Are you ready for a miracle?

Anybody remember the movie, Leap Of Faith?

It’s one of my all-time favorite comedies… The soundtrack is fully-awesome, the cast is top-shelf and I remember Steve Martin saying in an interview, “If you’re a believer, you’ll really like it.  If you’re really a schiester, you’ll hate it.”

And I think he’s right.  Aside from some PG-13 language, the movie tells the story of a con-artist-turned-preacher who gets stranded with his entourage in a small town and decides to pitch his tent and hold a “revival” to raise money.  He’s the classic flashy, evangelista… complete with a glittery jacket that transforms him into a human disco-ball… Using high tech gadgets and the skills of a few seedy friends, he pulls off a scam that has the money rolling in…

Until a real miracle interrupts the groove and he has a change of heart.

He tells the boy that’s been healed, “I’ve pulled off just about every kind of scam there is and there’s only one thing you can’t get around: the genuine article.  You are the genuine article.”

Here’s what I want to know about the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey:

Are people really getting healed?

Jesus didn’t establish a methodology for healing… He did it in a variety of ways.  Some of them probably seemed crazy to people watching… Like when he spit in the dirt to make mud, then spread it over a blind guy’s eyes… OH, and Jesus healed on the Sabbath, which was not only a little crazy, but much maligned by the religious leaders… Anyway…

I’d like to be open-minded about how crazy something LOOKS until I know whether God is really in it or not…

And aren’t the hearts and needs of people more important to God than methodology and PR?  And isn’t Jesus’ best PR the way that we believers treat one another in a loving way?  I think that’s what He said… SO…

I propose this litmus test:

If the healing is REAL, then God is glorifying HIMSELF in the midst of the madness (which I confess confounds my own wisdom in much the same way that Jesus confounded the prevailing wisdom of His time)… but if the healing is staged, then we can blow these guys off as kooks and idiots…

It has, at least, the benefit of making us appear reasonable in the midst of the madness…

What are you called to give?

I just completed a fairly substantial redesign of the website for an organization called LifeChange International… They partner with missionaries on 4 continents to serve the needs of people and share the love of Jesus… I’m very pleased to be involved with the organization and happy to help them use social media to raise awareness of the work that they do.

My first project with LifeChange was working with Jack Fairweather at Arise Ministries in Manila, the Philippines.  Arise has opened an orphanage outside of the city proper, where they take in kids off the street and give them a safe and loving home… I first wrote about Jack when we launched our GiveBack feature last summer… You can read those articles and see a video about Arise by following this link.

The funny thing is that I know Jack and his family… his daughter and mine are the same age and went to each others birthday parties before they sold all of their worldly goods and moved to the Philippines to live in a dorm with a dozen or so homeless, street kids.  I had talked to him about that move for six months and it still kinda stunned me when they actually did it.  Now we Skype occasionally and I think of him as “my friend in Manila.”

Jack and his family have given themselves to God in a very literal, measurable way that many of us never will.  Even for me and my wife, as we move back into church staff ministry, the sacrifice isn’t as “real”… We still have a nice home, two cars, other stuff we like…

I wonder how I would respond to the call of God that Jack has on his life…

OR EVEN MORE POIGNANT, a woman in our church named Semsa (say: Shem-sa) Aydin, whose husband was martyred for his faith in Turkey in 2007,  shared her testimony on Sunday in halting ESL that somehow communicated the message of Jesus more eloquently than any preacher I’ve ever heard…

Semsa’s husband knew the men that murdered him for weeks before his death… They had been coming into the church and asking questions about Jesus.  And as a pastor, he had been talking with them, answering their questions and trying to share Jesus’ story to them and his own story of conversion from Islam.

He told his wife that he knew they were false… He used the illustration of Judas’ betrayal… He somehow saw what was coming but felt that the call of God on his life was to keep serving these men and sharing Christ with them…

On April 18, they made another appointment to talk about Jesus…

And they slit his throat.

I also thought about one young lady who was killed in the Columbine shooting, more than a decade ago… The shooters pointed guns at here and told her she would live if she would renounce her faith… she declined… they shot her…

What kind of faith?  What kind of relationship with Jesus makes a person do that?

There might be an answer in the life… or more pointedly in the death of Stephen (Acts 6)…

But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

“Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. (vs 55-58)

The view from here...

