What's Important; Part III Insights of Worship

4 new insights to consider for your expectation of worship. Here is where I share my heart for worship. 

1. The primary work of church is worship.
Most people think evangelism is primary work. It is important, but worship is our primary function. Everything we do should come from our love of God. Evangelism flows from that. Missions flows from that. Discipleship flows from that.

2. Worship is a source of renewal. God speaks and acts in our service. The sermon is not just an educational or motivational tool. It is another way to hear God through our Pastors. Worship is not a rule or chore, it is something to look forward to. I always remember Carl saying people don't ever say they are taking a day off from going to a ball game or going to see a movie. Why do people take a day off from coming to celebrate Christ? Our service celebrates Christ. One great thing about our church is our Anglican faith. One of my heroes Andy Piercy says Anglicanism gives us tools, not toys. Tools are useful, toys entertain us. These tools are traced back to the early church. We follow a prayer book with hundreds of years of history. It frees us from inventing a way to draw close to Christ, or inventing a new way to celebrate Christ.

3. Worship is an active experience. Worship is God speaking and acting to us like He did to the prophets and apostles. We sing together. We pray together. We read scripture together. Scripture is not just a book, we hear God speak. We can respond to God, to his word. 

4. I desire a return of arts to the church. Music, banners, dance, drama, color. God came to us through flesh and blood...he died a physical death. Emmanuel, God with us. Thomas wanted to see the scars. We use art to help us in worship. Backgrounds, images that enhance the message. Flowers, banners. And when we sing, we use songs not to entertain, but to enhance our service. We hear His Word in the songs we sing. I really want to talk a bit more about this part. I know a priest who refuses to call the musicians in his church Worship Leaders. His reasoning includes the explanation that all of the service is worship, therefore, the priest is the Worship Leader. I agree with him, but I would add that our service is led by the Holy Spirit, and many people share in following the lead during our worship. The prayers of the people are led by the people. The Gospel is read by one of our Deacons. At any point of the service, a person other than the priest could be leading. At that point they are the appointed Worship Leader for that time. My time is to lead the church in song. I take this seriously. Every week I seek God to find a theme for Sunday. Sometimes I find it in Scripture, sometimes I find it through prayer, and other times, such as this week, I find it in where I feel God is speaking to me. After attending the inaugural meeting of our new Anglican Mission Society, I felt the Spirit saying we needed to steer the focus away from organizations and the work of people. What does that look like for me? I heard clearly God was reminding me that He alone is Holy and worthy of praise. Our songs today reflect that. The opening hymn was O Worship the King. During our time of singing our praise to God, we sang Holy is The Lord God Almighty, I Cannot Hide my Love, How Great is our God, and "my Jesus, my savior, Lord there is none like you", in Shout to the Lord. Our praise time is as purposeful as the scriptures we use every week. It doesn't end there. I want our music to reflect the words we are singing. This is done through the arrangement of our songs. Arrangement not like as in the order of songs, but directing how the music will sound in each song. We shouldn't be singing 3 different parts in a song that claims "we are all as one." We shouldn't have drums beating like running horses if we are singing "Soaring on the wings of an eagle". Is it too much to ask for details such as this? To get back to the stage, story and scene, an actor portrays a different person by his or her costume. They can speak in an accent. They use props where detail is important. All of this is like arranging a song. Words are the script. Our instruments are the props. When detail is important we leave nothing to the imagination. We paint the image of calm in the way we play. We display the image of majesty in a well-played trumpet part.

All of this is to say worship is more than a trendy band with electric guitar and drums. But those trendy bands can bring our culture into the church in a way that people identify with. The line between being trendy for the sake of entertainment and bringing the music of the church into relevance is a fine line.  If we walk that line in the context of the stuff I already mentioned above, we will probably be ok.

What's Important; Part II Church Un-simplified

What about our culture? Our American culture has reshaped the way we worship.
There are four consequences of this re-shaping, reflected in comments of people who are cynical in their view of church.

1. Worship is entertainment. We have become focused on what we get out of worship. We need a good band with nice singers. I hope the Pastor tells some jokes during his sermon. If the show is good enough, we will put some money in the offering plate as payment. I often have joked about putting a coupon in the Oak Forest newsletter as part of our advertising. $5 dollars off your next offering.
   2. Worship is over- sensitized. The reason we hear so much about no more crying in the Bible is because there is plenty of it going on today in our churches. We want a feeling or an emotion when we come together. Our culture has shown us that emotional responses are an indication of success. The cameras zoom in on a person weeping at a wedding or funeral. If we are not moved visibly to an emotion, somehow our church is over-intellectualized. This brings us to the third consequence.

