Use him as a chair.
June 21, 2009
I Should Have Known
Well....I should have known. Let me comment ONE TIME about my feelings for emergent worship and low and behold we went today and it was awesome. Okay...still did not care for the concert feel, but the message was neither short nor light. It was really, really good. Just what my hubby and I needed to hear today. Thank you, God.
Missing Something
As much as I thoroughly enjoy what we refer to at our home church as "blended worship" I miss the weekly recitation of The Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed. Of course we can say them in our home, and we do, but when in a larger body of believers it takes on something "more". I miss singing "Holy, Holy, Holy" in traditional style. And watching our wedding tape again recently I remembered that we sang the hymn "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" at our wedding 19 years ago and I just love that hymn.
Don't get me wrong, I like contemporary Christian music. I'm happy that my husband likes "Skillet" and can enjoy it with our teen and pre-teen. (Not me so much) I just really miss singing hymns in their original form, because what we usually do is sing the hymns with a contemporary beat. I want to sing the praise songs like praise songs and the hymns like hymns. (okay, that sounded a bit whiny, but you get it, right?) There is richness and meaningful worship in both.
Okay, while I'm on my bandwagon, and since it IS my blog....can I just say that I simply do not like the emergent church style. I'm only talking style here, so don't ream me over doctrine right now. That's a whole other topic.
The church we frequently attend at the beach has moved from contemporary to emergent. In my opinion that moved us from being a worshiper to an audience member. The last couple of times we attended it was an all out rock show with dark seating area, flashy lights and drama. If I needed to communicate with a family member I had to yell to be heard. I never felt that I was part of a worship experience. It truly had all the makings of a great Christian rock concert. I like rock concerts, but not for a worship service. Unfortunately, the message there has also gotten shorter and "lighter". It looks like we are looking for another "church away from home." Since we spend as many as 20-25 Sundays a year at the beach house, it's pretty important that we find a place where our family can focus on God and not on the pizzaz.
Don't get me wrong, I like contemporary Christian music. I'm happy that my husband likes "Skillet" and can enjoy it with our teen and pre-teen. (Not me so much) I just really miss singing hymns in their original form, because what we usually do is sing the hymns with a contemporary beat. I want to sing the praise songs like praise songs and the hymns like hymns. (okay, that sounded a bit whiny, but you get it, right?) There is richness and meaningful worship in both.
Okay, while I'm on my bandwagon, and since it IS my blog....can I just say that I simply do not like the emergent church style. I'm only talking style here, so don't ream me over doctrine right now. That's a whole other topic.
The church we frequently attend at the beach has moved from contemporary to emergent. In my opinion that moved us from being a worshiper to an audience member. The last couple of times we attended it was an all out rock show with dark seating area, flashy lights and drama. If I needed to communicate with a family member I had to yell to be heard. I never felt that I was part of a worship experience. It truly had all the makings of a great Christian rock concert. I like rock concerts, but not for a worship service. Unfortunately, the message there has also gotten shorter and "lighter". It looks like we are looking for another "church away from home." Since we spend as many as 20-25 Sundays a year at the beach house, it's pretty important that we find a place where our family can focus on God and not on the pizzaz.
June 20, 2009
Repenting of Religion
As I watch my boys dive over waves, I ponder much of this book that I'm reading. As with most books, I don't agree with the author in every area. That has never been a problem for me. I love to read. I love to read those whom I do agree with and also those I disagree with. I like to think it allows me a look into the pardigms of others. This book gives me much to think about. I was in college when I became a believer and involved in a parachurch ministry called InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Something that rubbed me the wrong way all through school (and still does)is what I refer to as "Christianese." That language of "holiness" that so many students and staff members alike, learned and used as though it were a blanket of protection. It was like you had to learn the lingo to be in the club. This book addresses that aspect and more of what is now called "Christian culture" in America. It also addresses what so many believers and unbelievers see as the impotent church. Here's a passage from the book.
“The church as a whole often seems to function like a sociopathic husband. The evidence is pervasive. The fact that the collective body of the church is known more for its declarations of good and evil than for its outrageous love is telling. We often do good things (at least as we define good), but something is often lacking—and it happens to be the one thing that is needful.
The church as a whole does not look like the body of Christ, whose outrageous love attracted people who would otherwise have had nothing to do with a “religous establishment” or “ethical system.” We don’t generally have tax collectors, prostitues and other sinners (not former tax collectors and former sinners) in our company (Mark 2:16). Rather, despite our own insistence that it is not so, we often look like a body of Pharisees whom sinners—people with certain kinds of sin we’ve identified as more serious than our own—avoid at all costs.
Another evidence of our spiritual pathology is that at both an individual and corporate level Christians often lack the freedom, flexibility, joy, boldness and playfulness of a real lover. The abundant life and reckless love Jesus exemplified and came to bring is often replaced with a hypervigilance on what people ought to believe, how people ought to behave, and how the church should appear. We live out of our ethical maxims and religous ideas rather than the vibrant, concrete life and love of God. We live in the abstract, not the concrete.
In a proper context, of course, there is nothing wrong with concerns about right belief and proper behavior. But it is evidence of spiritual pathology when these concerns dominate our individual or collective lives and are not rather merely by-products of what ought to dominate our lives: the outrageous, freely-given, unsurpassable love of God to us and through us.”