For a Christ-follower, using your gifts in worship is an act of heart… Something most creatives can easily wrap their right-brains around…

Heart… Feeling… Inspiration… Soul…

Virtually required elements for creativity.

Lately, Inspiration has been eluding me. I generally feel that I have a fairly deep well to go to when I need to draw out an idea… a image… a solution…

But not recently.

It’s like there’s a gate inside my mind that all of the good ideas are hiding behind… All I seem to be capable of is approaching the gate and knocking… But the gatekeeper is nowhere to be found and I seem to have misplaced my keys.

I haven’t even been able to write for a couple of weeks… In truth, I think my best writing is actually months behind. So, I dug deep and consulted a reliable source…

I prayed about it.

I wonder, often, about non-believers… How they access their creativity… Because I really identify with Jesus’ assertion:

I am the vine, you are my branches… Apart from Me, you can do nothing…

I’m not courting false-humility here… This is literally true.  I’ve tried to use my creativity outside of the realm of worship and “Christian service” and it’s always a dismal failure.

I understand that this isn’t true for every christian… I know a number of artists that are able to move in their creativity in “secular” situations.  I’ve always found this interesting and have recently just accounted it to differences in individual calling…

But true worship flows from the heart.  On another occasion, Jesus said:

The time is coming, and is already here, that the true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth…

Worship through artistic expression, therefore, must naturally flow from a true reflection of my innermost being… from a heart empowered by God’s Spirit. Whether I write or lead the band or doodle graphics or any of the other outlets for creativity that I offer up, it’s just not “worship” without integrity and connection with God.

When I suffer from “blocked” creativity, I start looking for a breakdown in either Spirit or truth or both…

I found an interesting combination of breakdowns when I prayed about this…

And I want to share these… If not for the sake of anybody but myself…

And, what are blogs for if not narcissistic navel-gazing…

Tomorrow… Part 2, All Stressed Up and No One to Punch…

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…

Next time: God-Centered worship songs connect too…

Is this thing on?

I wanted to come back and talk more about the benefit of using performance tools to connect with audiences in worship… I think this is important, and it’s not just because I’m comfortable on stage with a microphone in my hand…

It’s important because it is one of the primary tools in bridge building…

Leaders (read: the entire worship team) have the responsibility to bridge the gap between God’s presence and the people in the audience.  It’s not enough to just play songs or even play them well…

The Audience is Ignorant…

If you read my blog much at all, you’ll be aware that I’m a big fan of Tom Jackson, a live-music producer.  He does the circuit of artist development conferences and I try to catch him whenever I can.

Tom teaches that audiences are ignorant… They don’t understand music or audio or that yellow box on the floor that your guitar player keeps stomping on.

Here’s an example: As I have been increasing my leadership role in worship at my church, I’ve received a lot of (mostly unsolicited) input from people in the church. The musicians among them like to give me tips on audio equipment that will revolutionize our sound by adding nuances and tone.

The non-musicians have a different perspective. They tell me that no matter who is leading, everything sounds the same to them…

Being an insider, I know that the previous leader spent a huge amount of time, energy and money on equipment to nuance the tone.  He is very good at that and very committed to it.  Every guitar effect was carefully crafted, meticulously dialed-in, for the expressed purpose of adding variety to the sound. The past and current leaders (myself included) spend a lot of time in rehearsal working on dynamics within songs and throughout sets…  There is absolutely no way that any 2 songs sound the same on a given Sunday…

So, why is that the perception of the non-musicians?

What the Audience Knows…

Tom says that if all the songs look the same, the audience will perceive that they all sound the same…

A guitar player understands his nuanced tonal differences, the musician understands subtle dynamics and the audiophile understands a good EQ… a soccer-mom just sees a band that never moves while playing songs that all look the same… She’s becomes easily distracted and starts wondering where she can buy Gatorade on sale this week…

It doesn’t help in our church at all that the platform is small and the center area is devoted to the pastor’s MacBook.

The other thing that the aforementioned soccer-mom understands is human behavior…

If the worship leader and all of the musicians are focused on their printed music, or their equipment, or even their own experience of worship, it sends a non-verbal message to her that they’re not interested in connecting with her. It may just mean be that they’re  nervous or afraid of making a mistake or that the suffer from the misguided ideas that we talked about in Part 1 or Part 2… And so she doesn’t connect with them…

An effective leader can alter the dynamic in a number of ways, but the simplest way is to unchain himself from the instrument… Even if it’s just for one song in a set.  He can  make eye contact, encourage people to clap, raise hands, smile… just by doing those things himself… The other members of the team can do the same thing… It brings freedom to the audience when the leaders are free.

