David Zimmer: Welcome to the Sound Plus Doctrine podcast. My name is David Zimmer.
Bob Kauflin: My name is Bob Kauflin.
Devon Kauflin: And my name is Devon Kauflin. It’s great to be here.
BK: Oh my gosh, you didn’t let us introduce you. That’s alright.
DZ: It’s so good that you jumped in. Oh we love when Devon is here and he contributes so much to our podcast.
BK: He does.
DZ: And it’s great to have you.
DK: Great to be here.
DZ: It’s also great to have you listening or watching wherever you are. Thank you for listening to this podcast. I hope it serves you. My question for this week is, why do we have the WorshipGod Conference?
BK: Wow, that’s a great question. Because we… Well.
DZ: Do. [laughter]
BK: We do yeah. It’s there, okay? Worship conferences are like a cool thing, and we just wanna be in on that.
DK: How long have you been doing the WorshipGod Conference?
BK: Since 2004, with that name, was started doing conferences, Sovereign Grace started doing conferences back in I think ’99. I mean there was one in ’94, but we don’t count that one.
DK: I’m sure it was great.
BK: ’99 so yeah, 22 years. 23 years. But yeah, so with this name 2004…
DK: And so what was the genesis of that why did you do it then?
BK: Yeah, we were doing… Well we sensed that you know early 2000, we just sensed a need, knew there was a need for theological training for those who were leading music in their churches. There was a lot of stuff happening. I mean the last 30 years, so much has happened in the area of music in the church, and a lot of it has been pragmatic, a lot of it has been experiential, not as much has been theologically driven.
DK: And would you say then a lot of what would have happened would have been more industry-driven?
BK: Well, that was another aspect. Yes, yeah, so what’s coming out of Nashville, what’s coming out of LA, primarily Nashville was driving what churches were choosing to do. So whether that be the production values or whether that be the kinds of songs we’re singing, it’s like… Those were the things, the way we look, the things we say, those things were being driven more often than not by an industry, not by going to Scripture and saying, What has God told us about what we should do? So even the name WorshipGod, one word, came about because there were a lot of Worship conferences going on in the ’90s, early 2000s and worship is one of those words that when we use it, we think we all understand what it means, but you can worship anything. And there’s a whole genre of music that’s called worship music, every kind of music is worship music, just worshiping different things. So I wanted to make it clear that when we use the word worship for this conference, it has a direct object, and that direct object is God, so it’s the WorshipGod Conference, because that’s what we’re here to learn about, and it’s for, not just musicians, it’s really for anyone who leads and plans and participates in the corporate gathering of the church.
BK: That’s the aim. And we sought to focus on specifically three areas, and that would be Theology, which I just talked about. The Heart, because God’s not only concerned with what we do, he’s concerned about who does it, not just what we do but who we are, and then the Skills… So leadership skills, musical skills, communication skills, all those kinda skills. So those are the three emphasis we have. And we started in 2004, 2006, saw a bump in the attendance because that year I started leading, playing the piano, leading the music, at the Together for the Gospel conference. So we had a lot of people come as a result of that conference, and then in 2009, we had John Piper come join us, and that helped attendance as well. So we’ve been doing it pretty much every other year for all that time, we’ve done some internationally, a couple in the UK. And I think that’s the only international… We’ve done some regionally, so you can say a couple international, but we’ve done about 20 of them.
DK: And so do we keep doing them just because, yeah this is what we do.
BK: That’s a great question which I’ve asked myself many times.
DK: Every two years.
BK: Yeah. Well we cancelled 20… We were supposed to do one in 2021, but COVID just… We just decide, we can’t do it. We’re doing one this year, 2022, calling it “Unchanging”. And the question is, yes, should we keep doing this? And…
DK: What would be some reasons why we would stop doing it? Why does that question confront you every couple of years?
BK: Yeah. Conferences are a mixed bag. Aren’t they? They’re exciting. But conferences can produce the wrong results, bad results like, oh this is what Christianity is about, or a bunch of different kinds of influences who aren’t necessarily theologically driven or maybe just people you don’t know as well, or celebrity culture, all those things can be mixed into the good things that conferences bring, which is the opportunity to interact with people who are different from you, the opportunity to see the great things that God is doing throughout the body of Christ, to learn from people that you wouldn’t normally be exposed to. To meet people… A part of the joys of a conference is meeting the people who are there. So definitely a lot of benefits to a conference, but it takes a lot to put a conference on and an increasingly technological age where people just can watch a YouTube video, let’s do a podcast… Watch a podcast. [chuckle]
DZ: Live stream.
