Breaking the Silence

After over three months of conference calls, interviews, site visits, and much prayer, I was honored to be able to candidate last weekend for the senior pastor opening at Heather Hills Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Sweeter than Honey

Four years from now, when I turn 40 years old, I will have spent exactly half my life single and half my life with Deborah.  Trying to be a good husband, I researched the symbolism of the 16th wedding anniversary.  Well…there isn’t any.  It stops after 15 and then goes by fives.  So, what can I give my wife for this obscure moment of reflection?  A blog article?  Okay, maybe a nice dinner too, etc.

Even now, it’s difficult for me to remember life before Deborah.  We should never have met. 

Without Him

I received an email yesterday from John McCain that reflected on the life and death of Tim Russert, the long-time moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press.  I always enjoyed watching Tim do his thing.  It was obvious that he loved his job and had a high respect for politics and those who worked in that realm.  It was also obvious from the two books he authored that he loved his family and took parenting very seriously.  I, for one, will miss his voice and influence in one of my favorite hobbies, politics.

However, McCain ended his email with these words that got me thinking:

A Bite of the Big Apple!

The last time I was in Manhattan was on my honeymoon, 16 years ago this month.  It hadn’t changed much from a cursory look.  Except for one pretty noticeable gap in the downtown grouping of skyscrapers, everything seemed about the same.

I stood at the World Trade Center site yesterday afternoon for a few minutes.  What we all saw on television nearly seven years ago cannot possibly have given us an accurate rendition of the terror and chaos that must have enveloped the city that day.  The incredible collapse of those two massive buildings must have paralyzed many in fear.  It certainly did me as I imagined it yesterday.  There’s only a certain, scaled perception that television, even big-screen TVs can offer.  It was heartwarming to see the work of hundreds of builders as they labored to build the memorial, slated to be opened in 2012.  I can’t even imagine what it was like that day.  Overwhelming.

God Leads Us Along.

As I type this, I am sitting in a hotel room in Wheeling, West Virginia.  It’s been eleven days since I closed and padlocked the door on our storage unit in Denver, loaded the family in our minivan, and headed out on what I am calling our “Homeless Tour.”  It’s true!  At the moment, we are homeless, jobless, and perfectly content in God’s will!  We continue to pursue the leading of the Lord to a senior pastorate at the place of His choosing and timing.  In the meantime…

The Next Phase…

Last night, we had a tearful yet joyful time of fellowship with our church family in Denver as we said “Goodbye!” after six wonderful years of service and shepherding.

Now, the real fun begins.  I’ve said before that God has taught me to once again walk by faith and not by sight.  Well, the faith part is more real than ever before as I am now officially unemployed.  I’ve never had more uncertainty about the future than I have right now and never had more confidence in the provision of God than this moment.

So, phase two…

Out of the mouth of babes…

(HT: Don Fields)

The Creative Spectrum

This is an excerpt from Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts by Harold M. Best, pp. 180-181.

Artistic culture is a vast expanse.  Deep within its workings, it is also seamless, even in the face of vivid differences between, say, grunge rock and Renaissance motets or street rap and Milton’s poetry.  It is especially important for Christians to see it this way, because this is surely the way God sees it.  Just as he is no respecter of persons, so he is no respecter of styles.  He does not love the Baroque artifactual signature any more than that of the South Pacific Rim.  Nor would he prefer, if he were a dancer, the polka over the hora.  He is Lord of diversity, Creator of the human imagination and Master of every one of its artistic ways.  His lines of demarcation are based on faith or its absence, authentic worship or inauthentic worship.  His call to excellence is based on how we are becoming better than we were yesterday more than how we place in a static aesthetic hierarchy.  A Bach cantata is no more a musical password into his favor than a Zulu harvest song or an Indian raga.  When the Scriptures call out to the nations to rejoice, they do not call for an artistic Esperanto, a colorless and hypothetical language, a test-tube Pentecost.  Nor do they call out to a panel of artistic experts to determine what might please the King of kings.  They call out to the many cultures to use their instruments, their tongues, their shapes, textures and gestures, their vivid twists and turns.  God is happy with the plethora.  He loves its faith-driven clamor and hilarious tintinnabulation.  It comes to him from everywhere and from all times, translated into eternal speech by the blessed Paraclete, in whom groans, mutterings, silence, singing, dancing, shaping, masterpieces and pastiches make up a transfigured jubilee.

