Worship begins with the Right Question

I genuinely believe that authentic worship meets people's needs because people need to worship. I admit that sounds like a little circular reasoning. But my point is this: Worshiping God is not simply a good thing to do; it is a necessary thing to do in order to be human. When all the clutter is cleared away from our lives, we human beings not only need to engage in corporate worship; we truly want to worship in communion with others.

So, what does that mean for planners of worship? One important thing it means for worship planners is that we do not make worship meaningful; worship is already meaningful. In other words, we don't manufacture worship that meets people's needs; authentic worship already meets people's needs. Another thing this means for planners of worship is that while worship will meet people's needs and thus will be attractive to people, not everything that attracts people to the sanctuay is authentic worship.

I also believe that worship is what happens when people become aware that they are in the presence of the living God. Worship is a lot like falling in love. When someone falls heads over heels for another, adoration flows naturally from the lover toward the loved one. This adoration is not primarily about anything else. Indeed, in the presence of the loved one, the lover cannot help but adore, and apart from the beloved, nothing can provoke adoration - not perfume, soft music, dim lights or wine and roses.

So what's the right question then when we worship planners contemplate the plan for worship? Here's what I would say about that: Rather than making a list of human tastes and desires and then trying to figure out how to pound the pegs of worship into those holes, we work from the other direction. How does authentic worship evoke from us what is genuinely human and satisfies our deepest longings? That's the right question.

Drawn from, Tom Long, Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship, The Alban Institute, 2001.

Follow Me - Becoming a Little Jesus

Following Jesus involves more than simply accepting Jesus as your Savior via some prayer of commitment, no matter how sincere that prayer might be. In order to follow Jesus you must also emulate him, using his life as a pattern for your own. We call this emulation becoming a "little Jesus."

When we call ourselves little Jesuses, we aren't claiming to be able to walk on water or die for the sins of the world. No, being a little Jesus means that we adopt the values embodied in Jesus' life and teaching. Only Jesus was able to feed thousands with small amounts of bread and fish, but as little Jesuses we can embrace the values of hospitality and generosity. We might not be able to preach to the multitudes, but we can commit to speaking truth to lies. We can't die for anyone's sins, but we can embrace selflessness, sacrifice, and suffering.

We hope to see a conspiracy of little Jesuses unleashed all over the world, transforming their communities the way Jesus transformed his.

From: ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church, by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009), page, 6.

Nehemiah Weeping?

Nehemiah 1
1 The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.
3 They said to me, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire."
4 When I heard these things, I sat down and wept...

Nehemiah heard from his brother about the state of the walls of Jerusalem and those who survived the exile. The walls are crumbled and the gates have been burned. Once he heard this, Nehemiah mourned and wept. I imagine that this wasn’t only because of the walls, some dumb old walls. But the accumulation of all that the walls and everything else that was lost meant for understanding the larger picture of one’s relationship with God. Jerusalem, the Land, all of this and more were indications of God’s blessing, or in this case the lack of God’s blessing. That something was tragically broken about himself, and because he is part of the people of God, that something was tragically broken about them. It all came to bear on Nehemiah. Everything just lays overwhelmingly heavy on him. Man, have I felt like that. But it makes me wonder – is my heart broken, really broken when I look closely at the state of the church, the state of First Christian Church. Are we really making a difference? And that’s not really it. But do I grieve, I mean really grieve, that FCC , in the words of Nehemiah's brother, is in "great trouble and disgrace"? Do any of us really?