BK: Yes, do we really need to get together to do this? So what it always comes down to is, I think there’s a particular kind of person that we are aiming this conference at, that we don’t see a lot of conferences like this. Those would be people who want what they do on Sundays to be biblically driven, they care about doctrine, they care about theology, they care about basing what they do, making decisions based not just on culture, even though they might be influenced in some ways by culture, but really digging into Scripture and saying, what are we supposed to be doing? What is God saying to us? And we can never assume that because we’ve been doing something for a few years, that God doesn’t wanna change it, or that every time we gather, God doesn’t want to convert us in some ways, not salvifically, not in terms of salvation, that he doesn’t want to change our minds in some way about who he is, about who we are, about how we’re doing what we’re doing. So that kind of person, person who cares about less about celebrity and more about the hearts of the people who are doing this.
BK: We really believe in the local church, because we believe God instituted the local church, that’s where the main things are happening. We don’t think the conference is the main thing. If the conference isn’t serving the local church and an expression of that, even an out-growth of that, it just can create these false expectations in people’s minds, like I was saying earlier, oh, that’s what it’s supposed to be like and…
DK: I think that’s one of those, the challenging things about a conference and leading a conference, is what makes a great conference, doesn’t necessarily make what makes a great…
BK: A great Sunday meeting.
DK: Time of corporate worship.
BK: Yes.
DK: As the church gathers, and often, I think we can have that category confusion, and so we go to a conference and we think, wow, that was such an impactful experience I just had or such an edifying experience, I was so encouraged. All these things, and then you start asking, well, why was that? When it’s because the music was so great and the singing was so passionate and the preaching was so good, whatever it is, you can answer it any number of ways, the production was just on point, you can go all through all these things and then you think, well, that’s what we need to do on Sunday. And so I think being aware of that with the WorshipGod Conference, in a sense, we try to put on the anti-conference conference.
BK: Yes, that’s a great description.
DK: Where we are purposefully not all about production, we actually are, and we wanna do things well, but we’re minimalistic when it comes to the performance or the production of what we’re doing, because we want to give people categories, biblical, theological, practical categories that they can then implement in their local church and utilize in their local church to serve those people, ’cause that’s what God’s at work building, that’s how he’s at work in the world. Jesus says, I will build my church, not, I will build lots of conferences. He’s gonna build his church and the gates of hell won’t prevail against it.
BK: Yeah, so one of the things we try to do in the conference is to make it as normal and low-key as possible. So for instance, we open up the rehearsals, I remember… Well, I’ve been in a number of contexts where… We did this for years in Sovereign Grace, where you keep the doors shut while the band rehearsals.
DZ: It’s so loosened.
DK: ‘Cause it’s secret.
BK: Yeah, nobody can…
DK: What we’re doing is secret.
BK: See the secret sauce that’s going in, what are people doing? And I’m thinking…
DK: Or we don’t wanna give away the secrets. I mean we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag.
BK: Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely, we wanna hide them.
DK: We want that… Whenever we hit that bridge and we jump that octave, we want it to be a surprise for everyone.
BK: Or we don’t wanna see them, we don’t want people to see our, how badly we do the rehearsal, making mistakes or whatever, we just, we want them to see us like a very best. And I’m saying, no, we wanna see… We want people to see what we do ’cause you do it every Sunday in your local church, well, this is what we do.
DK: Right. Normal people doing normal things.
BK: Yes.
DK: Serving an extraordinary God.
BK: So I’ve had people come up to me saying, oh, it was so great watching you guys rehearse.
DK: And all the mistakes you made and how bad you were and…
[laughter]
BK: Yes, I mean there are things they learn and stuff, but that’s a part of it. Someone emailed me one time and said, I noticed that in the WorshipGod Conference, you guys keep the lights up when you sing, when we’re doing… Is that… It seems to be intentional. [chuckle] Is that intentional? Or do you just like, or do your lights not work? [chuckle] No, it’s very intentional.
DK: We couldn’t figure how to turn them off.
BK: Yeah, we didn’t…
DK: We wanted to turn them off, but we couldn’t figure it out, we couldn’t find the switch.
