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We should . . . recapture the conviction of the early church that the corporate action of worship is a rehearsal of God’s plan of redemption. Worship sets forth the gospel. It proclaims the entire faith of the church.

Robert Webber, Common Roots: The Original Call to an Ancient-Future Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 127.

 

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There is no story but God’s; no God but the Father, Son and Spirit; and no life but the baptized life.

Robert Webber, The Divine Embrace

 

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Worship is central to all we do. And for that reason our whole life is both a procession toward worship and a procession out of worship. Life is a cycle of constant return to the source of our new life and to the empowerment for life that we receive from the Christ we meet and celebrate in worship.

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation

 

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Worship is the “summit” toward which we always proceed.  For we take to worship the issues we deal with on a day-to-day basis with an expectancy that God will bring healing into our lives.  But worship is always the “fount” from which our lives flow because worship not only brings healing to our life issues, it also empowers us to face the realities of our life in the world with the conviction that the last word is not the death evil brings, but the resurrection Jesus gives.

-Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation

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…

This year…Christ in me

Today brought the unexpected joy of a deep conversation with a friend.  This is a friend who has walked through some of the darkest medical valleys of our life and helped us simply by being there…and also by explaining what the doctor was saying in plain English.  To have someone who cares about you AND speaks “medical”…that is a friend indeed!

We were talking about how each of us is called to live our lives (the joy and the pain) by following Christ the best we know how.  All our stories are different, but we are all called to follow.  So this year I am going to begin again with this poem from a little under 400 years after Christ.  I hope it helps focus your new year as it has mine.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who desires me ill,
Afar and a near,
Alone or in a multitude.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

• Lorica, St. Patrick (ca. 377)

Blue Christmas

A little over a week ago, the Ward family was talking about Christmas cards.  You know, the kind of Christmas card with the picture on the front.  And as we talked, the comment was made that “we don’t have any good pictures of all of us with Silas to put on our card”.  A lot of our pictures from the middle of the year have Silas with a tube in his nose.  All of our pictures from this half of the year show his “stone face” look since he has lost much of his facial expressions.  It’s true, we don’t have many “good” pictures from this year.  And that got me  thinking…

Too many times I define Christmas as a “winter wonderland” or a time of joy and fun.  But for many, it’s a hard time.  It’s the first Christmas without someone.  It’s another Christmas without someone.  It’s a time to be reminded of broken relationships or what we don’t have.  For many, all they get for Christmas is blue and they feel as if they are left out in the cold looking through windows at the rest of the happy, blissful world.  But as I’ve written before, even if it’s hard there is always hope.

This Christmas I’ve been humming this song by Over the Rhine because it encapsulates my feelings of pain and hope.  It’s called “Darl’in Christmas is Coming” and I’d like to share it with you.

So it’s been a long year
Every new day brings one more tear
Till there’s nothing left to cry

My, my how time flies
Like little children hiding their eyes
We’ll make it disappear
Let’s start a brand new year

Darlin’ Christmas is coming
Salvation army bells are ringing
Darlin’ Christmas is coming
Do you believe in angels singing
Darlin’ the snow is falling
Falling like forgiveness from the sky

If I could have anything
What would I want this new year to bring
Well, I’d want you here with me

Tear these thorns from my heart
Help the healing to start
Let’s set this old world free
Let’s start with you and me

So if you’re having a “blue Christmas”, I hope you are able to see the healing start in his love and forgiveness that does fall from the sky like fresh, white snow.  And from the Ward family to yours…Merry Christmas.

More than Thankful for Hope

Every year around this time, people sit at a large table surrounded by friends and/or family and ruminate on the things they are  thankful for.  And this, I think, is a fine thing to do.  ”Very traditional,” one might say and also a way to realize how much God has already blessed us despite what we tend to think the rest of the year.  I too am thankful for my family, friends, a new mini-van and house, turkey induced sleep and foggy, fall days.  There are other things that I’m also thankful for, but in a different kind of way.  I’m thankful for things I don’t have to do…here is the short list…

1.  Because we only have to make 4 trips to Cleveland for Silas’ medical trial instead of 13 we will not have to drive the additional 4,365 miles over 72 hours costing around $675.00 in gas.

