riding the wrecking ball

Why are young adults not finding their faith in their parents church?
Brian McLaren asks the question in a recent post.

These families share something in common: their young adult kids are not easily finding their places in the church of their parents. The problem is widespread. I have been in two groups of pastors lately where someone asked how many of our post-high-school kids were actively involved in the church. No pastor in either group had a majority of his kids involved in the church; most had no kids actively involved.

Mike Sares replies that it is the drive for “excellence” is driving young adults from the church

Today’s young adults see a generation of baby-boomer Christians that has striven for "excellence" in every part of church life. Boomers proclaimed in the 1980s that image is everything, and their churches have reflected that cultural trend. The nurseries have got to be sparkling clean, the church buildings are marvelously functional as opposed to artistic, the music is as close to FM radio quality as possible (even if they must hire a band), the Sunday services are seamless with perfect transitions (just like television), the preaching is entertaining and informative (but not so deep as to offend visitors), and the plants on stage are beautiful (but artificial).

As a result, according to Dieter Zander, the next generation has concluded that "everything is image," and therefore nothing can be trusted. Church is too slick, too good, too polished to be real. And the twenty-something hunger for raw authenticity just doesn’t fit in.
(posted aug 27 http://www.jordoncooper.com/)
***

on a 'day off' while on mission in sri lanka, i was talking with a twenty-something (whatever that means) friend of mine about this phenomenon.

in the late 80's and on into the 90's, the quest for quality became the new (or not so new) idolatry... at the expense of relationships. as part of this battle for a culturally relevant environment in reaction to the christian counterculture that had risen up with its own radio and television stations, its own celebrities, colloquialisms and inside jokes, the family of God became institutional with a capital I. although there was a real drive to, by means of a quality production, reach those who had yet to hear and respond to the gospel, the whole relational element of evangelism and discipleship became almost secondary to the correcting of the mistakes of the church's forefathers and, with boomers at the helm, the assembled church became this thing that was the anithesis of everything the they had restlessly sat through growing up.

and so now the next generation of pastors and worshipers slowly (or not so slowly) moves into position to take hold of the wheel and turn this thing off of the superhighway and into the bush where their adventure is.

great. boomers, step back.

here's the thing, though. within every new reactionary method, there is wisdom and there is folly. just as the pursuit of 'quality' was great for reminding us that our best was important to give to God, it also belched out a bi-product of mass spectatorship. people started inviting their friends to church because of the programming, the music, the yada yada yada and stopped inviting them to Jesus. it was possible in this environment for one to be in active ministry, having perfect church service attendance for a decade or more without ever actually connecting with God one-on-one.

with gatherings so well-produced and facilities so shiny-looking, it was easy for many to slide back into consumer-mode simply because they felt somehow unworthy to serve in the upfront stuff and were mildly unaware of (or, let's face it, disinterested in) the behind the scenes stuff. social marginalization took place in the church and one of the key groups that felt marginalized, as cited above in the observations of brian d. mclaren and dieter zander, was the group of younger people that would grow up to eventually inherit this monstrosity.

it wasn't, in our church's case anyway, that the youth and younger adults were excluded from invitations to serve. it was simply that the time commitment implied by involvement in many of the ministries, what with some pretty intense type-A leadership styles and over-achieving work ethics, left little room for a life. it became quite common for everyone to be about reaching a hypothetical crowd with the gospel, since very few of us actually had any time left in our lives to develop relationships with those who weren't doing the same ministries, much less with those who didn't know Jesus.

so many of the prodigal heirs left home without their inheritance.

they were not abandoning their faith as such... they were simply checking out of the infrastructure before they got stuck trying to maintain something that they didn't believe in- something that had air so conditioned that they were left feeling a bit chilly, daydreaming of the beach.

house-churches and alternative services now rise up to attend to all the failings of the I-Me-Mine church. fair enough. in the tradition of their fathers, a new generation of church leaders moves into position to have a go at seeing the great commission realized.

i only hope that new approaches to authenticity in faith and fellowship result in a deeper walk for all generations, not just in producing environments where the children growing up in these emerging churches 'fix it all' again when they come of age by returning to the hard wooden pews, hellfire and brimstone homilies and eloquent hymnals of their grandparents' worship experience and tradition. otherwise we're just riding a generational wrecking ball back and forth as it destroys worship environments to the left and to the right in a forty-year arch.

rings and loops

c.s. lewis, one of my heroes, wrote an amazing article long ago entitled 'the inner ring.' in it, he says this:

of all passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is the most skillful at making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things...

as long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. you are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. until you conquer your fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain...

the quest for the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. but if you break it, a surprising result will follow. if, in your working hours, you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. you will be one of the sound craftsmen , and other sound craftsmen will know it. this group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. it will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the professional as a whole against the public, nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. but it will do those things which the profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which the profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. and if, in your spare time, you consort only with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside, that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. but the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric, for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do the things that they like. this is friendship. aristotle placed it among the virtues. it causes perhaps half of the happiness in the world and no Inner Ringer can ever have it.

