The Cart Before the Horse

This past Wednesday evening, my pastor departed from his planned expository study (very good and highly recommended ... a treasure missed by many of our people) to share some thoughts from his personal devotional time. Those thoughts resonated with some truths I have encountered in reading from Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel. I've learned that when I encounter similar messages from multiple sources, it is often the voice of God trying to get through to my heart.

The Gospel message came from Luke 7:36ff which is the account of Jesus having been invited to the home of Simon the Pharisee for a meal. You may recall that at that meal, a woman known to be "immoral" (as the NLT tranlates the Greek) came and washed Jesus' feet not only with expensive perfume, but also -- and perhaps more importantly -- with her tears. I say that the tears may be more important because it takes some significant emotion to make someone cry enough tears to wash first-century feet. Simon took Jesus' response to the gesture as proof that Jesus was no prophet ... missing the point completely. Master of the "teachable moment," Jesus told a brief story, pointed out Simon's lack of customary hospitality, and then gave the woman the gift of forgiveness (at which point the men around the table gave the "who does He think He is?" response all so familiar to us in church work -- from our own thoughts as well as from the mouths of others).

The key realization that my pastor shared with us on Wednesday was that it was before Jesus gave her the words that she began pouring out her love on Jesus. Jesus' story to Simon seems to indicate that He interpreted the woman's actions to be a response to forgiveness. She didn't approach Jesus in fear ... she approached Him in love. Her outpouring came before Jesus told her (in the presence of the men at the table) that she was forgiven.

The point? We often think that it is our repentance that enables us to experience the forgiveness of God, when in fact it is the other way around. It is God's forgiveness ... His grace ... that leads us to the place where we can truly repent. Manning states it clearer than I can:

The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace. (The Ragamuffin Gospel, p. 75).

The songwriting trio of Tomlin, Giglio and Reeves put it this way:

And it's Your kindness, Lord, that leads us to repentance;
Your favor, Lord, is our desire.
And it's Your beauty, Lord, that makes us stand in silence;
And Your love, Your love is better than life.

© 2000 worshiptogether.com Songs

So there it is. Three places (at least) where God has tried to speak truth to my heart. Could it be that when we struggle to repent, it is because we do not realize our own poverty and therefore cannot comprehend what Manning calls "God's furious love for us"? That perhaps like Simon the Pharisee we do not understand how much we have been forgiven?

That's enough to think about for now.

Friendship Makes Strange Bedfellows?

As the book of James says, “God shows no favoritism.” So we don’t either.
Oftentimes the Christian community has sent the message that we love people and build relationships in order to convert them to the Christian faith. So there is an agenda. And when there is an agenda, it isn’t really love, is it? It’s something else. We have to rediscover love, period. Love that loves because it is what Jesus teaches us to do. We have to surrender our agendas. Because some people aren’t going to become Christians like us no matter how hard we push. They just aren’t. And at some point we have to commit them to God, trusting that God loves them more than we ever could. (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, p. 167)

In the Fall of 2006 I was asked to join Bob Link, Randy Randall, and Danny Verdin to form the backup quartet for the Laurens Community Theater production of “Always Patsy Cline.” I knew Bob Link and Randy Randall already, and I really enjoyed getting to know Danny. All three men are fine musicians and we got a big kick out of doing the play.

Out of that performance, there came several invitations for us to come and sing … and it was kind of difficult to explain to people that we weren’t an established quartet with a ready repertoire. The only thing that we sang that would stand on its own in the Patsy Cline performance was “How Great Thou Art.” Everything else was just backing vocals. To sing for something else would mean that we had to find music, learn it, and rehearse it … and none of us really had the time … particularly at that time of year. It was hard to explain why we couldn’t just come and ‘wing it.’

We did succeed in getting together for one gig around Christmas time for the Laurens Rotary Club. I happened to have access to some good 4-part men’s Christmas music and we chose 2 or 3 pieces from those. To that we added a solo piece or two and came up with a short program that we enjoyed doing. We met at the church and spent about 45 minutes (or less) actually learning the music and deciding what to do and in what order. We also came up with a funny way to begin the “act” and had a great time.

