I have issues (No one is safe...) Saturday, February 05, 2011

I haven't written lately because I have been deeply involved in life. Not an excuse to not write... but good enough for right now.

In reading for MWS 502 I have been studying the history and spirituality of Christianity. It is incredibly interesting to see the ebb and flow of strength Christianity has held in the world and it is also astounding to see the insane amount of variation and variety not just in the world but in the US alone. Some may say that God will keep his religion pure, but at a closer look it seems that every incarnation/denomination/sub-denomination, even the ones that think they are keeping it pure all have an aspect of personal preference. Every turn has their own beef, their own agenda and looking through out early American history it seems like all these different splits were motivated by reaction against some other group. Others involved economy, other politics, etc. The other thing that bothers me is that no one seems to be hitting the center of Christ's message. You have one group that has some good things but they go way overboard on the right. Another group will have some other great aspect but they jump overboard on the left. Why can't anyone get it right? (This is a loaded question because every good believer of a church should/probably believes that they are right.... no one can win...)

So, my first beef is with Methodism/Holiness. Methodism started by the Wesley brothers as a wonderful opportunity to share the Gospel with the people of the fronteer. These were rough dudes out in the wild. Working in ridiculously harsh conditions, some were ex-cons, some had lost everything back East. Pretty much all of them were undereducated and were looking for ways to start a new life - and hit it rich along the way. The Wesleyan emphasis was on deeds. Deeds don't save you, but deeds are how you know God and how people know you know God. Again, deeds don't save you but deeds are a measure on how close you are with God and if you really are a true believer. So, to the uneducated rufians; don't chew, spit, drink, play cards, rollerskate, dance or go to the circus. There are things that bad people do, you aren't bad people any longer, so don't do them - Just live a good life. The issue I see in this is that this message gets the priority/message of Christ out of order. We are told to be holy as Christ is holy, so we try, but we can't. So, what do we do with that? Is God asking us to preform an impossible task of perfection? No. this path of thinking isn't even in the right direction. Is it bad to murder? Yes. Is it bad to not help a friend? yes. But not doing these things doesn't make you a good person. in is sin. But, to be holy as Christ is holy is to be in Christ. When we are in Christ, when God sees us, he sees Jesus - his Son and his sacrifice over death and the Devil. We are holy because Jesus was holy. Methodism and the idea of Holiness creates a problem where we think that good works make us good/more spiritual. But since we are all in the same spiritual, sinful boat how can this be true? The real answer is to start in the other direction, the direction towards spiritual discipline. Instead of our works making us spiritual, how about our spirituality compelling us to do good works? In this manner we lose the pressure of having to earn blessings or grace or proving to the world that we are Christians by doing good deeds because we have to. Now, because we are free in Christ, because we have been given the opportunity to take part in God's story for the world we are free to be Christ in the world - instead of being held over the barrel of Hell, we are now compelled, and given the opportunity through the Holy Spirit, to live lives of thanksgiving to a gracious God who has reconciled the whole world to himself and himself to the world.

Worship is: Thanksgiving Sunday, October 10, 2010

Why does anyone worship? What is the purpose? Some say that even if there was nothing in this Christianity for them they would still choose to worship God. That sounds so great but it isn't even a conversation worth having. Why? Because there is something in it for us, for me, for my life now and after - a better way to live, a loving Savior and communion with his Spirit. In return we are only asked to be thankful. Thankfulness, a life of gratitude, is the only thing required of me. Why do we worship? Worship is not only the highest point of thanksgiving but in the end all giving of thanks is worship. I would say if I am not creating an atmosphere of thanksgiving in corporate worship there is no point to what I am doing and I should probably do everyone a favor and find another job.

In the story of the Ten Lepers (Luke 17:11-19) it is told that only one of the Lepers came back to thank Jesus for being healed. Christ doesn't say that the others are bad for not returning but he does commend the one who come back to give thanks. On a large scale, like how Christ healed all ten, God has already blessed the world. How do we respond? The returning Leper does five things that we especially associate with contemporary worship - he saw what had been done for him / Came to the Lord / praised Jesus with a loud voice / fell on his face infront of Christ / and thanked him. What if the tenth Leper had gone through the motions of the first four actions and never got around to actually saying thank you? He might as well not have come back at all.

