The Church Coffee Shop Redux

coffeecup In a previous post, I voiced dislike for the friction created by the church coffee shop that tended to snag folks on the way into worship. It caused not to be fully present to worship, distracted as they were by coffee, chat, and momentary community. Meanwhile, little thought was given to the disruption of these brothers and sisters filtering in during times of praise and prayer, sidling into rows and breaking any focus that earlier arriving worshippers were enjoying.

Perhaps there is a via media that can work. Much like a ball park in the seventh inning, a local church that emphasizes worship closes the cafe ten minutes prior to every service as a way of encouraging worshippers to move inside of the sanctuary and to prepare themselves for a move of the Spirit. Caffeinated no less!

Priorities…

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Psalm 28 The Lord is the Strength of His People

The Lord is the strength of His people, a fortress of salvation for anointed one.

Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever. (vv 8-9)

Read this psalm backwards. By doing so you will discover a contrasting pattern to our human priorities. The psalmist praises the great glory of God, linking Him to shepherd of Psalm 23 and intercedes on behalf of God’s people similar to the cry in Psalm 25.

Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy.

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.

My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song. (vv 6-7)

The Lord is so good to His people, to those who trust Him. We are moved to ask, what have we to fear then? Is there a hint of doubt in the opening verses of this prayer? When we read from the beginning, the pleas of David mirror our own concerns that God might not hear us, that he might have turned away.

To you I call, O Lord my Rock; do not turn a deaf ear to me.

For if you remain silent, I will be like those who have gone down to the pit.

Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place. (vv 1-2)

The plea is subtle but important. As David voices his wish to be heard by God, he does not doubt but rather, praises Him by saying that the absence of His voice alone is like being dragged to the pit. To say that we are nothing without the immediacy of God’s presence and His all encompassing holiness is praise of a better quality than some of the prom songs that we lift up to him on Sundays. Our foremost act of worship is to recognize hell as being His absence. Though there may have a time in our lives when we sought to escape Him, to know His closeness and then discover it gone is the worst imaginable fate.

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Lent 2009 and Walking with Peter

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The forty days of Lent for this year begin next week on Ash Wednesday, February 25th. Though Lent as a church observation has fallen from favor in many evangelical churches, I like to follow the Church calendar. It delineates the seasons of the year and helps us to focus on seasons in our lives. Traditionally, Lent is a period of sacrifice leading up to Easter in which we do without and practice penance as a reminder once again to die to self. It is a named period in which we recommit ourselves to holiness…though, this should be our daily vocation.

This year, the Spirit has brought the life and ministry of Simon Peter to my heart as my guide through the Lenten season. I suspect that many of us find a kindred spirit in Peter. He is a bit gruff and rough around the edges. Jesus does not pluck him out of the ivory towers of religiously trained nor was he an important thinker of his time. Just a guy with a boat who spent his cold, dark nights out of the water trying to make his livelihood by netting fish and selling them.

Saint Peter’s mouth is known to have run before his brain and his impetuous behaviors make us initially wonder what Jesus saw in him to validate his selection as an Apostle. As one of His closest disciples, we learn of a man of commitment who shares the same fears and failures that we do. To be with Peter as he abandons his Lord at a crucial moment is to be with us as we question our own commitment when it seems that God’s love should preclude some of the struggles and strife that visit our own lives. Who among us has not stepped from the boat onto the water proclaiming “I believe, I believe” only to falter a few steps in and find ourselves with the waterline quickly approaching our necks?

Lent is a time for us to once again to renew ourselves to the words that Peter left us in his first epistle:

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.  1 Peter 3:15

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Volume != Passion

image In the February 2009 issue of Christianity Today, John Stackhouse has a penetrating piece on the trend toward louder worship bands in the church. (You can read the text on his blog by going here.) The core premise of his essay is that we have lost the intent of the musicians in the church. They are to accompany the praise of the congregation, supporting our voices with rhythm, melody, and key as we lift our hearts in song to our Father who we came to worship. The trend has gone in the other direction however. The praise band have become performers in many cases who feel that they must then project their music onto us as though we were attending a concert.