At the party following the Laurens County Chorale concert last night, the Rotary program came up as I was talking with Danny Verdin (his mother, his brother, and both of his teenage children sing in the LCC). Bob said that even a couple of months afterward he still would encounter someone who was there who commented on how enjoyable it was. Danny remarked that he noticed that even people who didn’t like him seemed to be enjoying it. As I reflected on that remark later on, I think I’ve figured out that in order to serve in public office and keep one’s sanity, one must develop the ability to live with the fact that some people just may not like you.

I don’t know much about Verdin’s politics (I just don’t follow state politics that closely), but I have a feeling that we might not see eye to eye on everything. I might even strongly disagree with him on some issues. But agreement on political issues is not the basis of our friendship … friendship is. I find him interesting and quite likeable … and I am happy to call him my friend.
That’s enough to think about for now.

Science Olympiad National - Preliminary Report

The Bell Street Middle School Science Olympiad team just arrived home Monday night after a long (but good) and tiring 6-day trip. It took two full days on a bus to get out to Wichita, two days there for the competition and festivities, and two full days on the bus again to get back. We had 17 students (15 primary and 2 alternates) competing and 12 chaperones/coaches on the trip. This blog will not include much detail (look for that in subsequent blogs).


So how did our team do? For the specific scores, see www.soinc.org. Our kids placed 47th out of 60 teams ... a ranking that we are very proud of given the level of competition at nationals. Our kids were competing against teams from many schools with very different demographics from ours, from communities with a much higher per-capita income, education level, tax base, etc. Some of the other schools in the competition were very similar to us, but many of them were charter schools, math and science magnet schools, and private schools. Just as a for-instance, one of the high school teams at nationals spent twice as much ONE of their 25 competition events as our total participation cost (materials, transportation, lodging, food). Looking through that lens may help to understand how we are tremendously proud of our kids.

Reflections on the trip:

1. Next time, take ear plugs. One of the great advantages of charter bus transportation is that most come equipped with DVD players. The ability to show movies on a bus trek that lasts 2 full days (18+ hours on the road each way) makes the process considerably more tolerable for middle schoolers. Sometimes, though, it would be handy to be able to reduce the volume or shut it out completely (read on for reasons why).
2. I can now say I've seen "High School Musical". I'm glad I saw it, but I don't care ever to see it again. It's got a good message (imagine an after-school special on steroids), but the ending was obvious 15 minutes into the story. It's healthy for middle school teenagers to hear that they should care less about what their friends think is cool and more about what they are good at and created for (purpose-driven, anyone?). Those ear-plugs would have come in handy during the numerous times when a small group of the kids insisted on singing songs from HSM to pass the time on the bus.
3. Wichita State has a beautiful campus. I failed to make the connection with the aviation industry until we got there, but several prominent aircraft manufacturers are located in Wichita (e.g. Cessna, Beechcraft-Hawker). There are sculpture intstallations all over campus ... some whimsical, some beautiful, some quite interesting, and a few that are just plain weird.
4. The speaker for the opening ceremonies was a WSU graduate who went to work for Scaled Composites (Burt Rutan's group) and was the head of the Spaceship One project. His talk was full of humor and practical application of science from low-tech to high-tech. He told a story of how they encountered some surprising loss of laminar flow in an early test flight of one of the vehicles and needed to troubleshoot. He then said, "So we built a wind tunnel," upon which he showed a slide of the control surface mounted on a pick-up truck and driven fast. His point: you don't have to have fancy equipment to do cutting edge research and development.
5. I hate cell phones ... well, not really. What I hate is trying to talk on a cell phone while riding on a bus with a movie playing. The word that best describes this frustration is "nnnggrraaahh!"

