African Barbershop Beatbox A-capella Dance

I couldn’t resist.  I had to post this little gem that made me smile.  The musician is Alex Boye.  Besides being an “African Barbershop Beatbox Accapella Dance”, he describes the style of this song as “Boyz II Men meets The Lion King”.  I had to post it for that reason alone!  Beyond that he writes,

This song is a song of gratitude spoken in 4 different languages expressing my gratitude to God for the goodness of life. The English translation of the chorus reads:

“WHEN YOU DANCE WITH GOD, YOU ARE IN THE RIGHT WAY”

This is not a cover, but an original song. Growing up, i loved listening to Boyz II Men and the beautiful harmonies. Later on in my life, i stumbled across African a capella groups and was enamored with the deep feelings of oneness i would get from it. I tried to re-create that feeling in this song.

There are no instruments in this song. It is all done by mouth. I had an idea to have multiple images of me singing the chorus simply because i am the one singing all the vocals anyway.

May you feel gratitude to God for His many blessings.  And may you dance too…

Communal worship

The official term is “corporate worship”, but I prefer “communal” instead.  Either way, the point is the same.  In an iPod world, God still calls us to come together and worship as a group to do something we can’t do by ourselves.  Jim Altizer unpacks the three “R” words (what we should do) that we need to consider in communal worship.

I appreciate the way Jim unpacks this.  He challenges us to not be so “possessive” of God’s word in the communal worship gathering…He points out that actions help us experience the story of God.  While I appreciate his explanation of anamnesis and his challenge to get more creative, I was hoping to hear some more creative ideas that are still rooted in biblical and historical example.  For example, how about performance art in the style of Ezekiel?  How about outdoor services on opposing hills in the style of the the Israelites reciting blessings and curses to themselves?

Now, I know that Jim’s goal was basic understanding.  He wasn’t trying to push the envelope for physical action.  And his explanation becomes a challenge.  Are we creating worship experiences that are truly communally driven or are they performance driven?  What do you think?

Instruments from the Inside

A friend recently posted a link to this page (with all the pictures).  It is a series of pictures taken to promote the Berliner Philharmoniker.  The friend that posted them commented that the pictures look like the inside of “tiny temples”.  An interesting comment, I think.  Beauty many times points us to the creator.  The pictures are not on the same level of God, but reflect Him, however imperfectly, none the less.  These instruments were created to make beautiful music and to be beautiful.  And God is there…

Enjoy the Spinning Beach Ball of Death!

This video is for MAC lovers and lovers of improvisational mayhem everywhere.  Check out what happened at a recent TED talk!  And all for the love of the spinning beach ball of death.  The next time it pops up, I just might have to smile!

Choose Humility

Humility is one of those tricky things, isn’t it?  As soon as you declare yourself humble, you cease to be so.  And the other irony is that both the arrogant and the truly humble probably won’t think of themselves as humble!  So is it something we’re born with or something we simply pick up along the way like additional candles on our birthday cake?  John Dixon doesn’t think so.  He is the author of a great book called, Humlitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love and Leadership.  I highly recommend it for leaders and anyone who wants to better follow Jesus.

Dixon thinks that it’s something we can choose and cultivate and he starts out with a basic definition that might re-orient your thinking from the get-go.  He writes,

Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.

Does that sound like Jesus?  I’m still working through it.  But, I think it does.  There were a ga-zillion great quotes, but I thought I would just focus on some of the reasons to choose humility first and share the other thoughts in later posts.  So let’s jump in and think about humility…

1.  ”Knowing a great deal in one area of life is no guarantee of proficiency in another.”  Dixon tells a great story of a plane that is at a high altitude and has engine failure.  The passangers are forced to jump until it gets down to three people, but there are only TWO parachutes left.  The first person makes a long speech about how they are a famous professor and have knowledge the world needs so he should get one of the last two parachutes.  He grabs one and jumps.  The last two people are just normal folks.  One is a student and the other an adult.  The adult looks at the student and asks, “What should we do?”  The student replies, “I think we should take the last two parachutes.  That professor just jumped out of the plane with my back-pack”.  It’s true.  Knowing a lot in one area doesn’t make you smart in all areas.  That is one good reason for all of us to choose humility.