BK: The panel was so complicated. No, yes, it’s intentional because we’re not trying to impress you with some mood or some atmosphere, it’s we’re ordinary people, and you’ve come here… Now, let me say, you’ve come here to see ordinary people. Now, let me say, God can use, what you were describing earlier Devin, God can use high production conferences with incredible video graphics, he can use those things, with really popular well-known speakers, he can use those things, he does use those things to magnify the glory of Christ, to change people’s hearts, to transform people’s lives, and he does use them, but what God uses and what we should aim for are not always the same things. And so, when we get to the local church, we need to be asking, what should we be aiming for? What should we be going after? And so, with the WorshipGod Conference, we’re trying to give some semblance of that, we’re trying to… Trying to encourage that and say, hey, we’re ordinary people like you are, and these are ordinary things.
BK: Now that doesn’t mean we don’t do things and try to do things in a skillful way, that there isn’t some level of production to what we do, we do rehearse before we do the conference, but it’s not like we’re preparing for this conference for days and days and days on end, in terms of rehearsals. We have a 45-minute rehearsal and just like you might, and then we lead the congregation in singing, the people who are there in singing.
DK: Why don’t we just do books or video teachings, or I mean we produce albums. Like, why isn’t that enough? Why do a conference, an event that we invite people to? What’s the difference there?
BK: Yes, that’s a great question. People would know this, but we had a retreat earlier last year, 2021, where we got away for a couple of days and just talked about this. And we were asking that question, why have people come, why not just…
DK: And it’s a lot of… It’s a lot of time and resources for us even to do.
BK: It is. It is. We try to keep the cost down ’cause we know it’s a lot of sacrifice for people to come. But we came up with this, we wanna give people the opportunity to see and participate in the ways our Biblical values shape our gatherings. So there is an element of actually participating in, say, a meeting that is maybe less formal than your meeting might be, a meeting that is more joyful than your meeting might be, a meeting that’s more Biblically driven than your meeting might be, just… Maybe a meeting that’s more physically expressive than your meeting might be. Just… I’ve heard from…
DK: Or more structured than your meeting might be.
BK: Or more structured, right. Heard all those comments from people, it’s like, “Oh wow, to be there and to experience that, it was so helpful.” So it is that element of participation, because we have this podcast, we have books, we have different teachings, trainings from past conferences, but there is something about gathering together. And we’ve experimented with different lengths, so we’ve done a Life Together conference, which was like a Thursday through Saturday I think, and we’ve done Friday nights Saturday things. But after having done this for 17 years or something, I think there’s a real value in doing it from Wednesday night to Saturday noon, to give people that opportunity to just kind of sink into it, both with each other if you come with a team, and then with the people who are there and to let… To take that much time away to realize, our growing in our knowledge of God, our growing in biblical understanding is more than just like a shot in the arm.
BK: I mean, I know big conferences that are like Friday, Saturday, and it can be really amazing, but there is something that’s just saying, “You know what, we’re gonna take this time away, and we’re gonna spend our time with our team, and we’re gonna spend our time with the people here.” It’s not a massive conference, I think the biggest we ever got to was like 1600 conference, and I think a couple of years ago it was 700 people, but it’s an opportunity to get to know people, get to know the people who are speaking, get to know the members of your team better and just talk through some of these things.
DK: One thing I have loved about the conferences we’ve done is the camaraderie and the community that’s formed as you gather like-minded people together. And so it’s a diverse group of people that come to WorshipGod Conference, but generally, what they’re drawn to is, “We want theologically rich truth to mark our gatherings.” I mean that’s generally…
BK: Yes, and not just our songs, but the whole… And there are lots.
DK: Yes. And so, we seek to be intentional about not just highlighting or equipping people through the ways. We do that, but also in bringing other people, other like-minded people into that. And so, there are other ministries or other churches, and over the years, we’ve had several different people involved that are seeking to do the same things that we’re doing. And it’s not like we’ve got this figured out on the market corner, it’s, no, we are a part of this much bigger thing that God is doing as he builds his church through his word by the Spirit.
BK: Yeah. We were talking earlier about this and drew the analogy of a cafeteria line or buffet line versus a full course meal. So I think of Keith and Kristyn’s conference, SING!…
DK: It’s a great conference.
BK: It’s a great conference. We’ve been there every year, except this year, past year I had COVID. [chuckle] But it’s more like…
DK: I love Keith and his team’s vision for what they’re doing…
BK: Oh, Keith’s a good friend, yeah.
