Worshiptainment With Pastor Matthew Everhard DMW#245

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We've got a real problem with worship tainment, and if you don't know what that is Matthew Everhart's here to tell us all about it stick around Exploring theology doctrine and all of the fascinating subjects in between Broadcasting from an undisclosed location dead men walking starts

00:34

Welcome back to another episode of dead men walking podcast everyone. I'm your host Greg Moore You can find out more about us at dmwpodcast .com

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follow us on socials. Tell a friend and Thanks for listening appreciate it here with another episode

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Well, I got to set sit down with my good buddy Matthew Everhart pastor

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Matthew Everhart He's been on the show before he was on a couple months He's been on I think twice now in the last year, and it's just always a joy to speak with him quickly becoming one of my favorite

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Presbyterian Online pastors, I love his content that he's putting out on YouTube He has you know thousands and thousands of followers over there

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And and that I don't say that because it's like it's all about followers I say that because truth resonates with people and when you're when you're speaking truth when you're speaking biblical truth

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And you are doing it in a way that communicates Communicates that well to people you find yourself with people checking in to your

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YouTube pages in your podcasts and things like that because People are seeking after truth In these days he has a new book out called worship attainment

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I got an advanced copy of it about a month ago read it wrote a review for it And I wanted to have him back on the podcast to talk about it

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Because I think it's much needed right now If you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time you know that if I've rallied against the worship attainment culture which he has coined that term, and I think it's gonna be a term that will stick around and and become popular

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And basically really takes us back to what is biblical in a worship service

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Obviously he believes in the regulative principle. We talked about that a little bit, but really talked about What is biblical?

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What is permissible? What it looks like what worship means and then you know we went back and forth to with my personal experiences of You know some of the most powerful worship services

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I've been in has never had a musical instrument attached to it. It's been a hundred men singing psalms

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Singing hymns things like that so we talked about all that stuff. He gave us a overview of the book

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Obviously if you click below you you can on this This episode whether you're watching or listening you can purchase that book very easy read

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He you know Matthew's a funny guy, too. He's got some humor in there, but theologically rich biblically sound

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Just a great book called worship tainment So that's what this episode is gonna be about it only went about 30 minutes, but we covered a lot in that 30 minutes

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There's a little announcement in there at the top of the show about the bracket coming up in March for the best reformed podcaster

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That's late breaking news If you want to listen to that and hear about some of the prizes that are gonna be going to the podcast that wins that But other than that you'll probably be listening to this

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While I'm at fight left feet, so hey if you just walked by my booth Or you got a sticker from me or a notepad and you clicked on the latest episode

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Welcome come say hi to me say hey. I just listened to your Matthew Everhart episode or hey I just listened to your redeemed zoomer episode last week.

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That's about the time. It'll be coming out into this month end of October so Come say hi to me.

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Tell me what you thought about the episode and Let's hang out. But other than that, the next thing you'll hear is me

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Your friendly podcast host Greg Moore and pastor Matthew Everhart talking about worship attainment.

04:08

Here we go. Yeah, so Matthew What's going on brother good to see you again Yes, thank you so much for having me on man

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I really appreciate you know Who I just talked to is Keith Foskey and I had to rib him a little bit about beating me in that That tournament that we had a while back

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He said though that he's going to actually send to me a couple of those 1689 cigars, so I'm pumped about that Hey, that's awesome.

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You know and it's funny because I just someone just reached out to me a gentleman who does rebinding In normally my rebinders

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Jeffrey Rice at post -mortem. It's Lux. He's done. You know, I got a Bible right here He's done that one for me a beautiful.

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Yes I know but this guy's kind of new and I've seen some of his work and he said can I donate a Bible to the winner for the next one in March and I said absolutely so We're not sure if he's going to reach out to the winner and do a custom or do one first and then that's the one

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You get we're working through it. But that's one of the many prizes that are coming in the next bracket. So yeah

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Yeah, I wanted to have you back on the podcast because we have a very important book coming out called worship tainment that you just Completed when is that being released by the way?