2.  ”It is a  fact of our nature, it seems, that most of us have a grossly exaggerated sense of our own abilities.”  I see that in myself.  I think I am SO GOOD AS SO MANY THINGS when in reality I’m not.  I get a sense of this when I watch Dan play the piano.  I get a sense of this when I watch my Dad, a building contractor by profession, put in a new faucet at my house in an hour when it would take me a whole day and still leak!  I get a sense of this as I try to be a good Dad to my kids.  I think I am doing a good job until I loose my temper or do something stupid or thoughtless.  I think I’m so good, but most of the time it’s a bit over exaggerated.  It is better to choose humility.

All that to say, choose humility.  Not a false sense of humility where you pretend you don’t have status, or resources or abilities or influence.  No, it means that you acknowledge all these things and then use them for the good of others.  Jesus did just this when he didn’t think equality with God was something to hold onto, but made himself a human, a servant, to live with use and redeem the whole world.  As Dixon writes, “Humility is not an ornament to be worn; it is an ideal that will transform.”  I want to be transformed by Jesus.  I want to be transformed by humility.  I pray the same for you.  Choose humility.

What I Learned from Starbucks-Prt 1

I recently finished the book, Onward, written by Starbucks founder and CEO, Howard Schultz.  I don’t read a lot of leadership books, but I really enjoyed this one.  First off, my wife and I love coffee houses and affectionately refer to Starbucks as St.Arbucks.  But I also had a number of take-away thoughts for the church.  So go get your own…

Grande coffee in a venti cup with 2 pumps hazelnut, 2 pumps vanilla, 2 pumps caramel, 2 equals and 4 sweet and lows filled to the top with cream, with extra cream on the side, double cupped with no sleeve, a stir stick, and a stopper put in the top

…and enjoy reading what I learned from Starbucks…part 1…

1.  I loved the fact the Howard Schultz identified writing as a way to connect with the other people at Starbucks.  He writes, ”Writing helped me stay in touch with myself as well as our people, and I resurrected one of my favorite modes of communication:  composing frequent memos to Starbuck’s partners.”  I hope you know that this is what I do every week via WorshipNotes.  It helps me stay in touch with myself and with you.

2.  He identifies a coffee house as a “3rd place” and I think the same applies for churches.  A 3rd place is not your home and it’s not where you work.  It’s a “social yet personal environment between one’s house and job, where people can connect with others and reconnect with themselves” (13) and I would add that in the church we also are able to reconnect with God, our maker, redeemer and restorer.

3.  When he talks about merchants he has a great perspective on how the ordinary can point us to the extraordinary.  Again he writes, ”We take the ordinary – a shoe, a knife – and give it new life, believing that what we create has the potential to touch others’ lives because it touched ours.”  Later he says something similar except he points out that we take the ordinary and “infuse it with emotion and meaning” and then we tell the same story over and over and over again…This is the goal of believer artists.  I am not extraordinary.  And no offense, but you aren’t extraordinary either!  We work with soundboards, instruments, mics, music, props, costumes, projectors, computers…this things are just ordinary things.  Most of what we use isn’t even cutting edge technology.  But we give them a new life, emotion and meaning that points to the creator.  We believe that this story that we tell over and over and over again has the power to touch others’ lives because it touched ours.  Not through anything we do.  We are ordinary.  But because of who he is…he is an extraordinary God.

4.  ”We are genuinely interested in educating our customers.”  (11)  That’s a big part of why ECC exists.  We are a teaching church because we believe that you need to have basic knowledge of God to be in a right relationship with him.  We also believe that ”…knowledge can breed passion…” (78)  It’s not always true, but when you know the truth…it will set you free and that is inspiring.

5.  We have talked about the need to work on our talent/craft because it is a God-given gift and something we try to offer back to him in worship.  We’ve also talked about how people will know quickly if we are true or false.  Shultz identifies these two key ingredients when he writes ”…quality and transparency are prerequisites to participating.” (20)  We must work to hone our craft to remove distractions and we must do this with transparency or you might say authenticity.