(c.s.lewis; exerpted from 'the inner ring', taken from 'the weight of glory', circa 1962)
***

if we make loving others our profession, what are the implications of lewis' words here?

i think the implications of this are a feedback loop the builds upon itself with each cycle to a deafening celebration of everything good.

could this, perhaps, be the voice of God himself?

*note: jollybeggar is off to sri lanka until the end of august on a mission. for descriptions and details of what this kind of mission can entail, feel free to read his journals from last year, posted at www.acts1v8.blogspot.com (hyperlinked to your right under the heading 'jollybeggar abroad')

shalom, my friends.

the god-makers

lately this beggar's world has been full of all manner of calamity and wonder. these are days of faith, my friends. i honestly haven't been at 'leisure' to further attend to the discipline of blogging. however, just in case there is anyone who still checks this site for something fresh, i have decided to post something that i came across today when doing some major 'housecleaning.'

it is from a small denominational magazine that i used to write for back at the turn of the millenium...

i remember reading once on someone's blog that it could be rather interesting to repost the 23rd entry on our blogs a year later or whatever in order to note how far from then the now has taken us. well, the article below was published in october, 2000- nearly six years ago- and though my voice has changed a bit, i still hold to the same things (call this redundancy or consistency?)

maybe sometime soon i'll be able to actually put into words all that has been going on at this point in my journey. until then, however, know that life is good and God sustains me, your friend, through all things great and small...

shalom
***
All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless... Who shapes a god and casts an idol which can profit him nothing? He and his kind will be put to shame; craftsmen are nothing but men." -Isaiah 44.9-11

every now and then the word of God gives me a shot right in the chops.

it's really easy to justify involvement in a rather subtle form of idolatry simply by adhering to the maxim: "Give your best to God."

please make no mistake here- i will always maintain that if we are not giving our best to the Father then we are falling short of what he has called us to do for his kingdom. to withhold anything from his will is to be a gripper rather than a releaser.

as a worship leader i work hard to develop what God has entrusted to me. i drill and practice myself to blisters. i listen to maxwell tapes, attend worship conferences, subscribe to leadership magazine, even read the latest yancey title... but sometimes i think that we can carry too much of the burden of worship upon ourselves as leaders. without careful internal scrutiny, we can become too important to the kingdom in our own eyes, and this results in spiritual confusion- maybe not immediately, but inevitably.

the people in the seats become too reliant upon us to rejuvenate them; we become too responsible for the quickening of their spiritual pulse. eventually people end up worshipping the worship.

the danger within any worship context usually arises when people lose track of why they are there. it is this way because of the basic human propensity to become preoccupied with ourselves rather than God.

as spiritual navel-gazers, we allow ourselves to be the centre of our worship, rather than exalting Christ. worship becomes experiencial, rather than sacrificial. we draw energy and joy not from singing the name above all names, but from knowing that when we are singing his name we have his attention.

'all who make idols are nothing...'

personally, i cannot stand the idea of being eternally inconsequential. like a little child, i just want my God to be pleased with the present i made for him myself. i want to grow closer to him with my every offering. in offering it to him, i long for his acceptance of my gift. i want him to be proud of me and i want him to use what i made for him because then i feel less like a spiritual freeloader.

however, if my creative energies are directed towards somehow validating myself by my worship expression then i am wasting both the time and the gifts that have been entrusted to me. Christ's death already established my worth in his sight.

'who shapes a god or casts an idol which can profit him nothing?'

webster says an idol is 'an image of a god, constructed of wood, stone, etc. and worshiped as if it were the god it represents.' one of the things that we seek to do with our words or our music is to paint a picture of God's glory- to somehow make the mind-bending attributes of God understandable for normal, linear, rather blunt-minded creatures like ourselves.

no matter how big or beautifully ornamented the box, God will not fit into it.

furthermore, we must not tuck even a tiny portion of his glory into our own back pockets for our own personal use later. there was a worship leader in heaven who did this long ago and to a certain extent he still works daily at stealing the worship from Almighty God. if the people begin to worship the art as if it were the God it represents, then we are creative heretics in search of company, working away on something that not only profits us nothing, but ultimately costs us everything.