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What's the release date for worship payment? You know, it's pretty much already out now The official day is

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October 24th of this year, but people are ordering it online on Amazon and they're already getting their copies

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I haven't even got a copy yet I wanted you'd think I would have one but I don't even have one in my hand yet So people are getting theirs before me

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The Kindle version is gonna come out though on October 24th If you're a Kindle reader and the audible version

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We're gonna have that come out as soon as we get it done We do have I do have one of the best book readers in the world

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David Martin is doing this book for me and that'll be out as soon as we get it ready

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So if you listen to your books on audible that's coming, too So this subject is interesting to me and for those of you listening

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I'm stacking a few episodes because probably when you're listening to this I will be in Fort Worth, Texas at the fight left -beast conference

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So I think we're gonna release this on the 30th. So it'll be out for a few days the official launch date 24th

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You're probably listening to this around the 30th end of the month So we'll have the link if you're listening or watching right now the links down there go click it go buy the book support this brother

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I'm this very important subject, but why I find it interesting is because believe it or not the the openness and kind of the liberties that the

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Western Christian evangelical church kind of takes with With their church service is what kind of pushed me back into the scriptures and eventually to reform theology believe it or not

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It was kind of you know, we were talking offline a little bit where I was a younger guy and I'm going How do we have all this disparity and how we worship and some things that I even saw in the you know

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In the mid 90s that I go. Is this even Christian? Can you do this? What is this push me back to scripture which then pushed me to?

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Really trying to shed traditions, right? and I think we have a lot of traditions on I would say unbiblical and ungodly traditions even in how we

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Worship and we don't in most churches don't even know well Maybe they do know but most congregants might not even know that what they're doing isn't prescribed in the

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Bible So can you kind of give us an overview and let's get into this of what worship tainment is because I think it's a much -needed book for this generation

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Yeah, so worship tainments in my view is an ungodly combination of elements of worship obviously, there's something there that strikes you as reverent or Theological to at least some degree but then with heavy doses of Entertainment in it and that exactly is the problem because whenever you start talking about worship tainment as entertainment

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You've already got the target audience Completely wrong because worship of course is something that's commanded of us that we are supposed to give our do honor worship and praise to the true and living

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God and When whenever we bring entertainment into it, we've already corrupted it

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So it's kind of like, you know If you had sewer water and some pure water and you meld those together

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You just have sewer water it pollutes that which is pure and the same thing is true with worship tainments the moment

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We try to bring in Progressivism secularism the entertainment world that whether Hollywood Nashville influence, whatever it is

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We try to bring man's world into the divine we end up with an amalgam that is probably not doing either very well honestly, the world is always going to entertain better than the church and then when you pollute the things of God you've you've ruined it, so part of the reason

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I wrote this book is because I'm so concerned that So much of what we do that Supposedly worship the worship that we we owe to the

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Lord the one who redeemed us with his blood Ends up being something far less than that and even kind of a corrupted and kind of reduced version of entertainment as well

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So it really doesn't do either very good Yeah, you know what? I like about this book too.

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And it's called worship tainment link below is It's not just hey, I'm gonna write a book blasting some of the people

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I see doing some things that I don't like it's actually very Theologically sound and you kind of lay out biblical principles and do's and don'ts on page 35

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I really liked kind of going well, what does the Bible talk about that? We are allowed to do when it comes to a worship service and you have a list there it goes through in much more than what you would normally think if you talk to You know a liberal

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Christian. I'm saying liberal in their theology They would go well We have to do this because the Bible doesn't allow us to do all these things and it's like no greeting

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Announcements calls the worship confession of sin professions of faith singing psalms hymns and spiritual songs reading scripture

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Preaching baptizing the Lord's Supper doxology and benediction I mean, we do have a lot of freedom within worship biblically to do those different things

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It just seems to me that we've gotten way off base in in the Western Christian Church And yeah,

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I know you said progressivism and when we talk political like left Yes, that's innovated the church, but I've been in some church services brother that are very politically conservative.

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Let's say But also very worship attainment oriented

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They've got political speakers coming in and they're doing stuff from the stage and they've got spider -man coming down from the ceiling on Easter You're like what and that's an extreme but it's like what are we doing?

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So it was very nice to see it kind of in the very beginning of the book laid out This is what we're gonna be talking about because this is what's biblical and I think we really need to get back to that Can you talk a little bit?