Gregory Boyd on pg. 97 of his book, “Repenting of Religion.”
“The church as a whole often seems to function like a sociopathic husband. The evidence is pervasive. The fact that the collective body of the church is known more for its declarations of good and evil than for its outrageous love is telling. We often do good things (at least as we define good), but something is often lacking—and it happens to be the one thing that is needful.
The church as a whole does not look like the body of Christ, whose outrageous love attracted people who would otherwise have had nothing to do with a “religous establishment” or “ethical system.” We don’t generally have tax collectors, prostitues and other sinners (not former tax collectors and former sinners) in our company (Mark 2:16). Rather, despite our own insistence that it is not so, we often look like a body of Pharisees whom sinners—people with certain kinds of sin we’ve identified as more serious than our own—avoid at all costs.
Another evidence of our spiritual pathology is that at both an individual and corporate level Christians often lack the freedom, flexibility, joy, boldness and playfulness of a real lover. The abundant life and reckless love Jesus exemplified and came to bring is often replaced with a hypervigilance on what people ought to believe, how people ought to behave, and how the church should appear. We live out of our ethical maxims and religous ideas rather than the vibrant, concrete life and love of God. We live in the abstract, not the concrete.
In a proper context, of course, there is nothing wrong with concerns about right belief and proper behavior. But it is evidence of spiritual pathology when these concerns dominate our individual or collective lives and are not rather merely by-products of what ought to dominate our lives: the outrageous, freely-given, unsurpassable love of God to us and through us.”
Gregory Boyd on pg. 97 of his book, “Repenting of Religion.”
Love and the Journey
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. –excerpt from 1 Corinthians 13, The Message
If I think of salvation as an "event", rather than the journey it is, and have not love, then that sin nature I was so definitely born with churns with pride. With each event that I think will prove THE event. As I live out the process of sanctification, daily, moment by moment, meeting God for today, I don't have to feel guilt or "give up" because the journey continues until we meet face to face. I have not failed, I am in-process as a work not yet complete.
Molly over at Adventures In Mercy put it this way:
When you are on a journey, you aren’t trying to be perfect. You are simply trying to remain on the process of journeying. If you stumble, you get up, wipe off your knees and keep going. You can even sit down and pull out a picnic lunch from your backpack. It’s all okay. None of the perfectionistic hysterics about messing up. You don’t mess up when you’re on a journey. You might trip, but that’s part of the journey. A journey is both/and. It was a one-time event, the day you set your foot on this trail and decided to follow it. But it is also a process, a way you travel, a ever-unfolding experience.
One-time-event salvation is dangerous because it reduces following Christ to a legal transaction. Following Christ becomes “an event that happened,” not a Way we travel, and that is dangerous because it just isn’t true and it sucks the life right out of what really is true. You sit down and never go anywhere, waiting for heaven, waiting for the Left Behind series to come to life. You miss the journey altogether.
And salvation-is-rule-following is even worse. If you weren’t an anxiety-ridden basketcase (or a first-class faker) before you started, honey, you will be before you're done. ://adventuresinmercy.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-way-of-love/
Some things are important, necessary. Giving my husband support when dealing with bad days at work (met CMPD's new Chief?....nuf said) , caring for our home, homeschooling the children, taking care of my parents. However, if Ihave not love, these things become burdens, done out of pride and expectation of praise or fear of man's judgement. More than outward appearances of happy husband, a clean house, well-educated children and cared for parents, I want all of those areas to exhibit love. The love we have for each other and the love we have for God.
If I think of salvation as an "event", rather than the journey it is, and have not love, then that sin nature I was so definitely born with churns with pride. With each event that I think will prove THE event. As I live out the process of sanctification, daily, moment by moment, meeting God for today, I don't have to feel guilt or "give up" because the journey continues until we meet face to face. I have not failed, I am in-process as a work not yet complete.
Molly over at Adventures In Mercy put it this way:
When you are on a journey, you aren’t trying to be perfect. You are simply trying to remain on the process of journeying. If you stumble, you get up, wipe off your knees and keep going. You can even sit down and pull out a picnic lunch from your backpack. It’s all okay. None of the perfectionistic hysterics about messing up. You don’t mess up when you’re on a journey. You might trip, but that’s part of the journey. A journey is both/and. It was a one-time event, the day you set your foot on this trail and decided to follow it. But it is also a process, a way you travel, a ever-unfolding experience.
One-time-event salvation is dangerous because it reduces following Christ to a legal transaction. Following Christ becomes “an event that happened,” not a Way we travel, and that is dangerous because it just isn’t true and it sucks the life right out of what really is true. You sit down and never go anywhere, waiting for heaven, waiting for the Left Behind series to come to life. You miss the journey altogether.
And salvation-is-rule-following is even worse. If you weren’t an anxiety-ridden basketcase (or a first-class faker) before you started, honey, you will be before you're done. ://adventuresinmercy.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-way-of-love/
Some things are important, necessary. Giving my husband support when dealing with bad days at work (met CMPD's new Chief?....nuf said) , caring for our home, homeschooling the children, taking care of my parents. However, if Ihave not love, these things become burdens, done out of pride and expectation of praise or fear of man's judgement. More than outward appearances of happy husband, a clean house, well-educated children and cared for parents, I want all of those areas to exhibit love. The love we have for each other and the love we have for God.
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