'craftsmen are nothing but men.'

unless God intervenes and transforms our efforts into something that brings him glory, our worship is only temporal. only when God is glorified will anything we do last beyond that final day when we stand, longing to hear him say

"well done, my faithful one, enter into the kingdom...
they're playing our song!"

i see dead people

ethnocentricity... the self-medicated attitude or philosophical position of being members of the only party that knows the way everything is supposed to be done. group arrogance.

well we certainly get tagged with this one from time to time... especially we pastor types!

in the 70's and into the 80's there was a christian band called daniel amos that epitomized the phrase mainstream alternative for a bunch of us christian kids who were looking for something artistic and Christ honouring (at the time it was basically an either-or scenario... if you wanted to be 'spiritual' then you pretty much had to check your aesthetics at the door). originating at calvary chapel under the spiritual toutelage of rev. chuck smith- but don't hold that against them- this band started as an eagles-esque cowboy band, moving through three or four creative stages in as many albums, hitting some really satisfying homages to their influences (beatles, bowie, electric light orchestra,b52's and talking heads a'la eno) along the way. (http://www.danielamos.com/main.html)

there was a song on volume 1 of the alarma chronicles that addressed the whole worship ethos and its inherent ethnocentricity from a satirical, new wave point of view
(note: i've focused on the content aspects of the lyrics, and have cut out the stuff that only works on record...)

you might not recognize, the truth gets colored by
wrong things, bad things do disguise
afraid you might despise the real thing
the real thing...

down in southern cal we don't wear shoes
we lay it way back
when someone with charisma tells me "don't wear shoes"
i tell them "go back- where did you get that?"

down in africa they beat the drum
they like the big beat
white man through the p.a. says "don't beat that drum"
they tell him "go back- where does it say that?"
the real thing...

down at the little church they all wear hats
they feel they're doing right
over at the big church they hate those hats
it get's them uptight- now is that right?

you might not recognize, the truth gets colored by
wrong things, bad things do disguise
afraid you might despise the real thing
the real thing...
-terry taylor

the whole worship style discussion is so totally old that, about halfway through its history, even Jesus got into it. remember the whole whip-wielding 'house of prayer/ den of thieves' (citing isa56.7/jer7.11 in matt21.13) thing? what was it really about- making money off of the poor or turning tennets of worship into something to be done for fun and profit? i think that it was the latter.

the poor were being exploited by everyone before, during, and after Jesus walked the earth. Jesus even spoke to the disciples about it at bethany (in matt26.11 and mark14.7) it's not that he didn't have a heart for the poor- his acts of mercy (healings, feedings, fellowship and the like) are examples of this heart for social justice. however, Jesus also didn't go through the temple with a bullwhip on behalf of the poor who could not afford the extortionate prices of sacrificial animals or the over-the-top exchange rates... he tore the place apart on behalf of Holiness because the temple was meant to be a place of worship and communion with almighty God according to scripture, and the temple officials who had seen an opportunity to turn something that was to be about God into something that directly benefitted them had carpe diemed their way to the bank. Jesus' anger burned because they were stealing from God, not from each other.

scripture records some pretty powerful examples of similar attitudes and actions in the name of piety... it's usually messy. (1sam2-4; acts5) it seems that embezzling from God is a pretty serious deal. why? because in this thievery we see satan's agenda clearly. anytime someone slips some of God's glory into his or her own back pocket, satan's lurking around there somewhere.

okay, so here's where i'm going: is our self-centred flippancy towards the things of God within our contemporary worship experience so great that we die over it? perhaps not to the point that we are actually aware of it, but is awareness definitive? do we have conditions placed upon us that exist before we are aware of them? think of the incubation period of a disease or virus, dormant or remissed cancer cells, arterial blockages not yet diagnosed.

remember the bruce willis film 6th sense, or a close celluloid relative called the others starring nicole kiddman? in both films, people are carrying on life as usual and we only discover through a couple of fun little twists that actually they've been dead the whole time and didn't know it. there is a form of reverse dramatic irony here, which my son and i refer to as a shyamalon twist (after the acclaimed young director of 6th sense, unbreakable, signs and the village) where the audience joins the principal characters in not knowing the crucial piece of truth around which the whole story is wound until a revelation in the final reel.

well what if we are all struck spiritually dead the moment we embezzle from God and, because we don't experience a lightning bolt from on high or something, we think that we're fine?