6. As I was reading Onward, I was struck by this quote because it reminded me of the importance of you, our volunteers.  ”Our partners’ attitude and actions have such great potential to make our customers feel something.” (117)  We do want to educate people who attend ECC, but a big part of what we do as believer artists is help those people connect their head knowledge with their heart’s emotion.  We can’t just sing the truth.  We have to sing the truth as if it is life itself and is the most important thing to us.  So important that it’s changed our lives and we believe EVERYONE needs to experience that same transformation.

 

This isn’t scripture.  These are just some thoughts from a book that I found inspiring…and I don’t think it was just the caffeine coursing through my veins!  It was a chance to re-envision what we do and also realize that we are doing so many things right.  The most right thing being that we are working to help people learn HIS WORD so we can apply it to OUR WALK.  Next week…we’ll order a

Venti Non-fat, no foam, no water 6 pump extra hot chai tea latte

…and jump into Prt 2…

Alligators Love Michigan Church

After posting about my college roomie, I thought it only fair to also post about another good friend from college who serves at the UB Pathway church in Michigan.  Somehow, and this sounds crazy, a gator showed up on their soccer field and Brent was there to capture it all on video.  It caused such a stir that the Huffington Post even picked it up!

Me-ouw!

Just saw this ha-larious little piece and thought I’d stash it under “things I will never use in a service” file here on Worship 360.  For cat lovers – and Gioachino Rossini lovers – everywhere, this is one of the better renditions of Duetto buffo di due gatti (Humorous Duet for Two Cats).  Enjoy and me-ouw!

Hidden in Our Hearts by Jeff Barker

I have had the honor of knowing Jeff Barker at IWS.  He has challenged me and also helped quite a bit by sharing pieces of his thoughts, work and writing with me.  I grabbed this article from the IWS newsletter and thought I’d share it with you.  I am inspired by Jeff’s dream and I hope you are too.  Enjoy…

I am on sabbatical from Northwestern College—my other school when I am not at IWS. I am living this semester in the Pacific Northwest, where Karen and I are working alongside Pastor Jon who is committed to reclaiming the orality of scripture. For starters, every Sunday Jon speaks his sermon’s scripture text from memory.

We arrived at this church around the same time as Noel, a young worship leader fresh from doctoral coursework (not at IWS, but another fine seminary). Last week I sat in Noel’s office in conversation about presenting the Bible in worship—in particular, God’s Word as testimony, story and drama. I explained that it was natural that I would spend my sabbatical at this church because reclamation of biblical forms often requires one particular starting point: memorization.

“I think this is how my seminary mentor would respond,” said Noel. “He would argue that there is a serious danger in presenting the Bible from memory in public. The memorization itself may be a distraction. People will notice how fascinating and unique it is that the passage has been memorized. But they might stop paying full attention to the scripture. In other words, the form of presentation might obscure the content.”

“Here’s my dream,” I said. “I dream of the day when presenting the scripture from memory will no longer be unique. I dream of people from the culture at large saying, ‘Isn’t it fascinating that Christians place such a high value on Bible memorization? If you go to one of their worship services, you always hear someone speaking whole passages from memory—and not just the pastor or the worship leader. No. Everyone in the church seems capable of speaking straight from the book.’”

I asked Noel, “How will our people catch this vision unless they see it modeled in the church’s most public and formative gathering—the worship service? And how will it be modeled unless the church’s leaders lead the way?”

We do not want scriptural content to be obscured. We want the form of a presentation to support the content. And we want the opposite as well. We want the content to be presented in an appropriate form. What can we learn by reclaiming the forms in which the scriptures were created? What can we learn by following the practices of a people who wrote God’s law upon their hearts?

Before I left Noel’s office, I said, “I’m going to meddle. I offer you this challenge. In your worship planning, are you willing to have at least one verse spoken from memory every Sunday by you or someone on the platform?”

Noel said, “I’m there.”