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Just about that and how you've seen kind of the church expand their kind of liberties of what is and is not

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Allowed in a church service Yeah, so first of all, let's just keep in mind here that there should be some charity

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Okay, even amongst those of us who are pretty conservative reformed and Bible believing there has to be some charity and an acceptance of some different orders of worship and things like that and the reason for that is because that the

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Bible itself does not prescribe a Order or liturgy for the worship service

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So in other words, there's no place in the scriptures where you can turn to let's say Colossians And here's an exact liturgy for what a

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New Testament worship service is supposed to look like So even when we compare some of the Reformers and I actually do that in one of the chapters

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I set in parallel columns some of the worship services of the Reformers and the Puritans and surprisingly

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There's there's a difference what you would do in Geneva would be different from what

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Luther was doing which would be different from what the Westminster divines did and and all of those guys We would consider to be good guys and and those who we would should admire rightly

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I think so there has to be quite a bit of charity as far as that goes. However the the main idea of the book is that we should return to what the

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Reformers and the Puritans called the Regulative principle of worship and simply stated the regulative principle of worship

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Regulates our worship by bidding us to do in worship only what

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God Himself Expressly commands us to do Either through direct command implication or at least by the example of the of a positive principle so to speak

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So what that really rules out is that we invent forms of worship that we think

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God might like and so on the cover of the book we have the scene where Moses comes down from Sinai and He discovers that the

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Israelites are worshipping a golden calf and he gets angry and he smashes the commandments

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Okay So so that's kind of the motif that governs the book and the reason that's so repugnant is because the

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Israelites Fabricated in their mind something that they thought would be good something that they thought even might be beautiful than even pleasing and yet Ironically, they've concocted the very essence of what pagan idolatry is

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And so I'm hoping that this book can kind of smash some of those modern golden calves that we've created for ourselves

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Especially in the modern world as we've fabricated all these newfangled ways to try to attract unbelievers to our worship services

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So this is a call to return then to those basic building block Principles of worship.

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So think of it like this If the elements of worship are like Legos There's a there's a sense of freedom in which you can order them to some extent within an acceptable

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Christian worship service. Okay? Yeah, but you can't introduce Foreign Legos into the mix right link logs.

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Yeah, Lincoln logs won't work with Legos. Correct. They don't connect exactly, right? So We know that the basic elements of worship are actually pretty simple and most people would agree what they are

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We should pray we should confess our sins We should sing Psalms hymns and spiritual songs.

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We should preach the Word of God We should do the sacraments the two the only two that the Lord ordains

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Which would be baptism in the Lord's Supper and we could do other things like send off Missionaries and we can do benedictions and we can make announcements before after church

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All of those things are somewhat flexible in terms of the order But those are the things that the scriptures command us to do for the glory of God and therefore

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Worship is rightly regulated when we focus on those elements that God has given us.

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That's the whole burden of the book right there Yeah, you know, I want to jump back to something you said which

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I think I have a theory on why I think So many churches have accepted the normative principle which stands against the regulative principle

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You know you said worship is for God's glory and God's glory alone something that I felt that effect and what

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I found is Even growing up and I'm 43 and grew up in church and you know

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So I'm an 80s and 90s kid But even back then get a lot of people that would use stuff like man the worship really blessed me today

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Boy, did I get a blessing from worship and getting a little older? I went boy. Do we have that backwards?

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I'm to bless the Creator. I'm to bless God. That's I'm Worshiping him he gets all the honor and blessing now

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Can you get a side benefit of being blessed from being in the presence of a holy righteous just God?

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Absolutely, but the goal is not for me to feel blessed by the preaching or feel blessed by the worship or the song or whatever

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It is and we've kind of just flipped that on its head And if if I'm the main reason if I'm the customer

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So to speak in the church. Well, then yeah, we want normative Principle and we want to do as many different things as we can to make the person that's attending feel good and happy and blessed

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And excited and and really entertain them worship team. Yeah, right Yeah do you feel that's kind of what has really pushed this is we've taken the focus off of where the worship should be and we've

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Moved it to the congregant Yes, exactly, right and okay So thinking about the regulative principle versus the normative principle there we might be looking at the difference for instance between like a reformed

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Presbyterian worship service, which would be regulative and like a Lutheran or an Anglican service which would operate under the normative principle going back to the days of Luther and Calvin One of the analogies now, this is not original to me and I don't think it's in the book

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Somebody else said this was that when the reformers were considering medieval worship and they were trying to reform not only doctrine and worship

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It's like this Calvin took let's say you have a junk drawer, right?

