Reach Australia Highlights: Day 2

I’ve just done some calculations and determined that over the past 20 years, I have sung around 7,300 songs in church, heard over 2000 sermons, and had several conversations about how to care for those experiencing confusion with regard to their gender.

Why do I tell you this?

Today, on day two of Reach Australia, I spent a fair bit of time thinking and learning about these three topics. Here are some of the highlights.

Why Sing?

It’s all well and good to sing 7,300 songs. But why do it?

This morning, Rob Smith, a lecturer from SMBC, helped us unpack this question. Why sing? What’s the purpose? Rob had three main headings.

1. Singing as Praising God. When we praise God through song, there’s a horizontal and vertical thing going on. God hears it (the vertical). Others hear it (the horizontal). And if you’re in solitary confinement, others still hear it (the angels).

The fact that God tell us to praise Him tells us something. If you think about it, praise should just come naturally. If we’ve really understood who He is and what He’s done, it should just happen. But sometimes it doesn’t.

God deserves our praise (Psalm 7:17, 18:3, 147:1). God demands our praise (Psalm 47:1, 6-7). God desires our praise (that’s why he commands us to praise Him!). We need to be reminded of these things. I need to be reminded of these things. I need to remind the people I lead of these things.

I love that. Don’t be half dead as you sing. No hands in pockets. No coffee in hand. Sing lustily. Who cares if you can’t sing? Or, as Rob would say, “He deserves more than the dregs of our affections.” So true.

2. Singing as Praying to God. We were reminded that praising is bigger than singing (you can praise in other ways). And singing is bigger than praising (you can sing in other ways). Singing also involves praying to God.

The Psalms are an obvious example of this. The Psalms are meant to be sung. But several of them are prayers. I didn’t jot down the ones Rob mentioned. But flick quickly through the Psalms, and you’ll find psalms of prayer like Psalm 5, 17, 25, 28, 51, 70, 86, 90, 102 and 142.

Rob also encouraged us to think through framing our songs as prayers. Maybe instead of just saying, “Let’s sing”, the church song leader can introduce a song by saying, “Let us join our hearts and minds and voices together in prayer to God.”

3. Singing as Proclaiming God’s Word. Singing is also a way of proclaiming God’s Word. Rob took us to Colossians 3:16 (NIV):

16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

A few things stick out to me from this verse. First, as we sing, we’re proclaiming the gospel, the message of Christ. Therefore, we need to be very thoughtful about the songs we choose. Second, we’re teaching “one another”. It’s communal whole-church teaching. Adults teaching children. Children teaching adults. Men teaching women. Women teaching men. Third, it’s not dull and lifeless. This is meant to take place “richly”. With “gratitude in your hearts”. Or, as John Wesley puts it:

“Sing lustily and with a good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sung the songs of Satan.”[1]

It’s hard to obey the call to let the message dwell “richly” and with “gratitude” when singing as one half-dead.

What Martin Luther says sums up Rob’s third point:

”Music is a vehicle for proclaiming the Word of God [ . . . T]he gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him know that he should praise God with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming [God’s word] through music and by providing sweet melodies with words.”[2]

Rob closed by asking: “Have I robbed God of praise?”

Powerful question. Probing. I love singing. But I reckon I don’t do it nearly enough. On my own. Or with my Hope Groups (Bible Study). Or with my various youth groups.

I’m seriously considering trying to insert more music into all of these. After all, I agree with what JC Ryle said:

“Good hymns are an immense blessing to the Church of Christ. I believe the last day alone will show the world the real amount of good they have done. They suit all, both rich and poor. There is an elevating, stirring, soothing, spiritualising effect about a thoroughly good hymn, which nothing else can produce. It sticks in men’s memories when texts are forgotten. It trains men for heaven, where praise is one of the principal occupations. Preaching and praying shall one day cease for ever; but praise shall never die.”[3]

Who doesn’t want to be immensely blessed, elevated, stirred and soothed? I do.

One last thing. I really enjoyed this quote about the power of song, attributed to EY Harburg (hard to find a reference for it outside of quote websites).

“Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought. “

Just a good quote about the power of song. It makes me want to sing more.

Preaching to the Heart

Next up, preaching with Murray Capill. In particular, preaching to the heart. He shared lots of helpful things. As I went through, I found myself converting his points into questions that I want to ask myself every time I preach.

Questions to ask. Here is my summary of what he said, but in question form. I’ve designed these questions to analyse my sermons before preaching them.

• How and where can I speak to the mind? That is, how can I convince people intellectually?

• How and where can I speak to the conscience? How can I convict people without guilt-tripping?

• How and where can I speak to the passions to move people without manipulating them?

• How and where can I speak to the will to persuade without coercion?

• How can I better set up the intro with a stronger sense that this really matters?

• How can I better ensure that the body of the sermon unfolds the treasures of the text?

