Category: Ministry

Dangerous Worship of Power

If you haven’t picked up Mark Labberton’s book The Dangerous Act of Worship yet, don’t wait a minute longer. Rather than a how-to, Labberton has crafted one of the finest volumes associating proper worship with justice that I have had the privilege to read. It is a not a book that you will tear through in a couple of days. I labored with this book over weeks because of the repentance motivated by the injustice that my own worship allowed. 

He writes in chapter seven about the proper recognition of power and how appropriate worship speaks to it. Safe worship permits the continuation of power abuse while dangerous worship recognizes the true power in God. Labberton says

Nothing thwarts God’s purposes more than twisted power; nothing renews God’s purposes more than redeeming power.

When we explore the danger of worship, pushing out beyond our safety zones to encounter the true and living God, we are struck by His power. Placed side by side with our feeble and unjust practices of power, we see the injustice wrought by our appropriation of what is not ours. Worship that walks us out into the dangerous desert alone with God realigns our thoughts and actions and helps us to discover that the greatest power is found in emulating the Savior’s self-sacrificial love. How many times has this topic been discussed in our worship planning meetings?

Mark asks us to reflect on each of the Church’s worship practices, from the Call to Worship to the Offering and Benediction. Each gives us an opportunity to reflect on true power, to help us realize that the manmade constructs that we often associate with power are but mere facsimiles of God’s supremacy. The brief section on the Offering is especially powerful, given the often contentious feelings that surround this practice. We live in a culture that sees money as power and, in some cases, worships it. The act of offering our gifts at the altar is a significant release that is often given short shrift in the Church today. Laying down the gift can be an exercise in recognizing the true wealth and it source and the more dangerous we make this the closer we bring our brothers and sisters to the practices of justice that it should engender.

Immigration and the Evangelical Mindset

Here is an article I wrote for Evangelicals for Social Action (link on my blogroll for further information) regarding the current division of the Evangelical community on the topic of illegal immigration.  

Balancing the Scales on a Theology of Immigration

The Bible is used as a bludgeon and a shield, but either extreme is improper when used in this debate. Read the piece and let me know what you think.

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Man of Integrity or Tickler of Ears

When His enemies were fully arrayed against Him near the end of His ministry, they still could not directly accuse Jesus of anything heretical in His teaching because it was marked by integrity. There is a telling verse in Mark (12:14) where they admit as much;

They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.

As a Pastor, I long to hear the same thing said about me and yet, on the day after the message is delivered you can’t help but reflect on whether or not your sermon compromised at any point. Did I soften a hard passage in order not to offend? Did my application call a radical reordering of the lives of the Church or did I simply “suggest” some things that they might do? Integrity can be chipped away in countless ways each time we compromise the message that we care called to preach. Compromise comes from a lack of trust; we carry the burden of the church on our shoulders rather than trusting in the true owner of the Church to manage things. The good news is, it’s not irreversible. We can return to the Truth Giver again and again and refuse to be swayed by men & women knowing that one day we will hear the words “Well done, you were men and women of integrity. Welcome home” from One that really matters.