The Future of Worship!

This video is a bit long, but one of my favorite worship leaders, David Crowder, talks about some ideas on the Future of Worship.

It is not only informative, but also hilarious!  He even uses an overhead projector, I’m not sure what an overhead projector is, but he definitely uses one!

Check it out here

If you have less time, start the video at around 13:40.

Seriously, friends, this is good stuff here!

What is your goal?

If our devotion is to the cause of humanity, we will be quickly defeated and broken-hearted, since we will often be confronted with a great deal of ingratitude from other people. But if we are motivated by our love for God, no amount of ingratitude will be able to hinder us from serving one another.
-Oswald Chambers

What do you think?

Impact

Wow, it has been an intense month of December!  The last week I led eleven (11) services.  That’s definitely a record for me!  At any rate, I took a few days off, refreshed and renewed and am excited to see what this new year may bring for my family and me.

I have two questions rattling around in my head right now:

1.  How will you let God impact your life this year?

2.  How will you impact your world this year?

Study

‘He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.  He that to what he sees, adds observation, and to what he reads, reflection, is in the right road to knowledge, provided that in scrutinizing the hearts of others, he neglects not his own.’

-Caleb Colton

Discipline of Worship

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

-William Temple

Does your message connect?

Here’s a quote from Martyn Lloyd Jones about why he taught preaching and the value he saw in true preaching:

“But, ultimately, my reason for being very ready to give these lectures is that to me the work of preaching is the highest and the greatest and most glorious calling to which anyone can ever be called. If you want something in addition to that I would say without hesitation that the most urgent need in the Christian Church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the Church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also.” (Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

Have you ever heard a sermon that missed?  It just didn’t connect with the people.

Now, have you ever heard a message that changed your life?

What is the difference?

Bored? Do Something!

If you are wondering what to do with all of your free time, a few fantastic peeps at Grace have collected a bunch of opportunities all together in one place for you to peruse and pick what you can do.  There are places as far away as Guatemala and as close [to Indy] as downtown.

Go there now and

First Worship

“At that time people began to call on the name of the LORD.” Genesis 4:26

This is the first recorded worship in the Bible!!!  After Cain kills Abel, Eve has another son, Seth who also has a son, Enosh, and the people WORSHIP GOD!

Bible in Three Parts

Here’s an interesting breakdown of the whole Bible into three parts:
1.    Gen 1-2          ~ Creation
2.    Gen 3              ~ The Fall
3.    Gen 4-Rev 22  ~ Redeeming the Fall

Thoughts?

My visit to Solomon’s Porch

Last night I had the opportunity to visit Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis, MN.

To give some background, I work at a church where we have a venue that is loosely modeled on Solomon’s Porch so it was very interesting to get back to the beginning and see what and where some of our ideas came from.

The experience was different, interesting, comfortable and strange.

I love the fact that they meet in an old church they have retro-fitted to suit their needs.  It gives the space a warm and artistic feel.  The high cathedral ceiling, wooden beams and warm yellow paint with art all over the walls was total satisfaction for my visual ADD.

The space bridges ancient and modern with 100+ year old architecture mixed with a speaker system and huge screens with images and words projected.  They also provide free wireless and I saw quite a few mac’s around the room (no PC’s – sorry folks!)

The whole room is full of couches set up in the round with the focus in the center of the room.  There really were only about three chairs in the room, which made for a really comfortable and casual atmosphere.  The service I attended began at 7pm, but it was clear at 7:10 that it would begin whenever they were ready to begin.  Personally, I had no problem with the flexibility.

The songs were strange to me.  They did all original work, which is fine, but to me, being a songwriter, they were hard to sing and not catchy.  Then I get into the theology of the songs which I am very cognizant of as a worship leader.  I would have to say that I cannot get behind some of the theology of the songs sung.  For instance, I am uncomfortable singing God as ‘she’ mostly because in the Bible God is referred to as ‘he.’  Also, I am alright with the idea of the Holy Spirit groaning for us (cf Romans 8), but in one of the songs there was a section for us to groan.  For me, it felt too charismatic.

I loved the way we did Communion.  We served each other by actually breaking bread and handing it to a person.  For the Cup, you had a choice of juice or,  here it comes, WINE!  Personally, I think it was a wonderful way of participating in the Lord’s Table.

The service contained a fairly long section on Social Justice and featured a young woman from the organization Freedom Firm about freeing people from sex-trafficing in India.

Overall it was a very communal, organic experience.  I appreciated the community, the atmosphere and the discussion.  The concerns I have are theological and don’t know if I could reconcile that as a regular attender.

I will probably process this experience for a while longer and if I think of more I will post it.