• How can I better ensure that my conclusion lands with helping people lift their eyes to God and the gospel?

• How and where can I better describe reality so their heads nod in agreement?

• How and where can I better anticipate and answer objections?

• How and where can I better speak of their experience?

• How and where can I better speak of my own experience: (e.g., I don’t know about you, but I find)

• How and where can I better speak of life as it could be and should be?

• How and where can I better use illustrations that help people see and feel it?

• How can I ensure that I open up each text as a pastor and a leader?

Conclusions. A challenge we all face. I must admit, I often find it a struggle to land my sermons. Here’s a quote from Bryan Chappell that resonated with me:

“I try to end the sermon candidly with inspiration more than with direction of behaviour. Behaviour has happened. Behaviour instructions, I pray, are happening in the body of the sermon, and sometimes it happens at the end. But primarily at the end I'm trying to give people a sense of their hope, security, and joy. That's the real fuel for doing what they have been called to do at other stages of the sermon.

I'm not using the conclusion primarily to instruct. I'm using the conclusion primarily to inspire. For instance, if the subject of my sermon is sexual immorality, in the conclusion I'm not trying so much to condemn sin as to celebrate marriage, and God's faithfulness, and the gospel truth that you can have a different life by pursuing the purity to which God has called us.

Or I can even celebrate the fact that God would love us enough to warn us. If he didn't love you he'd just let you go. I try to inspire with the goodness of God very consistently in what I leave people with, rather than to say, "So be a better person. Let's have the benediction." No, the benediction is about blessing God for his goodness, so that we have deep assurance of his power and affection, as we move forward to do our calling.”[4]

I usually go for “instruct” over “inspire” in my conclusions. I reckon this is something I need to work harder on. I’ll need to keep asking myself this question (also in the list above): How can I better ensure that my conclusion lands with helping people lift their eyes to God and the gospel?

All in all, I’m now pretty keen to read Murray’s book, The Heart is the Target.

The Transgender Challenge

Lastly, there was the session on “The Transgender Challenge” with Rob Smith. Here are three things I found helpful:

Understanding the Cultural Shift. Rob noted that gender confusion is not a new thing. For example, he cited the Roman Emperor Elagabalus (aka Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) as someone who genuinely seemed to believe he was a woman. However, things have really shifted over the last ten years. Particularly around 2013 when Time Magazine suggested that we are now facing “the transgender tipping point”.

Drawing on Abigail Shrier’s controversial book, Irreversible Damage, it was suggested that the increase in transgender identification among young people—especially young girls—is influenced by several factors that feed into what she refers to as “transgender ideology”. The five main factors identified: cultural celebration (e.g., the magazine cover above), societal indoctrination (messages in schools), social media, pornography, and peer contagion (where clusters of friends might come out as transgender within a short period, influenced by group dynamics and the desire for acceptance).

Sex and Gender. Smith noted that today, sex and gender are seen as radically independent of each other. He attributed this idea to Judith Butler, who wrote:

“When the constructed status of gender is theorised as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.”[5]

Today, our culture agrees with Butler. Our culture says, “Your psychology is your gender—let your body be conformed to it.”

The Bible says, “Your body is your gender—let your mind be conformed to it.”

Smith argues from the Bible that sex and gender are intrinsically linked. He explained that gender is introduced in Genesis 1:27, where we read of “male” and “female” being made in the image of God. We are introduced to biological sex in Genesis 2:24 -25, where we get terms like “man” and “woman”. He then showed how Jesus joins the two ideas together—gender and sex—in Matthew 19:4-5.

A Pastoral Approach. Smith placed great emphasis on the need for love, compassion and gentleness when engaging with those experiencing gender dysphoria. It’s essential to recognise the turmoil, the distress, the hopes, the longings, the pain. But it’s also important to reiterate that God understands everything. He understands completely. The turmoil, the distress, the hopes, the longings, the pain. They need to hear Jesus’ invitation:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.“

Matthew 11:28-30 NIV

Helpful words. I need to hear these words. So do you.

I haven’t had the opportunity to walk alongside many people experiencing gender incongruence or gender dysphoria. But I’m confident that what I’ve learned today will significantly help when the opportunity arises.

References

[1] John Wesley, Select Hymns with Tunes Annext: Designed Chiefly for the Use of the People Called Methodists (London, 1761), http://archive.org/details/selecthymnswitht00wesl.

[2] Martin Luther, "Preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae," in Luther’s Works, vol. 53: Liturgy and Hymns, ed. JJ Pelikan, HC Oswald, and HT Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 323.

[3] J. C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1885), 382, http://archive.org/details/christianleaders0000ryle.

[4] Bryan Chapell, “Preaching to the Heart,” Preaching Today, accessed May 15, 2024, https://www.preachingtoday.com/skills/2016/march/preaching-to-heart.html.

[5] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, 2011), 10.