2.  I’m thankful that I didn’t have to paint my house trim, rake my leaves by myself, clean our house for the kid’s birthday party or make the 8 frozen meals downstairs in the freezer because other people from our church did that for us.  Wanting to help Silas and our family, they pitched in and gave.  I am humbled and thankful.

But beyond that, I’m thankful for hope today.  I’m thankful for hope that defies our “out-come based world”. And I guess I’m thinking about that because so many times my list on Thanksgiving is made up of things I have achieved or things I own.

But what happens when we have less this Thanksgiving than last Thanksgiving?

What happens when we pray for God to heal a loved one and they are not better or perhaps worse-off than before?

Has God stopped caring?

Has God stopped listening to our prayers?

This afternoon as I was driving home from a huge Thanksgiving meal where we stopped just short of the sin of gluttony, I was thinking about my son Silas who has lost quite a bit of ability in the last year.  I was also thinking and praying for a wonderful family who gathered this Thanksgiving knowing that it would most likely be the last one with their husband and father who is battling cancer.  And then I thought…have all of us been trying to win and simply lost?  Are these situations that are hopeless?

No, no and again no!

Hope transcends today’s suffering.  Hope transcends sin and death.  This is a basic belief for Christians.  The problem is this:  even though we claim Jesus, we act as if our prayers are magical spells and He should answer all our prayers.  But that’s not what he said is it?

He came with the name “Emmanuel”.  He said  that he would never leave us or forsake us.  So God is with us no matter what changes or what outcomes we wish for or what ideas we conceive about God.  He is with us.  This isn’t an academic statement for me.  God wasn’t just here for a time and has now left.  He is here now.  This is true and this is life and in this we have hope.  He hasn’t left us and my list at Thanksgiving is just one, small, little example of that.

And if all of that is true…maybe the goal of hope isn’t for everything to be perfectly resolved.

Maybe things won’t always be better this Thanksgiving than last as our out-come based culture assumes.

Maybe this requires a shift in our thinking.

Maybe instead of hoping for “deliverance from” our suffering we should have hope for “deliverance through” the suffering.  As one of my profs, Greg Wilde, has written,

…perhaps we are delivered from evil when, instead of avoiding it, we live through it with God and come out on the other side, shining.  There is hope in midst of suffering, not because it will be over some day, although certainly it will be, but because God is there in the midst of it, now.

So this holiday season, I’m more than thankful for hope…hope that lasts…hope that remains.  Yes, I’m thankful for hope.

**  Quote from Anchoring Faith, Hope, and Love in Today, By Gregory Wilde, Adjunct Professor, Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, July, 2008

Reaction vs Biblical Response

Great quote from Bob Kauflin based on his recent trip to Australia.  He speaks to the tensions at work in the church today and how we so many times miss God’s call for music to connect our head knowledge with our heart’s emotion.  It was never designed to be an either/or situation!  Check it out…

Reacting to what other churches are doing wrong is not the same as pursuing what is biblically right.  It’s one thing to say we don’t want to be as wild emotionally or as dead liturgically as the church down the street. It’s another thing to say we want to promote biblically informed, natural, whole-hearted responses to God’s glory in Christ. Reactions don’t necessarily lead us in the right direction.

Pastors and music leaders need to teach more on the place of music, affections, and expressiveness in our gatherings.  I’ve spent the past 14 years in my present role trying to understand more biblically how music functions in the gatherings of God’s people. I discovered early on that my views were primarily rooted in my own experiences and what I’d seen in others. Of course I used scattered Scriptures to support what I did and believed. It wasn’t until I read books like Engaging with God by David Peterson and Music Through the Eyes of Faith by Harold Best that I saw my own short-sightedness and pragmatism. God has said quite a bit about how he wants to be glorified in His people when they gather and what role music plays. It’s our joy to listen and seek to apply what He’s said. Music is too powerful a medium, our culture too musically addicted, and people too concerned about what others think, for pastors and leaders not to speak directly to these issues.