Unceasing Worship; Unity and Mutual Indwelling

So we won't be talking today about authentic worship. I missed an important section. The third chapter deals with what Best calls mutual indwelling. This chapter gave me a headache. There are some deep and mysterious concepts in it. Therefore, I'll say this... READ THE BOOK! For those of you who won't be able to for one reason or another I will do my best to present a basic outline of the idea of mutual indwelling. As a starting point I'll say this: The concept comes down to

UNITY

In point form here are the concepts that make up Mutual Indwelling:

a. God is our dwelling place (Psalm 90)
b. Christ (being fully God) is our temple and greater than the temple
c. We are God's building (1 Cor 3:9) and corporate temple (1 Cor 3:16-17)
d. Christ is the chief cornerstone of the church and we are the redeemed living stones that make up the temple with Him (1 Pet 2:4-8)
e. We are each temples in which Christ dwells

So this leaves us with Temples (each of us) within a temple (the church) within a temple (Christ). So we are individuals and yet we dwell within one another in the sense that we together make up a single living temple, the church.

Are you still with me?

How can this be? Mr. Smith hates my music. Mrs. Jones disparages me at congregational meetings. Brother Killarny wants to spend money on the building while Sister Mildred wants to up our giving to global missions.

Then we get slammed...what about me? How do I offend? How do I promote disunity? How can unity exist in such a place?

Grace. Infinite grace that flows from the Father and Son and Spirit to us as we pour back to Him and to one another.

So the question: to what degree are we as worshipers and artists called to promote and encourage unity while still being the unique people God has made us to be?

The Difficult Simplicity

Jesus is central. Everything points to him. In Him all things were made and are held together by the power of His hand. Focus on that for the next 1000 years. I bet you still won't get it.

Unceasing Worship: Continuous Outpouring

I hope there has been enough time for people to read, reread and digest the first post on Unceasing Worship. I likely won't post more than twice a week on this topic because I think its one we all (myself included) need time to think on and process. Now that some time has past I'd like to move on to the second big though: Continuous Outpouring.

I'll admit to having a bit of trouble with this. These words never appear together in the Bible. However, I think it is an idea that is more than implied just as something like (for those of us at WLA's Thanksgiving service dealt with) Edwards' doctrine of Continuous Creation. The term is never introduced Biblically but never the less it seems sound.

So what is Continuous Outpouring? Well there are two words so let's look at them separately and then how they might be proven to be true Biblically.

Continuous: Relentless. It implies Continuity. Best says "I keep breathing until I die". That's a good way to think of it. We HAVE to, by nature, continue to do this. For God its represented in His own name for Himself: I AM THAT I AM. His word abides forever; Jesus is the same yesterday today and forever

Outpouring: Best admits there are other words he could have used. I won't list them. However, its important to know that its the scriptural force that caused him to choose this word. Most notably its used to describe Jesus sacrifice...being poured out as an offering.

Best suggests that continuos outpouring is shown to be true in three significant ways. First, by the nature of God. Father, Son and Spirit continually commune in perfect harmony with one another. They constantly interact with each other. Their love is perfect and never ending. Its in God's nature to be continuously outpouring. Second, he shows it in creation. Refer back to Edwards' doctrine of continuous creation. Thirdly, the doctrine of Imago Dei reinforces this. We can see continuous outpouring in ourselves. If our proposed definition of worship is to be accepted we have already admitted - we are constantly, continuously even, worshiping something. We are always ascribing worth to something. In an unfallen world it would always have been God. Fallen worship means we can be distracted. However, just as we always worship, just as we always breathe, God always pours out and its that part of Him that's in us that makes continuous outpouring true in light of Imago Dei. Lastly, continuous outpouring is shown to be true in the life and ministry of Christ. He relentlessly gave of himself, focused outward, right until death where the ultimate self-proclaimed outpouring happened. There is much scriptural force to this concept.

So, can we accept this idea? Does continuous outpouring help us to understand worship? I believe it does. I believe it shows why our current definitions of worship come up short.. why referring to music as worship is not good enough. Next time I'll look at authentic worship... what it is and what it is not in light of continuous outpouring.

ESV Study Bible now available

I went over to the Upper Room and got the new ESV study Bible today. I've been waiting for it to come out for a while now. Pastor Mike uses it for all of his sermons and its highly recommended by John Piper and Mark Driscoll which makes it awesome in my books.