3. Worship is over-intellectualized. We have become a culture of explanation. Any person with cable TV can learn the secrets of magicians, myths and legends de-bunked, or how to make that favorite restaurant food yourself in your own kitchen. Many churches today will explain the Christian faith to you. We will read from scripture and the latest book to teach you everything you need to know about Christianity. This was an interesting concept in India. I was told several times that Hinduism is not a religion. It is a way of life. You can't read how to be Hindu in a book. You have to experience it. They were telling me this because our culture is known for explaining Christianity in an intellectual way.

4. Worship focuses on the self. I need to tread lightly here with all of the counselors we have in this church. I don't need to remind you of all the American preachers under fire for the prosperity Gospel message being preached in many churches today and on TV channels broadcast across the globe. Since much of our culture focuses on the self, it shouldn't surprise you that many of our churches focus on the self. I don't want to make any enemies here, but an example of this for me is the "I am second" campaign. I know they do great things and they want you to say God is first, but I was always bothered by the title. There are two ways to state their campaign. I am second. God is first. By saying "I am second", we focus attention on our position in relation to God. Worship doesn't focus on where we are. It focuses on where God is.

Enough said about what cynical people think.
Back to my trip to Uganda, Africa. I was asked to visit to help recover the sense of Festive worship. Festive worship is centered around an event. It is hard to have a party without a theme. We celebrate birthdays, National holidays, weddings, and many other events. On Sunday we celebrate the Christ event. What is that you might ask? Well looking back to the Old Testament, Jewish worship was centered around the Exodus event. When Jesus came to die for our sins, we have an event to celebrate. I went to a soccer match in Uganda. It was a big deal. The King of Buganda, Uganda was there. The Kingdom of Buganda was playing against another Kingdom area of which I don't recall, but that isn't important. The important part was how they celebrated after each goal. The people would run up to the king's feet and bow. Not just bow, but throw themselves flat on their faces before him to honor him for the goal. We went to church that following Sunday. I noticed nobody bowed. Nobody was excited at all. It was as if they had forgotten why they were at church. It is a celebration with our God who saves. We honor him. We bow before him. Later this morning we will sing "We Bow Down". I commented during my rehearsal on Thursday that I expected to see people actually bowing down. I was excited to see people demonstrate last week how deep, high, and wide their love for God is. Do we believe the words we sing? Can we catch a bit of celebration in the moment? I challenge you that this type of event is only good when you are here. Have you ever taken pictures of a really great party and shown them to someone later? Somehow the pictures can't capture the moment. We use phrases like "Well, you should have been there." We recorded many songs in India. We had some great moments of worship. When I listened to the recordings they didn't sound as good as I remember. I think it's because I was listening for quality of music. I listened to the voices as one would listen to determine if the recording is worthy. It wasn't. But we were not singing to make a recording. We sang to worship God. On Sundays are we worshiping or listening? If we listen, our music will always fall short of expectations. If we worship, God joins in and when God joins in, he brings it! There have been moments for me that the music or singing lacked in my expectation. It is on those Sundays that people come tell me how amazing the worship was. What is your expectation?

What's Important; Part I

I was asked to preach on sunday in my church. I don't get asked very often, so when I do, I want to say something that makes sense. Since I write so much, I decided to write my sermon out as a blog, then use it to preach from. Since I wrote it out, I figured I may as well use it here for people to read. It was kind of longer than a blog post should be, so I decided to break it into a couple chunks. Here is part I.

One of my fondest memories of my grandfather was when I was a kid. I used to play church with him. We would march around the house singing from the hymnal. I would go in front carrying a hobby horse, holding it high. He would walk behind me carrying the hymnal singing what now are some of my favorite hymns. He would use some sort of cloth around his neck as a stole. That was pretty much it. Later I would celebrate communion with Necco wafers. Most of the time that was by myself. As I look back my grandfather was probably tired from marching all over the house so that was all he could do. I remember mumbling as many words from the Eucharistic prayer as I could make sense of. That part of the service was there but not all the time. As I look back on this story it tells me what I thought about church as a kid. I was probably 5 years old. What was important to me as a kid? The processional was important. Evidently the cross part of it wasn't the important part. It was a symbol for me that had some meaningful part of the service. I could substitute the cross for any item that had a stick and we could carry it. A broom would do, but the horse was better because it was something cool to look at. I saw church simplified as the processional. We sang. I didn't substitute other songs for the hymns. It had to be hymns. Hymns were all we had back then. There were no praise and worship songs so I don't know if I would have sung those songs. That part of church influenced my life so much to this day our processional songs are always hymns. To me its a rule. Another rule was the person holding the "stick" had to go first. The priest had to come in last. That was important to me as well. I obviously understood the processional carried an order of significance. There was no sermon. Pretty much my view of church consisted of marching around singing hymns.

