Don't Waste Your Time in Worship

When I was in Bible college I came across a book that completely changed the way I looked at corporate worship. Originally written in 1978 and now long out of print, the little book Don't Waste Your Time in Worship by James Christensen continues to challenge me. Here's how the book starts:

"To worship God meaningfully is a supreme accomplishment. For a finite person to be in communication with the Infinite is not something done on the run. Nor is it a reality when approached flippantly or grudgingly.

For the community of faith to corporately magnify the Lord, and to adequately praise Himis an activity that requires spiritual perception, preparation, and concentration.

After thirty years as a Christian minister, I am convinced that many people who attend church do not really worship God at all. They waste their time. Furthermore, I am increasingly humbled by the awesome responsibility of leading a congregation in this intimate, soul-searching, and exalting experience."

Merry Christmas!

"4 For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian.
5 For every boot of the booted warrior in the {battle} tumult, And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.
6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
7 There will be no end to the increase of {His} government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this." (NASB)

Preachers - Are We THERE?

Do we believe in our message this much?

Sacred Music Sans Message

I enjoy all sorts of good music. There are romantic ballads that can deepen your love for your spouse, patriotic songs that can rally the spirits of our countrymen, soaring arias that can instill a sense of awe . . . but just because I enjoy Foggy Mountain Breakdown in my car doesn't mean it belongs in church. Todd Friel with Way of the Master has written an article recently that is well worth considering:

Jesus Just Wants to Give You a Hug?

Over thirty years ago, the great philosopher Paul McCartney asked, “What’s wrong with silly love songs?” Having given this over three decades of serious consideration (OK, at least several months), I have Sir McCartney’s answer.

It depends.

If you want to fill the world with silly love songs, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to fill the church with them, I say, “Stop it!”

Tune into your “get you through your day” Christian music station and you will hear grown men, whining like love sick puppies, “Nothing else can take your place, or feel the warmth of your embrace.” Who are they singing to? The One who holds the universe together by the power of His word, or a chick?

Take the Quiz
Here are six phrases from six contemporary songs. Can you pick which phrases belong to secular songs and which to the sacred?

1. All I need to do is just be me, being in love with you.

2. My world stops spinning round, without you.

3. I never want to leave; I want to stay in your warm embrace.

4. I’m lost in love.

5. Now and forever, together and all that I feel, here's my love for you.

6. You say you love me just as I am.

The first three are from a popular Christian band called Big Daddy Weave, the second half are from Air Supply.

More and more of our Christian music is sounding one note: Jesus loves you soooooo much. Do I doubt for a second that Jesus loves His children? Nope, but it depends on what your definition of “love” is.

God “agape” loves His children. Agape love is not an emotions based, warm and fuzzy kind of love. Agape love is a self sacrificing, “I will help you despite how I feel” love.

William Tyndale was the first translator to use the word “love” for agape. Prior to the 16th century, the word “charity” best described agape. Leaving that debate aside, since Tyndale’s time, the English definition for love has expanded. Our modern day use of love ranges from a love for an object to physical love/sex (eros love). I love that new car. I love that girl. I love that God. That God loves me.

Not only do we use “love” in romantic ways to sing about God, we have added other romantic phrases to our Christian music repertoire: hold me, embrace me, feel you, need you. This criticism is not new, in fact, it has existed since Godly men began endeavoring to sing anything but the Psalms.

John Wesley considered an “amatory phrase” to be language that was more feelings based love than self-sacrificing agape love. John deleted “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” from one of his brother Charles’ collections because it was too romantic sounding.

Amatory Phrasing
Not only are musicians guilty of writing amatory phrases, but they are singing with amatory phrasing. Christian men sing with such romantic longing and neediness it makes me want to scream, “Man up!”

Christian women are singing with such throaty breathiness you would think they had just run from their home to the studio. To whom exactly are they singing? Brad Pitt or the Savior?

There are two consequences to this “Jesus is my boyfriend/girlfriend” music. Needy, emotional women continue to need more counseling, self help books and conferences where they can spread their wings and soar. Men simply are not showing up for church. It is my belief they simply can’t stand the mood manipulating worship times designed to help them “feel the Lord’s embrace.”

Musical Mermaids
Without theology in music, we are offering fluff that will not comfort when bridges collapse and test reports are negative. Songwriters could provide true hope if they would write about the sovereignty of God rather than crying about “how safe I feel when Jesus is holding me.”