If you don't have an ESV Bible I think you should get one. As my cell group has been studying Colossians inductively this year we've been using a commentary to help us along. Almost every time the commentary suggests the best wording for a passage its the version of a verse the ESV uses. Why is that important? Because sometimes the english language is confusing and IMHO its important to know as precisely as possible what the BIble says. Several versions are best but if you get one to use most often this is the one as far as I understand.

Besides the great translation there are maps, summaries, cross references, articles and more that will help you understand God's word more fully.

I just used mine this morning to follow along with a podcast and loved the extras I got out of the test and sermon because of it. If making it to the Upper Room seems tough you can get it from Amazon

Halloween...

So being a dad puts a new spin on how you look at things. Take Halloween for instance. When I was a kid we went out to get candy and dressed up in some silly costume in order to be allowed to retrieve said candy. Being the I was raised in a good Christian home we were not permitted to dress as anything demonic - witches, ghouls, goblins etc etc (although perhaps Goblins should have been allowed since they are a part of the LoTR universe and as such not demonic in the truest sense of the word). For all of my childhood years though I did participate in Halloween.

However, as I got older and my sister entered the years of candy getting, my parents got more and more convicted about participation in All Hallows Eve and so my sister and her friends were provided with a "Harvest Party" at which they got dressed up and received candy from the kindly folks at our church instead of running around out of doors to get candy from their neighbors. As I've thought about it I've come to think this largely missed the point as so many well meaning Christian alternatives to pop culture do. Instead of providing a really positive alternative and choosing not to participate at all in something we believe is wrong we section ourselves off from culture and basically do exactly the same thing as culture does but we don't engage with them in doing it. What are we saying by doing this? You people are demonic and we want nothing to do with you! We still want the holiday but we don't want to do it along side of you. The subtle shift is away from condemning the act and towards condemning our neighbors themselves. We miss any opportunity to redeem the event and culture and just end up looking silly in the process. No one is fooled when we do exactly the same thing as they do but do it inside the walls of the church and call it "Christian". People ask "aren't you still celebrating Halloween"? Our answer "OH NO! We're celebrating the harvest on October 31st by dressing up and giving piles of Candy to our kids (what does candy and harvest have to do with one another? Furthermore, did we not just celebrate the harvest on Thanksgiving?)!

And as if the whole point of the holiday we're enough reason to get out of it there is the awful truth of how many obese pounds on our children's backs we condemn them to by participating. Most people would agree that North America has a gluttony issue and our kids are suffering because of it. Its on the news every second evening at 6 o'clock. Yet we send our kids out once a year to collect pillow cases full of refined sugar? Who in their right mind would go up to a child and hand them 10lbs of candy and say "here you go...finish this off in a week"? No one. Why? We know its bad for them. So why do we pretend its ok at Halloween?

These are the thoughts I've been thinking as I process whether I'll be letting Layla participate in Halloween. The other side of the fence is that I don't want to come across as cultish or anything. If there's a part at school I'll likely let her dress up and have fun with her friends. But we won't decorate. She won't go out and get a 10lb bag of candy. We likely won't give candy to kids. What do I have in mind instead? I think we're going to take a small family trip around Halloween to some place she wants to go. It's an alternative that invests in our family and doesn't seem like we're just condoning the whole practice without calling it Halloween. I want he to know why we're not doing it like everyone else.

What do you think? Am I missing something? Am I just an idiot? I'd be happy to have further confirmation that my wisdom is foolishness. Let's talk.

What does God look like?

Have you ever stopped to wonder at what God looks like? I think most of society thinks God looks like Gandalf. Maybe if you're a movie goer then Morgan Freeman's visage pops into your mind. I am really coming to hate even the mere thought that anyone could think they'd know how to depict God by a simple visual image. Everything is going to fall short. Has any person you've known ever done any of the following:

Created the Universe.

Seriously...the list can stop there. It doesn't need to go beyond that. God. Created. the. Universe. Can you imagine that? No. You can't. God is so much more powerful than you that your feeble mind could never even comprehend his appearance and you would fall dead if you ever did see him.