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Calvin took the junk drawer and completely emptied it out And then he only put back in the things that are commanded of in Scripture the elements of worship

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Luther took a different approach. He kept the drawer intact and then he removed the things that he thought were

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Forbidden by by the scriptures and so you end up with it It sounds like it'd be the same but you end up with a different junk drawer that which is only commanded versus removing the things that are forbidden, but I Think it's actually worse than that I think right now what we're experiencing in modern worship attainment is neither the regulative nor the normative principle

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But it's the anything goes principle. It's the pragmatic principle of what do we have to do to attract?

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Unbelieving pagans into our worship service and to retain them so that they come back week after week and can

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Continue to contribute in some in some ways So that's where you're seeing the really outrageous stuff the kind of stuff that if you describe it

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You'd like you wouldn't even believe that it happens in Christian worship services except for that It's online and on Twitter and you're seeing things and you're hearing stories about people doing ridiculous things

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I give some illustrations about like a Place where people Cast Christ as like a

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Batman figure and then crucify Batman and things like that these outrageous things where Week after week you have to jump the shark doing stupider and stupider things in in holy worship to try to attract pagans

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So that's a that's even worse than the normative principle right there in my view So what do you say to people who might go?

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Yeah, but you know, there's no cussing There's no violence. It's we all love

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Jesus We're doing it for Jesus and they use Jesus as almost like an incantation Like if they just say the name

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Jesus, it's okay But that would be their argument like look at which we got to meet people where they're at on their level

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They're sinners coming to church And we're doing this for you know What Christ commanded the lost and the broken and the poor and the downtrodden and and why can't we have a little fun in a church?

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Service, what would be your answer to that? Well, I'm definitely not against fun and I'm not against joy

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I think joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit that I love joy And I I think true Christian worship should be joyful But though the way that we reach the lost is with the gospel itself through the preaching of the word

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You know in the reformed tradition of which I am part We highly value the preaching of the word and we call that one of the ordinary means of grace because that's the way that God ordinarily

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Conveys his grace converting sinners is through the preaching of the word So we already have an entirely sufficient book the

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Word of God and if we would simply preach the Word of God Trusting that it actually has the power that it claims it has namely the power to change hearts

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Then we don't need to fabricate any kinds of new means So I think the problem is we think that we're smarter than God We think we know what a pagan ought to like and that therefore we can contrive what it is

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We believe would bring the pagan in into our midst But God being wiser than man

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He already knows and he's already he's already imbued his word with the power to convict and to convert and so a lot of what

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I'm calling people to do is simply trust that the Word of God has the power to do what it claims it can do which is to change lives and transform sinners and convert hearts

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So worship attainments in my view is dangerous because it's always taking a step away from what the

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Lord Bids us to do in his word, which is of course sufficient for for the sake of all these purposes

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Yeah, so why now though? I mean why not write this book ten years ago? Why not write it five years from now?

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I'm always interested to know was there something pressing on your spirit. Was there something you had seen?

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Was there an idea a spark and then it grew into something like why write this book right now for 2024?

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Well, that's a good question. I think you know, we've been in the midst of these worship wars now for several different decades

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It's just that the line keeps getting pressed back and back again So in the 20th century, we saw a number of changes to worship

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We saw for instance the Jesus movements Which was in a sense kind of a revivalist pietist type of movement in which there was a call to simplify worship services from the more mainstream traditional and even historic types of worship services to basically reducing it to your music and then your message and That's become kind of the hallmark of worship attainment services

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Is that a lot of the beauties of the worship itself have been stripped out of it? So for instance, you don't see things like prayers of confession or prayers of illumination

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Before the reading of the word or benedictions at the end of services those things have been seen as like extra religious contrivances

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And so you have this kind of attempt to reduce worship basically down to two things music and message and sometimes neither of those are

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Done very well, but usually in worship attainment. They're done so professionally that it's almost as though Like there are some sort of scripted

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Hollywood a polished technique that's supposed to Do what what man believes?