As pastor of worship and discipleship, Noel will sometimes preach. Yesterday Noel preached his first sermon at this new church. His text was the final seven verses of Jesus’ high priestly prayer (John 17:20-26). He looked us in the eye and spoke the words that Jesus prayed for us. I must admit that I was distracted a bit from the content of Jesus’ words because I was so thrilled that Noel was speaking them from memory. I expect that, after a while, my experience with Noel will be the same experience that the rest of this church has had with Pastor Jon. Jon said to me, “When I first came here eight years ago, people would often say, ‘It’s so fascinating that you speak the scripture from memory!’ Do you know how often I hear that now? Never.”

Today, I got up early and went out to a local coffee shop. As I flipped open my laptop, I glanced over at the next table and noticed a kindly gentleman grinning at me. “I’m Paul,” he said. “I saw you present the Psalm in church yesterday. I’m involved in our pastor’s scripture memory project. When I started, I struggled to memorize a single verse. Now I have whole chapters. It’s changing my life.”

Jeff’s book, The Storytelling Church: Adventures in Reclaiming the Role of Story in Worship will be released and available on Amazon any day now.

What Do Different Church Traditions Think about Worship?

Have you ever wondered why ECC worships the way it does?  Or have you wondered why different churches worship the way they do?  These were compiled by the late Robert Webber of IWS fame and WorshipTraining.com. (Ancient-Future Worship)

Approaches To The Theology Of Worship | WorshipTraining

Theology is a reflective discipline. That is, people who do theology reflect on the truth of Scripture and the insights of the church in a systematic way. Systematic reflection on worship results in a theology, or rather, theologies of worship. In this section, theologians of various Christian traditions reflect on their worship and attempt to articulate the words and actions of this worship in a systematic form. Interpreters bring their own experience to the subject they interpret. One who constructs a theology of worship is not exempt from this hermeneutical method. Personal perspectives can often illuminate the broad and varied patterns of Christian worship. This section offers three views on the theology of worship: a liturgical approach, a free-church perspective, and a charismatic interpretation.

Liturgical Worship Approach: Enactment Of Salvation History

For those who approach worship from a liturgical and sacramental point of view, Christian worship is an action which recalls the events of the history of salvation. This recollection, which is based on biblical models of worship, is not simply an intellectual remembering; it becomes an actual participation in the saving event through forms of worship empowered by the Holy Spirit and received in faith.

Free-Church Worship Approach (ECC): Ascribing Worth To God

Free-church worship occupies a middle position between the liturgical/sacramental forms of worship and the informal worship of many charismatic churches. Whereas free churches may follow a formal order of service, their worship does not conform to historic Eucharist-centered liturgies. This worship has three objectives: to speak to God, to listen to God, and to respond to God—a sequence based on the ancient biblical structure of proclamation and response. This style of worship is found in evangelical and fundamental churches as well as in many mainline Protestant congregations.

Worship is the ascription of worth to God for who he is and what he does—just as the psalmist expresses it:

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.  Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. (Psalm 96:7–8)

Charismatic Worship Approach: Responding To The Spirit

Worship, for Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, is an expression of the experience and empowerment of the Holy Spirit—an event which for many brings the Scriptures to life and continuously incarnates Jesus Christ in his church. The release of a life of praise, of intercession, and of spiritual gifts for ministry takes place in the setting of the body of Christ at worship.  Although tongues and interpretation are an important manifestation of the Spirit in the worship of Pentecostals, emphasis is also placed broadly on others gifts of the Spirit, including those of healing and prophecy.

And for a brief overview of theologies…

Reformed worship focuses on the majesty of God’s transcendence and the frailty and sinfulness of humans. Reformed worship captures, proclaims, and enacts the gospel.

Lutheran worship calls people to faith again and again through the proclamation of the Gospel through Word and Table. In this service, God acts and the people respond. In form, Lutheran worship is both evangelical and Catholic.

Baptist worship seeks to develop a worship rooted in Scripture, it is more inclined to rely on general principles for guiding worship rather than on literalist model of worship based on Scripture texts alone.

Anabaptists see the church as a radical body of believing disciples. Worship arises out of this community of faith and is simple and egalitarian. It recounts God’s story of redeeming love through the ongoing experience of the community of faith.

Wesleyans are deeply concerned to define worship as more than public acts. Worship has to do with all of life, with relationships, and with vocations. In deed and thought believers continually act out their relationship to Christ.