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(Editor's note: We invited J.D. Walt to respond to Brian McLaren's column, "It's All About Who, Jesus?" J.D. speaks as a pastor, composer, worship guide, and leader of emerging ministers at Asbury Seminary.)

I had the privilege of co-writing (with Chris Tomlin and others) a short chorus called "The Wonderful Cross." It's a small part attached to the big Isaac Watts hymn "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." The words to the chorus are:

Oh, the wonderful Cross. Oh, the wonderful cross,
bids me come and die and find that I may truly live.
Oh, the wonderful cross, Oh, the wonderful cross,
all who gather here by grace draw near and bless your name.
From time to time we get e-mail about the song. One such e-mail came from Dan, who excoriated us for celebrating the cross and a gospel that would "bid us come and die," as Dietrich Bonhoeffer so aptly put it. Dan closes his letter with this:

"Don't get me wrong, when that song is being played, I do sing, but I change the lyrics around a little. Instead of what it says, I change the chorus to:

'You are Wonderful Christ,
You are Wonderful Christ,
You did come and die, Now I (when I sing that part, I kind of stretch the I out), I-I-I can truly live.'"
Dan's complaint captures the essence of Brian McLaren's assessment of much worship out there on the "contemporary" scene: stretching the "I" out.

Too often we don't construct worship "for God" but for individuated consumers who come for an experience of God. This is how we manage to endlessly fight over worship. For those coming to be fed, taste is a neverending battle. But this is the wrong conversation altogether. The real issue in worship isn't so much about songs and style but the larger issue of Story: the story of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The big question we wrestle with at the seminary is this one: What does worship "for God" look like? In defense of modern worship songwriters, many of the songs being written today squarely target the glory and grandeur of God. A cursory survey of the top 25 contemporary worship songs sung in the church today reveals more lyrics about God than the "hold me close electric blanket" theology Brian identifies. (Check http://www.ccli.com/WorshipResources/Top25.cfm)

I think Brian's best case comes with the assessment that much of our worship spends itself declaring what we're going to do, usually in the singular: I will worship, I will praise you, I will bow down, etc. Could it be yet another way of "stretching the I out?"

The big question I have for worship is, "Are we stretching the God out?" In other words, who is God and what is God up to in our worship services?

In our seminary community, we are working to design worship that comes "from the Story to the Trinity for the World." In this design, worship is the end and not an instrumental means to something else.

Look at the component parts:

(1) Worship "from the Story" means we can't settle to endlessly name and sing of the glorious attributes of God.
Worship can't be about magnifying our conception of perfection, ripped as it were from a few favorite proof texts. Instead we must get our hands dirty in the ambiguous, storied soil of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. The big question I bring to worship is, "How are we remembering God here?" Without the texture of the story's context, we unwittingly import an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God into the narcissistic machinations of our own stories.

(2) Worship "to the Trinity" means we begin with a richer understanding of sovereignty.
Our three person-ed God dwells in community. At the heart of the cosmos is not my relationship with God, but the Father's relationship with the Son. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are baptized in the Triune name. It's how Paul says things like, "I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me" and "You have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." Though we enter as individuals, worship is about community. And it's not our community "down here" worshipping God's community "up there." In Christ, by the power of the outpoured Holy Spirit, we are ushered into the dwelling place of God the Father Almighty. We do not generate worship in and of ourselves. Jesus Christ makes an offering through us to the Father for the sake of the World.

(3) Worship "for the World" means simply we are not our own.
Herein lies the most subtle temptation of all: To run headlong into the world, making worship an instrumental means to mission. Authentic worship is the end, leading us to a place of being "in Christ" for the World.

Perhaps the most prolific worship song ever composed is one we don't sing anymore. It's the Christological hymn fragment found in Philippians 2:5-11. In a sense, the call to worship is the call to "stretch the I out" only in cruciform submission to the You. To worship the Triune God is to become narrated into the Story by inhabiting the mind of Christ in the power of the Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 2:6-16). The movement is not so much from a self-centered gospel to a world-blessing gospel but to a God-declaring gospel which blesses the World.

Admittedly, these distinctions are subtle, but in a moon shot, rocket scientists tell us that even slight variances (thousandths of degrees) in the trajectory of the take-off inevitably lead to missing the moon altogether.

Staying with the interplanetary metaphor initiated by Brian, my question isn't whether a Martian would understand what we are up to in our worship gatherings; it's this: would our worship songs and services make Jesus feel like a Martian?

John David (J.D.) Walt is the Dean of Chapel and Vice President of Community Life at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.

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