Matt Chandler - Centering Worship

Well, if you’ve been wondering what seal, trumpet, or bowl we just lived through, um, no, no, that wasn’t—dang it! I even had friends who said, «Don’t say that; that joke’s not going to work,» and I was like, «No, it is going to work,» and then I’m going to adjust my glasses so you know that I was right. But now I’m not going to adjust my glasses because that fell flat. Um, about a year after— or really a year before—my conversion, the young man who was trying to introduce me to Jesus brought me to a Wednesday night youth gathering called JAM, which stood for Jesus and Me. Um, no, no, it was super creative in the '90s. And I showed up at JAM at the Family Life Center of First Baptist Church of Texas City, Texas, and when I walked in, there were a lot of kids there. They started the night with a song called «I’ve Got Joy"—maybe you know it. «I’ve got joy down in my heart, deep, deep down in my heart.» Then the guy who was leading worship to tracks yelled out, «Spell it!» and the entire room went, «J-O-Y down in my heart, deep, deep down in my heart.» It was easy to mock at the time, right? Certainly, it was something that I hadn’t experienced. The closest I had come to anything like that would have been the skating rink when «YMCA» came on. So, it really—you know that you might not have known «deep, deep down in my heart,» but you knew that one. You knew about that skating rink!

After that, they came up and played a silly game, and then Jerry Hendricks—little did I know at that time that a year and a half from that moment, he would probably be the biggest mentor in my life for the next four or five years after that. At the time, he was just a kind of awkward student minister. Right? He got up and made an announcement, and then they shifted, you know, it was kind of upbeat and goofy, and then all of a sudden, things changed. Their singing became a little different. It didn’t take long—keep in mind this is—I was probably 16 or 17 at this point. They were singing «Our God Is an Awesome God"—for those of you old heads in here—and they were singing those kinds of songs. Before I knew it, these people that I quasi knew—Jeff, I actually knew really well—their eyes were closed, and their hands were raised, and it felt as if they weren’t even in the room with me anymore. I had never felt so much like an outsider as in those moments. They would just sing with their eyes closed and their hands raised, and like at camp earlier that year, it just got monumentally weirder. Now, on top of the singing with their eyes closed and their hands raised, someone would actually get down on their knees, someone would start to cry, and everybody was going up front. I thought, «Is God up front? Do you have to avoid that section if I don’t want to get caught up in this?» There was this place they would go that I couldn’t reach. I vividly remember thinking mainly about Jeff because it had only been 20 minutes earlier that we were talking about football or a girl, and now I was left there with the football and the girl, and he was in some other place. I started to want to go with them when that shift occurred. We stopped hitting each other with socks full of flour or whatever youth ministry fun game we just played that bordered on illegality. They would shift, and I wanted to go, but I couldn’t get there. I tried to mimic them, or maybe I closed my eyes—I wanted to go, but I couldn’t.

About a year later, by the grace of God, the Spirit opened my eyes to the beauty of Jesus, and I became a Christian. When I became a Christian, I could finally embark on this little journey with him. I could leave where we were in that dingy Family Life Center and go with them. I learned then that it’s much more than seen, and it’s certainly much more than expression; it’s like they got to go to what was ultimately most real—the realest of reals—and finally, I got to go with them.

Now, we’re going to look into Window One this week. All right? Hopefully, you’ve read Revelation 4 and 5. Just so you know, one of the reasons we created the microsite and included that little thing is that I don’t want to spend 15 minutes of a 30- to 45-minute sermon just reading four chapters to you. So we wanted to put this in your hands. I hope you have spent at least some time this week reading Revelation 4 and 5. I’m going to pull from it and join in. Remember, we’re doing a survey—join in the story with it. But hopefully, you’ve already read the passages. If you haven’t, it’s okay; you can read them afterward, but I’m going to reference the passage as you go.