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He can do but but only God ought to do So there's that but I can't say no that there's any particular thing that drove me to write this other than that worship is something that I think about all the time because as a pastor and One who you know,

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I lead my own church in in worship practices and I devise Worship services and liturgies for us to use on the

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Lord's Day worship is never a thought that's far from my heart and Seeing a few things online that have just provoked me

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Maybe even giving me that kind of holy fury to to do something about it is what drove me to write the book

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No, yeah, and it's so like I said before it's so needed for our time now I'm gonna Deviate from the book a little bit and just get your personal opinion on something and kind of Get up on my soapbox here for a minute because I I did grow up in church

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I did play drums on a worship team. I did lead for many many years on keyboards

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So I was picking the the songs and you know, create creating the setlist so you call it

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To the point to where even as early as ten years ago, you know on stage with in -ear monitors playing the keys we're practicing two services and That's just kind of how

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I grew up and Also, I really love music. I love sitting down on my piano and worshiping the

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Lord I love taking the aggression out on my drums. All my kids play an instrument

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I think that's very healthy but what happened one of the first times I ever was in a service where there were no instruments and it was just 800 people

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Singing a hymn I had never seen any or heard or felt anything so powerful now.

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Yeah I'm just throwing that out there I'm saying this as someone who is a musician who loves music who plays music who thinks music is something that Should glorify

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God and in all they do I I listen to reformed rap for crying out loud every every once in a while Like I'm all over the place there

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But when I'm coming before the throne of God in the presence of a holy creator

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That's different than what I'm doing sitting at my piano or listening to something on, you know, Spotify And I found that the the community and unity of voices alone is probably one of the most powerful things

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That God has ever created. I so I kind of had this Paradigm shift and I went wow all these churches.

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We what do we use? we use microphones amps the only person you can hear singing is the Lead singer or the worship leader, right and it really creates automatically just musically tonally it creates a separation

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We're up here and we're all and they're on a stage, right? So, you know, there's legit reasons why you got to have a stage in church to be able to see and things like that But you create this separation to where if you have, you know, one of the most beautiful times

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That I have is our church takes all the men and sons up to a three -day primitive camping trip in northern,

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Michigan You know vault toilets tents on five acres in the middle of National Forest and all we do is cook food have

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Devotions and sing psalms and hymns and you got a hundred and fifty boys and men Singing, you know

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Christ alone or whatever it is and I go there's nothing more powerful to me when it's so communal

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So raw I can hear my brothers singing next to me. I'm not listening to one guy

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Sing most of the time, but Jesus is my boyfriend song as I call him Instead I'm singing these theologically rich sound songs you end with doxology.

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It's like it's it's now a personal preference of mine, but my point being is

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It's also biblical for a reason like God knows what he's doing, right? Like like worship services are supposed to be communal and honoring to God and I feel like we've really lost that in worship attainment

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I mean even and I'm not even talking about the far ones that you know Like the Batman and all that you see that and you just shake your head and go.

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Oh my gosh. How do we get here? Yeah, I'm saying even in a in an average evangelical. I'm not saying this like to put them down Yes, we want to have charity

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But I'm saying you're losing something when you've got nine people on a stage all playing their own instrument

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You've got the sound up to 11, you know the bass up to 11 It's just it's not the same

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When we're all as brothers and sisters worshiping the Lord with our voices as one and that and that to me

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It was one of those things in my head where I went. Oh, okay Yeah God does know what he's doing when he prescribes certain things in the

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Bible on how we are to worship because it's beneficial to us Too we get that blessing even though we're not trying to get blessed.

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We're blessing the Lord We get the byproduct of that through worship. Does that make sense? 100 % it makes sense and that's in fact part of the burden of the book in fact when it when it comes to music one of the things

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I'll tell you is that I'm not here to convince you to change your preferences

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Everybody has particular kinds of music that they just tend to like some people like jazz and some people like Rock and some people like R &B fine.

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That's granted But what to what effect is the music designed in the worship service?

