Friday, May 29, 2015
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
How Christian Music Sanitizes The Wilderness - Chaplain Mike in Internet Monk
Praise music is especially weak when it comes to giving voice to the full spectrum of human experiences and emotions. Today's church has largely embraced a theology of glory and neglects the trinitarian reality of the suffering God. It shows in Praise Music.
Psalm 42 was the basis for a winsome little song "As The Deer." The song exemplifies a big problem Praise Music has when it comes to using imagery from the Bible, especially the book of Psalms.
Rather than meditating on the Psalmist is actually using imagery, it is interpreted in a way that is easily grasped in our culture - in romantic fashion. That is manifestly NOT what the imagery refers to in Psalm 42.
The psalmist is NOT longing for God because he has a precious "personal relationship" with God and wants to celebrate that. Rather, HE PINES FOR GOD BECAUSE GOD CAN'T BE FOUND!
The deer in the psalm can't find a stream. It is dying of thirst and desperately concerned for its very life. This is why the psalmist is thirsty for God. He is dying of thirst for an ABSENT GOD.
Even when today's songwriters make use of the Psalms they tend to transform the raw, earthy language that describes our complex, often messy relationships with God and others into easily digestible spiritual sentiments.
This is similar to what today's Christianity does to the Bible. It takes one image from a rich, profound, complex and realistic description of life and latches on to it because the image evokes a simple, devotional sentiment that prompts an immediate emotion.
The Christian life is not all sweetness and light. People know this, but praise music doesn't often help them know what to do with that knowledge and the feelings that go along with it.
We live in real wilderness. We do best to acknowledge it. Sanitizing it helps no one.
The full article is available here
Heaven Is Not "Up There" Somewhere - Chuck Queen in Patheos
Heaven is up, down, and all around. Heaven is where God is, and God is the very Spirit in whom “we live, move and have our being.”
Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperOne, 1998) prompted me to rethink my views about salvation, the kingdom of God (which was the central theme in Jesus’ preaching and teaching), discipleship and the spiritual life, the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross, and the reality of heaven.
While I don’t agree with everything Willard teaches—such as his view that the Bible is inerrant, for instance—he helped me to realize that heaven is not just up there somewhere, but is, rather, right here and now.
He writes:
Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (HarperOne, 1998) prompted me to rethink my views about salvation, the kingdom of God (which was the central theme in Jesus’ preaching and teaching), discipleship and the spiritual life, the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross, and the reality of heaven.
While I don’t agree with everything Willard teaches—such as his view that the Bible is inerrant, for instance—he helped me to realize that heaven is not just up there somewhere, but is, rather, right here and now.
He writes:
The Old Testament experience of God is one of the direct presence of God’s person, knowledge, and power to those who trust and serve him. Nothing – no human being or institution, no time, no space, no spiritual being, no event – stands between God and those who trust him. The “heavens” [he noted that heaven in the Greek is usually plural] are always there with you no matter what, and the “first heaven,” in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body. (p. 67)
Such words from Willard came to me as living water when I was in a dry, parched land. At the time I desperately needed to know that God was that close. That the world is immersed in the Divine and the Divine pervades the world came to me as very, very good news.
Heaven is up, down, and all around. Heaven is where God is, and God is the very Spirit in whom “we live, move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28). Heaven is now as well as later. It is where we experience conscious union with God and all of God’s creation.
In Falling Upward the progressive Franciscan priest and mystic Richard Rohr expresses the symbolic meaning of heaven this way:
Heaven is the state of union both here and later. As now, so will it be then. No one is in heaven unless he or she wants to be, and all are in heaven as soon as they live in union. Everyone is in heaven when he or she has plenty of room for communion and no need for exclusion. The more room you have to include, the bigger heaven will be.
It’s when and where we recognize that we all belong, that we are all connected.
The full article is available here
The full article is available here
Friday, May 22, 2015
Responsive Call To Worship: Mercy Should Be Our First Concern (based on Micah 6:8)
ALL: Mercy should be our first concern.
Reader: God calls us to love and seek justice.
ALL: We are God’s hands and feet on earth.
Reader: Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, we can serve.
