Writing Challenges & Uncomfortable Questions
A friend at the local St Louis Podcaster’s Meetup group suggested I listen to a nice little podcast called “Writing Challenges“. I had no idea going into it that the podcast comes from a Brit – a delightful surprise – always nice to get a dose of the accent. (especially today, the day when I go to swear-in at the court house to become an American citizen!)
Another suggested podcast was “Uncomfortable Questions” – fascinating interview format which gives an insight into a whole variety of people’s believes / philosophy. My only complaints are (a) she pod-faded back in 2008, (b) the host has probably the third worst/most annoying voice I’ve ever listened to (coming in behind Captain Janeway of Star Trek Voyager at #1 and radio ads for Ray Vinsen’s mortgage company at #2). Sadly the sample set for the podcast gives the content a somewhat skewed and unbalanced leaning toward a particular world-view, as the host acknowledges at one point. Still, a fascinating insight into a particular segment of society and what they believe!
Should we or shouldn’t we?
In Christianity Today there was a recent article:
Barring Yahweh
The Vatican gives orders to excise the name from worship. Do Protestants agree?
Observant Jews have traditionally not used the name Yahweh, refusing to pronounce the so-called proper name of God out of respect, or to be sure they do not misuse it. Now neither will Roman Catholics, at least in their worship services.
“Protestants should be following their lead,” said Carol Bechtel, professor of Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. “It’s always left me baffled and perplexed and embarrassed that we sprinkle our hymns with that name,” she said. “Whether or not there are Jewish brothers and sisters in earshot, the most obvious reason to avoid using the proper and more personal name of God in the Old Testament is simply respect for God.”
Both Yahweh and Jehovah have been removed from the Christian Reformed Church’s Psalter Hymnal, turning “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” into “Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer.”
The article finished by saying
Protestantism has long traditions of both using and avoiding the name Yahweh, according to John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. “Some people said using Yahweh emphasized for them the transcendence of God, which you might say is precisely the goal of not saying the term.”
Seems to me that people are missing the point entirely given that we are to relate to God on a personal level:
For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15)
So in honour of missing the point, I offer one of my favourite worship songs:
| He is Yawheh © 2001 Vineyard Music Who is moving on the waters? Creator God: He is Yawheh Who is He that makes me happy? Creator God: He is Yawheh You are holy and eternal |
Challenging
I was listening to a message, Is There Not A Cost? by Ravi Zacharias where he quoted:
It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.— A.W. Tozer
and a poem
When God wants to drill a man,
And thrill a man,
And skill a man
To play the noblest part;
When He yearns with all His heart
To create so great and bold a man
That all the world shall be amazed,
Watch His methods, watch His ways!
How He ruthlessly perfects
Whom He royally elects!
How He hammers him and hurts him,
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which
Only God understands;
While his tortured heart is crying
And he lifts beseeching hands!
How He bends but never breaks
When his good He undertakes;
How He uses whom He chooses,
And with every purpose fuses him:
By every act induces him
To try his splendor out -
God knows what He’s about.— Author Unknown
Cutting edge of evangelism, huh?
I ran across this article on Christianity Today, well worth a read!
Go and Plant Churches of All Peoples
Crusades and personal witnessing are no longer the cutting edge of evangelism.Fifty years ago, if you said evangelism in a word-association game, you would probably get back Billy Graham. Crusade evangelism dominated the American church’s ideas about reaching out. When First Baptist Church members decided to share the gospel with their neighbors, they looked to see which evangelist could come to town.
Crusades haven’t disappeared, and churches still teach personal witness. But today, church planting is the default mode for evangelism. Go to any evangelical denomination, ask them what they are doing to grow, and they will refer you to the church-planting office.
They don’t mention Vineyard, but, its a good piece nonetheless!
Our move to the USA coincided with us moving from a large, well established (English) Baptist church to be part of a church plant; a church that seats 600 down to 35 people in a school hall. It was a shock to the system! What kept us going was the vitality of church life – if you didn’t all pitch in and do your part then church wasn’t going to happen. Back in our old church you’d be waiting a decade before opportunities would arise.