Though no worship band has yet to reach Motorhead-at-the-Warfield sound pressures, the volume in some cases has become annoyingly loud. Besides the physical discomfort of poorly mixed loudness, the volume has an effect that many worship leaders have failed to note. When you cannot hear your voice or those near you, the tendency is to not sing or to sing quietly. Look around you this week if your church uses a high volume praise band and make note of the number of people not singing but instead, simply watching the ‘performers.’ An important part of singing in worship is not often discussed; you are often singing for the benefit of others around you. When a person is unable to raise their own voice in praise due to their pain, suffering, depression, etc. many times it is the sound of your voice that lifts them up and gives them hope. When drowned out by the sound of crash cymbals, an opportunity for love can be lost.

Has your praise group become performers? Has the worship service become so choreographed and scheduled to the second that there is no room for the Spirit to work? When I think back to churches I have visited in which there was a lone pianist who played the melody and God was serenaded by the majority of people in the room and contrast it with some of the production oriented services I have been too, I come to conclusion that the pendulum has swung too far to one side and perhaps it is time for the arc to begin to come back in the other direction. Worship leaders, can you hear us?

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Psalm 27 ~ Wait for the Lord, Be Strong and Take Heart

imageIn the 27th Psalm we have one of the most eloquent expressions of the central ideal of biblical faith – trust in the Lord. David exhorts us to come to the same conclusion that he has; despite current challenges and threats, the Lord can be trusted in full. Two stanzas of his expression of trust open the psalm.

The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear?

The lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?

When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall.

Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. (vv 1-3)

Danger is all about and the psalmist has every reason to fear but he will not allow himself to do so. Fear will not overwhelm his confidence in the protective wing of the Lord nor will it challenge his confidence. Do we practice the same steadfast confidence in our current world? We are bombarded constantly with bad news and dire predictions of calamity. Without faith in the preservation of the Lord that he has exhibited throughout history, men and women succumb easily to the short view, seeing their imminent destruction and possibly their final breath. Knowing that life in this plane is not all that there is, the Christian looks forward.

With such confidence, why does the psalmist pray for deliverance in the second half of the psalm? Confidence does not preclude our petition of God. The Bible teaches us the propriety of being in prayerful communion with God and to take all things to him. Asking for a deliverance and His preservation should not indicate a lack of confidence but rather, a knowledge that the Lord craves our presence with him in prayer. The concluding verses of the psalm summarize for us.

I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (vv 13-14)

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Life After Church by Brian Sanders

imageOne of the things many positive traits that Christians should be known for is doing everything with excellence as we strive to make the Imago Dei within us known. As Brian Sanders writes in Life After Church, this should include our leaving church if the Spirit moves us to do so. To some, this suggestion is sacrilege on the order of the pastor declaring that he is leaving his wife because God wants him to ‘be happy.’ Leaving A church is not the same as leaving church, Sanders is quick to remind throughout his work and it is not a confrontation of God. Rather, it is a way of reconciling the internal movement of the spirit within a particular Christian’s life that does not align with the direction of the body in which she worships and has community.

One of the most important things that the author asks us to consider is how we define church. Can a redeemed believer ever leave The Church? Theologically, no. Our membership in the body is sealed at our surrender. To be able to fully deny Jesus and profess unbelief is not the call of this book. Sanders asks the Christian who is considering a move from their current church to no church or to another congregation to consider the form that the soon to be ex-church takes. Three components are needed to declare a body to be ‘church’: worship, community, and mission. He gives three examples (which I quote directly) against which to compare our church:

  • A group of men who meet in a bar after work to talk about living deeper, more surrendered lives in which they take time to pray for their families and invite their nonbelieving friends to share a meal and the gospel would be church.
  • A Sunday morning service where a great organ resounds the glory of God and the music and preaching move thousands of unrelated people, who return the next week to have the same experience, never engaging the mission or each other—this is not church.
  • A group of mothers invites other mothers to a park after school and builds relationships with them and their kids, hoping to share Jesus with them. They also meet to pray for each other, listen to struggles, cry together and recommmit to the goal of living for Jesus and reaching every mother at that school. That is church.
  • The church softball team plays in a church league, worships together on Sunday and even enjoys good fellowship before and after the games with Christians from their own team and from other churches. This is not church.