it is conceivable. in genesis 3 (yep, i'm back there again) the snake whispers that eve won't die if she samples some rebellion. whatever her inference or understanding of death (after all, literal interpretation of the scriptures holds that nothing had died yet) she tastes, looks around to see if anything has changed and then, seeing that she is fine, kills her life's partner too. no worries- he doesn't know it either.

but in that instant the physical and the metaphysical are rent apart. physical bodies begin to die and perspectives begin to cloud. it is now only a matter of time until the body catches up to what the soul is already experiencing and dies too. from that moment on, death becomes part of worship and sacrifices are offered, that the purity of the perfect animal can be exchanged before God for the sin of the one offering the animal- bringing new spiritual life and a fresh new day for the sinner.

Jesus railed in the temple because these religious capitalists were dead people making the very house of God an abomination in the eyes of both God and man. they were taking something that God had set up to ford the gap between the holy and the common and were turning it into something that would repel anyone who had not been raised in that tradition. it's like everyone knew they were dead except them- everyone knew that this place was no more the house of God than the public baths were a place to get cleaned up.
the romans knew it.
the greeks knew it.
the homosexuals knew it.
the prostitutes knew it.
the addicts knew it.
the lepers knew it.
even the blind who begged at the city gates could see with their sightless eyes what the ethnocentrically religious could not... that their so-called worship was an embarrassment to everyone and everything holy because it was all about themselves.

the same is often said of the church today. the hypocrisy evident in the body of Christ is still the most cited reason for achristians to remain that way. in a recent study published over easter in our local paper, i read how only 17% of canadians interviewed in the week prior to holy week admitted to regularly attending church, but that 62% agreed with the statement "through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided a way for the forgiveness of sins." why the numerical discrepency? it appears as though the majority of canadian people still believe in the God, but have trouble believing in the value of a corporate worship experience. are we a nation of beer-drinking mystics, or do we just tend to mistrust other people... particularly when they are part of something institutional? whatever the reason for it, the discrepency between those believing and those joining with others who believe is one with powerful implications upon both the unity of the body of Christ and the potential impact of this body upon the darkened world to which it has been trusted to bring the light of the gospel.

however, this is nothing new. we all know this.

as part of the comment box that spawned this post, curious servant made a typically poignant and poetic observation:

Today, on this spinning ball of dirt, there are a lot of folks who worship our Lord, pray to our Lord, tell stories of our faith, in many different ways. We have Korean churches, and Catholics, and messianic Jews, and the 1,001 other approaches... In the past there was the early church, the medieval churches, the Renaissance, the modern age, the post modern era... and someday we will all share a single reality together. Heaven will be diverse.

So, if we are uncomfortable with some folks speaking in tongues, and others singing very serious, dirge-like hymns, what will happen in our hearts and minds when we are mixed together in one huge congregation?

Are we ready for it?

good question. i think that it is one that believers in Christ need to sort out for themselves. for me the answer has been found in a prayer and personal worship discipline. you see, when i wasn't listening to daniel amos, i was learning how to worship with the recordings of john michael talbot. (http://e-pistles.blogspot.com/2006/01/simplicity-and-four-dollar-perspective.html)

a song that i use regularly as a prayer a quarter-century later, particularly in times when i am tempted to ethnocentrically judge and therefore embezzle, is one of his:

create in me a clean heart o God
let me be like you in all my ways
give me your strength
teach me your song
shelter me in the shadow of your wings
for we are your righteousness
if we've died to ourselves and live through your death
then we shall be born again to be blessed in your love

the cut of one's ephod

we all go through periods where we ask the heavy questions. who we ask and how we ask often determines the kind of response we receive, as well as whether the response is a satisfying one. people are emotional beings and often the emotions of a moment add so much colour to the events taking place that we start to lose track of what we are really about as people. i received this email from a friend who has a longer story than there is room (even on this long-winded blog) to tell.

short version? he felt disaffirmed when he was spoken to one day by the lead pastor about the importance of considering time and place when exploring worship expressions- being challenged to ask whether this demonstration is impactive or distractive in bringing the larger group closer to God. although he felt like he was being censored, he was, in fact, being invited to take greater responsibility for his role as one of the worship leaders within the assembly.

we are all worship leaders to some degree. our active or passive pursuit of the sense of God's presence affects everyone around us in some way. this is why it is important to understand the differences between corporate and private worship expressions. whether our heart is in the right place or not, the cut of our ephod can be a distraction to others and we need to prayerfully consider them as well, for corporate worship is done together with, not in spite of those around us...

