A Litany of Confession

You may see the article I was originally working on (which was about worship renewal and the church growth movement of the 1980s and 90s) in the coming weeks. It was prompted by what Graham Kendrick wrote in an article in a recent issue of Worship Leader magazine, along with Sally Morgenthaler’s foreword to a book on alternative worship that I bought on clearance at LifeWay yesterday. I just couldn't get it into a form concise enough to satisfy the space available (1/2 page 8.5 x 11) in the time I had to devote to it.

Instead of what I started to write, I want to share a litany Morgenthaler cited in her foreword to Alternative Worship: Resources from and for the Emerging Church. It comes from a Christmas Eve mass that was, according to her, “brilliantly contextualized for a rave community in Glasgow, Scotland.” To try to describe a rave to those who have never encountered that term in such a context before would be an interesting exercise that I choose not to engage in at the moment. That deep worship of God can happen in such a context strains my brain, but we must realize that the way we’re familiar with is not the only way, nor is it even the best way.

Leader: We confess that we live in an age that what a person has can be seen as more important than who they are. • In an attempt to have, we are in danger of losing our very selves. • In an attempt to have, we have left many on the margins of society.

All: Author of creation, we cannot see Your face • Have mercy on our blindness, send to us a sign of grace.

Leader: We confess that we run around seeking comfort and security, but we have failed to go on our own spiritual journeys. • In doing this, we have sacrificed relationships and justice for personal passions. We’ve been wrong, we’ve been deluded, we’re sorry.

All: Author of creation, we cannot see Your face • Have mercy on our blindness, send to us a sign of grace.

Leader: We confess that we live in an age where trust is in short supply; • Where the press tells us all that there is to fear and we hide in our fortress homes. • We have failed to foster compassion and left the vulnerable uncared for. • We’ve been wrong, we’ve been deluded, we’re sorry.

Say and receive these words of forgiveness:

All: God, who is both power and love, • Forgive us and free us from our sins • Heal and strengthen us by the Spirit • And raise us to new life in Christ our Lord.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Random Thoughts

I have no deep theological thoughts to share with you this week. None from me. None from anyone else. The well is running dry ... probably because I'm not slowing down enough to allow the Source to fill it. It’s been a very weird week so far.

Friday night one of the CHS band students had an Ovation guitar with him. He had asked me during the summer if I was interested in buying one. Being an Ovation guitar fan, I asked him if I could take a look at it. I opened the case to find my guitar that was stolen from the church almost 3 years ago. Now I have my guitar back (but in significantly worse condition than when it was stolen), but my young friend doesn’t have a guitar any more. I had gotten over my anger at the thief, but now I'm angry at him all over again. It's like he stole another guitar from another person. And don't even get me started on the pawn broker whom I had approached a few days following the break-in asking him to be on the lookout for an Ovation guitar. I even provided him model and serial number with a picture of the thing, for crying out loud! But I'm being a good boy and allowing the local police detective handle all of that.

Then on Tuesday the StickBoy's very nice Yamaha Xeno trumpet was taken out of the case and dropped by someone who didn’t have permission, who didn't own it, and who probably won’t own up to it. This is the trumpet we bought him in order to provide an instrument he can have to use and enjoy for the rest of his life. There is significant damage that I’m hoping can be repaired without breaking the bank.

I'm upset about both of those things ... but in my mind I’m wrestling with whether these things are upsetting to me because I’m way too preoccupied with THINGS in my life. The guitar was a tool for ministry and was the only acoustic guitar I owned. I had to buy another one to replace it, for which the deacons kindly voted to reimburse me (so now do I owe the church back for the purchase of the new guitar?). We bought the trumpet in order to give the StickBoy an avenue for developing his God-given musical talent. But they ARE just things, after all. I only had one acoustic guitar ... and the StickBoy only has one trumpet (he's using mine until we can get his fixed). But do I treasure them too greatly?

“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be." (Mt. 6:19-21, NLT)

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Screwtape on Churchgoing

I am reminded of the story (fictional) of a gifted carpenter who had been marooned on a desert island for several years before he was finally rescued. Before leaving the island, he gave his rescuers a tour of what he had built in order to survive. “This is my house,” he told them as he showed them a well-constructed dwelling that he had built using the raw materials available on the island. “And over here,” he continued, showing them a reverently appointed chapel that looked like he had just finished it recently “is my church. I’m a Baptist.” Spying another, similarly sized building through the trees, one of the rescuers asked what it was. “Oh,” replied the castaway. “That’s where I used to go to church.”

Written in the form of letters from an elderly, retired devil (Screwtape) advising his young nephew (Wormwood) who is just learning “the business,” C. S. Lewis’s classic book The Screwtape Letters takes a look at temptation from the side of those who wish to interfere with the work of God in the lives of His creation. Each letter is Screwtape’s advice to Wormwood in ways to keep his “patient’s” faith in Christ from growing as it should. As you read the quote, keep in mind that when “the Enemy” is mentioned, it refers to God.

Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighborhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.
The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization [neighborhood church] should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction. In the second place, the search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the Enemy [God] wants him to be a pupil.
—C. S. Lewis. (1898-1963) The Screwtape Letters. New York: Time Incorporated, 1961, p. 52.

NOTE: I am indebted to Chip Stamm, director of the Institute for Christian Worship at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY for the C. S. Lewis quote.