DK: And how they are seeking to serve the church and imparts theologically rich songs to the church that people can sing and want to sing and should sing.
BK: Yes. I would say, God is using the Gettys to influence congregational singing in a way that he has few people certainly in my lifetime, maybe in the last 100 years, it’s just Keith’s vision, his hard work, his desire to build relationally, unsurpassed. But that conference is more like a buffet where you have… There are theological guard rails, but there is a ton of different kinds of people, and it’s just like, “Hey, this… ” Here, and here, and here, and here. And so that’s, I thank God for what that conference does. WorshipGod Conference is not that. [chuckle] It’s a full course meal in that we’re saying, “This is your first course, this is your second course, this is your third course, this is your… ” I mean, there’s some variety, sure, there’s some… The different things you can choose from, but it’s much more limited. We’re saying, we believe that these things are valuable and important to musicians, to leaders, to pastors.
BK: We always encourage pastors to come, they’re the ones who are most responsible for what’s going on in their church, songwriters, tech people, or even just someone in the church who wants to understand better, “Why are we gathering again, why are we saying all these kinds of things?” So we’re saying we have found these things to be really relevant, really true, really helpful and we think they will be helpful for you as well.
DZ: Yeah. I was just gonna say, I think my exposure to the WorshipGod Conference back when Enfield came out to play at one of them you had, I just was marked, it was so different than the conference that I was a part of with Resolved, which…
DK: It had a lot of the same values.
DZ: Yeah, the same values. Preaching, theologically rich songs. And something I just thought was so wonderful about the WorshipGod Conference is it mirrored to me what a Sovereign Grace Church would kinda typically look like on a Sunday, in terms of how you shared and how you read scripture, and then how you did the songs and then how they’re preaching, and then how you followed up the preaching with a song and a benediction, and now being a part of a Sovereign Grace Church, I go, “Oh yeah, we’re basically rehearsing what we do on Sundays with more people there.” [chuckle] Extending that to people that wanna learn and grow and figure out, “What do I do in my gatherings and why does my gathering look different than this one?” And so, just coming from an outside perspective of saying, “Oh, this mirrors the church to me”, was refreshing to me.
BK: Oh, that’s great. And we want, from the beginning our aim has been to magnify God’s glory in Jesus Christ. So I have received emails from people saying, “Going to that conference has just changed the way I think about what I do.” And part of it’s the songs people sing. But another part of it is just recognizing that, “Wow, this really is about the glory of Christ.” And musicians, leaders can struggle with the glory idol. I want people to think I’m the best, I wanna… And sometimes you go to conferences, thinking, how can I become the best. So people will say, “Wow, they’re the best.” And at our conference, what we wanna say is, “Jesus is the best. And that’s why we do what we do.” That the last conference was The Glorious Christ, Music is Great. Jesus is Greater., which was really got to the heart of why we do this. It’s like, “Yes, we wanna serve you musically. Yes, we want to serve you with teaching, good teaching, and yes, we wanna help you with skills and all those things. But you know what, most of all, we will help you glorify Jesus Christ. In what you do.” Not only in your songs, not in your meetings, but in your life. And so it does come through that lens of how we can magnify God’s glory in Christ. So the gospel is, we want that to permeate the time.
BK: So that’s one of the reasons… One of the things we do at every conference is, just give away a lot of stuff. At the start of every meeting, we usually, before the meeting is supposed to start we’re there giving away stuff, books, mostly books…
DK: Gear. Lots of gear.
BK: Oh gear, sorry, gear. That’s right. I knew there was something else we give. You can tell I’m a real gear head.
[laughter]
BK: Yeah, which people generously have donated, or sometimes we just buy and say, “We want you to be blessed.” Headphones, guitars, keyboards, software, pedals, yeah, all that kind of stuff. Because that’s…
DK: It’s an expression of the…
BK: Expression of the Gospel.
DK: Generosity of God.
BK: Second Corinthians where he became poor so that we might become rich. Christ gave up… He left his throne in glory took on our flesh so that we might then turn around and be generous with those around us I’m looking for the verse that says, exactly that. “So that we through his poverty might become rich.” I should probably look for it anyway. Anyway, that’s horrible.
DK: I do wanna say, though, that while the context of this conference is music, and the church and the gathering of the church in corporate worship, it is really and you mentioned this, but it’s really a theology conference, in the sense that we want to behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
DZ: Yeah.