We all have things that are important to us. Sometimes we don't acknowledge or recognize them as important, but our actions define them. When we traveled to India a couple weeks ago we noticed fences everywhere. Not complete fences. A fence made of brick only 2 or 3 bricks high surrounding a piece of property. Fences go up before the first brick is laid to build a house. Not just a few sticks to mark the property line, or some rocks laid. Bricks. Cemented together. It was explained that people had to mark their property lines to keep out squatters. Apparently bricks 12 inches high do the trick where some rocks or a wire fence tied to posts would not. When the property is finished enough to move into, the wall around the property will be finished with a proper gate. The gate often times was very ornately decorated. Opening the gate led you to a house nearly completed, but having an amazing looking front door. Entrances. This is important. As you approach someone’s home the appearance of the entrance is important.

The house always has a room to gather. Social interaction is important. Not a room to watch television, but a room to gather and talk. This is similar to Africa. I recall Kezlon, the Dean of the Cathedral in Uganda, moving into a home here in Oviedo. People had gathered couches to donate for his new home. I rode around in a U-Haul with Jon Holland and Sheryl, our Missions Pastor, to collect these donations. After collecting 3 couches and seeing the size of Kezlon's small home, we told him this was enough. He insisted on picking up the next two couches. When we got to his home, he wanted us to arrange all the couches into the living room, all against the wall. We tried to help him by selecting a few couches that would work, then moving some of the others to storage. Once again he insisted on arranging all the couches in the room all facing in toward each other. It wasn't until six months later that I made my first trip to Uganda. Upon entering the first home of a family in Uganda, I looked at Sheryl and we laughed. Every home had a room in which it was filled with mix-match couches and chairs, all facing inward. It was for people to sit and gather to talk. This was important in their culture. We got it.

Are You In The Club?

This past week I changed vehicles with my youngest daughter to help her get some maintenance done. I own a 1992 Mustang and she  owns a 2006 Jeep Wrangler (which she saved and paid for herself...proud dad).  I took her Jeep to get new tires and then drove around to do my normal routine.  As I left the church that afternoon, some guy driving by waved at me. I was pretty sure I didn't know him but I waved politely. Then another woman waved at me. I was certain I didn't know her.  It was like I was in some strange movie.  Then I realized that the people waving to me were also in Jeeps. Aha! I recalled a similar time when I rode a motorcycle. Everyone on a motorcycle waved as you rode by. It was the low wave, where you put your hand out as if to give a low five (opposite of high five). You see, bikers can't be cool and wave, so it's not really a wave.
Anyway, it seems Jeep owners have this private waving club as well.  I looked in the owner's manual and it doesn't tell you anything about such a club or how to join. I also am pretty sure the dealer doesn't tell you about the club either, so it's like a secret club. I began to wonder who started this club and how does everyone that drives a Jeep know that you are supposed to wave?
I have a Mustang and I know there are car clubs for Mustangs where people get together and show off their cars, but there is no waving.  Why don't they wave? What about Nissan Altimas? My middle daughter has one of those and there are many on the road, but no waving. I tried it. We waved at another Altima owner and they drove away quickly with a worried look.
It made me think of the church. We have a club called Christianity.  Do you remember the old song that said "and they'll know we are Christians by our love"? It seems like that song should be re-written today with new lyrics. "And they'll know we are Christians by our judgmental attitude!" Of course that doesn't sound so good, but maybe it's more accurate.
We could take a lesson from Jeep owners. Jeep owners don't care what year you joined the club. If you have owned a Jeep since 1980, you get the same greeting as a 2012 Jeep owner. Actually it seems like the newer Jeep gets more attention. I remember when new Christians got the most attention.  In today's church it seems like the new Christians aren't really in the club until they have completed a few Bible Studies. Or spoken in tongues. Or participated in a Mission overseas, etc. You have to pay your dues! Of course, thats not MY church, but I know it happens.
Jeep owners don't care how old you are, or what color your Jeep is. They don't even care what condition your Jeep is in. (minus 5 points for ending in a preposition) They will wave at you if you are having a bad day, if you ran a red light, if you cut them off....  Well, actually for cutting them off you probably get a "special wave", but that's not the point here.
The truth is, this really is not what the church should be. This kind of club is superficial and requires no relationship, but the church can still learn a lesson here.
When will the church begin the club of waving to and welcoming other Christians? When will people identify Christians by their love again, and not by their judgmental attitudes?  If the church is not a building... if the church is really the people... then we will always have some broken pieces. But we shouldn't let the broken pieces hold up the building, and we don't put the broken parts up front for everyone to see. We can work with them, help them to be like new, and then let God fully restore them.
I say the problem lies with the church (people) removing God from the club He started. We stopped following His rules and began to try and fix things ourselves.  Things he originally made. That needs to stop. We should recognize God as the President of our club.  I bet God does the high-five and the wave.

