9 posts tagged “church”
It's a holiday weekend and I had a feeling going in, plus some knowledge, that attendance might be lower, and it was. Weather was rolling our way as well, but we were still blessed with a warm crowd in both services. I won't belabor the point, but I pretty much sabotaged the morning service with an inattention to time. We got home at 12:35. Yeah, way late. Have to do a better job of culling when I get a text I'm so passionate about.
Worship Music
Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing)
Holy Is the Lord
Breathe
Holy Holy Holy
I Need Thee Every Hour
Message: There's Something You Need To Know - John 15
I used two clips in the message (added 11 minutes I should have allowed for, but very strong messages in both) First was from an ER episode called "Atonement" that I discovered only the night before and the second was from Sermonspice called "An Unspoken Plea"
Both incredibly powerful and I hope they spoke to people's hearts. I went in hoping to show what God's heart was all about and challenging the people to match up with that. But I got carried away. So I'll learn from that.
Sunday nights during Lent we're trying some alternative worship. Here's the layout of it as we did it last night.
EVENING WORSHIP FEBRUARY 17, 2008
PRAYER
Veils
How Deep the Father’s Love For Us - Video {From You Tube}
"By this time it was noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. The light from the sun was gone. And suddenly, the thick veil hanging in the Temple was torn apart." Luke 23:44, 45, NLT.
MEDITATION DURING THE VIDEO
As
you realize that God has torn away the barriers between Him and you,
tear your veil from top to bottom. (Very powerful to hear each
individual come to that realization and tear his or her veil. Awesome
sound.)
FIRST READING
"Once when Jesus had been out praying,
one of his disciples came to him as he finished and said, "Lord, teach
us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." He said, "This is how
you should pray: "Father, may your name be honored. May your Kingdom
come soon. Give us our food day by day. And forgive us our sins--just
as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And don’t let us yield
to temptation.""
Luke 11:1-4, NLT.
Religion or Relationship? Video - Bible ("You don't fix faith. It fixes you." From You Tube)
SECOND READING
Then,
teaching them more about prayer, he used this illustration: "Suppose
you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three
loaves of bread. You would say to him, ‘A friend of mine has just
arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.’ He would call
out from his bedroom, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the
night, and we are all in bed. I can’t help you this time.’ But I tell
you this--though he won’t do it as a friend, if you keep knocking long
enough, he will get up and give you what you want so his reputation
won’t be damaged. "And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will be
given what you ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on
knocking, and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives.
Everyone who seeks, finds. And the door is opened to everyone who
knocks." Luke 11:4-10, NLT.
(I gave a couple of minutes of context and application to today and then asked these questions to start people talking)
SHARING
What was your biggest answered prayer? What was your toughest unanswered one?
(Great time of sharing between people who normally are very reserved.)
PRAYER BEFORE COMMUNION
PERSONAL PRAYERS OF CONFESSION
EACH PERSON COMES AND TAKES COMMUNION WHEN THEY ARE READY. TAKE A PIECE OF BREAD AND TAKE A CUP OF GRAPE JUICE. WHEN WE ALL HAVE THEM, WE WILL FIRST EAT THE BREAD, THEN DRINK THE JUICE.
(Two weeks in a row? In a Baptist church? It is a powerful symbol)
TAKE ONE OF THE SLIPS FROM THE BASKET AND READ IT AS THE VIDEO PLAYS.
The slips were the Tozer quote - "Anything God has done anywhere, He can do here. Anything God has ever done anytime, He can do now. Anything God has ever done for anyone, He can do for you." So keep on seeking, keep on asking, keep on knocking.
Video: A Living Prayer (Allison Krauss - off You Tube)
CLOSING PRAYER
My wife, who's blog is linked to the left, felt the Spirit there far more powerfully than in the morning service. "That was worship." I'm praying that as we press out from where we've always been that I hear more people say that, and see more people involved.
I'm a pastor. I love Jesus. It makes me happy when others come to love him too. But there's a big gap to cross sometimes between what people know and believe about church and what Jesus came to show about God. So can we help people understand? Well, if Deep Purple's Smoke On the Water can translate into Japanese, we sure can translate the message of Jesus into 21st century life.
Enjoy... at least until they start singing.
"We can't say Jesus is the way—"I'm going to follow Jesus"—and then use all the devil's ways. All the "I like to do" or "have a talent for" or "have an aptitude for" or "have a spiritual gift" language is popular in our churches, but we have to do it Jesus's way.
The way Jesus did it is as important as the way Jesus is.
I'm just trying to connect ways and means. The means by which we do something can destroy what we're doing if they're not appropriate.
And I think the American Church is very conspicuous for destroying the way of Jesus in the ways we do church."
The attractiveness of Christianity is ultimately not found in a church service. It's found in a group of people who are living the gospel. Churches can be more than a service. They can be alternate communities that exemplify the Kingdom of God and its values.
Part of the appeal of the early church must have been the way that slaves and masters, Jews and Gentiles, and men and women overcame social differences and worshiped together. One could only explain this kind of countercultural community of love and forgiveness by the gospel. You can explain good music and preaching lots of other ways, but there's no way to explain people who are living the gospel apart from the gospel. HT - Daryl Dash
We're preparing everything for Palm Sunday, for Good Friday, and for Easter. Let's remember that long after the last "Hosanna" faded, the crosses on Golgotha were used by others the world saw as criminal, and Easter's day on the calendar passed away, it was the lives of those who believed that continued to be different. It was who they loved, not when that made the world sit up and notice.