I'm not sure if I'll blog this any more. I'm still trying to catch up on my sleep and my digestive system has yet to return to normal. I do have one final thing to report that makes us extraordinarily proud of our team. We don't have a perfect team by any stretch of the imagination ... and there were some things that happened that strained relationships among team members during the competitions. I don't know of any team (sports, music, project, community action, business, etc.) that doesn't encounter some degree of tension. It's a part of the team dynamic when people work together. The only time you don't encounter conflict is when nobody cares. Back to the point, though ...

In addition to all of the event awards given at the closing ceremony, there is also an award given to the team that best exemplifies the spirit of Science Olympiad. It is voted by the individual event supervisors. The Bell Street team won this award the first time they went to nationals in 2003. This year our team won it again, but it gets even better. For the first time in the history of the spirit award, the vote was unanimous. All 25 of the individual event supervisors -- independent of each other -- voted for Bell Street. We're still trying to get our brains around that ... and trying to figure out how to make sure that we pass that spirit along to the future Bell Street Science Olympiad teams.

All for now ...

Thank You, Youth Choir

I covet your prayers as I travel with the Science Olympiad team to compete in nationals at Wichita State. Last Sunday the Youth Choir led a significant portion of the 11:00 worship service. It was the last hurrah for the 2006-07 edition of the FBC Youth Choir and I’m really going to miss their music. Leading our Youth Choir is one of the brightest spots in my work here at FBC.

This morning I got an e-mail from N. Y. expressing her appreciation for their ministry. Let me share it with you:

Hi Morris,
Sunday's Youth choir performance was outstanding. I wonder how many adult choirs and adult praise teams they will bless in the future! Your hard work together with their commitment have surely borne fruit to God's glory. I hope you felt the joy that those of us in the congregation experienced. I believe God's heart rejoiced as ours did. Thank you for the good job you are doing with both Youth and Adults.
Love you, N.

I share N’s enthusiasm for what God will do in the future in and through the lives of our teenagers. Without the commitment of our teenagers (and their parents) to Youth Choir, the hard work would have simply resulted in frustration. Their talent and hard work, combined with their commitment, brought joy to the hearts of others … to God’s glory.

Great youth choirs are built, in part, on children’s choirs. This Sunday evening our Children’s Choirs lead us in worship. Whenever I listen to our children learning on Wednesday evenings, I am excited about their future singing in Youth Choir. I think about God’s truth being planted in their hearts and the ways in which God will use them to bring His joy to the hearts of others. How awesome to be involved in something like that! That’s enough to think about for now.

Requiem Aeternam - Robert E. Webber

On Monday of this week I learned of the death of Robert Webber at age 73 of pancreatic cancer. That name may not mean much to you, but it means a great deal to me.

I encountered Bob Webber when I was a student at Southern Seminary. He was one of the keynote speakers for the annual Church Music Institute. Alumni would pay money to come back for the event, and students got to experience it for free (our tuition covered it, I’m sure). I still have the cassette tape I made from his talk. Webber’s teaching on worship (he wrote over 40 books on the subject … I have 3 or 4) had a profound impact on my formation as a young minister.

I can’t think of Webber without thinking of the title of perhaps his best known book on worship: Worship Is a Verb. Think about that a minute. We are prone to think of worship as a noun … as something we attend … as an event we hold … as something to be endured until it’s finally over and we can get out of here. Sometimes we even think of worship as a “performance” (by whomever happens to be up front) to be graded (by whomever happens to be in the “audience”).

In today’s world, we are so accustomed to a performance mindset that it is easy to think of worship that way. Our sanctuaries look like a stage for performers and seats for an audience, don’t they? Thinking of worship as a verb, however, changes our whole perspective. Worship is not something we observe, nor something we simply attend, nor an event we hold every Sunday morning. Worship is something that we do. What may be mistaken for “performers” (choir, preacher, musicians, etc.) become leaders in a holy interaction with God. What may look like an “audience” (spectators or listeners) becomes a congregation (a body assembled with a purpose).

