May God Bless You…

Mike, over at Waving or Drowning, posts a wonderful Franciscan Benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort

At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships

So that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger

At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,

So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears

To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war,

So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and

To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness

To believe that you can make a difference in the world.

So that you can do what others claim cannot be done

To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

Justice in the Burbs

I’m currently listening to an Emergent Village podcast featuring Will and Lisa Samson, authors of a forthcoming book, Justice in the Burbs. This is an issue I’ve been wrestling with and I’m looking forward to reading this book! Unfortunately, the release date is August 2007.

Leadership is…

Len has come up with a cool working definition of Leadership.

“Leadership is the communal process of discerning

the surprising newness of God for His people

and then forming the vehicle,

cultivating the imagination,

and selecting the practices

to take them from where they are into God’s good future.”

I like where he’s going with this definition because it emphasizes the process and community rather than a specific personality. I also like the way his definition focuses on a more organic development rather than an organizational approach. It strikes a much-needed balance between the leaders’ responsibilities in the overall life of the community and the community members’ responsibilities to actually follow Christ. In other words, if I understand the definition correctly, the leaders are facilitating from within the community’s discovery of life in Christ and enabling the whole community to embrace and live it both corporately and personally.

It’s a great definition and worth pondering and unpacking.

Effectiveness of Sermons

Having spent too many hours the last few weeks preparing a mediocre sermon for this past Sunday, I really resonated with some of Jeff Gauss’ thoughts in his post, “The Effectiveness of Sermons.” (I came across his post by way of Jan Bros’ blog.)

While I like to engage in the task of “prteaching,” a term coined by John Frye, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the role for preaching and teaching in the life of the local faith-community has become bloated. Way too many hours (and then in the case of salaried pastors, way too much money) is often spent on preparing and delivering a lecture/sermon that most people won’t remember or apply. From a straight cost-benefit analysis, the over-emphasis on preaching and teaching is a poor use of resources in the pursuit of spiritual formation.

Now that doesn’t mean we must eliminate preaching and teaching altogether. There must be a balance in our expression of worship or liturgy. And part of that balance is hearing God’s word read and taught. (And when I mean read and taught, I also mean not in the disconnected self-help style of many sermons.) But it must also be balanced with worshipful responses to the Word, with corporate prayers, with communion, with art, with service and with dialogue.

I think the role of preaching and teaching should be twofold: 1) re-imagining God’s people with the biblical vision of entering and living in God’s kingdom and 2) encouraging and equipping God’s people in the task of becoming people who actually do enter and live in God’s kingdom. Yet again (and I don’t think I can say this too much) the role of preaching and teaching must be part of a well-thought and prepared liturgy. Imagination for kingdom life must have response through worship and prayer as well as the actual entering and living the kingdom reality through communion and service.

Also, I think the sermons that are necessary for a balanced liturgy should both flow from the pastor’s own spiritual formation, yet be bigger than the pastor’s spiritual formation. First, sermons should primarily be the expression of the pastor’s apprenticeship to Christ, not the result of his or her occupational responsibility of sermon preparation. They should reflect who the pastor is becoming in his or her journey with Christ through the course of study, Scripture reading, prayers, silence, solitude, etc.

Second, sermons should be guided by something larger than the pastor’s personal study. This is why I’m so attracted to the Lectionary and Church calendar. They are NOT the lazy pastor’s way of finding weekly sermon texts. Quite the opposite. Each week’s texts discipline the pastor to remain immersed in and then offer the faith-community something larger than the latest book or the pastor’s favorite Bible passages.

Third, the sermons must come from other sources than just the pastor(s). Perhaps the pastor’s greatest role in regards to sermons is not preparing and delivering them, but rather facilitating them in the context of a balanced liturgy. That might mean finding many others in the congregation who can offer a sermon or thoughts. It might mean gathering a group of ten or twelve people who pursue spiritual formation together with the pastor and from that activity, study, craft and deliver sermons as a team. It might mean finding others who can facilitate discussion around the texts and the sermon. It might mean finding others who can provide an artistic expression for the texts and sermons. (I like the examples from the Church in Bethesda, which blend Scripture, music and video.) It might mean reorganizing the role of the musical worship from being a 20- or 30-minute indulgence of personal intimacy and expression into a corporate response to the Scriptures and sermons. It might mean rethinking and reimagining communion as a corporate experience of God’s New Creation.

