comes walking in.

57:38

So he's not, you don't miss him, you know, like he's easy. But I thought about that and I, you know, obviously when

57:45

I'm worshiping, leading worship and preaching, I'm not thinking, I'm not trying to think about individuals in the congregation, but it was hard not to think, okay, here's a guy.

57:54

He's used to a much different style of worship. And you mentioned style earlier.

57:59

And I think this might be a good place to, to, to wrap up everything because your book certainly keys in on some of the negative eccentricities and a lot of the really bad things that, that are, that are, that are impositions upon worship that are, that are violations of worship that are, that are godless things of worship.

58:21

But there is a truth, and I think you would agree with this, where two churches can look different in the, in the circumstances or the, the methods of, of things, and yet still have those essential elements.

58:35

And if you would, as we begin to come to a close, I think that might help people who might not be

58:40

Presbyterian, who might be in a Baptist church, but want to, want to know that, you know, this book is going to still be helpful and not feel like they're, you know, well, if I'm not doing it

58:49

Matthew's way, then I, then I can't be doing it God's way. Is that, is that fair to say?

58:55

I think so. I think so. If anything, I am not saying that people should buy the book

59:02

Worshiptainment so that they can pull out whatever chapter six or whatever and get gospel fellowships, liturgy, and then do that thing.

59:10

That's not what I'm asking for. What I'm asking for is that everybody who reads the book would evaluate their worship services and ask, why are we doing what we're doing here when we gather together to worship?

59:24

And if people would ask a couple of simple questions, is what we're doing really honoring

59:30

God? Is God the primary focus of what we're doing here? Or are we trying to, to pacify, to entertain and to gather the secular people of, of the unbelieving world so as to create some sort of faux legitimacy for what we do here.

59:49

And if the latter is true, then why don't you excise some of those things that you do that don't expressly bring glory to God and make your services even a little bit more biblical.

01:00:00

If everybody would read the book and just simply look through their worship service and ask, how can we make our services more biblical and God honoring, then

01:00:10

I will feel that I have, I have done my job, but certainly I'm not calling people to replicate what we do at Gospel Fellowship PCA.

01:00:17

Amen. Amen. And since I did mention his name, I will bring him up. Steve was very encouraging after the worship service.

01:00:24

He didn't come up and say, Hey, you guys, you didn't wear a robe. Yeah. I tell you what,

01:00:31

I would wear a robe if I, if I, if I could, I, it just doesn't, it doesn't, it's not our, it's not our, our thing, but I have one.

01:00:42

I own one and I, and I use it rarely, but I do. If you do, and you go up steps, be careful.

01:00:48

If you step into your own robe, you got to back up the truck and go, go, go out the back because you keep stepping into that thing.

01:00:55

You're only climbing up into it further. And I know that because I've done it. That's funny. Well, brother,

01:01:01

I want to say, first of all, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to look at it early and read it.

01:01:08

And I was very blessed by it. And I hope that people will, will go out and get it and be as blessed as I was.

01:01:15

So, so thank you for that. And thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you so much, brother. You know, I love you in the Lord and I can't wait till the next time that we talk.

01:01:22

Amen. I love you too, brother. We'll talk soon. All right. See ya. Yep. And I want to thank you guys again for being a part of the show.

01:01:28

Thank you for being with us during this time. You can find Worship Tainment. I will have a link to it in the description if you want to go and purchase that book.

01:01:37

And I want to remind you again that we are encouraging you, if you like the show, please hit the subscribe button.

01:01:44

And if you like this particular episode specifically, hit the thumbs up button. If you didn't hit the thumbs down button twice.

01:01:51

Thanks again for listening to your Calvinist podcast. My name is Keith Foskey. And I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.