Great to be with you and I'm looking forward to talking about probably what is my favorite theme and that is enjoying God in our times together, starting tonight especially.

My understanding about this particular workshop is that it has to do with worship and some of the clusters of issues surrounding its nature in our contemporary

society. I'm a little bit uneasy with the word or the question, how to make worship relevant.

It doesn't quite suit the way I would ask the question.

So let me try to tell you how I would ask the question and then I'll talk for maybe half of this time

and then we'll take questions for the other half. I hope that's the way it works out.

So if I don't touch on what you had hoped I would please make a note and then stand up and ask questions when the time comes for questions.

I'm a little troubled at the contemporary and prevalent notion that worship is a part of the service that you do for the preaching and that you should be audience oriented when you plan it, rather than God oriented when you plan it.

And I'm sure the people who think audience oriented don't like that distinction, but that's one of the reasons I'm uneasy with the term relevance.

It seems to me that the question ought to be authenticity.

Is our worship according to spirit and truth?

God is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and in truth, John 423.

Is it engaging people with the living God? Is that happening? Now I suppose if it's authentic, if it's in spirit, if it's according to truth, if people are really engaging

with the living God, if it's deep, if it's profound that what is meant by the word relevant will probably be happening, but

maybe not because there are a lot of people who simply are not prepared to worship, they are not ready to worship,

they are not going to worship no matter what you do.

Because God hasn't done the work in their heart yet and to provide them with an atmosphere or music or language that makes them feel good may not be the best thing for them.

Because that's not necessarily necessarily worship.

So that's my orienting thought about the topic. And I think what I'd like to do is ponder a little bit with you about the relationship between contemporary worship music and preaching. I'm a preacher. I really don't know much about music.

I just know it's big, it's huge, it's relevant, it's what everybody's warring over these days the worship wars that

are out there in how you do your Sunday morning event is a big question.

So I won't leave it behind, but I am a preacher mainly,

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