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In other words, what would happen if the congregation? Simply evaporated and a worship attainment service it wouldn't matter because the congregation actually plays a very passive role in worship attainment because it's the professionalization of the expert musicians who are on front on the platform in lights with the fog on the

27:39

Amplifiers and probably on the jumbotron too, right? so if the congregation suddenly evaporated not much would change the power of the volume would still be overwhelming the auditorium and Everything would be electrified to a to a level 11, right?

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But in real worship The people of God are not supposed to be passive.

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They're supposed to be the active participants amen, and so this is why I would tell everybody like Go to a covenanter

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RP service at least once in your life because what you're gonna find there is that the covenanters and the

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RP's they sing the Completely acapella no instrumentation. No Electronics no amplification and you're probably gonna find that it's really

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Amazing how beautiful the voices are coming together when they sing to the glory of God. So like what's happening in worship.

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Is it the people? joining together Even with their melody and harmony rising to glorify

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God or is it the professionalized band? Who is leading the congregation as they sway rather passively vibing to the music

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It's two totally different ways to perceive worship and in my view the one is better than the other Yeah, and just to point out to when when you say, you know the the band and its excellence

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I'm not saying you can't have excellence when you don't use When you don't use instruments,

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I'm gonna be at fight left feast at the end of this month and One of my favorite times is beer and Psalms first night we got 1 ,500 guys

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We're gonna be singing Psalms and we have a musical director and you got a thousand people standing there and he goes All right, who's tenor who's also who's right and looking around and he says, okay shift around and then he teaches you each of the three

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Parts he goes now we're gonna sing with excellence on to the Lord You got a thousand people singing Psalms 41 or you know, whatever is gonna be it is one of the most powerful things

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Matthew in the world I Believe it to those in the Evangelical Church. You've never experienced that You know and you want to talk about emotionalism and they really so what what

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I what I sometimes see is we see the Western Church trying to manufacture an emotion

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Yes of like happiness and excited When I can just have the joy of the Lord when

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I have my brothers and sisters around me and we're communally worshiping God That's that's naturally that that joy and you know what

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I'm talking about when you're in that and it's not and I don't go there for that I go there because I'm humbled and I want to worship my

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Creator and you know in love and adoration and give him Glory because he saved me and I don't deserve it

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I mean, that's really how I entered church every every Sunday But but my point being is is there's excellence even in the regulative principle type worship, and I'm sure you can speak to that It's not like we're just throwing out everything.

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Okay, we'll just do whatever You know, we don't have any instruments or we don't have this or that so I will just do do our best

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There there's practice and there's excellence because you're bringing something honoring to the Lord, right? You want your best for the

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Lord in any way that you worship? Totally agree and excellence is something that we should be aiming at no matter what style of worship that we are in particular church has so if you have an organ and you sing hymns to an organ then do that with excellence if you have a

30:55

Modest praise ensemble that's gonna lead in some praise songs and do that with excellence, too If you're gonna sing a cappella psalms do that with excellence.

31:03

Nobody's arguing against excellence here, but I do think that The content of what we're singing is of course also

31:11

Intrinsically valuable which is one of the reasons why in this book I talk a little bit about psalm singing which may be completely foreign to some of our more broadly

31:21

Evangelical listeners out here today Greg because you know A lot of what churches sing is either this stuff like the old

31:28

Trinity red hymnal right here, which we have in the PCA Or it's a lot of the same kind of radio tunes that are going to be brought to you by less reputable groups like Hillsong or Bethel the kind of songs that are popular on the radio a lot of churches just accept that without any

31:44

Possible critique or discernment necessary. It's just a popular song. We'll go ahead and sing that But they're here right here in the

31:52

Psalter is something that a lot of evangelicals are not even familiar with But that Christians have been singing through the centuries

32:00

And so I would also suggest that whatever your worship style is and again styles and preferences

32:08

But you should try to incorporate some psalm singing into your worship times because I think that you're gonna be incredibly

32:15

Blessed when you actually begin to for the first time in your life, perhaps sing God's Word back to him

32:23

We could Greg in my church Gospel fellowship our elders approve all songs that we sing.

