Living in Hurricanes territory is hard work for a Blues supporter. I have been trying to keep my mouth shut but I can't help it. A few weeks ago I predicted that the 'Canes had as much chance of winning the Super 14 as the Blues. Well, this has turned to custard and the 'Canes are in the final with the Crusaders this Saturday. It hurts to say it but:
GO THE CRUSADERS!!! PPPPLLLLEEEEAAAAASSSEEEE!!
I mentioned a quote from Friedrich Buechner a couple of weeks ago in a sermon (something like): 'questions and doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.'
I have two recent questions (as well as many others...) that are causing ants in my pants:
1). This one comes from Guy Sayles and his blog at First Day. We often focus on the question of "Do you believe in Jesus?" This is an important question and rests at the heart of the Christian faith. But sometimes we, wrongly, stop at that question, as if saying yes settles all matters of faith and discipleship. There is a second and also very important question to ponder after asking "Do you believe in Jesus?" and it is: "Do you believe what Jesus believed?" Go check out Guy Sayles thoughts on this one here. It's a very important question for followers of Jesus.
2). The second question follows the readings I've been doing for our forthcoming retreat for our worship team. There is a lot of focus on the need for worship to be authentic today. It's been something that I've focussed a lot on. Today I read an article that gave me a kick in the pants. The article is by Graham Redding who is the Minister at St John's in the City, a Presbyterian church in Wellington. In the article he asks "What is authentic worship? Authentic to whom?" Is it most important to be authentic to the people gathered to worship (in which case, who decides if the bar of authenticity has been reached?) or to the Triune God of grace revealed in Jesus Christ? Who is worship directed towards, the people gathered for worship or the Triune God of grace?
I've found out over the last few weeks that some of the people I went to Bible College with have entered blogdom. I'm not on-to-it enough to figure out how to create a links thingy at the side of the blog, so the best I can do is give them a plug.
Alister is a good guy and a smart chappie (not sure what he's up to in terms of job etc now). He's now blogging at Kiwi and an Emu
Sean Du Toit (N. T. Wright's biggest fan!). I see Sean's giving a lecture on the Da Vinci Code at Stellenbosch University. He blogs at Primal Subversion.
Melissa Powell is a pastor at Cession Community. She is a very clever woman, and I would imagine, an outstanding pastor! She's blogging at Pensees (as in Blaise Pascal).
We four did a lot of papers together at Uni and it's interesting to see what they're up to now.
There's something special about scoring a treasure you never expected like the lost and found passages of Luke 15. Well, this week I reckon I've found a treasure. This week I bought my first ever Christian music CD. Call me whatever you want but I find most Christian music CDs just too syrupy for me. I can't connect with the stuff they're singing about. Anyway, this week I went into our local Christian bookstore (something I don't often do for the same reason as the Christian CD issue - the books are a bit too syrupy for me) and bought a new Bible because mine had literally fallen apart and disintergrated (always a good look for a pasta!). While I was there I browsed through the CDs and the lady recommended a couple of bands to listen to after I told her of my dilemma with much Christian music. I listened to the ones she recommended to me through the store headphones and they didn't really ring my bells. When I put them back on the shelf I saw a CD by a band called The Normals. I thought "that's me, I'm pretty normal" I put the CD on the store CD player and just loved the music. Very U2 and Radioheadish. Not only were the tunes great but the lyrics were fantastic - they sung stuff that I connected with. Here's some of their lyrics:
Have you ever been scared? Everybody's been scared. I've been scared. God, I've been scared.
Have you ever felt pain? Everbody's felt pain. I've felt pain. God, I've felt pain.
Chorus
But I'm the King of the world today. I've got this whole dirty place wrapped around my finger and I think I'm finally on my way home.
Have you ever had doubt? Everybody's had doubt. I've had doubt. God, I've had doubt
But it will get better and it doesn't matter because I feel loved. Oh God, I feel loved.
Chorus
I'm the King of the world today. I've got this whole dirty place wrapped around my finger and I think I'm finally onmy way home.
This is where grace becomes my mother 'cause I can be one man today and tomorrow another...
Or another song called 'Innocence':
Innocence, you were taken so slowly. It hit us suddenly and now I can't leave my room 'cause the lights of the city are just hiding from the dark.
Innocence, we never got to say goodbye but the glory of redemption is the wisdom that we find has taken it's place...
Or 'Brittle Bone':
Down here the well has been poisened. Now everything's dying. Some sell forgiveness on Gospel TV shows and I wonder why anyone's buying? 'Cause the truth is a hard sell for it burns out the lies
Great stuff. I went to the band's website The Normals and found that they too didn't like too much modern Christian music. They found that record companies demanded that they have a high JPM (Jesus Per Minute) and sing about happy, sugary stuff instead of gritty life stuff so that they'd get good sales on the Christian consumer market. Another group called The Frantics tried to write some gritty lyrics. Annoyed at these issues in the Christian music industry they wrote these lyrics:
Everyone's already been bought and sold. Got to get ahead. To fill their luxurious homes. Where all their lies resound again and again”
At one point in the Nashville session, one of the label executives stopped the session, recalled Shandrow (the band leader). The executive said something wasn't clicking. He had Shandrow spend some time with a studio employee to make the song more Christian.