I really hope that some of my friends, my relatives, people that I know who don't follow Jesus come to church this Easter season. New Hope, and every other church I know will do our best to make sure the good news of Jesus gets broadcast.
But I won't be fooled by thinking that if the whole world showed up on Easter that everything would forever be different. Everything would be different if we all had Calvary's love and Easter's hope visible and active in our lives each day.
Recently I read an article about churches today and how effective they are. The writer pointed toward the number of churches that aren't growing (while the population is rapidly) and asked "just how effective are we?"
He then asked these two questions.
1. If you didn’t know ANYTHING about Jesus, what would you know about him after a normal weekend at your church?
2. If you had a loved one who didn’t know Christ, and they had one week left to live, would you take them to your church or another?
To many, those are easily shuffled beneath the layers of life, never to be uncovered again.
Not for me. I'm constantly looking to see if the group of people I'm a part of is making a difference. After 7 1/2 years, I probably do that evaluation more frequently now than ever.
So when I spotted Dr. Rainer's book (75% off I might add - sweet!), I picked it up. Drawing heavily from a parallel with Jim Collin's "Good to Great", Rainer really works hard at trying to identify the factors that make good churches great ones.
He spends a lot of time looking at leadership and identifying the particular traits of the best "Acts 6/7" leaders. The sample was 13 breakout churches and 13 comparison churches. Not many churches I have ever known would meet the breakout criteria, but it's still very helpful.
At the end of the day, what pastors like me want to know is that we are making a difference for God's purposes and among His people. For me, anything I can read that helps me see that happen is worth reading.
Mark Batterson is a bright man. And I get the feeling that he's a rare soul. He's a repository of all sorts of knowledge about scientific facts and theory. That's not what I expected when I opened the book.
My friend Joe Gnatek sent it to me after he had read it, like a prescription for what ails you. I wrote in a post a blog I write that focuses on the life of a pastor that I had apparently forgotten how to take risks.
The whole premise of the book is that if you want to get anywhere in this life or the next, you HAVE to take risks.
More later.
Ok, I'm back.
The Chapters really tell you a lot about the book.
Locking Eyes With Your Lion
The Odd Thing About Odds
Unlearning Your Fears
The Art of Reframing
Guaranteed Uncertainty
Playing It Safe Is Risky
Grab Opportunity By the Mane
The Importance of Looking Foolish
Unleash the Lion Chaser Within
The spark for the book is an obscure passage from the Bible (2 Sam. 23:20-21) where a man named Benaniah chased a lion down into a pit and then went down into that pit, despite the snowy and slippery ground, and killed it. Apparently, Benaniah had something within him that many of us lack. So Batterson takes that passage as a springboard and using a wide range of illustrative material from his life, quotes from all sorts of sources, and the Bible
and builds a case for his premise that to risk is to live.
I'm a geek when it comes to technology but no so much physics, so when some of the illustrations he uses rely on scientific principles are used, I skip past. But there's a lot more than that here. I read fairly dispassionately until page 67 when I read this:
"Worship is forgetting what's wrong with you and remembering what's right with God."
Maybe that was a "reframing" moment for me, but after that point I really got into the book and appreciated it more and more. Maybe you will find out that you will too.
And I am.
But there's something about spaces like this one that just speak to me.
Faulkner famously said that in the South, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."
Well, in places like this one I'm more prone to remember that this Body I am a part of didn't begin in my lifetime and won't end when I leave.
I'm more apt to consider the sacrifices made by people whose names I'll never know that enabled me to stand there and admire such beauty.
When I look at the pews, I think of the men and women who sat there, listening to God's Word and finding hope.
When I see the light streaming in through those stained glass windows, I think of Jesus.
And I think that's what the Master Architect intended.
Why can't modern be beautiful too? Why can't we see that?
So I'll read anything or listen to anyone when they talk about how to introduce people to Jesus. This book outlines another way - a pretty radical way to reform how we do church in order to become far more effective in reaching people who are not there yet.
After several chapters of prelude in which the author gives his story and his history, he begins to roll out the "New Life" strategy. It's a combination of cell church and the contagious Christian method.
Have about another 40 pages to go. It's a tough sale for me - the whole house church idea. Having tried to plant a church beginning in a home, the idea is more than theoretical for me. I think the neighborhood church model makes a lot of sense with cell components through the networks everyone has. But I'll read anything that might help.
Finishing it, I ripped an email off to Reggie thanking him for his book and asking for any help or resources that he could offer. He was very kind and helpful in giving his time to me and pointed me in the right direction.
So I then went out and bought ten copies of the book and gave one to every person in our leadership. Then I sat back and watched as some read it and were similarly affected by it, and some didn't and weren't.
We've made some moves in the direction of the future as forecast by the book but haven't gone nearly far enough. So when I saw that Reggie was coming to our area in conference, I was thrilled.
Yesterday because of a friend's heart procedure, I missed the first part of the conference, but the other attendees from New Hope were blown away by his insight, his passion, and his humor. McNeal was part prophet, part salesman, part preacher and always engaging as he laid out where the church and culture intersect today and just how far we have to go to be effective missionally.
If I were asked to recommend a single book for church leaders to read to grasp what is happening in our culture and what the church will need to do to thrive in influencing it for Christ, it would be this one without any hesitation. And if I were asked who you need to see in conference to be inspired and convicted about where you are as a church and where you need to go - it would be Reggie McNeal.
I'm reading the book for the third time. I'll see Reggie McNeal again if he comes near. That should tell you a lot about how strongly I feel about his work.