ALL: Wherever love enters this world, God enters.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Thursday, May 14, 2015
"Where's God When?" Loss, Doubt and Church - Catherine Woodiwiss in Sojourner's
What’s it like to share your stories of loss to a room of hundreds? Wm. Paul Young (author of The Shack), Reba Riley (Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome), and Christian Piatt (PostChristian) are about to find out — and help others do the same. The three bestselling authors are launching a two-stop tour — "Where's God When..." — in Seattle and Portland on May 16 & 17, to help others hear, and share, their own stories of grief, heartbreak, and healing.
Wm. Paul Young, author, The Shack: The language of loss is something I’m quite familiar with.
The older I get, the more I’m cognizant of the fact that loss is a common language, but it isn’t a language inside our faith communities that we learn to speak very well. A lot of times not even in our homes. For a lot of us, it was not safe and not allowable to do so.
So this is an opportunity to sort of put our arms around a community of people. I think that’s the direction we have to go to find some healing, for not just ourselves but for our communities and for our world. We’ve got to be able to talk about what we have in common.
Loss is no respecter of religion. It’s an equal opportunity offender. It’s belief-resistant — it doesn’t care whether you believe in God or not. That’s the framework that we enter into and tell our stories. Loss is a common language, even more so than faith or church or God or any of that. It’s a much more common language.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Reconciling With The Church Through Worship - Shannon Hollemans in do justice!
Like many, I am a Christian both in spite of the church and because of the church. So how can we show people Christ or disciple them when the church is keeping them away from Christ?
Reconciling worship can be characterized by what happens outside of worship as much as anything that happens within it. It is not about a sermon series or carefully crafting congregational prayers.
This is a DNA issue.
It is one thing for the church to be heartbroken over injustice; it is another for the church to practice justice—in the decisions of those with power and in the life of the congregation. It is about us, all of us, being the church, together.
1. Reconciling worship embraces and celebrates the diversity of God’s people. This means that the images used convey that everyone is represented and reflected before God in worship. This mean it is a way of seeking participation from members representing every walk of life, not merely making room for diverse expression and participation, but actively pursuing it.
2. Reconciling worship remembers the causes of the hurting and oppressed. If there is any sin of which the North American church needs to repent together, it is our apathy. Oftentimes, the hurt caused by the church is not a result of what the church does as much as what it does not do. Great pain is caused when the church is silent. When people are devastated and dumbfounded and at a loss for words, that is where the Church should be—offering comfort, lamenting injustice, remembering, and speaking hope.
3. Reconciling worship recognizes and addresses the need for community. Much of worship music implies a “me and Jesus” understanding of our relationship to God. But in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 we read that it is not my body that is a temple of the Holy Spirit but the body, us.Reconciling worship has both vertical and horizontal aspects because worship, at its heart, is about communing with God and one another.
4. Reconciling worship fosters space for lament and grief. It should speak to the hearts of the many who come to worship with emptiness stemming from loss. Reconciling worship creates space that leaves room for diverse expressions of lament.
5. Reconciling worship nurtures repentance. There is immense power in confession, particularly when we do it as a community.Worship can only offer us comfort when it speaks to our very real pain, often as the result of sin. It is in turning and returning to God that the broken, all of us, can meet the God of heaven and earth face to face.
6. Reconciling worship uses language with care. Our hearts are revealed in our language, both verbal and nonverbal. And all too frequently, so are our biases. Reconciling worship avoids “us” versus “them” language, like “believers” and “nonbelievers”. It recognizes the diversity of the people in the pews, and of the people that they love. It's all about not allowing our biases to speak when leading worship. It’s about asking ourselves: how do my biases come through here? If person X were in the crowd, how would she or he hear this?
7. Reconciling worship cultivates restoration and hope. Reconciling worship turns our lens from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to the Tree of Life. It is for both the wounded and the one who has done the wounding. Our hope in Christ is the source of our unity in our diversity. When the focus is on God, not on us, it is much easier to find hope. [It should focus on the kingdom coming and God's will being done now through restoration and renewal.]
As followers of Christ we are meant to be ambassadors of reconciliation. It is an overwhelming task that we have the privilege of participating in through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The full article is available here
It is one thing for the church to be heartbroken over injustice; it is another for the church to practice justice—in the decisions of those with power and in the life of the congregation. It is about us, all of us, being the church, together.
1. Reconciling worship embraces and celebrates the diversity of God’s people. This means that the images used convey that everyone is represented and reflected before God in worship. This mean it is a way of seeking participation from members representing every walk of life, not merely making room for diverse expression and participation, but actively pursuing it.