"I can sing praises to my God any way I want. I can't sing praises to your
God any way I want. (My wife) and I do not want to be part of a church that
worships a God like that.
Christ Rules (and likes my style of singing!)"
***

paul addresses some public worship issues in 1 corinthians 12 and 14... here's the first bit of scripture- it is general and deals with the importance of unity and diversity as directed by the Holy Spirit, who presides over all worship expressions and gift employment:

(I corinthians 12.4-27)
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
***

the second passage is more directly related to worship expressions. it follows a 25 verse discussion of the importance of speaking words of prophesy and tongues in the right ways for the right reasons:

(I corinthians 14.26-33)
What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God.
Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.
***

(friend) the reason i am sending these scriptures to you for your consideration is that i think that you may be misunderstanding (our pastor's) words to you about singing in church.

no one is telling you how to sing or how not to sing- in fact, i remember a conversation in my office last year where i had just written a song and you showed me how you would sing it... then you said 'but i know that that is probably not the right thing for a morning service.' you have a good sense of humour, and you made a joke about people running for the doors, which caused us both to laugh together.

i am not sure why you feel differently now. there is nothing wrong with being able to identify the right time and place for something. it's called discernment, and it's totally important today just as it was in paul's day. the passage in 1 corinthians 14.26-32 echoes this, maintaining that the purpose of our worship times together is to be the strengthening of God's people (for the spiritual battle that awaits them the other 6 days of the week?)

the passage here deals most specifically with the gifts of tongues and prophesy. i don't go around telling people this, but so that you may understand my heart and the ideas i am trying to communicate here, i need to speak from my own experience... the Holy Spirit gave me such a prayer language to be used for his glorification. the holy tongue that the Spirit blessed me with has in it words which i have never uttered in the open hearing of other people, believers or otherwise. it is a holy thing.

although it is clearly a gift of God that i could have never just conjured up on my own, and although there are times when i am tempted (yes- it's the perfect word, for the temptation comes from hell to use a blessing of God to be a distraction to the body) to utter these words while worship leading, or while praying at the microphone, i choose to remain silent in this way at those times, speaking only words in english within the hearing of the people.

the decision is mine, as a man who loves God, concerning what to do with the gifts that he has entrusted me with. i do not believe that my prayer language would be taken away, were i to use it carelessly, but it would confuse the people in the church. i don't want to do that. when we come together to worship, i want to worship with my friends, not in spite of them... every time i step up to the microphone, there is temptation and there is decision.

(friend), i love you, man- you know that. but saying "i can sing praises to my God any way i want" and speaking of God as being a different person for you than he is for your friends at (our church) is not biblical.

satan wants to steal God's glory away by trying to pollute your heart with regard to worship- don't let him. satan would love for you to 'behave' and be angry about it. he would love for you to put your own preferences first, in spite of the people who might be distracted by that in a small room like the sanctuary on a sunday morning. he doesn't really care whether you are loud or silent... he just wants it to be about you. he wants you to be haughty. he knows that will deflect the glory away from God, and that is his goal.

don't let him succeed. be Christ's and Christ's alone.

much love

epilogue:
although there were a few weeks when my friend did some crowd surfing at some other churches, he eventually recognized that there are already many people who love him and his wife for who they are right here, and building those relationships again elsewhere would not only take time, but would carry with it no guarantees either. he continues to celebrate God's goodness to him in our fellowship, whooping and hollering in the loud parts and falling on his face in the deeper, more intimate parts- which is inspiring to those around. we all grow by knowing one another, yeah?

cross roads

what's the big deal with the cross?

i remember my pastor saying once that wearing a cross around your neck or displaying it in a church is as weird as having gold plated electric chairs or guillotines around to help us focus on God.

yep- that would be weird... but the thing with Jesus is that he brought new meaning to so many things, death by execution being one of them (not any death by execution, mind you- just his.)

i love that bit in romans (5.8) where paul points out that 'while we went on actively breaking fellowship with him, Christ died for us... that's how God shows his love.' he then goes on for the rest of the chapter talking about how death was brought into the world by adam, and how Jesus brought life in, instead, through his death. it wasn't just that Jesus lived a good life or that he died a tragic death, it was that he lived a good life and died a tragic death out of his love for humankind and then he overcame the tragedy, turning everything that we all thought we knew about everything right on its ear.