The Frantics then recorded it again. The executive, said Shandrow, exclaimed, "That's the God I serve! Yes!"
And Shandrow's thought on it: "That's the God they want to sell."
Go here to read the full story.
A couple of years ago Laurie Guy published a book called Worlds in Collision:The Gay Debate in New Zealand, 1960-1986 (with a lovely pink cover) which looked at the response of the NZ churches to the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. The book is a fascinating read and a wonderful contribution to NZ church history, the history of homosexual law reform in NZ and NZ social history during these turbulent years. I think the title of the book is a pearler and so I've used it for this blog post even though this post is nothing to do with homosexuality.
This week I've been reading from a book called The Prodigal Project and one particular story struck me as a perfect example of 'worlds in collision'. The world of church worship world in collision with the society its trying to reach. Mike Riddell, one of the authors of the book, wrote this story:
"A young girl lived with her family next door to a Baptist church. Her parents were not churchgoers, but they made use of the Sunday School to get their daughter out of the house on a Sunday morning. Each week she would attend Sunday School, and then stay on for the church service which followed. Family life was not pleasant, and she enjoyed the welcome relief of a different group of people who seemed much 'nicer'.
The church was charismatic, and on one particular Sunday, there was the usual long bracket of choruses at the beginning of the service. A very worshipful atmosphere developed as the congregation continued to sing songs over and over. Eventually, after a particularly moving chorus, a silence fell over the assembled people. It was one of those times in which worshippers are caught up in the presence of God, and hold their breath in expectation of some prophecy or exhortation from the Lord.
This time, however, the silence gave way not to any encouraging word, but to the sound of screaming from next door. There was the unmistakable noise of a woman being beaten; a succession of wailing and weeping interspersed with the thud of fist on flesh. The young girl, together with the rest of the congregation, listened in horror. She recognized the voice of her mother crying in anguish, and knew once more her father was erupting in violent anger. She waited in anticipation, to see what would happen.
The worship leader was tense. He had planned carefully the sequence of songs to lead to this very point, where people might 'break through' into the presence of God. And now instead, the whole atmosphere was being destroyed by this unwelcome intrusion of the outside world. He did the only thing he could think of; he led out in another song of praise. The congregation welcomed the opportunity to move on and drown out the ghastly sounds assaulting their ears. As they sang, the worship quickly shut out the noise from next door. The incident stayed with the young girl for the rest of her life, though she did not understand until much later why it made her so angry."
I'm still doing some reading for the forthcoming worship seminar for our church. I've just read an article by David Dockery on Southern Baptist worship and his cry for renewal in Southern Baptist worship. Whilst the Southern Baptists have their own definate characteristics I still found it very interesting. Dockery says this about worship: 'Worship is the foundational activity of the Christian church. It defines the life-giving functions of the people of the new convenant and the new age. Worship is a joyful experience for the believing community and is as necessary for spiritual life as air and food for physical well-being...Worship [in the New Testament community] was a vertical movement, that is, the praise of humanity to God. But there was also a horizontal movement because wprship is celebrated with others. Therefore worship was a community act, and the relationships between the members of the worshipping community were of the highest importance.' With the New Testament itself, Dockery identifies 3 groups from which the early church developed. The first group, identified as Jewish Christians, was characterised by a continutiy with temple worship (Acts 2:46; 3:11-26). The second group he refers to as Hellenistic Christians. The worship of this group is characterised by the renunciation of Jewish ritualism (Acts 6:1-7:50). Jewish rituals were reinterpreted as having been fulfilled in Christ (Heb. 7-10). The thrid and largest group by the end of the first century was comprised of gentile Christians. Gentile Christian worship was exhorted to be orderly (1 Cor. 14:40; 1 Tim. 3:15) since it had developed out of pagan origins. Worship became Christocentric and content orientated (1 Cor. 14:6-26) as preaching and the Lord's Supper characterised its major aspects. Also, worship became more organised and structured as the community developed.
There's some interesting things to consider here as the NT church changed and shaped its worship within different contexts.
The Princeton Theological Review has released its latest issue (Spring 2006) and it is dedicated to the work of the late Stanley Grenz (an outstanding Baptist theologian). One of the essays in it, 'Straddling the Tasman', is written by Brian Harris - one of my old lecturers and now Principal of the Baptist Theological College of Western Australia. In his essay Brian looks at how Grenz's theology can speak clearly and thoughtfully into the Australiasian context. It is well worth reading. I was particularly struck by Brian's comments on how differently the Chrismatic Renewal impacted the church in New Zealand to how it impacted the church in Australia.