I am sure there’s a link between involvement and a sense of belonging to the community. If there’s a sense of belonging, then the opportunity arises to minister the gospel and process the effects in community. People don’t just change their lives unless they have a safety net under them, so an authentic community is almost a pre-requisite for real life change. Church planting offers that chance to be deeply connected. So I react with a hint of “Duh! Of course church planting is the cutting edge, most effective way to reach our communities!”
Acceptable worship
A recent article on Kingdom Rain caught my attention. Part way through it the author (Brent Helming) said:
I think that a case is easily made that God’s gift of music, has an incredible and powerful ability to touch us at the deepest level of our being. Music stirs the heart and emotions like nothing else. It also embodies the ability to motivate the behavior of those listening. This is not by accident. God intended for music to have the ability to touch us deeply. However, in our brokenness and humanness, we can easily misplace the deep affections and emotions that music (even worship music) stirs in us. When this occurs during worship, we often end up focused on objects other than God; namely the worship leader, the worship band, and/or the engaging melodies of our favorite songs. It is this type of misdirected attention that nurtures a “consumeristic worship” mindset by creating the impression that the time of worship is simply an enjoyable music event (the “show”) instead of a life giving interaction with Creator God.Can you see the awesome responsibility that God has given to those of us who create, play and lead others with music? We have an incredibly powerful tool at our disposal. One that is capable of deeply affecting those who hear it. Worship Leader/Songwriter David Ruis, has termed this responsibility the “Sacred Trust” of leading worship. We as worship leaders and musicians have been entrusted with the precious gift of music and it is our commission to wield this gift responsibly.
and for those who are interested, he’s not just some random guy-on-the-streeet, his bio makes it clear that he knows something about what he’s saying:
Brent Helming has been involved in Pastoral and Worship Ministry for over 16 years. He has traveled both nationally and internationally leading worship and teaching at Churches and conferences. He has written numerous worship songs such as “Your Beloved”, Jesus Lead On” and “God of All Splendor”, along with a helpful interactive work book titled “Hot Tips for Worship Leaders”. Brent is currently developing a Coaching and Consulting Ministry for Worship Leaders and lives with his son, Brian, in Escondido, CA.
It struck me in this piece of writing what it is about certain worship activities that doesnt sit well internally with me.
I was talking with a friend who described artists who paint during a worship service. They are inspired by the music, about the presence of God that they are feeling, and they paint as a way to express this. There are other churches where people wave flags and banners as a form of worship. Neither activity sits well with me and I think I have understood why.
Helming’s article talked about a “misdirected attention“, saying “in our brokenness and humanness, we can easily misplace the deep affections and emotions that music (even worship music) stirs in us. When this occurs during worship, we often end up focused on objects other than God”
It seems to me that flow of emotions that the music stirred up is being diverted from flowing along it’s correct channel (to God) every day. I know that on a bad day I’ll listen to a stirring piece of music and squander the “lift” it brings, simply reveling in how I feel; a self directed, humanistic experience where I allow my own emotional state to become the end-point of the experience. Other days I’ll drive with worship music on and I’ll let the music lift me into an awareness of the presence of God and focus on Him, on prayer and praising my Creator. I’m a mixed bag of worship and idolatry just like the next man. All that is preface to saying that I feel that painting when the music lifts the spirit internally and an artist feels suddenly “inspired” is directing the flow and allowing the canvas to be the end-point and not God. Someone swept up in the musical worship should seek to give God their intellect as well as their emotion, give him all parts of themselves.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that the chief end of man is “to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever” and that “The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.” This requires the use of intellect. You’ve debased worship when you direct the mind from fruitful meditation on the words of the worship songs into a meaningless/mindless waving of a flag to and fro. This would squander not only the emotional lift (being directed toward a flag, not God) but also the giving of the intellect to Him.
I guess at the end of the day I can boil it down to something fairly simple: if I ever end up in a position of leading a church, neither painting during worship nor flag/banner waving will be practiced by my congregation!
