Church Planting Video

I like this video, but quite frankly, I have a serious chance of never being able to find it again. Thus, here it is.

Interesting Article - Do We Praise too Soon?

Quite Frankly, this article has been eating me up. I can't shake it, mostly because, I don't know what it looks like with cloths on...but I think there are some very valid points to it.

Praise That's Premature?
Do we praise too soon?
by Shane Hipps

I scanned the congregation as we finished our third song extolling the wonders of God and our joy for all God has done. As we started the fourth song with the same spirit of energetic celebration, I glimpsed a friend, sitting in the back, who had told me that week that his wife had cheated on him and wanted a divorce.

At that moment the lyrics kicked in, and we started singing joyful thanks for God's abundant blessings. The words I was singing suddenly felt forced, false, and even mocking. I had to spend the rest of the song looking away from my friend, who stood with his mouth shut, staring out the window.

After the service I approached him and said, "I was thinking about you the entire service; it must have been painful sitting through some of the songs."

"Yeah," he said. "I'm not sure this is a good time for me to attend church. It is painful to observe celebration and not be able to join. It accentuates my loneliness."

I left thinking there was something very wrong with this situation.

Worship is often equated with joy and celebration. It's a kind of pep rally to inspire thanksgiving and excitement about who God is. While this is a legitimate aspect of worship, it is incomplete.

This comes into full relief when we consider the experience of my friend and even more so when we read the book of Psalms as a record of ancient worship and a rich resource for our worship today.

An important pattern in the psalms is that they repeatedly employ a narrative arc, a movement from grief and lamentation to celebration and joy. This pattern is strikingly absent in many worship services today. We tend to deny our suffering in favor of celebration.

Perhaps this is because we mistakenly believe that to acknowledge suffering might mean we are ungrateful or lacking in faith. More likely it is because grief is an inefficient and unpleasant emotion that conflicts with the efficient and entertaining biases of today's culture.

This repression of our heaviest emotions is tragic, and over time it leads to an inauthentic and unhealthy spiritual life.

Authenticity and integrity in worship means expressing both lament and praise. Each element completes the other. Without lament, praise is little more than shallow sentimentality and a denial of life's struggles and sin. Without praise, lament is a denial of hope and grace, both of which are central to our life of faith and to God's promises.

To value one over the other is like suggesting that breathing in is more important than breathing out.

This is not only an issue of authenticity and integrity. It cuts to the heart of hospitality and pastoral sensitivity. For those coming to a worship service immersed in pain, celebratory praise takes on a mocking tone that excludes them. They are unable to join honestly in these choruses.

By incorporating expressions of sorrow, pain, and grief into our worship, as the psalms do, the hurting are ushered into God's presence with honesty. At the same time, the rest of the congregation is reminded of the suffering community gathered in their midst. They are invited to weep with those who are weeping. By honoring their pain, we acknowledge those who are suffering and affirm them in their grief.

Yet worship is not complete without turning to praise. When pain has been acknowledged, those who suffer are invited beyond their pain to consider God's faithfulness in the midst of suffering and even to rejoice with those who are rejoicing.

These opportunities for lament and praise are not simply about meeting personal needs. They are missional practices of authenticity, hospitality, and pastoral care.

Copyright © 2007 by the author or Christianity Today International/Leadership Journal.
Spring 2007, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, Page 64

Discovery in James

Working through James 1 for Bible Study actually taught me something I just plain didn't know before. Not that that should surprise me, but quite frankly, it did. I thought I had James 1 nailed!

Ok, the obvious, we are told to have pure joy when we meet temptations (meet isn't search out and find, but when it finds us, like the robbers who found the man traveling, and left him in the road for dead). Here's the question... HOW?!?!

Well, verses 2 - 4 tell us that we can be joyful because at the end of the trial there is a benefit - completion, maturity, perfection. If we have the right view, if we keep things in perspective, if we live with real integrity (the idea of a one track mind), we can be joyful through the trials, because we know what's at the end.

Fine and good, and a great spiritual thought, a wonderful Christian answer, the right answer, the easy (not simple) answer that I have used and clung to in life... but a pat answer at best. Because the real help in all of this comes next.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. - James 1:5-8

Why would James put that next? Is he just tossing out ideas left and right, kinda "proverbing" if you will? Nope.

The only way we can maintain our joy in the midst of trials is by seeing the end, and the only way to see the end is to ask for and receive the wisdom of God, which is totally opposite of the wisdom of this world.

In this world, the current trial would be all that mattered, as we live in the now, and we would do everything we possibly could do to make the pain stop, to feel better. And that's why alcoholism, drug abuse, porno addictions, prostitution and a myriad of other vices exist. We want out NOW. That is a direct result of our world view being now-centered.

The wisdom of God is needed in order to be then-centered, Him-centered. And that wisdom is there for the asking. And when He gives it to you, He gives it without reproach, without finding fault with us, without rubbing it in that we should have asked earlier, without mocking the snot out of us. He simply gives it, because He knows we need it, and it brings Him joy when we have it.

Now, if I could only be smart enough to ask for it.

Father's Day

As I sit in the shore house, with everyone else in bed (shocking that I am the only one up!!), I'm trying to wrap my head around some things. Mainly, what I did to deserve good kids.

From Luke telling Papa how great a dad I am, to Audrey thinking I am big enough to lift her to the sky so she can touch the clouds, to Jordan saying the only thing he wanted this morning was to spend time with me, to Amber telling me yesterday I am the greatest dad (mostly because I just bought her the biggest, ugliest, dangliest earrings ever seen by man's eyes), I am distraught by it all.

On one hand I want my kids to love me, to idolize me, to follow after me, but quite frankly, the other hand is rather strong...it's ME they are loving, idolizing and following...that scares the crap out of me.

I want to love my kids the way I should, to provide for them, to teach them. I want them to pass by me, and not get stuck trying to follow me. I want them see God in the right way... and to think I can screw this all up...

And yet, somehow, I haven't. I have Jordan, who wins a Christian character award; Amber, who is figuring bigger and bigger things out as she reads her Bible; Luke, who loves to pray, because he knows who he is talking to, and Audrey, who loves playing with me...no matter how crabby she is.

Reading 2 John 6 this morning,

And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.

So, the honest truth is, as I love my God, as I learn to love Him more, I am loving my kids. That's what has made my parenting so "successful"... or who.

Cause it sure ain't me.