Thanksgiving is a paradigm shift. It is saying that nothing else compares to the gift of Christ and that I am complete in that gift alone. Thankfulness is the pinnacle of losing my self - losing my life, goals, plans, dreams and placing them in the hands of God and giving thanks for where I am.

As it turns out worship is a bit harder than I first thought. But the reward of worship and the gift of thanksgiving are new eyes and a new heart in which to see and love myself, God and the world.

Prayers of the People - Worship and Spiritual Formation Sunday, September 26, 2010

This is the meditation on prayer I gave today as our church begins exploring spiritual disciplin and formation through corporate worship.

"We have a rich tradition of prayer here at Pope UMC as seen in the Pastoral Prayer element of the service. Every week we take a moment to make our requests known to God (Phil 6:4). We are going to shift things a bit today. Your prayers are important but they aren't my prayers and they aren't Pastor Robert's prayers. We do pray together these requests as a community but these prayers are yours. Just because someone is a pastor doesn't mean God listens to them more.

We see that prayer is very important even in Jesus' ministry. Jesus initiated his ministry by going into the desert for 40 days to pray and to fast. Near the end of his ministry in the garden of Gethsemane Jesus came before the Father in prayer saying "If you can Lord, take this cup. But when it comes down to it let your will be done and not mine." Christ knew that prayer is how we align our heats with the will of God "... your will be done."

Prayer brings us to the heart of God and it also gives us a venue to listen and hear his plan for us. Prayer is not just about making requests but God's requests are also made known to us. It warms our heart to Him. Not only that but prayer is just talking to God.

So we are going to start the next few moments with silence to focus our hearts and minds on God. To clear out the busyness and really listen for His voice. After our time of silence we are going to go through the Prayers of the People as listed in the hymnal on page 877. I will start by praying "Lord, in your mercy hear our prayer. Together we pray for... the people of this congregation..." Either out loud or in your heart take a moment to pray a sentence prayer for those people. After a few moments we will move onto "...those who suffer and those in trouble..." You can see how this flows in the hymnal. After our prayers for the church universal I will close our time of prayer. Again you can choose to pray silently or openly. But I encourage you to pray a loud so that we may agree and pray with you.

Now don't think of this as a strange or odd thing. Think of this as an exercise. Like walking for heath or practice for proficiency at your job or something like that. I want to challenge with with a spiritual workout. This is also something tangible and practical you can integrate into your everyday lives as we desire to be apart of God's plan for his world and our own lives. So, let us pray together. "

503 Project Refinement Monday, August 09, 2010

I have found that I best work on my projects in my head. The following was all in my head until last night. Actually, most of it was on bits of paper here and there, but I have been honing it down and I think I am at a good starting point. Please join in the conversation on this one. If you have any ideas or experience to share please do!

1. Address a particular ministry issue relating to postmodernism.

a. Is it possible for a traveling summer music ministry team like Wellspring plant seeds of worship renewal?

2. Point to particular theological propositions or positions under which the project is developed

a. “Moving from program worship to participatory worship.” Constance Cherry in her article Shifting from Professional Programs to Participatory Worship

i. Is it possible to move Camp worship from listener-observer (passive) and individual focused programming to active (shachah, proskuneo) and participatory-fellowship focused (koinonia) worship?

b. “Worship is doing God’s story.” Robert Webber in Ancient-Future Worship

i. How does a traveling summer music ministry team introduce worship in the context of doing God’s story?

ii. What are the challenges?

iii. What are some of the available opportunities?

