“How much do you have to hate somebody not to proselytize?”

Penn Says: A Gift of a Bible

Thanks to Ed Stetzer (and countless others) for linking to this video. Makes you want to have the strength of your own convictions, doesn’t it?

Noboy’s a Nobody and An Arrow Needs a Bow

I recently came across a great article by Miroslav Volf called “The Ultimate Somebody” reflecting on the recent passing of a friend and major influence on his life, a friend named is Toma.  Here is a snippet. I would highly recommend reading the whole thing here.

Can an arrow forget the bow that set it flying? Many an arrow does, even though its very flight is a testimony to the bow’s influence. It is especially easy to forget the shaping power of those whom illness takes out of the company of the “sane” and the “respectable.” But even when I fail to remember how formative Toma was for me, the trajectory of my life is a silent memorial to him. Maybe his was a truly Christian way of being somebody—being a bow for the flight of another.

And, if you’re looking for a good book to read around Christmas holidays, I would say that his book Exclusion and Embrace makes a great read, and a great gift!  You can buy it here.

Must Learn to Live As Missionary Citizens

Great thoughts by Timmy Brister over at Provocations and Paintings on Obama’s win and what it means for American evangelicals.  Read the whole thing here.  Here’s a quote:

On the other hand, I can’t help but think that the Obama presidency will help Christians who happen to be American to open our eyes to our syncretistic views of American Christianity.  While the fundamentalist impulse is to retreat into the ghetto, pull out the dispensationalism charts, and check the rapture ready index as a morning devotional, perhaps for the first time Christians will no longer seek to Christianize America but speak prophetically and live missionally in our growingly secular world.  Our greatest need is not to fight the battle against the culture but to fight against the battle against unbelief.  It is safe to live as functional atheists when we’ve got God in our constitution, on our coins, in the White House, but when the props are removed from us, how shall we then live?

We must learn to live as missionary citizens.

Worship Reflection 3 – Liturgical and Contemporary

Traditional Faithfulness or Contemporary Relevance.  Which is better for the church?

This is an interesting question.  It is also a false dichotomy.  It assumes that worship cannot be both.  I argue that it in fact should be both.  I argue this because we are in danger of the sin of self-righteous elitism if we pit one over against the other.

Worship that is pleasing to God is worship that is rooted and growing out of the church’s historic and catholic  roots, yet situated in its present contemporary context and sensible in the culture the church finds herself.  Below I highlight eight presuppositions – eight principles – that provide a foundation for the process of designing a liturgical worship service in a 21st century expression of the church.

1.    Liturgical does not mean Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, or any other formal denominationally set form of corporate worship.  Its broader than any of these individually.

2.    Liturgical does not mean “Traditional”. It incorporates traditional elements, but cannot be defined or explained simply by referring to traditional aspects of corporate worship.  Every element was at some point contemporary – so to stick too closely to any one tradition is it succumb to traditionalism, not biblical faithfulness in a cultural context.

3.    Liturgical does not mean any one certain “style” of music and lyrics. This can actually be sin on either side of the spectrum.  If we opt for only “old words” to “old tunes”, or the converse, “new words” to “new tunes”, we practice idolatry in the form of cultural elitism.  There is much validity to critique of much contemporary music – especially that which passes for contemporary worship songs of praise; but the answer is not to go to “old lyrics/tunes” exclusively, but to labor to find, perhaps even write, new songs that convey the same ancient truth the church has historically sung.

