Magnification seeks to see God magnified in our lives.
Where other things, people, passions or fears might previously have dominated, God becomes larger. And we want each of us to allow God to be magnified in our lives - to allow God to be our chief love among many loves. Loves that have been wrongly ordered because of sin.
This restoration of our chief love is ultimately the work of God – a purpose he promises to carry out across our lifetime. (See, eg. 2 Cor 3:18 – we “are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”)
Yet there are practices, disciplines, and thought patterns we can embrace in church life that may help achieve these ends. These practices, disciplines, and thought patterns seek to shape our minds, hearts, affections (our deepest, abiding emotions), and imaginations in a God-ward direction.
Central to this process is our worship of God – as we respond to his love for us shown in the life, atoning death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We seek to centre our focus on God, and as that focus grows, so our other loves are rightly reordered beneath and within our love for God. Magnification is the work of presenting God clearly to the congregation, drawing our attention to his true nature, and inviting the congregation to respond – in the church service and in our lives.
So, under God, magnification is about counter-formation of the mind, heart, affections, and imagination through worship of him.
Magnify was established in 2017 to encourage and equip magnification, music and worship leaders, and the pastors who lead them. By connecting pastors, music leaders and theologians together, we seek to foster and develop deep thinking, healthy team dynamics, discerning cultural awareness and whole-hearted corporate worship in churches across Australia and beyond.