mourning to dancing
sackcloth to glory
silence to singing the salvation story

without Jesus' death, there could be no resurrection, no hope of a living and eternal communion with a perfect God. death was and is the penalty for wanting things our way and trading our eternal inheritance to get it. if Jesus were beheaded the way john the baptist was then we might have a different symbol of our freedom from mortality. as it is, being that crucifixion was the method of execution, the cross serves as this symbol for God's ability to take even the most fearful thing known to us- a painful, torturous death at the hands of those having no measure of grace or mercy to extend in the process- and give it new meaning in light of who he is rather than who we are.

in our church, we have this huge eight foot cross that stands in between the platform where the band plays and the floor where the people sit or stand or whatever. there are coffee tables gathered around that cross for those who respond better to more natural, coffee house seating than to institutional rows, and all of the speaking/ teaching takes place on that common plain, not up on the platform. in fact, the only reason that the platform is raised is that it was built at a time when the services we conducted were less interactive/ more 'performance oriented.'

a friend recently expressed a desire to see the layout change because the cross was obscuring the view from the floor of the musicians as they played. this was becoming a distraction for him.

distraction is a really good word. it seems to be realized in different people in different ways.

where one person is distracted by what he can't see onstage, another can be distracted by what he can see there. the clothing of a person onstage, that person's expressiveness (or lack thereof) when that person does worship music, or even just a knowledge of who that person is in life when he or she is not on display- they can all get in the way of a person's desire to press in during a meeting. in various conversations over the years, all of these have been mentioned to me... in most cases i've tried to remind the person to extend grace and endeavor to focus on God in spite of those serving on any given sunday. however, knowing that this is really hard sometimes because people all have their own triggers, i have privately thought of just shutting off the lights on the band altogether, so that the only things that anyone saw were the cross and the projected words that they were singing together.

even then, the sound of the music created with all the lights off might be distracting... arguably moreso than our actual presence onstage!

the problem, i think, is that people come to a worship service looking for different things. whereas it is nice to presume that everyone is there to meet with God and God's people, the reality is that there are not only almost as many ways of connecting as there are people trying to sort it all out, but there are many other reasons that the people come together which have less to do with God specifically than with simply becoming people whose lives make sense. (thank God he is able to bring sense to the apparent nonsense that we holds us in its grip- i know... a whole nother blog. i think that i will start another blog where i can develop my tangents ad nausium!)

God is immutable and perfect and is the only constant in the worship equation- he's the only one who does not bring baggage of the week and its relational faux pas and failings into the worship circle. he also doesn't bring health concerns or any other form of existential anxiety with him. in truth, he is the only one who doesn't have his own personal pathway, paradigm or formula for a successful meeting. he does not pay attention to trends and traditions, nor does he ignore them: he simply acknowledges them as being valuable as human connecting points... ways that different people connect with him, not necessarily ways that he requires to connect with different people.

he only required one way. to live here and to die here and to rise again, setting the captives free to be all that he intended them to be from the beginning.

although, even in our rather small but significant evangelical denomination, there are many different approaches to experiencing God at the throne of his grace and spending time trying to sort out who we all are in his eyes, one congregation in sri lanka did something i found interesting, mainly because it was different from the traditions that have become my stability: the musicians and those leading the singing all faced forward with the congregation as everyone sang together.

it's an eastern tradition... they faced the cross.

simplicity and four dollar perspective

i swear that you find the best stuff in delete bins.

i mean, think of all the great cd's or cheap dvd's that you've found there. how many amazing shirts or pairs of shoes have you picked up from a bin marked clearance? plenty i'll bet.

i recently found a book (now the odds of finding a good book among the stinkers and lo-fat cookbooks in a clearance bin are definately stacked against you, compared to finding a great sweater there, but that's a whole nother blog) in a bin at sears the other day. i was so excited that i dug around and found a second one, which i bought for a friend of mine. the book is called the music of creation and is written by my favourite secular franciscan monk: john michael talbot.

i discovered the music of john michael talbot when i was in high school. it was, apart from my dad's maranatha praise albums, my introduction to worship music per se. before and after that, everything was rock and roll for all the reasons that we love guitar, bass and drums blasting from the windows of a mustang driving down mainstreet in search of the ultimate challenge off of the line. ( i realize that this probably warrants no comparison aesthetically to the tooth-rattling drone characterizing the powerful subsonic presence of a tricked out, hip-hop fueled honda crx pulling up to a light behind or beside you, but whatever... i digress)

point is, talbot's stuff was different than anything that i had ever heard. although he was a monk in a habit, he was this brilliant guitar player who was able to reflect upon the attributes of God with liturgical balance, while playing with the passion and prowess of a man who had sold his soul at the crossroads. although, over time, his music did become quieter and more contemplative as he changed from steel to nylon strings, there was still an integrity that said to the listener that this man was singing from the core of who he was to the creator of that core, not simply serving up some nice background ambience for preachers to write sermons by. years before i was writing worship songs and leading God's people towards the throne of grace myself, i was being led into the presence of God by this guy.