32:30

So we have a discernment process We just did it last night in an elders meeting. We had 10 songs We had to listen to them in advance and we discern it and we decide whether or not we're gonna sing it at gospel fellowship

32:41

I love that We never ever have to be concerned with the Psalter about what the content is because singing the

32:48

Psalms is already biblical So it has 100 % Pre -approval by our elders because you cannot go wrong when you're literally singing the

32:57

Word of God So part of part of the reason for the book is is not just to talk about like styles and amp, you know amplifiers and electric guitars and stuff like that But really to also call us to an awareness of the content of what you're doing when you worship the true and the

33:13

Living God Now that's such a good point you know, I don't know why churches kind of have latched on to that idea of well it's popular other places and we'll just pull it in and use it because I mean you look at like the broader evangelical church with how they responded to Shane and Shane which is a group two guys and they did a whole album on the

33:33

Psalms and they and They did their own arrangement and it was one of the best -selling albums within the

33:40

Christian community in the last 30 years you had evangelicals and you know

33:46

Nondenominationals and Southern Baptists and all kind look at oh my gosh It's such beautiful You know music and the

33:52

Psalms and in you're going as someone who like you who've probably been singing Psalms for years and years and years

33:58

You're going. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of the point. We're singing God's Word back to him So it's not like they've rejected it there's people out there that go

34:05

Yeah, these are absolutely beautiful, but I don't know how these these large denominations and these church leaders just now

34:12

Oh, oh, we're singing oceans for the next six months or oh, we're singing this new Bethel Whatever came out or Stephen Furtick's band has this one.

34:20

It's on the top 40. All right, we'll incorporate it It's like I love the idea. Like you said we have the same thing

34:26

We have an elder board that discerns all of our songs. We sing as well to That you discern those before they're brought in What is that?

34:35

How are we getting to a song out on the radio? And then within six months I see 85 % of Evangelical churches singing that song that's like what meeting are they going to that?

34:46

We're not at Matthew What's going on I don't know my guess is and I don't know the ecclesiology of most churches

34:54

But i'm guessing that elders sitting down to discuss theological content

34:59

Unfortunately is probably a rarity. In fact most churches i'm going to guess that Songs are filtered through the discretion of the hired worship leader who alone?

35:11

Has the prerogative to pick the songs that the church is going to sing and probably picks those songs based on qualifications like playability

35:19

Uh singability for the sake of the the band and then what vibe what emotion that creates and therefore

35:27

Then where to use it in the service Do we want a high rising like power anthem at the beginning of the service or do we want sort of a falling?

35:36

Chilling type of a song not scary. I mean but to like chill the emotions so that the preacher can come out they're probably thinking about those very pragmatic considerations rather than The words and the content and again very dangerous and I would suggest probably

35:54

You're falling right into the worship attainment trap if you're more concerned with how a song vibes Than what doctrine it conveys about god christ man sin death hell salvation and redemption

36:07

All right. So as we wrap this up here who would benefit the most from this book say they're listening right now

36:13

Uh, who did you kind of now, I know we could say everyone could benefit from it But is this someone is this book for someone who goes?

36:20

yeah, i'm exploring this or I don't know much about this or Thinking about switching something. I mean, who do you think would really benefit from worship attainment?

36:29

Well, okay. So there's probably three groups here the on the first side on this side

36:34

There's going to be the people who are from conservative reformed presbyterian Bible believing churches that are going to see this book as kind of a ra ra

36:42

Yay, let's go type of a book where they're going to agree with almost everything that I say just on principle

36:47

They're already with me on the other side You're going to have your very evangelical bland kind of generic type of christian churches and persons that are going to disagree on almost every paragraph

37:00

Why are you citing the confessions who cares about what the westminster divines were or what they said?

37:06

I don't care. This is not relevant But it's kind of that middle group that i'm actually aiming at people who actually really do care about worship

37:15

And perhaps they have some concerns with what they're seeing in their church services maybe there's some of these newfangled mechanisms that are kind of Breaking into the service and critic uncritically unchecked by some of the leadership

37:30

And they know that there's something off there But they're not exactly sure how to pinpoint why it's off and what to do about it

37:37

It's probably that middle group that I think is really going to benefit from it And i'm hoping that no matter what worship style you have in your church you're going to be able to read worship attainment and say

37:47

Ah, there's a few moments here where my hair's standing up and I feel convicted And then other moments maybe reading the book that you're going to feel empowered to say, you know, what doggone it?