4.    Liturgical means, “work of the people” (literal translation). This means that liturgical worship is best explained and described as God’s people responding to God’s initiation.  For some there is close connection to “covenant renewal” occurring every week within corporate worship.  At the least, liturgical worship is a corporate re-enactment and engagement with the drama of redemption, incorporating the dual movements of God’s initiation and provision and His people’s response and praise.
5.    Liturgical worship is rooted in history and connected in catholicity. When we say “history”, we need to include the history conveyed in the Bible as well as church history.  The church stands in a line that extends all the way back to Adam in the garden.  The people of God have existed since this time and have carried on through to today.  So we look across this spectrum, not just at any one distinct point.  It also branches out to include all the saints – those who profess and live under Christ’s lordship – spread out over the world and across time.  There may be particular expressions, but the church is a universal body, which incorporates with in it all the biblically based, God-honoring, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered churches of the world.
6.    Liturgical worship includes the 21st century church. This links back to the premise that it is more than “traditionalism”, but it needs to be emphasized more clearly.  To say that the church is rooted in history is not the same thing as saying that the church only looks backwards in history for its credible expressions.  The church exists along a continuum of history of which its current setting and cultural context is a part.  We therefore need to labor to learn from the historical applications of worship and incorporate them into our current setting.
7.    Liturgical worship does not mean “technology free”. To say that one prefers worship that is void of technological impediments is to assume that the church has preferred to avoid technological advances.  If that were the case, what’s the point in forgoing an overhead projector screen for the use of paper bulletins, pamphlets or even hymnals – all of which are products of the technological advances of the 16th century printing press?  By making hard claims that we don’t need certain technologies, yet adopting others, is a misnomer, and needs to be carefully articulated as to what it is we are aiming to accomplish and why.  The church has always used technology, and therefore, we shouldn’t be hesitant to use the technology available to us, as long as it best serves the purposes of our corporate worship together.
8.    Liturgical worship is corporate worship that takes the shape of gospel re-enactment. This means that the basic structure of the corporate worship service is one of God’s call to worship, man’s dilemma of sin and God’s assurance of deliverance and pardon, God speaks to man through the grace of His word, and man’s response to God’s gracious initiation.  To say it another way, corporate worship should follow the drama of redemption – Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation.

Reflections on Worship (Part 1) – What is worship?

This post will be part 1 of what will be a series of reflections on worship.  Writing helps me process my thoughts, and it is also helpful to hear and receive feedback.  So feel free to critique, question, suggest and agree with any of what follows.

What is worship?

We usually evaluate and critique worship in light of our personal preferences or emotional responses to the stimuli that is worship.  But we rarely if ever consider worship to be a verb – something that we do!  It is more something to be consumed and critiqued than actively engaged with our full participation.

Why?  Where does this come from?

It seems that our worship expressions and expectations are conditioned more by our culture than on Scripture and more influenced by TV and media than truth and tradition.

That’s a loaded word – tradition – but it is a viable aspect of our worship.  No matter where you stand on any spectrum, you come to anything with a “tradition”  – a story that has led you up to this point.

Some people come from a formal church tradition such as Presbyterianism, Methodism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, where worship reflected a strong stand on history, usually at the neglect and expense of innovation.  I would call this “traditionalism” – where everything we do is based on the way we’ve done things in the past, rather than careful reflection on the historic applications in light of contemporary audiences.

There are others of us who come to church and worship with no formal background, yet, we find ourselves shaped by suspicion of any and all authority structures (e.g. “traditionalism”). Our tradition is “skepticism”, and the burden of proof lies on everyone else to convince us that what is being said, taught, instructed or done is really “true” and the way it should be, and that I should do anything about it.

Both ends of this spectrum represent a fallacy to worship.  In both instances, worship is something that is done for me, rather than something that is done for God.

If worship is to be truly biblical, faithful to the tradition of the Bible and rooted in history to Christ’s church, and engaging His church in the world today, then it must be, what one author calls, “a royal ‘waste’ of time,” (Marva Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; 1999]), where God is both the subject and the object of our worship, where we spend ourselves in the splendor of our great creator and covenant keeping King, and where we delight our selves in, and subject our emotions to, the full-hearted devotion to His Son that His Spirit enables.

Worship then is the engagement of our whole being in faithful service to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Does God run interference in your life?

Best book on Acts I

Having just finished the “Acts” portion of my Acts and Paul class yesterday (part of the reason why my activity has been minimal on here), I thought I would share a significant quote on the christian life and God’s interaction.  This quote comes from The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption by Dennis Johnson.

Let me just say, if you are personally studying through Acts, or planning on teaching, do not do so until you have gotten and read this book (or at least, read it along your study/teaching schedule).  This is a great book, and it really shed some light on the significant thrust of the book of Acts, instead of offering up random insight into mot of the particular events.  Well worth the money and the time to read The Message of Acts.

Here’s the quote:

“However correct their statements in Bible studies or Sunday school classes may be, in practice many Christians really assume that God’s ‘interference’ in people’s lives pretty much came to a halt sometime in the past – perhaps in the apostles’ time, perhaps at the Reformation or some revival of bygone days, but surely before our time.

Would we say this out loud? Never!  But our meager prayer lives, our anxiety, our dependence on novel techniques in evangelism, our hope in technology to solve spiritual problems, our doubt that loving discipline can restore wandering brothers or sisters to repentance and reconciliation – all these testify to our unspoken assumption that God’s real action is in the past and in the future, but not in the present.”

Fellow brothers and sisters, God is continuing to work in our lives.  Believe that, then go live in light of it.