Do you feel insufficient enough yet? I know it might sound blunt and harsh but this is the truth. We are insufficient and God is not. God is powerful. God is also gracious and merciful. God has chosen to reveal himself through his word. So although we might not be able to know what God looks like we CAN know him! What an amazing thought! What a gift! The God who created the universe makes himself known to feeble, sinful people like us.

In response to this gift we are to do all we can to know God as well as we can. I'd pose this question to you: what do you need to do to know God better? And for discussion: what are you doing right now that you feel is helping you to know God more?

For more on this topic check out Pastor Mike's sermon this Sunday. For those of you who are not WLA'ers and might be interested you can always check out our website for the sermon audio on Tuesdays.

A new blogging series: Thoughts from Unceasing Worship

I'm going to spend the next period of time trying to bring thoughts from the book Unceasing Worship every day. It might be something that I'm working through, a quote that I found interesting or something challenging I've read. I'll just start at the beginning of the book and move forward. Hopefully it will inspire those of you from WLA to take me up on my offer to get the book. For now, let's be sure we know just exactly what we're talking about.

What is Worship?

This is such a fundamental question - what is worship? I mean, most of us who call ourselves Christians say we worship but I wonder what we mean when we say that? Do we mean that we gather together to sing? That's certainly part of it but not the whole. Are praise and worship different? What about contemporary worship and traditional? I'd like to suggest that all of these categories are for the most part fruitless. They miss the point. Worship is not about music only.

It's become popular to say that worship is a lifestyle. That statement sounds true, doesn't it? There are two problems with it though. Firstly, no one does anything about it. If worship is a lifestyle then why do we insist on labels like worship music, worship service, the worship time...lifestyle implies a continuous being. If one chooses to live a lifestyle they don't stop all of life to do that, they simply are what they've chosen to be.

Second, and more importantly, it's not true. Worship is not a lifestyle or even like a lifestyle. Worship is simply something EVERYONE does. Christian, atheist, or any other system of belief, we all worship something. It would be better to say that worship is human nature than a lifestyle. See, we are always ascribing worth to something. Hopefully its God. However, it can often be things or heroes or money or any range of things we choose to make more valuable in any given moment than God. If we are choosing to live in a worldly way at any point we are worshiping that thing, that value system, and not God. Worship is continuous...we are always directing ourselves toward something and with that in mind I present to you the definition Harold Best gives to us for worship:

Worship is the continuous outpouring of all that I am, all that I do and all that I can ever become in light of a chosen or choosing god. (18)

Have I convinced you? Is there more to it? Less? Is he wrong? Take some time and think on it...I'll come back tomorrow and lay out for you his biblical foundations for this definition. In the meantime, leave a comment or ask questions of one another.

I hope through this process that God gives me the grace not to seem condescending or prideful. My heart and hope is that by fleshing these thoughts out in public that I'll encourage you to join me in thinking deeply about worship, about who God is and about how we can serve him better and make his greatness known more vibrantly. I'll ask you to call me out if I'm getting out of line and I'll do my best to submit to God through the instruction he brings to me through you all.

Francis Chan gets "radical" again

If you've been following for a while then you might remember Francis Chan from a few other posts. Well tonight I found this article. And this is the paragraph that got me most:

Demonstrate your faith by giving dangerously.
In other words, put your money where your mouth is. I came to an elder meeting one morning with this suggestion: If we "love our neighbor as ourselves," then wouldn’t it make sense to spend on our neighbors what we spend on ourselves? What if we set up our budget so that half of our income leaves the church and goes to other ministries? To my surprise, the elders decided that morning to commit half of the budget to people and ministries outside of Cornerstone. It’s been almost a year now, and we’ve been able to give approximately 55 percent of our money away.

Unreal. Can you imagine doing this? As I think about it though, doesn't it make sense? Isn't God's economy so much different than ours? Wouldn't the church be known by its love so much more if we did radical things like this? I pray that to the degree any of us are called to re-steward what we have that we'd be faithful to do so.

How does Google make so much money?

So I've spent a good part of my day today getting my macbook syncing with my Google Calendar and contacts. As I've sat here doing all of this in a relatively add free environment the thought crossed my mind - just how does Google make money? I mean my perception (which I understand isn't true) is that Google just makes cool apps for the betterment of mankind. You know, sort of like the Gandalf of the internet. They ride around the web collaborating and creating peace and harmony for the peasants in such a way that most of us don't even know they are there.