In comparing worship to a theatrical performance, Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard wrote that in worship, if there is an audience, that Audience is God Himself. The performers of worship are the gathered congregation … the people in the pews. The pastor, choir, musicians, etc. are prompters who assist the congregation in carrying out a performance designed to please God. The question, then, is not, “Did the prompters please the cast?”; but rather, “Did the cast, with the help of the prompters, please God?” That’s enough to think about for now.

A Few Principles of Jewish Buddhism

Anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time (get a life, maybe?) knows that I sometime try to share something profound, but sometimes just have to let my silly side show through. I did a brief google search for an old friend and found the following on a newsletter for a center that provides support for people struggling with addiction. It's silly, to be sure, but scripture tells us that laughter is good not only for the heart, but also for the soul. Enjoy!

• There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?
• Be aware of your body. Be aware of you perceptions. Be aware that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.
• Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things faster.
• If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
• Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You’ll never meet the Buddha with such round shoulders.
• To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following: get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

I love that. It reminds me of one of my favorite jokes:

Q: "How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?"

A: "Never mind, I'll just sit here in the dark."

Annual Evaluation

In just a few minutes I go to meet with my pastor for my annual evaluation. I HATE this meeting.

Let me be clear about a couple of things. I love and trust my pastor implicitly. While we don't agree on everything, I have worked with him for close to 7 years now and I trust his heart as more than any other pastor I have ever worked with (and I've worked with some fine ones).

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I am reading Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What. In that book there is a chapter called "Lifeboat Theory" that helps me to understand why I dread this meeting so. It is a fear of not measuring up. It is a fear of it being discovered that on John Maxwell's scale of leadership ability I might not be much above a 5, and as I understand Maxwell, you only attract leaders to work with you who are at or below your own leadership effectiveness level. Maxwell has said some things (at the Catalyst Conference) that I understand to mean that one can only increase one's personal leadership potential one or at most two levels. That means that if I am indeed only a level 5 (as I fear), it is doubtful that I will ever progress to a level 7, and only with a lot of work can I do that. I also get the sense that the really valuable leaders are the ones who function at level 7 and above because they're the ones who will really make an impact in people's lives. I would love to be that, but I fear not measuring up.

Then I read Miller and hear him say that all of this comparison and fear of not measuring up has its root in the absence of what we lost at the Fall. Before the Fall our sense of worth and importance came from our relationship with our Creator. Now that that relationship is no longer what it was, we are constantly comparing ourselves to each other to see who measures up and who doesn't ... to see if we get to stay in the lifeboat. I wish I enjoyed reading Maxwell more than I do. He is a good man who loves Jesus and has been very successful in mentoring young leaders. But when I read him, I get the overwhelming sense of "I'll never measure up."

On a cognitive level, I know my pastor and I know that despite "growth areas" that I need to address he loves me and supports my ministry. On an emotional level, I still stress out over the annual job performance review that I am about to endure. Why I put this on my blog I have no idea. I guess I want someone else to tell me that they wouldn't vote me off the island either.

Requiem for Robert Webber

I learned today in Bob Burroughs' MONDAY MORNING E-MAIL (see www.creatormagazine.com to find it) that worship theologian Robert Webber passed away on April 27th. I became acquainted with Dr. Webber while at seminary. He was one of our keynote speakers at Church Music Institute (OK, so some of you now know that I went to SBTS). Some of his work has had a profound impact on my thinking (and acting) about worship. For that I will always be grateful.

I am among many who prayed for him when we learned a few months ago that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Now we grieve our loss but celebrate his eternal joy. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Requiem aeternam.

So What's "Traditional" Anyway?