anyway, enough fanclub tributes. i bought this book for $3.98 and began to read it.

i didn't get past the introduction before i was smitten with the power of an image cited by talbot and used by monks of the christian orthodox east to describe the stillness and silence of their unique way of life, a life of quiet discipline that is lived intentionally with contemplative prayer and mystical union with God as its objective (summarized in the greek word hesychia meaning stillness and silence.) he speaks of a pond.
***
When a pond is agitated, it becomes muddy and unclear. You cannot see what is within, nor does it reflect what is without. But as the pond becomes still, the water settles and slowly clarifies. When the water is still clear, you can see the reality of what is within. Its surface also becomes mirror-like, reflecting all that is without and providing a brilliant display of the surrounding trees and foliage, the animals and people along its bank, as well as the very blue of the endless sky...

Hesychia is a way of stillness that helps calm the waters of the soul, bringing us inner peace. Once that occurs, we can see underneath the turbulent surface of our lives, perhaps for the first time. In Hesychia, our spirit, soul, and body become mirrors reflecting the reality of God and the original harmony and peace he intended for all creation.

Achieving this kind of clarity is only the beginning of a lifelong process, because once we can see into the pond of our soul, we can begin to make out some of the old garbage that has lain on the bottom for many years without detection...
***
four dollar perspective with which to step into a new year... i'm still trying to figure out how to apply it to my own cluttered journey.

postascription

this post could serve as a postscript for 'blaming God' (posted 09/12/05)
sorry that there's not more here... i've been busy typing out my journals from sri lanka and posting them on poitu varam (jollybeggar abroad.)


it's just that i've been thinking and praying a fair bit lately about the hand of God. you see, i really want people to see it move. i really want people's eyes to open spiritually.

so, when the news reports of hurricane rita's progress and the ongoing evacuations started pouring out of my newspapers and television, i started praying for two things:

1) that the gulf coast of the united states of america would be spared a repeat of the katrina disaster, by the mercy and grace of God. that he would see fit to intervene and cause the storm to cave in on itself or wipe out some UNinhabited island or something. in short, that a miracle would take place and that people would acknowledge it as such.

2) if, rather than intervene, God chose to just allow this storm to hit according to the worst case scenarios that were being spun for us by meterologists, then he would pour his grace and mercy into the american people affected, that they would draw together immediately and allow peace and good will, rather than anarchy to reign.

well, it appears that God IS a miracle-working God, alive and well and at work on planet earth. however, i suppose that people can continue to deny him their worship and thanksgiving, defaulting to

"whew! that was lucky! that storm didn't even come close to the widespread damage and destruction that we feared. still, better safe than sorry..."
***
ascribe to the Lord, o mighty ones
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength
ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name
worship the Lord in the splendour of his holiness
(psalm 29.1-2)

body language

my friend John said...
What does his incarnate face look like as a church struggles with issues? Often it seems that we mistake the appearance of a narrow presentation of worship on Sunday morning for the face of Christ. How malnourished we are!

I think the face of Christ we need to be loyal to in difficult contexts is the body working together with her differences. Often it seems those in power have not moved to be inclusive nor have we moved to be included. Perhaps that is part of the difficulty. The face of Christ is in the mirror and in the face of our brother/sister and we need to be changed to accept the fullness of Christ's face.

which reminded me of something i punched out a couple of years ago. it amazes me how a hyperlink to God can be found in so many of life's encounters... this one started with the liner notes from a fear factory (a heavy, industrial rock band, not to be confused with 'reality' t.v. shows where girls in bikinis try to hold their breath while jumping spiders make webs on their heads) album...
***

he unknowingly enters an abandoned building. it is dark, cold and deserted. there is a ray of light piercing the darkness from a window high above. the light exposes rows of old wooden seats. one row on either side. in the shadows, behind the ray of light, he sees the statue of a man, hanging vertically with his arms spread out from side to side. he has seen this image before, but a very long time ago. almost like a faded memory. he contemplates whether it was a myth or a legend. as he walks up to the figure, he views the coloured glass on the walls, and the paintings of men with glowing orbs around their heads. now standing adjacent to the statue, he extends his arm with a curious hand to touch the tired-looking face of the forgotten man.