2. Reconciling worship remembers the causes of the hurting and oppressed. If there is any sin of which the North American church needs to repent together, it is our apathy. Oftentimes, the hurt caused by the church is not a result of what the church does as much as what it does not do. Great pain is caused when the church is silent. When people are devastated and dumbfounded and at a loss for words, that is where the Church should be—offering comfort, lamenting injustice, remembering, and speaking hope.
3. Reconciling worship recognizes and addresses the need for community. Much of worship music implies a “me and Jesus” understanding of our relationship to God. But in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 we read that it is not my body that is a temple of the Holy Spirit but the body, us.Reconciling worship has both vertical and horizontal aspects because worship, at its heart, is about communing with God and one another.
4. Reconciling worship fosters space for lament and grief. It should speak to the hearts of the many who come to worship with emptiness stemming from loss. Reconciling worship creates space that leaves room for diverse expressions of lament.
5. Reconciling worship nurtures repentance. There is immense power in confession, particularly when we do it as a community.Worship can only offer us comfort when it speaks to our very real pain, often as the result of sin. It is in turning and returning to God that the broken, all of us, can meet the God of heaven and earth face to face.
6. Reconciling worship uses language with care. Our hearts are revealed in our language, both verbal and nonverbal. And all too frequently, so are our biases. Reconciling worship avoids “us” versus “them” language, like “believers” and “nonbelievers”. It recognizes the diversity of the people in the pews, and of the people that they love. It's all about not allowing our biases to speak when leading worship. It’s about asking ourselves: how do my biases come through here? If person X were in the crowd, how would she or he hear this?
7. Reconciling worship cultivates restoration and hope. Reconciling worship turns our lens from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to the Tree of Life. It is for both the wounded and the one who has done the wounding. Our hope in Christ is the source of our unity in our diversity. When the focus is on God, not on us, it is much easier to find hope. [It should focus on the kingdom coming and God's will being done now through restoration and renewal.]
As followers of Christ we are meant to be ambassadors of reconciliation. It is an overwhelming task that we have the privilege of participating in through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The full article is available here
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Immigration Preaching Challenge - CRC Office of Social Justice
Did you know that only 16% of evangelicals have ever heard about immigration in church? As a result, fewer than 10% think about immigration primarily from the perspective of their faith.
The theme of immigration is woven throughout the biblical narrative. Still, immigrants find themselves on the margins. Society projects its struggles onto new immigrants. Xenophobia, stigma, and myth tend to color the reception of newcomers.
A quick study of the history of U.S. immigration policy reveals that misinformation has resulted in harmful immigration laws that are not based on reality. The majority of new immigrants are Christians--and when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer.
Preaching about immigration is a way in which we can respond to God’s call to be truth tellers, to make the gospel relevant to our context today, and to be aware of the burdens that the body of Christ is bearing in our midst. Your congregation is hearing about immigration from lots of places--but they need most to hear about it from you.
Take the challenge! Submit a recording (with a written outline) or a complete manuscript of a sermon you preached about immigration to osjha@crcna.org by September 30, 2015.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
CRC Group Visits US/Mexico Border - Office of Social Justice
The Christian Reformed Church’s Office of Social Justice led a group of 20 pastors and others to the Arizona- Mexico border from March 9-12 to expose them to issues of immigration that people on both sides of the border are facing.
Kelsey Herbert, a Congregational Mobilizer Fellow for the Office of Social Justice, says a goal of the trip was to encourage a greater dialogue in churches about looking at immigration from a faith-based perspective.
“Only about 10% of evangelicals say their faith influences their position on immigration. This makes sense when only about 20% of Christians have heard immigration talked about from the pulpit,” she says.
The experience was a stark reminder of how just how human, even to the point of death, immigration is and how the love that Jesus has towards immigrants is beyond human understanding.
Daniel Mouw, pastor of South Grandville Christian Reformed Church in Grandville, Mich. said he knew before he went on the trip that immigration policy is complicated. But the journey to the border underscored that it is far more complicated than he realized.
"The current immigration policy needs revamping; it is too complicated, too uneven, and too disruptive for far too many families,” he says.
“The Christian community needs to be talking together about this and communicating with our leaders. And we need to get those conversations started now because of the lives of millions of marginalized people are hanging in the balance.”
The full article is available here
Friday, May 1, 2015
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