Whatever practices a local church embraces, it will require relinquishing the sacred notions that 1) the pastor is God’s primary spokesperson, 2) the sermon is the centerpiece of weekly worship and spiritual formation, and 3) the sermon must entertain in order to hold the congregation’s attention.

Baptisms

Next week, the Live Oak Vineyard is having a baptism service. And all four of my kids want to be baptized! And I get to baptize them! I am so stoked. I’ve been waiting for this moment and I’m thrilled that I not only get to experience it, but that they want me to baptize them. And Pastors Steve and Floyd will let me do the honors.

A Touching Moment

I was asked to speak this past Sunday at the Live Oak Vineyard. (The Live Oak Vineyard is the merger of the Arcadia Vineyard and the Monrovia Vineyard, which my family and I have been attending for about a year. Although our family is deeply committed to our small faith-community, attending the Vineyard has provided much-needed opportunities for my children to be involved in youth ministry.)

Michael and I were sitting together during the musical worship portion of the service. I was praying, and quite honestly, fretting over my talk because I knew I wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be. Michael, reached over, and with tears, began praying for me. It was a moving and articulate prayer. Then he got up, went to one of the communion stations and brought over elements for he and I to share together.

Frankly, the sermon was mediocre. But that moment with my son was very powerful. He was my intercessor and cheerleader yesterday. And it made me proud!

“The Church You Know”

I came across this site (thechurchyouknow.com) via Darryl at Dying Church. It is clever and witty. They have produced seven videos based off of NBC’s “The More You Know” campaign of public service announcements. The video, “Attendance,” almost made me choke, I laughed so hard.

Update: I just watched the video, “Worship.” It’s about as hilarious as “Attendance.” I especially like their write-up that accompanies the worship video:

WORSHIP

Don’t get us wrong – we love musical worship, and songs have a rich heritage and important role in worship. But when songs become synonymous with worship, the latter gets confined to nicely-transitioned 20 minute packages a few times a week. Sometimes, these packages are even off-key, or incredibly painful to listen to and participate in.

If worship is a condition of the heart and an attitude towards God, then worship can take place in so many more places and ways. It might be spending time with your children, or it might be going for a run. It might even be a group of friends sitting around enjoying conversation and a few beers and laughing when someone farts. Okay, the farting part might not be worship. But not every gathering has to have a guitar and singing to include true, heartfelt worship.

Authentic fellowship, both with one another and Christ, is always worship – and doesn’t need amplification for the world to hear.

That last line is awesome!

Free Hugs

I came across this YouTube video through Garr Reynold’s blog, Presentation Zen. It’s a great concept and tells a wonderful story through image and music. It was what I needed tonight to make me smile.

Also, the Miniature Earth presentation mentioned in Garr’s blog is great as well.

Bravery

Michael is writing a book report for To Kill A Mockingbird, one of my all-time favorite books. There’s a great quote in the book describing bravery as “when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

I like that quote. Bravery isn’t something that happens in the moment. It’s calculated character. It’s moral fiber that evaluates a situation and is actually able to do what is right even when it seems to be the most foolish thing in the world. Atticus Finch exemplified this character throughout the book, even in the face of the darkest evil and the worst outcomes. And I hope when all is said and done, I will have too.

Jason Clark and What’s Right/Wrong with the Emerging Church

Jason Clark has reposted a great post outlining the things he loves and hates about the emerging church. It’s a great list and all I wanted to say was “Yeah! Me too!” I loved the post two years ago and I love it now.

Thoughts on Worship

I’m swamped and have not had time to do any writing. It sucks, because I like to read, reflect and write. But I haven’t been able to massage my life enough to squeeze out time to really blog like I want. But I’m glad others like Len are still stoking the fires. I’ve ripped his entire post to put here because it addresses something I’ve been thinking about on and off lately.

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From an interview with Mike Frost on Smulospace.. can you relate?

