Archive for culture
Cultivating Discipline, Part 7: A Sound Mind…
Posted by: | CommentsFor God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self–discipline.
– Paul, The Bible, 2 Timothy 1:7
Why is it that all of the Christians that I know seem to struggle through life? With rare exceptions, we all have some area of fear or weakness or wounding… And I have my doubts about the exceptions…
A Christian teen who is a contact on my social-grid made an interesting statement about sexual abstinence this week… He said it “doesn’t work.” It wasn’t completely clear whether he was talking about “abstinence education” or individual, moral abstinence… But here are a few little factoids to chew on:
The Bible clearly teaches that 1.) the Spirit of God dwells in the heart of everyone who submits to the Lordship of Jesus (Romans 8:9). 2.) This Spirit is characterized by power, love and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7). 3.) Self-control is evident in the life of a person who is filled with this Spirit, in the same way that you can tell that a tree is an apple tree because it has apples on it (Galatians 5:22-23).
In the life of a believer, something like abstinence certainly does work… At the very least, it can work… it should work… A Christ-follower who believes that it can’t work or doesn’t work doesn’t understand the power of God’s Spirit at work in a person…
(At this point, I cannot emphasize enough the power of God’s grace at work in us when we fail to walk in self-control… but that’s a different discussion.)
I’m talking about the potential power that lives in your heart… Potential for power over our weakness… Potential for love to heal our wounds… Potential for self-discipline and stability…
The trick is tapping into that potential.
Our culture has conditioned us to follow our urges… emotional urges… financial urges… sexual urges… But God has called us to a life of potential and tapping that potential requires that we control those urges. So, God expresses the expectation that we control our urges and then provides us with the means to do it…
Got that? We experience the power of self-control when we practice self-control… The willingness to obey God’s expectation fuels the spirit of self-discipline, which gives us greater power to obey under greater pressure…
Older English translations of 2 Timothy use the expression “sound mind” instead of “self-discipline” but the intended meaning is the same… A person who has a “sound mind” is consistent, purposeful and not a slave to “urges”… and that’s what self-discipline looks like too.
Jesus promised that we’d have trouble… But the wacky, constant struggle to make it through another day that some Christians experience is the very opposite of what God desires for us. That’s the reason He gave us this Spirit of power and love and self-discipline…
Cultivating discipline is a process with many nuances, but the most important thing to keep in mind is this:
God is for us and has given us what we need to finish well.
Psst... Pass it on...
Dad Life…
Posted by: | CommentsA friend forwarded this to me last week… I’m sure that about 100 of the nearly 900,000 views on YouTube are mine…
Psst... Pass it on...Cool…
Posted by: | CommentsOne of my photos is being featured on the website of Urban Flash Mob Marathon… Their arranging an event on Sunday, June 6 in Edinburgh, Scotland… If you’re in the area, check it out.
My picture is the one with the Stormtrooper...
Worship That Connects, Part 5: Like a Sloppy, Wet Kiss…
Posted by: | CommentsOk, if you don’t get the song reference from the title, you can watch the video…
I have mixed feelings about this song…
On the one hand, the verses are virtually impossible to sing the first several times that you hear it. It’s lyrically poetic, maybe too poetic for the average midwestern Joe that we meet in our church, but rhythmically awkward. The first three or four times that different worship leaders pitched this on to our church, it struck out. No one sang along…
On the other hand, the chorus is so strong and connects with people’s hearts so poignantly that it gets very emotional responses, particularly as it builds in intensity towards the end.
In fact, the emotive aspect of the song is SO powerful that it completely hijacks the visually bland performance on the video… If you can stand to watch it long enough to get to the chorus, without getting bored watching the Kim sway and stagger around with her eyes closed, you’ll see what I mean…
The truth is that a LOT of the modern worship songs that connect are ME-focused… Like this one: it’s kinda about God and the intimate aspect of his nature, but it’s mostly about how much we are loved by God.
Introduce that idea in an emotive way to a group of people who haven’t been still since they sat in the same spot at church last Sunday… It’s bound to connect at a very visceral level with a few of them.
But is it really worship? Or is it just a sloppy, wet sentiment?
A pastor-friend of mine derides this kind of music as “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs…
And then there’s the en vogue idea, out there in worship-leader-land, that emotive songs don’t connect with the manly blokes…
I don’t mean to endorse either of these ideas… They just represent the other extreme on the continuum…
There certainly is a place in the life of the church for sloppy, wet worship… because it does CONNECT with people who live in a world where intimate relationships are ended via text-message. The message that God loves them intimately is life-giving and true.
But, I fear, if that’s all we have, we end up with men and women in church that connect with a sugary, milk-toast god (small “g”) that falls pathetically short of being the real and powerful One that they desperately need…
So… mix it up…
Psst... Pass it on...Next time: God-Centered worship songs connect too…
Worship That Connects, Part 3: Dealing with Disconnects…
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We had a guest band at our church last Sunday… I’ll talk more about them later… It gave me an opportunity to watch people worship, to observe how they connect and don’t connect, and I made a startling discovery:
Most people in our church don’t connect in worship.
And we’re a Vineyard church, for cryin’ out loud… We’re a part of the denomination most widely known for it’s worship music…
And I’m not talking about first-time visitors… Many of the Disconnects are leaders of ministries.
My observation is that Disconnects fall into three categories:
The Bored…
A.W. Tozer says, “The church that can’t worship must be entertained and men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.” Our generation (and by that I mean everyone I know under 50) is overstimulated. We are bombarded with information in the form of TV, advertising, social media and numerous forms of messaging… I carry a device that is half the size of my first mobile phone and connects me to my phone, email, text messaging, as well as instant access to my accounts at Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc. If church isn’t engaging all of my senses the way my life engages them, I will be bored, check out and start people-watching… And I’m not the only one.
Bored Disconnects need to be drawn into worship personally. There are ways to connect from the platform that will help them stay engaged… I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.
The Confused…
Some people just don’t have a frame of reference for what’s going on. We have a guy in our church that came from a Catholic tradition… Expressive worship, with the raised hands and the getting loud, is foreign to him. Sometimes, the expression on his face is laughable. He wants to connect, but lacks the practice with the methodology.
The seeker-movement of the 80′s and 90′s focused the most attention on the Confused Disconnects… Many of these churches had regular meetings to assess the friendliness of their methods and language to unchurched individuals… The danger here is the potential for removing any real content from songs and messages…
The Confused Disconnect doesn’t need the Christian message dumbed-down, he needs the methodology explained… regularly. Worship leaders that teach about worship in the midst of worship will have a lot of success in connecting with these people.
The Broken…
People come into church from some devastating backgrounds. When these past issues aren’t handled lovingly by the church, the people end up being Disconnects. I watched a young man who has the background to understand the methodology, has the focus to keep his attention on what’s happening, but doesn’t have the heart to connect…
Broken Disconnects need the attention of teachers and leaders apart from what the worship leaders do on Sunday; and real relationships in the church that don’t make things worse. But don’t underestimate the power of worship to bring healing to brokenness. We’ll talk about that later too.
Ultimately, it’s up to the leaders to identify and deal with Disconnects in the most loving and effective ways possible, always remembering that we have to build the bridge from God’s heart to theirs.
Psst... Pass it on...