In researching texts of ancient literature, going back to the source (or as close to it as we can get) is crucial in validating the text. Everything used to be copied by hand, and logic dictates that the closer a copy is to the original both in date and generation, the more accurately it will represent the original. In other words, a copy of a copy of an original is significantly more likely to be accurate than a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an original.
There is a lot of talk about “traditional” and “contemporary” worship discussions nowadays, but conflict over worship practice is anything but new. I suspect that the term “traditional” carries with it an underlying assumption of “this is the way it has always been.” In fact, much of what we Baptists consider “traditional” only goes back some 75 to 150 years (if that far). Let’s go closer to the beginning. What do the earlier sources teach us about “traditions” in Baptist worship? When I read about the history of Baptist worship, I learn that conflict over worship – especially music – seems to be as much a part of our Baptist “tradition” as anything. Consider the following facts (from an article by Baptist church historian Pamela R. Durso):

· In the 17th century, Baptists in England opposed singing in worship and developed intricate arguments against what they called a “carnal exercise.”
· Thomas Grantham, an English Baptist pastor, fiercely opposed the singing of hymns in worship, calling them ‘human innovations’ and calling on Baptists not to use these questionable innovations in worship.
· Grantham did allow the singing of the Psalms, but only by a solo male voice, and never with instrumental accompaniment.
· Grantham also opposed the use of “mixed voices” or “promiscuous singing” in worship … for fear that a non-Christian who happened to be in church might pollute the worship by their non-Christian singing of Christian songs.
· In 1673, Benjamin Keach persuaded his church to begin the practice of singing a hymn at the close of the Lord’s Supper, but allowed those who opposed to leave before the singing began. Six years later they added a hymn on public days of thanksgiving, and 14 years after that the church agreed to sing a hymn as part of worship every Sunday … but 22 members left the church over it.

[NOTE: Article can be found online at ethicsdaily.com. I'll modify this blog with a link as soon as I have time.]

Reading historical information like that helps me understand that conflict about worship is nothing new. That doesn’t mean it’s healthy, or that it should continue; but it has been around for a long, long time. That’s enough to think about for now.

What I'm reading now

I'm reading Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What. I've wanted the book for a couple of years now, and when I found it for $5 at a temporarily set up discount volume Christian bookstore at a mall in a nearby city, I snatched it up in a heartbeat.

A little over a year ago I read Miller's first "big seller" Blue Like Jazz. I bought it after having heard him at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. What impressed me about him at the conference (and in the book) was his unconventional approach to the truths of God that allows him to communicate more clearly to those ambivalent or antagonistic to the message of Christ because of negative experiences with people who grew up like I did in the heavily inculturated, southern version of the Baptist church. That's a concept I don't have time to unpack completely right now. I tried to give a few sentences to it as I wrote this, but it's just too complex.

I've always been frustrated by books (and sermons) that say something to the effect of "all you have to do to have a meaningful, fulfilling life with Christ is follow these 3 (or 5, or 17) simple steps." The authors usually give wonderful stories about how following those steps turned their lives around and ever since then they have been successful, deeply spiritual, confident, yada, yada, yada. Read what he says about it:

"...it really got me thinking that, perhaps, formula books, by that I mean books that take you through a series of steps, may not be all that compatible with the Bible. ... My life was fairly normal before I read them, meaning I had good days and bad days, and then my life was fairly normal after I read them too, meaning I still had good days and bad days. It made me wonder, honestly, if such a complex existence as the one you and I are living can really be broken down into a few steps. It seems if there were a formula to fix life, Jesus would have told us what it was." (p. 10)

And then:

"Jesus was always, and I mean always, talking about love, about people, about relationship, and He never once broke anything into steps or formulas. What if, because we were constantly trying to dissect His message, we were missing a blatant invitation? I began to wonder if becoming a Christian did not work more like falling in love than agreeing with a list of true principles. I had met a lot of people who agreed with all those true principles, and they were jerks, and a lot of other people who believed in those principles, but who also claimed to love Jesus, who were not jerks. It seems like something else has to take place in the heart for somebody to become a believer, for somebody to understand the gospel of Jesus. It began to seem like more than just a cerebral exercise. What if the gospel of Jesus was an invitation to know God?" (p. 46)

My next entry may focus on the concepts mentioned in the chapters entitled "Adam, Eve, and the Alien" and "Lifeboat Theory." That's enough to think about for now.