New Books: Church, Gospel, World, Reforming?

Well, yesterday I came home and had several new books waiting for me.  I thank the folks at Crossway who keep on sending me good and interesting reading material.  I want to highlight a couple of these and tell you all to be on the lookout over the next couple of months for some reviews.

The first book to mention is Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.  This book had been previously published only in the UK, but thanks to Crossway and the new publishing banner of Re:Lit, it is now available here.  I have only scanned through the book, but the first chapter is promising.  The gospel is word-centered and mission-centered, so our churches need to be based on the word and on mission – love it!  I actually first about this book from a friend of mine over in South Africa (cheers Stephen!)

Book #2 – Wordliness, by multiple authors, but edited by a pastor’s pastor, C.J. Mahaney.  I wasn’t sure what to think of this book when I first started seeing it pop up on the web, but knowing C.J.’s other books (Humility: True Greatness and Living the Gospel-Centered Life) and pastoral heart (if you need some exposure, go check out his blog), I’m confident that this book will be insightful and helpful in discerning where and how the gospel applies to our world in our cultural situation.

Book #3 – Reforming or Conforming edited by Gary W. Johnson and Ronald D. Gleason.  This book appears to be a collection of various scholars critiquing the emerging church movement.  I haven’t dove in at all, but I will be interested to see if they distinguish between emerging and emergent.  Some of the chapters do seem fascinating (like “It’s Wright, but is it Right? An Assessment and Engagement of the “Emerging” Retreading of the Ministry of Jesus.” Caveat: I find myself being hesitant to read books like this.  I have read some thoughts by some of these guys on the internet and find myself not agreeing with their conclusions.  That being said, I do find myself appreciating the concerns they bring up.  Reading this will hopefully bring the fundamental issues to the front with constructive critique and positive assessments instead of just the reactionary tendencies demonizing those who differ.

Book #4 – Death by Love: Letters From the Cross by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears.  This book looks fascinating.  Its written as a series of letters addressing real live situations and people, with the full theological truth of the gospel.  I wasn’t expecting that, and I like it.  I honestly can’t wait to get into reading this one.  It seems to have a lot of potential of to help all pastors and lay leaders alike appreciate the depth of theological reflection, without losing sight of its pastoral implications.  This book also features some helpful answers to FAQ’s concluding each chapter (thank you Dr. Breshears for that!).  This is similar to their previous book, Vintage Jesus.

So, if you haven’t already done so, you should subscribe to my blog (button on the top right) and watch out for these forthcoming reviews.

Thoughts on Thursday: Whatever presses upon them…

Today’s thought (or, quote) comes from John Owen, in his book Communion with the Triune God, a book well worth owning and digesting slowly.  Here it is:

“‘His banner over me was love’ (Song 2:4).  The banner is an emblem of safety and protection – a sign of the presence of a host.  Persons belonging to an army do encamp under their banner in security.  So did the children of Israel in the wilderness’ every tribe kept their camps under their own standard. It is also a token of success and victory (Ps. 20:5).  Christ has a banner for his saints; and that is love.  All their protection is from his love; and they shall have the protection his love can give them.  This safeguards them from hell, death – all their enemies.  Whatever presses on them, it must pass through the banner of the love of the Lord Jesus. they have, then, great spiritual safety; which is another ornament or excellency of their communion with him.”

From John Owen, Communion with the Triune God, 141.

Thoughts on Thursday: What does it mean to be missional?

I recently read an insightful post on what it means to preach “being missional” over at In the Time of Postmoderns I Was a Puritan.  Here’s an excerpt:

Being “missional” doesn’t mean just dropping the word in sermons hoping people will figure out what it means. It takes talking about specific issues of the church’s mission, grounding them in scripture exposition, and trying to engage your church into thinking about, planning, and pursuing missional goals communally; not merely planting ideas in people head’s that they will individually pursue once they leave the four walls of the church building. That kind of individualism is what is plaguing the church already, we don’t need to blindly continue in it.

He goes on to provide a brief but helpful list of several areas where we can dig in to what it means to be missional.  Read the whole post here.

Darrin Patrick on Michael Phelps, Greatness and God

Darrin Patrick has some good thoughts on the idea of greatness, sparked by the recent accomplishments of a certain Olympic swimmer (Michael Phelps, in case you have been out of it).  Check it out here.

Greatness reminds us that there is a God who is THE Greatest. Humans, reflecting the image of God can be awesome, but God is the one who is freakin awesome.