It is only a secular or paganized culture that chooses to divide people on the basis of their artistic preferences and choices.  It is a spiritually connected culture that takes cultural differences, works through the tensions that they may create and comes to the blessed condition of mixing and reconciling them and of stewarding their increase and growth.  It is therefore not amusing to hear about how we are to embrace the poor, eat and drink with sinners and cross racial and ethnic lines, only to find out that leadership, back home in the safety of the local fortress, is afraid to do the analogous kind of embracing when it comes to the arts and to the commingling of their styles.  “Not in my style” may really and truly mean “Not my kind of people,” except when it comes time for the yearly youth group trip to Mexico or the occasional spade turnings for another habitat.  Why do we go outside the church to diversify when we fail to do so within it?

If this resonates in your spirit as it does mine, buy the book.  There is much, much more to glean.

A Shout to the Lord…on American Idol???

My friend Bob Kauflin and his pastor Josh Harris discuss the recent use of Shout to the Lord on the television program American Idol. Here are a couple of excerpts:

First from Bob–

In the positive column, someone watching ”Shout to the Lord” on American Idol might be led by God’s Spirit to download the song, or even to start going to church again. They might hear the Gospel and be gloriously converted, all due to hearing “Shout to the Lord” in one of the most unlikely places. For that potential, I praise and thank God.

But there’s a dark side. There’s something paradoxical about worship songs being sung on prime time TV by people who don’t know why Jesus came. Does the world see any difference between what’s taking place on American Idol and what we do on Sunday mornings? Has worship become part of the entertainment culture? It’s unsettling when Christian songs or worship leaders are acclaimed by the masses. Jesus said in Luke 6:26, “Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.” He also said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Mt. 15:8). Both verses temper my unbridled enthusiasm.

So I had two more thoughts. First, we need to do everything we can to sing and promote songs in the church that clearly, biblically, passionately, and faithfully proclaim the one and only Savior - his work, his words, and his worthiness. Along with songs that express our love for the Savior, we need to sing songs that “teach and admonish” (Col. 3:16), that celebrate and rehearse the foundations of our faith and fill out our vague conceptions of God with clear, theologically informed biblical truths.

Second, we we need to live in such a way that it’s clear being a Christian is more than giving money to worthy causes and being emotionally moved as we sing songs of every genre together. We want to do all we can to ensure that those who walk into our meetings see clearly that we’re not a local version of American Idol.

From Josh–

As I’ve read various comments people seem to fall into two different camps. Some Christians are upset—because they left out Jesus, because non-Christians were singing a song of “praise”, because it was all about money, because it’s another example of Christianity being “censored.” Other Christians are elated—because they put Jesus back in, because a praise song was heard by millions of people, because they see this as incredible evangelistic platform.

I guess I’m not really at home with either group. With all due respect, I don’t think that having a song like Shout to the Lord sung (even though I like it) is going to usher in revival. This reminds me of the fervor before the movie The Passion of the Christ was released. People spoke about this movie as if it was the ultimate opportunity for the gospel to advance. I don’t think it was. Was I glad that it was released? Sure. But I think that it’s too easy for Christians to think that any moment in the media spotlight on TV or in film is a bigger deal than it really is. We should welcome any opportunity for media to help spread the good news about Jesus, but I don’t think we should put too much stock in that vehicle. The gospel is going to advance as it always has—steadily as it is clearly proclaimed by believers in their words and modeled by their lives and actions. The gospel advances as local congregations receive and live God’s word for their neighbors to see.

What do you think?

New Blog!

I want to encourage my readers to check out my friend Mark Culton’s new blog, A Recovering Fundamentalist.  Here is how Mark describes his site:

It is all about trying to live a life of unswerving faith in Christ and His Word while maintaining a spirit of grace and charity. For me, this involves consideration for how my fundamentalist background plays into this.

Some of you who receive this email joyfully consider yourself fundamentalists. Some of you would resent being called by that label. Others of you may have one foot in fundamentalism and the other in evangelicalism. Still others of you may care less about any of this - in which case you can disregard the blog.

However, for those of you who are interested in honest, charitable discussion about the state of the church and the gigantic gap between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, please check out the blog.