Toll Bridge or Troll Bridge…

Worship leaders (and again: every member of the team is a worship leader) bridge the gap between God’s presence and the people in the pews… but building bridges is an expensive undertaking. And leaders pay the price of transit for the church they lead.

Purposeful connection (which is the goal of good leadership and performance) by the leaders is required to get people over the bridge. When we refuse or neglect to be purposeful, we end up being road blocks… Metaphorically, we stand in the middle of the bridge and declare, “None shall pass.”

Reach out to the church you lead, with your eyes, with your hands, with a smile, or by taking a step toward them… you can call it “ministry” instead of “performance” if it makes you feel better, but it’s really both and that’s the balance  that makes all the difference…

Next week: Connecting with sloppy, wet kisses…

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.

Tomorrow: Communicating to Connect…

]]> http://www.worshiponpurpose.com/2009/12/02/worship-that-connects-dealing-with-disconnects/feed/ 0 http://www.worshiponpurpose.com/2009/12/01/worship-that-connects-part-2-the-big-p/ http://www.worshiponpurpose.com/2009/12/01/worship-that-connects-part-2-the-big-p/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:00:36 +0000 TimJones http://www.worshiponpurpose.com/?p=885

untitled by Cas Smith (artycas on Flickr)

Performance.

There… I said it… Go ahead and judge me… I know you want to…

I saw a post on Twitter a few weeks ago:  “It makes me sad to hear someone talk about their Sunday morning ‘performance’… It makes God sad.”

Really?!

It makes GOD sad?!

I want to clarify something about the Bible… There is absolutely NO prohibition of performance relative to worship in the Bible… Not one passage that indicates that producing a quality worship experience will sadden the Almighty.

There are, however, several references to the skill that is expected of musicians and other artisans in their service to God and His people:

“All the skilled men among the workmen made the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim worked into them by a skilled craftsman.” -The Bible, Exodus 36:8

In fact, this same reference to “skilled men” is made with regard to every item in the Tabernacle and all of the priests’ clothes.

“Then Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them master craftsmen and designers.” -The Bible, Exodus 35:30

“David, together with the commanders of the army, set apart some of the sons of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun for the ministry of prophesying, accompanied by harps, lyres and cymbals…. Along with their relatives—all of them trained and skilled in music for the LORD—they numbered 288.” – The Bible, 1 Chron. 25: 1-7

“Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.” – The Bible, Psalm 33:3

Skill is the basis for performance.  The prerequisites of skill are talent and practice.  Skill has absolutely nothing to do with the heart-condition of the artist.  Skill has absolutely nothing to do with spirituality or maturity.  A person far-from-God can (and many do) perform with a very high level of skill.

Yet, it is absolutely required to lead God’s people in worship.

The Heart of Leadership…

Performance is amoral.  There is nothing intrinsically good or evil about performing.  There is nothing intrinsically sacred or secular about it either.  The key difference for the worship leader is the inclination of his heart…

Heart inclined to serve God and the Church through performance = good … Heart inclined to promote or serve self = bad

Notice that the Sons of Asaph (et al) in the 1 Chronicles passage above were set apart for the ministry of “prophesying” musically… This is really key:

Prophesy is the act of declaring God’s heart to the hearts of people… Different theological traditions will describe the means by which this happens in different ways, but this is the essence of prophecy.

After Peter delivers his sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2) which was inspired by the Holy Spirit (a prophetic message) the Bible says that people were “cut to the quick” which is to say that they took the message to heart…

A Bridge to Nowhere…

When the hearts of leaders are inclined toward the people they are leading, God speaks His heart to the people through the leaders… A bridge is built that connects people to God’s presence.

But when worship leaders focus solely on touching God themselves, the bridge doesn’t necessarily extend to the people in the pews.  In essence, they build a bridge to nowhere… No one connects and people will find this kind of worship dry and boring.

Perfecting our craft, pursuing excellence and using performance tools to connect with the people that we lead are essential to creating a worship experience that connects people to God’s presence.