Suffering & the book of Job
I ran across this, while reading the website for Christianity Today:
Where then did Job’s three friends go wrong? They reduced all evil to “retributive suffering,” which is caused by sin and disobedience to God. But there are seven other types of suffering mentioned in the Bible: educational or disciplinary suffering as in Proverbs 3:11 or Hebrews 12:5-6; vicarious suffering, as in the case of our Lord’s death on the cross; empathetic suffering, where one person’s grief affects many others, as Isaiah 63:9 illustrates; evidential or testimonial suffering, as in the first two chapters of Job; doxological suffering for the glory of God, as in the man born blind in John 9; revelational suffering, as in the case of the prophet Hosea’s wife abandoning him; and apocalyptic or eschatological suffering that will come at the end of this age.While we cannot deny that the issue of suffering in the lives of God’s people, such as Job, still contains a good deal of mystery, it is just as much a horrible misconception to declare that suffering is God’s normal route for every believer as it is to declare that God’s goodness means life will always result in prosperity and riches for those who serve the Lord.
Our decision must be to follow God and trust his justice, wisdom, and goodness whether we are in the throes of suffering or enjoying good health and blessing. Such a decision would surely cut the ground out from under Satan in the spiritual warfare of our day and age. Thus, the law of God does not contradict the Psalms, the historical writings, prophets, or the wisdom books. Believers will continue to suffer, but it will always be under the permission or direction of a merciful and wise heavenly Father who works for our good in the way of the truth and fairness of the gospel.
— Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
The full article talks about the difference between wisdom literature on the bible, how it basically splits along the 80/20 rule. Most of the time (80) simple proverbial wisdom will suffice as a rule to live by. When proverbial wisdom fails (20), you find discourses like the book of Job, far more lengthy, and tackling the tough times head on.
To Be A Pilgrim
To Be A Pilgrim
by John Bunyan
He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.
Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound – his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.
Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,
We know we at the end, shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.
WIDTW
(What I Did This Weekend)
There’s a saying “While the cat’s away, the mice will play” and I suppose that applied to this past weekend. While Alison was away at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival I decided to “get my geek on” and attend the St Louis Code Camp.
A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the church I volunteer with asking if I would speak at the Sunday service at the Garden Villas retirement home that week. It was Wednesday and I told them that I didn’t feel like I could do justice to a topic with that little preparation time. Honestly speaking, I could probably have done it and that was just a very believable excuse, meaning that I didnt have to move other things around to fit the sermon preparation in. After I hung up it was as though I heard a clear voice say, “Now, if they call back, you need to say yes” so it was NO surprise when I got a call a few minutes later. God has a way of calling us on our excuses – calling our bluff as it were!
So, I was prepared for John (one of the church elders) to ask if I would reconsider the decision, and preach that Sunday. Instead he gave me an extra week offering me the Sunday after. After hearing the internal challenge, how could I refuse?
Last week I had a call in the middle of this week from my own church pastor asking if I would stand-in and do the bible reading in our church service. Sunday looked to be busy. Then I got a call from John saying “oh, never mind, our regular volunteer is able to make it after all” about the preaching opportunity. What do you do at that point, especially when you thought you heard God challenge that you needed to accept the preaching assignment and been working in earnest to prepare a sermon? I was clearly disappointed but then I realized: the end result is something that I’ve wanted to have for a long time now! I am now a full month in-hand (sermon for this month, and the following, planned and prepared) and no longer feel like I am living hand-to-mouth (as it were).
Saturday’s Code Camp was a riot! It was so much fun to get together with other highly technical folks and talk “shop”. We swapped horror stories, victories, advice and news. I bumped into several folks that I used to work with and got the chance to catch up. I ended up being a groupie to Kyle Cordes, of Oasis Digital Solutions Inc, as I went to both of his talks (“Selling your Software as a Hosted Service” and “Flying Boxes – a case study of a filthy rich client user interface”). Somewhere during the “Object Oriented JavaScript” talk my brain announced that it was full and would be going offline for maintenance. That was it for the day; I sat out of the final session with other similarly brain-fried folks as we talked about life in the trenches as consultants in large corporate offices. A nice way to wind down.