Get Ready To Run

I love to travel. As much as I like to travel, I like to host people that are traveling. When we host people in Orlando, we take them to see the sights of Central Florida. That usually means Walt Disney World, Daytona Beach, air-boat rides to see alligators, or Universal Studios. When I visit other countries, they take me to see their sights. I will be in India next month and have been told we will visit the Taj Mahal.
I was in Rwanda for a church mission trip a few years back. During our time, they took us to see a game reserve. It was very exciting. We were going to see monkeys, zebra, hippos, and perhaps elephants.
Upon entering the park, we stopped several times for the guide to point out various birds. Birds? That is like stopping to show a visitor to Orlando Chuck-E-Cheese on the way to see Disney. Forget the birds! Take us to see big animals we don't see every day!
Next stop, a family of giraffe. Now we are talking! As we drove through the uncharted course of the game reserve our guide told us he had heard of a sighting of Mutwumbe. Mutwumbe was a large elephant who had been kicked out of the herd because he was aggressive. Even elephants have standards apparently. Because he was alone, he became even more aggressive toward anyone that approached him, like a grumpy old man.
We drove to the spot where he was bathing, and had to walk a short distance to find him. There he was. Very large, and in about three feet of water facing away from us. You could hear all the cameras clicking away under the whispers of our group of 10 tourists, not wanting to attract the attention of our grumpy friend.
Our guide addressed the group in a low voice. "Let me call his name so he will turn and you can get better pictures", he said. "Oh, I think we are ok with these pictures" one person replied. Another asked, "is it safe?" "Sure", came the confident reply of our guide.  With that, he turned to shout at the elephant as we anxiously waited to see what would happen. As the guide drew his breath, he glanced our way and whispered "Get ready to run!"
Um, no, wait...was all I could think. And then I thought back to 3rd grade and remembered the survival of the fittest. I don't have to out-run the elephant, I just have to out-run someone in our group.
Fast forward to today. Our church just went through a tough time. We had news crews on our property last weekend inquiring about a breaking story that was not favorable for attracting new members. When our pastor called me the day before to tell me the news, it was like he was telling me "get ready to run". I turned on the news at home to see what was being reported.  Our story was small compared to other news.  Just like my safari story, I saw that we don't have to out-run the news, just out-run the other people that have bigger problems.
As we study the New Testament, we find plenty of warnings for the church about the behavior of the people. These writings are not prophetic. They were not predicting the problems we would face today. They were actual problems the church faced then. But we are to use the teachings and advice for today. It still applies today.
Jesus told us in Matthew 28 to get ready to run. Not to run from the world, but to run into the world proclaiming the truth. That also applies today. What is the church doing today? Are we hiding? Or are we ready to run?

Are We Really Anglican?