walking away from the hanging figure, he glances back for a moment. the dampness in the air appears to be affecting the statue, for the beam of light is now hitting his face, and it seems as though he has been weeping.
(from the liner notes of "Obsolete" by Fear Factory)

the spiritual state of people that need to receive the gospel: lost and spiritually alone, many with only vague and disjunct memories of past religious experiences steeped in ritual and tradition rather than relationship.

these are the people that Christ died for, and christians know truth that can set them free.

worship isn't a designated time or place- it isn't a calculated emotional curve or a mosaic of isolated holy moments. no, although these can all be part of worship, it is a gestalt of all of them for the earnest servant of God... it is a day by day, hour by hour, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat song to God. it begins at the foot of the cross, through the moment of acceptance and straight on 'til morning. it is both active and passive and therefore all consuming. it is the reason that all of creation exists- to reflect back the glory and the love of Almighty God.

worship is saying "you are" to "I Am"

we are to live lives that bring glory to God. all that we do should be worthy of being written down as the work of God. all that we do should be an act of worship. we are his hands and his feet- we are the body of Christ (I Cor 12:27)

it's not the words of Christ that are so confusing, it's the body language.

how can Jesus' people be true to the great commission found in matthew 28 if all they do is live tidy little lives? are the people that are wandering through the abandoned churches of this world going to make a commitment to a lifestyle or a saviour? will anybody be able to make the connection if the christians don't show that there is one? is it working so far?

nietzsche said
"one should not go into churches if one wants to breathe pure air."

although he was writing back in the late 19th century, one can still smell today the musty odour of tainted spirituality that characterized both the church of his day and the temple of Christ's. hypocrisy continues to abound and the forgotten man on the cross continues to weep when it happens. he didn't die so that people could be outwardly righteous and inwardly corrupt. he didn't die so that people could use his name to get what they want from each other. he didn't die so that people could sing "when i get to heaven gonna walk with Jesus" without actually trying to walk with their neighbour first.

the world is looking for a saviour, but first they have to get past the saved...

loyalty placement

my friend dennis made an observation about why people become miserable in churches, yet refuse to change environments...

"they are victims of their own standing loyalties."
BAM!
nailed it there.

it seems like people generally place loyalty somewhere... a cause, a church family, a pastor/leader, an organization, a principle...even if it is simply loyalty to their own convictions on things. this loyalty is a stability of sorts, causing one to feel grounded and sure.

the problems seem to make a break for it when the balance of reason and resolve is somehow upset by 'lower' factors (like any leadership change- particularly in style or personality) that fly under the radar and then catch us by surprise. we find ourselves unwittingly embroiled in a situation that causes us to feel compromised or otherwise inconsistent, simply due to either unfamiliarity or negative familiarity (a bad experience or strongly preconceived opinion) with the agent of change.

music, particularly worship music, is often a flashpoint because of the important role it plays in our (churched) culture and how strongly emotive a change in music can be. we get on this thing where our personal aesthetic is somehow spiritualized and we buy into the lie that there is good and bad music, when in fact music is predominantly contextual... it is a language unto itself.

the truth about most worship music arguments is that the music simply FEELs unfamiliar and people draw spiritual conclusions from those feelings.

i felt uncomfortable, months ago, attending a worship service in another (more 'mainline') denomination. the service was set up according to the lectionary, with prescribed readings and passages and hymns (the combination of which was all already light years from my personally comfortable worship zone)

now, i love hymns (particularly as a devotional or songwriting aid) but these hymns were songs that i had never heard before which were written according to a whole different set of musical and lyrical rules than any with which i was familiar. i was lost, even though the directions and page numbers and colours of the books were printed in the program that i was handed at the beginning of the service.

but it came to me, as i was about to dismiss the whole experience as 'someone else's thing' that i simply needed to sort out how to engage. i stopped singing and started reading the words while everyone around me who was already familiar sang instead. the poetry was breathtaking. the biblical truth was purely pronounced and worded in (irony of ironies) a 'fresh new way.' without the personal distraction of musical style and inaccessible melody, i was free to worship- it was a personal pentecost and i was suddenly hearing the truth in my own language.

it occured to me that this difficulty finds its symmetry whenever someone from a church like this one comes to ours to visit. it strengthened my resolve to frame things in in such a way that people are free to access an awareness of the presence of God without feeling disloyal to who they are or what they hold to be important about their own worship experience.

ultimately, as dennis put in much fewer words, we are responsible for the placement of our personal loyalty because if it is misplaced then God fails to receive the worship that is his.