The weekend as a whole was busy. When it wasn’t busy, and I found myself alone, that was when it got complicated and less-than-pleasant. I’ve been on work related business trips before. I’ve been away a few times, but each time I amazingly busy the whole time and was with other people almost all of it. This weekend was a first. I was alone. Alison was out of town. It felt like I was missing a limb! Preaching at a retirement home brings me into contact with folk who’ve lost a spouse. They use phrases like that but I never had a real sense before of how it must feel. Well, yeah, now I do. I experienced for a weekend (despite knowing deep down that she would be returning) a visceral ache of loss. I experienced a taste of what some people live with the entire rest of their lives. I never realized what Alison meant when she said how much she hated the feeling of me being out of town on business trips. Not until this weekend. Somehow these things went from head to heart, from intellectual assent to personal experience.
We make a point of eating together – even if that means that we hit a fast-food establishment as we both run from one thing to another in a given evening. The worst times for me this weekend were meal-times. I simply couldn’t face eating if it meant sitting at a table alone. I grabbed some pizza at the Code Camp and a couple of random snacks, but mealtimes were the worst. Habits are good. Family mealtimes really bring a sense of “togetherness”. This weekend proves that they have become integral to life itself. Whatever else I face in a day I always know I can look forward to an hour or so of connection. Take that connection time away and I’m lost! I was so grateful, after enduring Friday night and Saturday, that I got invited out to eat by some folks from church for Sunday lunch. I didn’t have to eat alone.
Oh, speaking of Sunday. The sermon I’d prepared and didn’t use (postponed until the end of June now) was an encouragement to really appropriate the forgiveness of God, and the power of regret to hold us back from reaching the goals that God’s set for us and that we were called warts-and-all (from Philippians 3:7-14). In church, our reading was Luke 7:36-48 … a woman whose sins were forgiven after she anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume … and the pastor spoke on really appropriating the forgiveness of God, and the power of regret to hold us back. It was such an encouragement, after such a tough weekend, to feel like I’d heard God’s heartbeat for his people. Whatever my mixed bag of motives are, it felt like a nice confirmation that I had heard correctly, I had chosen the right topic, and to keep pressing on & not second-guessing myself.
What a weekend!
Quotes
I heard 2 quotes on the radio yesterday. They came from someone who was obviously quoting from someone else but he didn’t say who it was. Can you help me out by finding where they come from, who is originally credited with them?
The first was
Any leader worth their salt has succession in mind.
and the second
With no successor, there can be no success.
Thanks in advance for your help – leave comments or email me.
Easter quotes + links
Lee Strobel is quoted in an interview as saying:
Women in first-century Jewish culture were not given credibility in a court of law; their testimony was not considered reliable. So why [do the gospel writers] say that women discovered the tomb empty, even though it hurts their case in the view of their audience? I believe it’s because they were trying to accurately record what actually took place.
(read the full interview on Beliefnet.com)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “Letters and Papers from Prison” wrote:
SOCRATES mastered the art of dying; Christ overcame death as “the last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26). There is a real difference between the two things; the one is within the scope of human possibilities, the other means resurrection. It is not from ars moriendi, the art of dying, but from the resurrection of Christ that a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world. … If a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be changed. To live in the light of the Resurrection—that is what Easter means.
Lastly, Christianity Today has a superb interview with the current Bishop of Durham (N.T. Wright) – “You Can’t Keep a Justified Man Down“
Within the Enlightenment world of the last two centuries (as represented not least by liberal theology), we see a horror of any idea that God might actually act in the world. People produce fancy-sounding reasons for this, as though it would be quite wrong for God to step in and raise one person from the dead. Why didn’t he step in and stop the Holocaust? And so on. But in fact the whole Enlightenment project is at risk. They want God banished upstairs so they can get on with running the world downstairs.But with the resurrection, we have God saying, “No, I want to put things downstairs to rights, thank you very much. I started doing it with Jesus and you’d better get in line.” That’s a shock to liberal theology, just like it’s a shock to all kinds of other tyrannies – and liberal theology has become its own sort of tyranny.