37:56

Let's take a stand and try to reform our worship in a way that's more biblical So that's kind of what i'm trying to do here

38:02

No that that tracks because uh when I read the uh pre -copy that you sent me and thank you for that and i'll be uh,

38:09

Getting my um hard copy, uh right after this episode because I I read through it and I went

38:15

This is a book because sometimes here's what happens you you get way into something Uh, you kind of become heady about it.

38:21

You know it. Well, you've been studying it for a while and then You know, you like that really rich theological source and then you hand that book to you know

38:29

The christian that's been a christian for four years in a non -denominational church and they just go what are you handing me here?

38:34

What is right? Yeah fashions and church history this that's all those are all good things and we want people to know those things

38:40

But what you did is you balanced, uh, you've got doctrine and theology in here. You've got biblical references

38:46

It doesn't like go way over someone's head where you're using words that we can't spell and we have to go wikipedia what the uh definition is

38:54

Um, but also humor in there So it's a book that I would feel comfortable if i'm having a discussion with someone and talking about this

39:01

I mean you want to I got a really good book for you. I want you to read You know, it comes in under 200 pages or I don't know where I don't know what the final copy is

39:08

I think what I got was about 200 pages So it's like you're not going to spend three weeks reading it, but it's but it's not a little 20 page pamphlet

39:15

Where it misses stuff. So it's like this nice balance of being able to be theologically rich and sound and biblically sound

39:21

Uh, but but not too heady Does that make sense like not like up in the sky in the ivory tower where someone

39:26

Who might not know all the terms stuff because you define things you go through things very easily That I can hand it to them and feel confident in them going

39:33

Okay, i've got a good idea of what you're talking about now And those are the type of books that I like for that type of thing now

39:39

Yeah, I got my volumes and my theological stuff and reference books and I love those too But it's always nice when you're witnessing or when you're talking to another brother that might not agree on something like that To have a book in your back pocket that goes, you know what we're talking about But here's an expanded idea of it and I think you're going to get it

39:57

Um, that would be one of those books that I would use it for and I think it's a phenomena that you wrote it that way

40:03

Um, because i've had books returned to me and they go man There's too too much stuff in here, which yeah, I couldn't too many big words

40:08

I couldn't you know, it's kind of like me and mere christianity the first time I had to read it three times to really get it You know lewis

40:14

Lewis had some great ideas in there and some books are like that this and i'm not dumbing down your book i'm saying it's

40:19

It's rich and it's right and it's true. It's it's just it's readable. Does that make sense? And you communicate it very well, which

40:25

I think with it Which an author should be should be able to do and you did it in this book Yeah, I really appreciate that.

40:31

That's what i'm aiming for There's not like it's not an academic work like you're picking up bovings multi -volume set or something like that There's a few academic footnotes, but not a lot

40:40

Sometimes I send readers other places to get some information But I want people to be delighted in how much sense the book actually makes and find themselves

40:48

Completely competent to make it through all of the the technical stuff anytime. I introduce a technical term

40:54

I also define it right away. So I think readers will find it to be approachable and I appreciate your kind words Thank you so much

41:00

Awesome, matthew everhard. Thank you so much for coming on the program today. And of course guys Uh linked up is going to be worship tainment that link will also hopefully take you to some of his other books that he has

41:10

Hold fast to the faith the devotional commentary on the west mister confession Obviously he's been on the podcast before talking about the theology of joy jonathan edwards and external happiness in the holy

41:20

Eternal happiness, excuse me in the holy trinity and the list goes on. I think you have a few more books I think souls as well underneath your belt all those excellent books.

41:29

Um, Definitely, I think once more I know I repeat myself, but it's a book that's needed for right now because we are at a turning point

41:35

I believe Uh in the church we have been for quite a while and we need books like this for people to remind us to return to uh, biblically commanded worship and services and to really avoid that worship attainment where we are entertaining ourselves instead of uh honoring and glorifying god

41:56

Thanks so much for being here. Matthew. I really appreciate it. Remember guys as always Uh, you can find us at dmwpodcast .com.

42:03

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42:08

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42:16

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