BK: Yes.
DK: And so we’re always explicit about that. And so you did you mentioned, but I will say it again, it’s for anyone who wants to see more of God. And so that’s always what we seek to do. And so the sermons are not… The times of preaching. It’s not like, we’re just talking about “Oh yeah, this is how you sing better. This is how you can play the guitar.
BK: Yeah. Good point.
DK: It’s opening God’s Word together, and beholding God.
BK: Yes, it’s so many, the conferences that I have been to, not SING!, have been an example of people who are well-meaning and they’re preaching from the Bible, but you don’t get the impression like they are preaching what’s there in the Bible, it’s more like, “Hey, this seems to fit what we do.” I heard someone preach from Revelation one time about the four living creatures and had one hand the face of a lion, and one this face and this… And that’s like us as we’re in front of our worship teams looking back this way as one creature and looking this way. I said, “I’m sorry, I read that a lot, and I’ve never seen that there.” And I’m pretty sure it’s not there. So we want musicians, and everybody there to learn to love God through His Word. And I wanna read that scripture speaking of His Word, Second Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich. God is able to make all grace abound to you. So then all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” That’s what we wanna communicate when we’re together. We have been given so much.
BK: So when people come, tired, depressed, discouraged we want them to leave refreshed, renewed. And again, I’ve gotten a number of emails from people saying, “I was about to leave the ministry. I was about to… I just came so discouraged,” and just by looking at who God is in Jesus Christ, and experiencing his love in a fresh way, being with God’s people, they would say, “You know what, this is worth doing what I’m doing.” And that’s just very fulfilling. It’s one of the reasons we do the conference.
DZ: Off the top of your head, I know I’m just bringing this on you, but can you give a couple of titles that have been associated with the WorshipGod Conference? Music is great, Jesus is greater was one of the…
BK: Yep.
DZ: Conference themes we had.
BK: I have them right here.
DZ: What are some of them?
BK: We’ve done Human and Holy, Healthy Tensions of Gathered Worship, Triune, that goes back in 2015, I think, Called to be Faithful, which I loved, The Gathering, that was 2011, we recorded an album there, called The Gathering, oddly enough. From Generation to Generation, that’s when John Piper came just to highlight. Rediscovering the Psalms, that was 2008. This is… So we’re doing one this year, Unchanging. We have a two-volume recording coming out based on the Psalms called Unchanging God. So we’ll be looking at some of those themes again this year. And then 2006 was the Glory of His Presence, which was a lot of fun. And then 2004, I think it was just WorshipGod or just The Glory of God.
DK: And can you talk a little bit about the burden behind this year as far as why do a conference around Unchanging?
BK: Well, because we just did the album Unchanging God. So why not?
DK: How convenient!
BK: How convenient.
[laughter]
BK: I think it should be evident to everyone that in the… In light of the last few years we’ve experienced, where it seems like the foundations have been shaken, what can the righteous do? It seems like everything has been shifting so much, relationships, questions of race, politics, medicine, science, just everything’s like, “Whoa, where are we?” You know what, the big things haven’t changed. And the biggest thing of all, God Himself, hasn’t changed. He is our rock, He is our refuge, we can stand on Him, we can trust in Him, we should be looking to Him, rather than trying to find our identity and our worth and our significance and our… The proof of our rightness in all these other areas, which are worthy of consideration and conversation. But they’re not what makes us who we are. The Gospel of Jesus Christ makes us who we are. Jesus Christ makes us who we are. And He is the same yesterday, today and forever. So we thought, what a great time to just be reminded again of the firm foundation we have in God Himself.
DZ: Amen. Yeah. Great, great discussion about why we have the WorshipGod Conference and what it is. And I hope that that is helpful to you, as you think through the conferences that you wanna bring your teams to and learn from, and we’re just happy to be a resource to serve.
BK: And if you wanna find out about it… Can I say this?
DK: Can you say it? It looks like you’ve already started.
BK: I don’t know. I’ve already started oh, my gosh. Yeah, worshipgodconference.com that’s where we’ll have all the information on it.
DK: And we have all of the information from…
BK: From previous conferences. Yeah. July 20…
DK: Which is not the same as seeing and participating in the conference.
BK: No, it’s not. No, it’s not. You can download those messages but it’s not same as coming. So July 27-30 this year, in Louisville, Kentucky, and we would love to see you there.
DZ: Absolutely. Thanks for being with us.
