Archive for the ‘Church’ Category:
Confessions of A Christian
2 Peter 1:3-11
“Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
This short confessional statement makes it clear that the realization that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior produces a life change. So when this confession is made, what does it mean? Most Christians hear these words so often that we can repeat them without considering their implications. As a result, I am going to attempt to define each of these loaded terms with regard to their Biblical context and describe which aspects we as a culture tend to omit or elaborate. Read more »
How Ironic
This Red vs Blue clip emphasizes how sometimes we use words that carry different meanings to different people. When we discuss heavy topics, we are often doing so with some very loaded terms. What are some terms that you have frequently seen misunderstood?
Dead Man Walking
For Holy Week, my church put on four worship services to illustrate the story of Jesus’ last week on earth. The Wednesday night service was organized by the pastor and church plant leadership team we are preparing for in St. Louis city (Mike and I are on that team). The pastor and the worship leader are incredibly artistic men, and instead of the usual worship-preaching-worship model of service, they crafted several short videos that were interspersed with music played by the “Soul Expedition Band.”
The evening’s theme was “The Sweat of a Son,” telling the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying before he underwent torture and crucifixion. To communicate the stark intensity of this struggle, the video showed some blunt video imagery. Clips from the movie “Dead Man Walking (the scene where Sean Penn’s character is executed by lethal injection) were inserted to help contextualize Jesus’ impending execution. The following short video utilized clips from “The Passion,” with frequent flashes of the previous video, to connect and contextualize Jesus’ prayer in the garden with the struggle of knowing he would be executed.
Now, I explained all this because we’ve received some interesting responses after this worship service. One response in particular was noteworthy. Read more »
Seven New Deadly Sins???
According to the Vatican, there are now seven more deadly sins. The first seven were updated due to the modern world being one of globalization where many modern practices were ambiguously sinful in the minds of Catholic followers. See the CNN interview here. The seven new sins are: Read more »
“My HomoErotic Relationship with Jesus”
Your lips, O my spouse, Drip as the honeycomb; Honey and milk are under your tongue; And the fragrance of your garments Is like the fragrance of Lebanon. - Song of Songs 4:11
Popular Christianity places an emphasis on believers having a Personal Relationship with Jesus. As a Christian, I proudly proclaimed that I did not follow a religion, but that I had a relationship - a personal one-on-one with the Messiah. Looking back, I have no idea how to Biblically justify the idea of a personal relationship. I am pretty certain it is nothing more than modern Christian pop culture. And on a more practical level, I don’t think Jesus wants a relationship with any of us anyway. As a Christian, I talked to Jesus for years, but never heard a word back from him. That is in no way a relationship, despite all the effort I put into it. Read more »
The State of Worship, Part 2: Purpose and Motivation
The first part of this post was (honestly) mostly a rant, but it outlined some of the problem from my perspective. I make no claims that it is THE perspective to view this debate from, only that it could be a common one. Having been a guitarist for six years, which is longer than I’ve been a Christian (and thus listening to Christian music), I bring a “less-churched,” if not an “un-churched,” perspective to the table.
Worship is ANYTHING that we do that fulfills God’s purpose for us and thus glorifies Him. This can be anything from working in your garden and rearing children with your spouse (Genesis 1:28) to writing and playing sweet guitar riffs (Psalm 33:3). If we do these things with God-given motivation and purpose, then we are worshipping Him indeed!
A fair number of Christians, particularly those in the American Evangelical Christian “sub-culture,” seem to have abandoned or compromised the very motivations and purposes that define worship, with respect to music. Read more »
The Value of Risk in a Risk-Averse Culture
When I was in high school, my Dad encouraged me to pursue a career in financial planning. I really did like the idea of helping people get out of debt, invest wisely, and build wealth. But the career I really wanted was in law enforcement. While my Dad wanted me safely behind a desk from 8-5, I wanted the freedom of keeping the peace in a roaming patrol car at all hours of the night.
I’ve learned over the last several years that I’m a bit of a closet adrenaline junky, and thrive in stressful or risk-inherent environments. But I’ve also learned that this is not necessarily the norm for our culture.
Read more »