Charles Spurgeon had the same criticism of “Hymns for Heart and Voice” published in 1855. He condemned the hymns as being “little better than mermaids, nice to look at but dangerous because they cannot deliver what they promise.”

Is there anything wrong with being reminded that our God is our help from ages past? Of course not, the Psalms are loaded with promises of God’s comfort. But unlike the Psalms (and theology based hymns), contemporary music is void of the reason why we should not worry. We do not worry not because someone purrs that we shouldn’t fret, but because God is our shelter in the stormy blast and our eternal home. Our comfort comes from knowledge, not caterwauling.

If you enjoy a silly love song now and then, knock yourself out. But leave them where they belong, in the world or in the bedroom, not in the church.

Night and Day

Here is a segment from Way of the Master radio, highlighting the difference between the authentic Gospel and the poisonous, man-centered imposture of the wolves who have become oh-so-popular.

Assembly-Line Evangelism

"Ours is the technological age, when enormous harvesting machines bring in wheat or maize. There is no such thing as a parallel in the kingdom of Christ. The method He stipulated in the Great Commission is to be followed to the end of the age. We are to make disciples."
- Erroll Hulse, The Great Invitation: Examining the Use of the Altar Call in Evangelism, p. 164

More Classical Music

Here's another good'un.

Stay in Your Box!

Immediately after leaving the ICU at McKay-Dee hospital, where a parishioner had just passed away, I heard a Christian make what is without a doubt the tackiest, most thoughtless statement I have ever heard--and I've heard some doozies, having grown up in a Hyles-ite church (pausing to check that the garlic & crucifix are in place to ward off the fundarnmentalists). I won't tell you what he said, since it was SO egregious that you probably wouldn't believe me anyway; but it underscored an important lesson that I've learned about this sort of thoughtlessness.

Think back to the woman taken in adultery. The Scribes and Pharisees caught a woman in sin. What was their reaction to her? "How can we use this woman to achieve our ends?"

Now, what was Jesus' reaction? He defended the helpless and, more importantly, provided for her deepest need--real forgiveness of sins.

Nothing has changed. Legalists use people; Jesus loves them. We must be on guard against the creeping blight that would start us thinking of statistics instead of people. Numbers NEVER trump relationship. I would remind you that Jesus left the multitudes behind to minister to individual needs. Pragmatism has begun to drive our ministry decisions, and twisted good people into something hard and grotesque. Keep your focus where Christ kept His--on real people with real hurts and real needs. Losing that focus has brought fundamentalism to the place where people are little more than a commodity--numbers to pad our stats and impress our seminary buddies. And it's one of the main reasons that modern fundamentalism, as a movement, needs to pass into extinction.

A Calvinist Said THAT??

Came across this clip from an Alpha-Omega Ministries conference. Now this is what a real Calvinist sounds like -- a deep understanding of the doctrines of grace drives him to make a passionate, genuine appeal to everyone to repent and believe! Don't be fooled by imitations. This is authentic, historic Calvinisim.

Welcome to the Deep End

On Sunday Grace Bible Church voted to call me as their pastor. On Tuesday morning I was in the hospital, comforting a woman as she watched the doctors remove the respirator from her husband of 53 years, who was lying in a coma. My first sermon as pastor will be a funeral service. Welcome to the deep end.

But it's only in the deep end that you get to see Romans 8:28 really work. Only our great God could turn a day like that into a good thing. But He does. All the time. It was an opportunity to really minister to the flock He has placed in my charge. It was an opportunity to offer whatever comfort can be had in a time like that. It was an opportunity to show and tell the love of Christ. It was an opportunity to see God's peace surpass all human understanding yet again. And it was an opportunity to have the honor to see a hero -- a hero of our country and a hero of our faith -- enter his reward.

Praise the Lord for the wonderful, mysterious ways in which He works His will. Keep your forty-billion-served, numbers-centered, activity-focused, Bible-Belt McChristianity. This is ministry.

Grapes and Giants

Just got this email from my father-in-law. Good stuff at just the right time.


