Christian Worship is all about God and the true God is trinity
by Robin Parry
Worship is the face-to-face encounter of the church with this God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The privilege and the responsibility of song writers and worship leaders is to shape that encounter of the triune God and his church in such a way that the worshippers can experience its trinitarian richness. The songs we sing significantly shape our relationship with God and its vital that they serve to facilitate an encounter with the Christian God - the trinity.
Our spirituality, the way in which we relate to and think of God, is shaped more by communal worship than any other single thing. (I think Charles Wesley knew that). This makes you, (worship leaders and songwriters) the chief theologians of the church. ("Yikes!" I hear you say). Expressing good theology in your songs is not about dotting 'i's and crossing 't's (creating churches of the "dead right") but about enabling people to worship and experience the true God more adequately. So you guys are far more important to the spiritual health of the church than you may even have realised. The trinity is the heart of Christian life and theology. Every aspect of Christian belief has the trinity at the centre, whether it be creation, humanity (in the image of the triune God), the providence of God, God's redemption of the world through Christ (incarnation, ministry, cross-resurrection-ascension), the future of the world, the mission of the church, prayer, worship, the Kingdom of God and so on. The Father always works in his creation through his Son and in his Spirit and we approach the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.
The trinity is the hub of the wheel called "Christianity", in which all its spokes connect. It is like the grammar of a language. Every time you open your mouth to speak, that hidden grammar comes to expression. If you neglect that grammar you end up speaking gibberish. In the same way, the trinity is the grammar of Christian worship, life and theology.
Every time we speak of God or to God it should come to expression. When we speak of the cross we speak of Jesus offering himself to the Father through the Spirit (Heb 9:14) or of the Father who sent his Son (John 3:16) empowered by the Spirit. Creation is the work of our Father wrought through the Son (John 1:1-3) and Spirit (Gen 1:2). The resurrection of the Son was not his own work, but that of his Father in the power of the Spirit (Rom. 8:11). Even God's love is deeply trinitarian. Everything God is, or ever does, is the work of the whole trinity.
I worry that many of our songs are offered to a Jesus who has been disconnected from the Father and the Spirit (Jesus the mystic figure who I meet with warm fuzzy feelings). Too much of this leads to an erosion of the Christian grammar of our worship and we end up doing the worshipping equivalent of speaking gibberish. We also end up with shallow worship that, like a bottle of Coke, makes us feel briefly full and content, but one burp and it's gone.
I guess what I am saying is this: all our worship should have a trinitarian grammar. Whatever you are writing songs about, somehow or other that grammar should come to expression. For example, songs about the cross should not just mention Jesus. (that's a guideline, not a law). Whether you are writing songs of response or revelation, joy or lament, transcendence or intimacy and whether those songs are high or low on theological content, (the fruitcake or the rich tea biscuit) they should empower an encounter with the trinitarian God. It may be that the songs are "in your face" trinitarian ones or it may be that you want to focus on one person in the trinity but that the others can 'just be seen', out of focus, in the background. Either way the grammar is there.
That said, wouldn't it be great if we had some more songs about the Father? Christian worship in the New Testament was directed to the Father through the Son (as well as to the Son) and I do worry that the Father has been eclipsed by Jesus in some modern songs. Ironically this is not honouring to Jesus himself who longs to lead us with him to the Father - his Father and our Father. So Father songs (with the Son and Spirit perhaps out of focus looking over his shoulder) would be lovely.