Q: When I was a student, and later worked with you at the Centre for Evangelism and Global Mission at Morling College, I couldn’t help but noticing every now and then that you didn’t seem overly enthusiastic with corporate singing. You’ve also written about your distaste for “Jesus is my boyfriend” worship songs. Can Christian music be redeemed through contextual forms of music and meaningful lyrics?

A: I really hope so! But I’m not a musician, so I write about this stuff as a disempowered critic. I have no ability to change it myself because I can’t write music or play an instrument. But I’m getting tired of singing love songs to Jesus-my-boyfriend. And frankly I feel silly when I have to sing songs so sentimental and cloying they could have been written for a 1990s boy band. As much as I’m loath to admit it these days, I’m not ‘in love with Jesus’ (for some people this might sound like blasphemy).

But let’s be honest, I love my three daughters more deeply than I could ever imagine loving anyone, but I have never fallen in love with them. My love for them transcends the exciting, heady, temporary feelings of romantic love. Likewise with Jesus. I love him and am completely in his debt. But I’m not head over heals in romantic love with him. So it’s not singing that I don’t like. It’s the kind of singing that I’m expected to engage in. As much as this romanticising of worship bothers me, even more disturbing is the recent trend of singing worship songs in which I have to pledge my unfaltering devotion and service to him. You know, the ‘Jesus, I will never let you go…’ type song. In these songs I have to declare that I will follow him to the ends of the earth and that I will praise him all my days. In one sense, there’s nothing wrong with making such promises to God. The Psalmist does so on occasion. But frankly, I’m so much more comfortable with singing about the fact that Jesus has promised that he will never let me go. My promises seem hollow and unreliable. It’s God’s promises to me in Christ that are solid, reliable and unfaltering.

I sorely wish Christian musicians would write songs that help to sustain us as exiles, as foreigners in a forbidding country. We need songs that strengthen our resolve and inspire us to act. Not silly loves songs to Jesus.



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I used to love intimate worship. I enjoyed singing songs of love and devotion to Jesus. And I still do on occasion. I like expressing my loyalty to Jesus through that medium.

But I think I’m growing up (or at least I would like to think so). I don’t simply want Jesus to be my “boyfriend.” I want him to be my Teacher, my Master, my Father, my Savior, my Lord, my Model, my Coach, my Shepherd and so much more. And most of the time I’m not going to feel the emotions of “romance” (for lack of a better word). Nor should I. I know Jesus is intimately present with me. But there’s so much more to our friendship than intimacy. Intimacy is at the core, but it’s not everything.

Jesus is about transforming this world, quite frankly, with or without me. Surely he loves me and calls me. But he calls me to God’s purpose for the world (Romans 8:28). There’s work to be done. And I need to train in order to be able to do that work cooperatively with Jesus. And I need to actually do the work that needs to be done. And like any work, it’s a combination of joy, love and loyalty with pain, struggle and failure.

Paul brings this out in Romans 8. There are two aspects of those who love God — the Spirit brings the intimate Abba-cry and the Spirit conforms us to Christ through labor pains.

I want my worship to reflect that. I want my musical worship to reflect all facets of my journey with Christ, which is why I’m finding more and more “worship songs” in “secular” music. There’s a gritty honesty in a lot of that music that seems missing in the mainstream worship music. Plus, I want my musical worship not to sacrifice sound theology for the sake of poetic expression or a simple rhyme. I’ve been cringing lately at a lot of the songs I used to sing as well as the newer stuff that comes out. I’m not sure we realize how singing a catchy, yet theologically incorrect chorus can distort our imagination and thinking. And I enjoy greater musical diversity in my musical worship. (Is it me or do all the “worship bands” sound the same?)

Also, I want my worship to expand far beyond music. It needs to incorporate silence and inarticulate prayer and spiritual disciplines and art and communion and icons and symbols and probably other elements than I’m unaware of right now.

Two significant elements of worship that I have found particularly relevant regardless of mood or circumstance are the Jesus prayer — “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” — and the Lord’s Prayer. I love to pray them silently through my day. I can’t even begin to explain how beautiful they are as continuous expressions of worship through the day.