Archives for “Worship”
“God desperately wants an intimate relationship with you!”
Relax, I’m not going to spend the entire post bagging on this claim and those who make it. I will spend the greater part of this post explaining the problem that many Christians have with that statement, but you might be surprised where I end up — I certainly am.
Recently a friend pointed out how frustrated he was with this particular evangelical meme. I, too, have been annoyed by just such claims before. “Cerebral” Christians like myself are usually critical of those who simply trust what they think they know about God, since we have – not infrequently correctly – identified many of their beliefs as erroneous understandings that are sometimes counterproductive to the Christian mission. Surely no small part of the disgust that many feel toward those who typically speak of an “intimate relationship” with God issues from a sense that these evangelicals are stereotypically not as close to God as they seem to think they are: for these, daily prayer times, emotional worship services, and a commitment to avoiding “the world” seem to be the central components and hallmarks of a robust “relationship” with God, but this more often manifests as a general out-of-touch heaven-mindedness. In effect, it all sounds so make-believe, and a disappointing deficit of healthy fruit this type of “relationship” seems to produce bears that out.
- I love “Historical Jesus” podcasts A fascinating discussion from two conservative evangelical scholars on the subject of the historical Jesus took place on last weekend’s episode of Unbelievable. Adam Bradford, defending his book The Jesus...
The (sometimes bewilderingly) controversial theologian Brian McLaren wrote an article in a newsletter (I think) in which he enunciates his take on where we are and where we should go in modern worship music. He addresses it as “An open letter to songwriters” (direct pdf link), and presents some well-stated observations and requests in his typically humble way. Here are a couple excerpts:
Related posts:Let me make this specific: too many of our lyrics are embarrassingly personalistic, about Jesus and me. Personal intimacy with God is such a wonderful step above a cold, abstract, wooden recitation of dogma. But it isn’t the whole story. In fact—this might shock you—it isn’t, in the emerging new postmodern world, necessarily the main point of the story. A popular worship song I’ve heard in many venues in the last few years (and which we sing at Cedar Ridge, where I pastor) says that worship is “all about You, Jesus,” but apart from that line, it really feels like worship, and Christianity in general, has become “all about me, me, me.”
- The heart of worship I’ve been musing about this for years and have finally decided to put it down in electronic pen and paper. It concerns something I’m afraid is taken for granted by...
- Facing the music: genocide is just genocide Kenton Sparks contributes a humdinger of a post today, the second post in a seven-part series entitled “After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age.” He begins with...
- How true Christians live When the Church of Jesus When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer: May our prayers, Lord, make us...
ElShaddai Edwards has tagged me with the Weird Worship meme, in which I am supposed to come up with five worship songs with strange, perplexing, or otherwise – well, weird lyrics. My peeps know I’m highly critical of worship songs in general, but this has been more difficult than I thought to come up with songs whose lyrics I might characterize as “weird”, as opposed to simply badly written, wrong-focused, or theologically errant, or which there are a host of songs I might mention. But here I go…
Related posts:- Brian McLaren on worship music The (sometimes bewilderingly) controversial theologian Brian McLaren wrote an article in a newsletter (I think) in which he enunciates his take on where we are and where we should go...
- The heart of worship I’ve been musing about this for years and have finally decided to put it down in electronic pen and paper. It concerns something I’m afraid is taken for granted by...
- How true Christians live When the Church of Jesus When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer: May our prayers, Lord, make us...
When the Church of Jesus
When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door,
Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer:
May our prayers, Lord, make us ten times more aware
That the world we banish is our Christian care.
If our hearts are lifted where devotion soars
High above this hungry suff’ring world of ours:
Lest our hymns should drug us to forget its needs,
Forge our Christian worship into Christian deeds.
Lest the gifts we offer, money, talents, time,
Serve to salve our conscience to our secret shame:
Lord, reprove, inspire us by the way you give;
Teach us, dying Savior, how true Christians live.
- F. Pratt Green (#319, Baptist Hymnal)
Related posts:- Losing the plot This story is certainly making the rounds around the blogosphere, but I can’t pass it up, particularly because I have some things to say about it I haven’t read elsewhere....
- Brian McLaren on worship music The (sometimes bewilderingly) controversial theologian Brian McLaren wrote an article in a newsletter (I think) in which he enunciates his take on where we are and where we should go...
- The heart of worship I’ve been musing about this for years and have finally decided to put it down in electronic pen and paper. It concerns something I’m afraid is taken for granted by...
I’ve been musing about this for years and have finally decided to put it down in electronic pen and paper. It concerns something I’m afraid is taken for granted by many people in the “worship movement”. I can imagine some who know me thinking that I’m just trying to justify what the generous would call my “conservative style of worship”, or what the more critical might suspect is my rebellion against a perfectly unassailable institution that I happen to have trouble participating in because – well, I must not feel enough love for God within my bones.
At ten years of age, my family stepped into the equivalent of a post-Yorktown environment at our new Baptist church: the decisive battle had been fought in the War on Hymns, but the sedition of obstinancy fomented by over-aggression was still stewing. I was a little too young to notice or care about the debate and its significance; all I knew was that we didn’t sing as many hymns as at my previous church, and people seemed to be more “into” the singing, what with holy hands and vocal interjections lifted spontaneously and frequently. I recognized the musical style as more modern (the drums), and for what it was worth, I approved of that.
Related posts:- Brian McLaren on worship music The (sometimes bewilderingly) controversial theologian Brian McLaren wrote an article in a newsletter (I think) in which he enunciates his take on where we are and where we should go...
- How true Christians live When the Church of Jesus When the church of Jesus shuts its outer door, Lest the roar of traffic drown the voice of prayer: May our prayers, Lord, make us...