Church planters, designers, marketers, researchers and I all agree that churchy words aren’t the best way to pull in newcomers or engage an audience. In fact for most of my adult life I have railed against speaking in Christianese. Unfortunately, in this particular case, I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. You see, it is I who titled our upcoming worship conference EMPOWER: Releasing the Sound of Heaven. Ooooh… Aaaahhh… Sounds mysterious. And well, maybe just a little bit… who am I kidding a lot WEIRD. What the heck does it mean?? Is this one of them cult churches now?? Don’t worry, we’re not going to be going all weird and David Koresh on anyone I promise. Let me give a simple explanation and a little teaching on what this all means… First… we need a proper understanding about what worship is. Worship does not equal singing songs for 30 minutes on Sunday, and possibly some random point later in our week. It certainly includes this, but it is not limited to singing praise unto God. It is much, much more. It is much more complete in nature. Worship is all about what we are all about. It encompasses everything we are. Singing, speaking, living… All of it. Ok. Now that we have that out of the way, on to the WEIRDness. What does it mean to release the sound of Heaven?? Psalm 119:89 says Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens. NIV,2011. So if God’s WORD is firm in the heavens it stands to reason when we speak it here on Earth we are releasing it to do whatever it is that it does. And THAT is what we find in Isaiah 55… verse 11 says (God talking), …So is my Word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. So, there we have a portion of what we are talking about when we say releasing the sound of Heaven. We are releasing God’s will and purpose on the Earth when we speak His Word. We also know that Heaven is full of songs and worship of God. (See the book of Revelation...) When we sing songs of worship here on Earth we are Releasing the Sound of Heaven. And Finally, John 15:5 talks about living in the Vine. The Vine being Christ. It says apart from Him we can do nothing. That’s pretty pointed. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Apart from Christ we are absolutely powerless. Which, as you learned in 3rd grade, is the opposite of being EMPOWERED. Next, let’s look at some very familiar words of Jesus that speak about Releasing the sound of Heaven that many of you possibly know by heart. The Lord’s Prayer from Matthew chapter 6 speaks about letting His Kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in Heaven… Did you catch that. Rewind. Read again. On earth as it is in Heaven. So, it is very possible that many of you, Christianese or not, have already heard about this WEIRD idea. So, in conclusion… Worship = Speak God’s Word, Sing His song (metaphorically or actually), and Live in Christ. This is how we Release the Sound of Heaven! Now quick, make sure you are going to be at the worship conference next week. You will not want to miss it. You wanna see God move? Be Here. You wanna see God’s glory? Be Here. According to one of our lead gtr players, Jake Lane, “it’s gonna be EPIC!”