Well now it is official. Our church is part of a Missionary Society. I'm not really sure what that is, but some people who understand church law made it happen so it must be good. After all this, I was wondering if we are still an Anglican church. It seems now-a-days everyone has claim to the Anglican faith. Well, not really everyone. The Catholics don't want to be Anglican. In fact, very few people have even heard of it, but who is right?  Who is Anglican? Will the real Anglican Church of America please stand up? Seriously...stand up.
To simplify this, I look at it from a food angle. I love Chinese food. There are many Chinese restaurants in the area. What makes a restaurant a Chinese restaurant? There are four basic types of Chinese restaurants.  First is the sit down and order type. Next we have the "New York style" take-out kind that shows you all the pictures of the food on the board above the counter. The third kind is the buffet.  Last, but certainly not least is the food court "try my sample" kind.  Can you pick which one is the true Chinese restaurant? They all claim to be Chinese restaurants.
Can we choose by the employees? Have you ever been to a Chinese restaurant, greeted by a teenager wearing trendy clothes? ("Welcome to PF Changs, how many are in your party?") Does the cook speak fluent Mandarin? A true Chinese restaurant would have an all Chinese staff, wouldn't they?
What about the food? I spent several weeks in Taiwan and visited China. There is no such thing as Egg Foo Yung on any menu there.  An insider secret here. Most of our favorite dishes in America don't exist in China.  They are made for Americans.
So what does a real Chinese restaurant look like? Nothing like you would see in America, but that's the point.  The Anglican church is as American as rice noodles. Not to confuse you, but that means its not American. The Anglican Church originated in England as the official Church of England. It is the Queen's church. It has spread through the world mostly through missionaries from England (not really important to the story so if you think I'm wrong...tell wikipedia).  You will find Anglican Church services in Africa that look nothing like our services.  Sure they are similar, but similar as in Chinese take-out food is to Chinese buffet food. There are things on the menu we don't have.  For example, I wonder if Chinese Anglican churches serve fortune cookies after communion.  (fortune cookies also not found in China)
Figuring out who is Anglican is as controversial as naming which restaurant is truly Chinese, or Mexican, or pick your fare.             
We have the 1979 prayer book Anglicans. We have the Reformed Anglicans. The Episcopal Church Anglicans. And now all the trendy acronym Anglicans like ACNA, CANA and AMiA. I read all (or some of) the blogs concerning Anglican churches in America. If you think it's just the common church-goers who are confused let me leave you with an example.
Our former Bishop is now the priest in charge of a small Anglican church by the beach, not part of our new Missionary Society. At the same time, he is also an assisting Bishop in another Anglican affiliation, and claims to be seated as a Bishop in our Anglican Missionary Society as well.
If you thought Bishops on a chess board were difficult to understand, this is inconceivable (shameless Princess Bride quote).  Which rules do you follow if you belong to more than one organization? If they are all the same, then why aren't we all the same?
I always say God has grace for the human race. It didn't work out so well for some people in the Bible, but then Jesus came to die for us and our mistakes. Let's show a little appreciation folks. This debate over who is really Anglican is embarrassing.  What happened to taking ground for God's Kingdom?  We can work with the Lutheran church down the street but we can't play nicely with the other Anglican churches because we think they are posing as impostors. Really? Let's stand up....together.

Decorating the Church

One of the areas of responsibility for me working at a church is church decor. If you know me than you can see how God has a sense of humor. Church decor? Really? Quick Bible history inserted here.
The Levites from the Old Testament were the appointed worship leaders in the day. You can read about them in Chronicles (both books) and Numbers. These guys not only played the music, but they were in charge of making the church look good with decorating. Now its my job. Thanks guys!
The idea behind church decor is to stay seasonal. Just like the malls and department stores. The big difference is we don't decorate in advance of the holiday and we stick to one at a time. We decorate for Christmas, just days before the celebration. We don't put out the wise men until they appear historically in the story, which is after the birth.
A quick side note. A pastor once told me that his first assignment as a young priest in a large church was to put out the giant manger scene in the front yard of the church, which happened to be on the corner of a very busy intersection. It was the first Sunday in Advent, four weeks before Christmas. He went to the storage room and put all the stuff out, including the wise men and baby Jesus. When the Senior Priest saw this he immediately shouted at the young priest to get them out of the scene. As the pastor tells it, "the senior Priest called me into his office and said "This is humiliating! Clearly the wise men don't come until after the birth! Now everyone will think we don't know the story of Christmas!" So he went out and took away the wise men and baby Jesus before the whole town would see it. Unbeknownst to them, while they were discussing the problem in the office, a reporter from the local paper shot a picture that was published the following morning on the front page. Wise men and Jesus front and center with the church name clearly in view. 40 years later he is still a priest. Christmas still came.
This week we celebrate Pentecost. I love the images of Pentecost. The color red, Holy Spirit flames, and fire. The Spirit as a bird of peace, and the dove. These are all good images, but why do people insist on using them all together. Come to my church and look above the drums. We have a red banner of a dove barely escaping the mountain of flames below. "Fly higher little bird!" is what a friend said to me.

On the front of our altar, the hanging piece of cloth is officially called a frontal. Aptly named. We use a red frontal for Pentecost. The flames look so slick one person commented that it looks like our church is sponsored by NASCAR. Sure I get that, but once again we have a poor little bird caught it some sort of telephone wire as it was about to fly into the flames. It looks like we are celebrating a sacrifice with a roasted bird. Who makes these banners? Try to stick with one theme. Either the bird or the flames.
A few years back someone on the decorating committee (which we no longer have) recommended hanging red cloth around the cross to look like flames coming out. I rejected that idea saying I didn't think a burning cross was the image we should be going for, especially when all our priests were wearing white robes. Just saying.