No matter how they make their billions of Googly dollars I've got to give them credit. They appear to be the most benevolent group of billionaires on the planet. Good show!

First weekend on a Mac...

Well last week I moved over to Mac. My work laptop was on its last legs and I'd been considering moving over to Mac for sometime. The new Macbook was released last week and so I took the plunge. For the most part it has been a pretty easy transition. The biggest pain so far has been getting my Outlook information into Entourage. However, everything else has just been plain old fun. I think this is just a great illustration of what alot of people in my generation are looking for in products these days. We're not really so concerned with familiarity. It's more important that the products have an "it" factor. Uniqueness is important (or at least the perception of uniqueness).

The apps are cool and easy to use. Everything is intuative. The whole interface is just cool. The laptop is fast and feels great in your hands. It's just cool. I'll let you know as time goes on if I have any negative impressions. So far...nope.

Ever wonder why this blog is called "Unceasing Worship"?

I stole the name from a book by Harold M. Best. The book expounds on a theology of worship much more broad and inclusive than what we typically label as worship in the church. I read it some time ago and am reading it again. It really is a fantastic book, one that is forming my thoughts on worship and ministry and one that I'd highly reccomend you read. In fact, I'm giving consideration to using it as a vehicle by which we can evalute our ministry here at WLA.

You can get a copy of it here. I'll likely be blogging about it as time nmoves forward but for now, let me give you the definition of worship offered up by Harold which I think is fantastic:

Worship is the continuous outpouring of all that I am, all that I do and all that I can ever become in light of a chosen or choosing god.

The big thoughts for me today...this involves way more than music. So, how do we more accurately create a church of joyful worshippers in light of this definition? Do we like this definition?

Blog Action Day - Global Poverty

Hey All,

I'm ashamed to say I didn't know about this sooner. Today is Blog Action Day...a day when bloggers unit to raise awareness. This year the focus of BAD is global poverty. This is an issue that has been ripping me apart for some time now. God is breaking my heart for this issue. Increasingly I look for ways to contribute and one of my goals is to go on a missions trip to Africa and get my hands dirty by helping in a tangible way.

The whole point of this is to create a discussion. Well I'll ask this question...what, if anything, are you doing to help with the issue of global poverty? Are you sponsoring a child through Compassion Canada? Are you buying products that support companies looking to irradicate poverty? Are you signing petitions from companies like one.org? These are all simple, effective ways to help. I encourage you, do what you can and remember that Jesus said "whatever you do for the least of these, so you've done for me".

What do Layla, John Mayer and SCL have in common?

Sometimes weird things just happen. Here's one of them. Back during Mel's pregnancy, somewhere around month 5 I think (I made that up...but it sounds right) we discovered that John Mayer would be playing at the Molson Amphitheatre on July 7th. Now, John is my favorite musical artist these days and so any time he comes close I figure its a great chance to see him. Well Melissa's due date was July 8th or 9th depending on what colored wheel we listened to so it kind of messed up our plans to see John for the third time. However, I saw this as an opportunity to make a bold statement and select July 7th as the date Layla would actually be born on. I mean, she's her daddy's girl and I knew she would want to allign herself with her dad's likes and so she did. In fact, she was born right about the time John was taking the stage for his encore. She knows how to make daddy proud!

Now, here's where it gets weird. One of my favorite blogs to read is Stuff Christians Like. I don't always get to read everything he posts but most of it is good stuff. Great for a chuckle and sometimes thought provoking. Well, when you have a baby, blog reading sort of takes a back seat for a few days and in the blogsphere that's like a trillion years or something. So I missed a lot of Jon's posts in July.

Fast forward with me now to this past weekend. Barbara Postma references Jon's blog on "Is this John Mayer or The Message Bible" and much to my shame I had no clue as to what she was referring. So, being the great friend she is, Barbara goes back and digs through the archives at SCL and finds me the post. I read it and, again, much to my shame got one wrong. I thought I was a better Mayerite than this. So naturally I want to share this post with you, my friends, and so went back to find the link today and discovered not only was it posted during my absence from the blogsphere but it was posted the very day after Layla and John took the stage together. HOW WEIRD IS THAT!

Ok so maybe its not so weird but hopefully it made for a good read and a bit of family history you didn't know before hand.