The Spirit rebels against a ‘church’ where God is not honored, people aren’t in community with each other, or they aren’t reaching anyone. This is what causes the unrest in the Christian’s soul causing him to consider the jump into the unknown. The absence of one or more elements cannot be made up for by the overemphasis on the others. Again, I quote Sanders on falling into this error;

  • Just Worship: hypocrisy. If our spiritual life is confined to a privatized worship that’s sincere but doesn’t lead us into mission or into deep relationships with others, we face the threat of hypocrisy. We offer ourselves to God but don’t put into practice what his presence and his Word would require.
  • Just Community: idolatry. If we pursue deep relationships but fail to live those relationships in the light of the mission of God or to submit those relationships to the headship of Jesus, we risk idolatry. Deep relationships unmediated by a concern for the kingdom and mission of God will take over our hearts, taking a place that should belong only to God. These unbalanced relationships will quickly become unhealthy and detrimental to our spiritual life.
  • Just Mission: pride. If our spiritual life is confined to independently pursuing mission but not open, accountable friendships or dependence on God, we risk becoming our own God. Taking the mission on ourselves without realizing our need for God or the people of God will certainly lead to error and egomania.

Without all three, the place we find ourselves is not church. 

This book didn’t generate the buzz that others have over the past year since it was published and I must admit, this sat on my shelf for some time before I picked it up to read. While it is messy in the way that our lives as Christians are, Brian has filled the book with so many nuggets of wisdom and insight that you want to read with a pencil or marker in hand to underline or highlight those thoughts that you will want to go back to again and again. The final pages about leaving well reveal his true heart for The Church; we are not to leave to damage but to rebuild or strengthen. Selfishly leaving for the satisfaction of injuring others is not an acceptable action for the people of Jesus. We leave in love and concern for those left behind.

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Psalm 26 ~ Test Me, O Lord

26Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind;

for your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth. (vv 2-3)

The Psalmist’s cry to the Lord should cause us to pause in prayer and ask if this is the transparency that we truly want to have before our God. In the lives of many Christians, we offer up our outer beings, the public personae that we rehearse for those around us. That is the cleaned up, polished, and groomed person that we believe will convince others that we are straight and true in our walk. Somewhere in the back of our mind we know it is isn’t true and even more importantly, we know that the Lord isn’t fooled. He needs no invitation to clamber about in our hearts and minds and the know the real us: the one who doesn’t consistently love his neighbor, the one who succumbs to her temptations and on and on.

The proclamations of faith and innocence do not begin or end with those verses that we have seen. In the opening verse, the psalmist proclaims that leads a blameless life and is a man of unwavering faith. The NIV translation of ‘blameless’ is a bit beyond the meaning of absolute purity, something that Yahweh possesses but is found in no man. It is better read as in my integrity I walk which gives it a domain inside of the fallen human experience. Is this braggadocio? Reading further we find instead it is a plea not to be judged as those who are unfairly judging him. The psalmist correctly places his ultimate trust in God.

Do not take away my soul along with sinners, my life with bloodthirsty men, in whose hands are wicked schemes, whose right hands are full of bribes.

But I lead a blameless life; redeem me and be merciful to me.

My fee stand on level ground; in the great assembly I will praise the Lord. (vv 9-12)

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J.O.Y.

The Amish give us this proverb/acronym as an aid in maintaining our humility and our right relationship to the Lord and to others…

Jesus first

Others next

Yourself last