The society we live in is so infused with consumerism that it’s hard to see. And it impacts the way we see everything ... even our church life. It is so easy to forget that church is not entertainment that we purchase but family in whom we invest; and that the investment is ourselves more than our money. That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Chew on this awhile

After a brief hiatus in order to recover some psychological energy, I have resumed my reading of Harold Best's Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts. One of the primary underlying premises of the book is that worship is our response of countinual outpouring in response to God's continual outpouring of Himself toward us. As one beggar telling another where he found food, I share this paragraph from page 119.

We make and offer art because we worship, we should not make it to lead us into worship. We can carry the above concepts into the weekly corporate gathering. Since Christians come to such gatherings as continuous worshipers, it should now be obvious that it is erroneous to assume that the arts, and especially music, are to be depended on to lead to worship or that they are aids to worship or tools for worship. If we think this way, we fuel two untruths at once. The first is that worship is something that can start and stop, and worse, that music or some other artistic or human device bears the responsibility for doing the starting or the facilitating. The second is related to the first: music and the arts have a kind of power in themselves that can be falsely related to or equated with Spirit power, so much so that the presence of God seems all the more guaranteed and the worshiper sees this union of artistic power and Spirit power as normal, even anticipated. This thinking lies behind comments of this kind, "The Lord seemed so near during worship time." "Your music really helped me worship." And to the contrary: "I could not worship because of the music." These comments, however innocently spoken, are dangerous, even pagan. Senior pastors, ministers of worship and worship teams must do everything to correct them. If we are not careful, music will be added to the list of transubstantiation, turned into the Lord's presence. Then the music, not the Holy Spirit, becomes the paraclete and advocate. God is reduced to god and music is raised to Music. Thrones are exchanged, lordship reverts to its fallen hierarchy, and conditioned reflex replaces faith.

I have some thoughts related to what Best wrote that are not fully formed in my head just now, but they run along the lines of:

• Do we get that worship is not something that starts and stops ... and more specifically that it's not tied to the music?
• Do we get that all of life is to be lived as a continual response to God's outpouring of Himself in everything we experience?
• Why does a "worship leader" have to be a talented musician?
• Why can't a worship leader (in the spirit of Romans 12:1-2) be the director of a group of people responding to God's love by giving themselves to a mission project?
  

It's enough to make my brain hurt a little ... but I am convinced that these are thoughts that we need to be thinking.

The Voice of a Young Poet

Sam Swofford came up through the children’s choirs at my previous church and began taking piano lessons from the lovely wife a couple of years before we moved to my current location nine years ago. Now a college student, he continues to pursue music and song-writing. You can hear some of his music at his MySpace page (click on the title of this entry and it'll take you there). Here’s one of his texts:

“The Eyes of The Lord”

Everybody’s tired, everybody hurts,
Everybody’s wondering why things work out for the worst.
Everybody’s dreaming of a heart that doesn’t break,
Everybody’s paying for the choices that they’ve made.

But if we all stand in line,
At the gates of heaven, we will find:

When you look into the eyes of the Lord,
There’s nothing left to hurt for, and everything to hope for.
Open up your eyes, look up to the skies, and cry, children, cry.
Oh, it’s a sight, Lord, a sight.
When you look into the eyes of the Lord.

Everybody’s hopeless, everybody’s cold,
Everybody wants to, but they know they shouldn’t go.
Everybody’s striving for bigger, better things,
But bigger’s not always better, and you find out the hard way.

But if we all stand in line,
At the gates of heaven, we will find:

When you look into the eyes of the Lord,
There’s nothing left to hurt for, and everything to hope for.
Open up your eyes, look up to the skies, and cry, children, cry.
Oh, it’s a sight, Lord, a sight.

When you look into his eyes, you’ll see:
The Christ is staring back at me.

Hallelujah, sing.
And when you’re completely broken,
the Christ is there; just get to know him.
He will set you free.
He will set you free,
When you look into the eyes of the Lord.

I haven’t heard this text to music yet, but it doesn’t matter. It moved me to tears just reading it out loud to the lovely wife this afternoon. There are a couple of lines that are just what I needed today. Way to go, Sam … and thanks!

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.

Continual Repentance

Last week via facebook, I reconnected with Bill Haynes who was my youth minister when I was a young teen and who preached my ordination service some 22 years ago. The connection led me to his blog and his recent post of the following Puritan prayer (from a collection entitled Valley of Vision). Let the devotion of an ancestor in the faith instruct us in our daily walk.

O God of Grace,
You have imputed my sin to my substitute, Jesus
and You have imputed His righteousness to my soul,
clothing me with a bridegroom’s robe,
decking me with jewels of holiness.
But in my Christian walk I am still in rags;
my best prayers are stained with sin;
my penitential tears are so much impurity;
my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin;
my receiving the Spirit is colored with selfishness.
I need to repent of my repentance;
I need my tears to be washed;
I have no robe to bring to cover my sins,
no loom to weave my own righteousness;
I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiving change of raiment;
for You do always justify the ungodly.
I am always going into a far country,
and always returning home as a prodigal,
always saying, Father, forgive me,
and you are always bringing forth the best robe.
Every morning let me wear it,
every evening return in it,
go out to the day’s work in it,
be married in it,
be wound in death in it,
stand before the great white throne in it,
enter heaven in it shining as the sun.
Grant me never to lose sight
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.