120 Minutes

I've been a bad blogger lately. I haven't been consistent about it. I supose my excuse would be that I don't have enough time. That's simply untrue. Seth Godin agrees with me. WEll actually, I stole the idea from Seth Godin. I was reading said blog last week and it hit me...I have far more time than I realize. And lately I've been trying to spend my time doing things of merit. I could still do more. So I pose the question to you - how would your life be different if you reclaimed 120 wasted minutes? Perhaps you could spend time with God. With your family. You could read something intellectually or spiritually stimulating. You could get better at something. Go ahead...put the remote down! I dare you!

Me? I'll start by blogging more.

YouVersion for Blackberry

I absolutely love the Lifechurch.tv team. Not only do they go to great lengths to preach the name of Christ in every relevant way for His glory and the salvation of lost people but they're just about the most creative and generous church I've found. They are highly committed to sharing the bountiful resources that God had given them with other churches. For instance, they share many of their graphics, sermons and series ideas on an open source website for free with other churches. Great stuff.

The thing I wanted to highlight today was their new app called YouVersion is available for the Blackberry. You can find it here www.youversion.com/bb/It'll give you a searchable Bible for quick reference on your blackberry. Enjoy, compliments of LifeChurch.tv

Vision - its not just for leaders

So here I am back from Men's Weekend. The thing I always look forward to most is the time alone with God on Sunday morning. We all spend 2.5 hours reflecting on our life as men in Christ and coming up with a battle plan for the upcoming year. I would call this a vision for my life in the next 12 months. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think enough people come up with visions for their life. I think in general we look to leaders for vision. We fail to realize how important a stated, measurable vision is for every area of life. Call them goals if you want. Whatever word you want to use, create a vision for the important areas of your life.

Proverbs 29:18 says "without vision the people cast off restraint". Some translations say "the people die". I think that's a bit extreme, death that is, but to cast off retraint I think is really appropriate. That's the problem with people really. We fail to see the vision of better life that Christ is calling us to...that by having lives that are more in line with that of Christ that His glory would be more known through us. Casting off restraint is what gets us into trouble. We start to do the things we know we shouldn't because we're not being disciplined. So we get fat and we gossip and we sleep too much or look at porn or whatever it is the casting off of restraint makes us do. Its only by seeking to follow the example of Christ and being CONFORMED to his image that we really are able to make His glory known. Think of it this way...do you remember those jello molds your mom used to make (or you make)? Without the confines of the mold the jello doesn't look much like anything. But with a bit of constraint the jello can take the shape of the mold its placed into. Our life in Christ needs confines. We need restraint.

So for me I've made a list of goals for my time with Christ, for prayer, for my character flaws, for my health, for my family and in several other areas. I don't do these things to make God love me...he already does. Thank God for his grace! I do these things in the hopes that I might be a more accurate reflection of Christ and be increasingly so as each day goes by. Sola gloria deo!

A weekend with Men

Camping. Fire. Tests of strength. These are the things a weekend away with other men are made of. I look forward to WLA's men's weekend every year and not just because I love fire. In fact this will be our first year with fire. So it can't be for the love of fire. In fact its because it always proves to be an excellent time of learning, challenge, reflection and connection with God. There's something about 52 men in one room all focused on serving the Lord with all their heart that is inspiring.

I'd ask that you pray for us. Pray that God would convict and shape us. That we would catch a glimpse of his greatness and be change by the experience. Pray that in doing so together we would become better followers of Christ who desire accountability and who desire to be better husbands, fathers, sons and brothers.

New Lincoln Brewster Record - I Love It!

Well it may come as no shock that on many levels Lincoln is my personal favorite worship artist out there. I'll admit there are better corporate worship writers out there (Mr. Tomlin and the Hillsong Team win those awards IMHO) but for the best blend of great songs with great lyrics, musical excellence, great production and just enjoyable listening Linc wins for me.

His new album, Today is the Day, is just a continuation of this. For us at WLA it probably doesn't hold more than 2 songs we could do on a Sunday but it's quite diverse and I think you'll see churches of many styles and creeds using music from this album. Lincoln asserts himself even more solidly on this record as the king of guitarists because some of the riffs and licks he does are simply sick! For me, I find myself praising God for the talents he gives to his children because of Lincoln's guitar skills.

All in all I'd reccomend this record to you as a solid listen and an inspiration on many levels.