3. Offer viable, concrete, and tangible solutions to issues in your context

a. Interview past Wellspring members on their experience at camps

b. Song Pairings

i. Good food is enhanced when paired with good wine, what are ways that worship song can be linked in pairings and combinations to create arcs or a flow that purposefully and intentionally tell God’s story?

c. What are ways we can introduce the idea of God’s Story into team training?

i. Emphasis on individuals coming together to join God’s Narrative.

ii. Encouraging community dialogue among team members as they create a team narrative.

1. Like tributaries into a river: Individual Narratives -> Wellspring Narrative -> God’s Narrative

4. Discuss how those solutions are more appropriate for your particular context than other solutions are—that is, how they are localized and contextualized solutions

a. Different ministries approach summer traveling music ministries in different ways.

b. I will be talking about specific camps, other camps may not have this problem.

c. Does having a Worship Arts major give us an advantage in this pursuit? If so how can we use that advantage? If not how can we benefit from the program?

5. Explain how such solutions are going to be implemented in resolving the issues.

a. Discuss the philosophy behind the “Christian Camp.”

b. Interview Wellspring team members to see if there opportunities for change.

c. I have kept track of the songs the teams have used this summer, see if there is any.

d. Present my findings

e. For the second part of my project I would put together a training service - Finding God’s story in our lives and applying that to the Wellspring Narrative. Also, show examples of participatory, corporate, God’s story focused worship song pairings. Do this in the context of a service/practicum for the team members.

Do Worship Tuesday, August 03, 2010

As I talk about worship, I easily find myself thinking “what is worship and how do we go about worshiping?” I am very pleased to find that most people when asked this question will say that worship is our lives. As the corny t-shirt says, we were “Made to Worship.” Great, we made to worship, but I seem to lose people when I talk about what being made to worship implies. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an announcement guy say “wasn’t that great worship?” or a pastor say “we are going to have more worship in a minute,” or even a worship leader say “Let’s get ready for (some) worship!” I would certainly have enough money to pay someone else to write my blogs. The problem is that we have been conditioned to compartmentalize worship. Worship is something I 1) do at church for 15-20 minutes near the front half of a church service 2) do while cranking Tomlin at 11 as I cruse through town or 3) am only participating in when I feel the Lord moving. I heard a youth pastor explain worship like this “we are like lightning rods, and worship is happening when God is striking those lighting rods.” Seriously? Worship seems to have become synonymous with God responding to us or specific songs and feelings. When we feel God’s response worship has been accomplished.

In our attempts to be contemporary and unleash passion in worship we have created strict boundaries to what (and when) actions are worship. This is worship music, this is worship time, when this song plays it is the worship portion, the sermon is definitely not worship, or my favorite tweet of all time “My favorite worship music is the kind I can go nuts to.” And in a way the expectation of feeling in worship is a significant part of these boundaries. There needs to be a line drawn that says there is a difference between this false “time to do worship” and doing worship. Robert Webber says “Worship is Doing God’s Story.”(1) According to Scripture God’s story has a lot more to do with creation, redemption and recreation than it does with whether an up-beat song is better to worship to than a slow song.

Even Christ dealt with this. When talking to a Samaritan woman at a well, the woman basically asked “Isn’t our worship better than their worship?” And Christ responded “No, you say you worship on this mountain or in this temple, but there will come a time where you will worship in Spirit and in Truth.” (2) To worship in Spirit and in Truth. Wow. To worship in Spirit – to worship with the entire family of believers throughout the ages, to worship with one breath at the eternal wedding banquet, one voice to the Father, in the name of the Son, through the Holy Spirit and to do it in Truth – United and living out the Triune message in the world. This doesn’t sound like the Sunday morning “do” worship to me. Worship shouldn’t just seep into the cracks of my life; it should be what every brick of my being is made of. And it isn’t even a matter of should because it is whether we know it or not because well, we were made to worship.

Are there elements that are more conducive to a worshipful mind set? Sure. But let us not get carried away. We must continually question whether or not a worship of moods and creative resources has surpassed our worship of the Creator.

1 - Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God's Narrative. Robert Webber. Baker Books, 2008.

2- From John 4:21-24