The following is by Missionary Buddy Smith of Malanda, Queensland,
Australia :

We have been reminded again just recently that
grapes and giants are most often found in close proximity.
They just seem to go together. When the spies brought back
from Canaan a great cluster of grapes, they also brought back
reports of giants living in walled cities. In fact, the Bible
dictionary I use indicates that the grapes came from the very
location, Hebron, where the giants lived. I must confess that I
would rather it were not so. My flesh is a lover of grapes, but
has no affinity for giants. I would like for them to be found
far apart so that I could rest in peace under the shadow of the
grapevine and eat to excess the grapes of Eshcol, all the while
avoiding all contact with the giants. The apostle wrote to the
Corinthian church this very truth when he penned the words,
‘There is a great door and effectual opened to me, AND there
are many adversaries. (16:9). Great door, many adversaries!
Opportunities and Opposition, Doors and Difficulties,
Blessings and Burdens, Grapes and Giants! This is God's plan
for His servants. The very fact that they are found together
teaches us to be optimistically realistic and realistically
optimistic. If there are giants who are harassing you at this
moment, then there must be large clusters of grapes nearby! It
is God's way to plant them in close proximity. If there are
grapes growing in abundance in your life, then you must be
ever so watchful for giants! And just here you will see one of
those Bible portraits of the servants of Christ. In one of his
hands is a cluster of the very largest, lushest grapes, sweet
and rich, blest of God. And in the other hand he holds a sharp
sword, with which he fights off the giants. While he tastes the
sweetness of God’s richest blessings, his eye is sharp and his
arm is strong and he holds the Sword of the Spirit, because
the giants, the enemies or God, are ever near. We have been
enjoying many wonderful grapes of blessing in the church
planting work here, and there are also giants. Over the past
few months our church has been under severe attack from
many quarters. False accusations, slander, threats of lawsuits,
unrest in the homes of our members, dissatisfaction on the
part of some, and a thousand other difficulties have come our
way. These are our giants.”

Another Frivolous Post

This is COOOOOL. It's a project from a book called Forbidden Lego. Gonna have to pick one up & work on with the boys!

The Call - or Just a Wrong Number?

By far and away the very BEST, that is, the most helpful, thoughtful, and above all, Scriptural, treatment of the "call" of God to the ministry comes from R. L. Dabney. In volume 2 of his Discussions collection there is an article titled, "What is a Call to the Ministry?" Here is an excerpt:

"What, then, is the call to the gospel ministry? Before the answer to this question is attempted, let us protest against the vague, mystical and fanatical notions of a call which prevail in many minds, fostered, we are sorry to admit, by not a little unscriptural teaching from Christians. People seem to imagine that some voice is to be heard, or some impression to be felt, or some impulse to be given to the soul, they hardly know what or whence, which is to force the man into the ministry without rational or scriptural deliberation. And if this fantastic notion is not realized–as it is not to be, except among those persons of feverish imagination who of all men have least business in the pulpit–the young Christian is encouraged to conclude that he is exempt. Let the pious young man ask himself this plain question, Is there any other expression of God's will given to us except the Bible? Where else does God authorize us to look for information as to any duty? The call to the ministry, then, is to be found, like the call of every other duty, in the teachings of God's revealed Word."

It just gets better from there. Dabney does not deny the validity of a call to the ministry; rather he demands that we anchor our call in the Bible . . . as we should!

Rapture Drills Scheduled

Let's face it: every generation has suffered from eschatological tunnel-vision, convincing itself from good, sound eisogesis that IT is the generation which will see Christ's return. Every once in a while, when I start to feel myself caught up in the perennial enthusiasm, I break out an old vinyl LP of Jack Van Impe preaching on "The Coming War with Russia," to remind myself of the true nature of the dogmatic certainty of the date-setters (in the Old Testament these guys were stoned; today they become bestselling authors--go figure).

Nevertheless, from time to time a story pops up on the radar that seems to lend some credibility to the idea that we may be living in the last of the "last days". Consider this article about the completion of a tzitz, the High Priest's headpiece, by the Temple Institute in Israel.

I'm not really referring to the crown itself, since the bare existence of such an article is not proof; but to the fact that it can be produced and immediately announced worldwide. The framework for the sort of global events of Daniel and Revelation has always existed--His name is Jehovah. However we are seeing, from a human perspective, an increasing plausibility that the conservative, dispensational, pre-trib, pre-mil scenario could play out on CNN today. Hmmmm . . .