Tomorrow: Dealing with Disconnects…

Photo credit: TMP7 by Jonathan Sloan (jonathansloan on Flickr)

I’ve been leading worship at my church… And since I tend to be one of those cerebral guys that likes to think about things, I’ve been thinking a lot about leading worship… Why do some things work and others don’t?  What is it about certain songs that really get people worked up?  Why are some people completely unmoved while others weep?  What do I need to do as a worship leader to help those disconnected people engage?

And I thought that I’d share my observations (insightful and otherwise) with all of you good people…

God is in the House…

I’m really weary of hearing people beg for God’s presence.  Jesus said, that “wherever two or three gather” in His name, He’s there.  Whether we experience His presence is not about begging Him to come… It’s about showing up ourselves.  In general, the act of worship is essentially unnatural… maybe supernatural is a better description… either way, it is outside of our natural inclinations to sing, shout, dance, clap, whatever…

The Worship Team is a Bridge…

My team has heard me beat this drum on a weekly basis:  When we lead worship, we have to put the needs of the church ahead of our own desire to “enter in.”  We have to watch their response and adjust what we’re doing.  We have to connect with them.  Since the act of worship is something that has to be learned and practiced, people need a bridge to the presence of God.

Somewhere along the way, the “presence-based” traditions (pentecostal and charismatic traditions especially) got this idea that leading worship was connected to the leaders’ own worship… I’ve heard people say that we (worship leaders) can’t lead others to a place that we’re not.  Which is only true in part: We certainly can’t lead people into the presence of God if we’ve never been there, but that’s where the analogy falls apart.

I’m not leading anybody if I stand inert, hands raised, eyes closed and try with all my being to touch God.  As if I could then , “channel” this experience to the rest of the tribe (read: voodoo).  This “all about me” approach also runs afoul or the essentially selfless nature of leadership… It’s all about the people being led… I got this Idea from Jesus:

The First will be last…

Rather than thinking of ourselves as a conduit of God’s presence (which is kinda arrogant, when you think about it) we have to see ourselves as God’s doormen (or doorwomen, as the case may be).  It’s the job of the worship leaders to throw open the doors to God’s presence and invite people to come in.

When my wife was pregnant with out daughter, I used to drop her off at the door when we’d go shopping.  I remember one occasion when I parked the car and walked up to the door to find her still holding it open for a seemingly endless stream of people who didn’t say “thanks” or acknowledge that she was even there… And while this is a horrible example of how we should interact with people, it’s exactly what worship leaders should do as they serve the church:

Hold open the doors to allow others to enter in.

Tomorrow:  What that looks like and the much-maligned “P” word…

Kathie Luther is a mixed-media artist from Indian River, MI. She works in oil and acrylic painting, digital painting, as well as a variety of textiles, sculpture and photography. Her paintings feature escatological themes and bold, often biblical, imagery.

Kathie teaches art to adults and children in her art center and has prints and original paintings for sale.

Check out Kathie’s Flickr photostream and eBay store.

Read more about Kathie, her art and ministry here.

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength… they shall rise up on eagle’s wings.” -Isaiah 40:31

I had the pleasure last week of chatting with our featured artist, Kathie Luther.

Kathie is a mixed-media artist up in northern Michigan, with a broad scope of skill that covers painting, sculpting, textiles and photography.  If you visit her photostream on Flickr.com, you’ll see examples of the many artistic interests and skills that Kathie has honed in her years teaching art to children, teens and adults.

Kathie first discovered a love of art in her high school biology class, where assignments required her to draw specimens.  This, combined with her love of nature, inspired her decision to study biology and art at Northern Michigan University.  She soon chose art as her major area of study and eventually received a degree in art with emphasis in sculpting, casting and pottery.

After college and making time to become a wife and mom, Kathie found herself teaching art in a K-12 Christian school and later began holding classes for children and adults in her home.  As with many gifted teachers, Kathie is also a perennial student and through the years picked up painting, photography and digital media.

Her painting always tended to be inspirational in nature, but began to take on a more prophetic tone about five years ago.  At that time, her themes and imagery began to trend toward symbolism and eschatology (related to the end times).  You see a lot of that in the images that we’ve been featuring on the site.

For the record, I grew up and studied theology in a non-charismatic tradition, so I know that some of you can’t help but raise an eyebrow when I use the word “prophetic,” but what we’re talking about, simply put, is the idea that God still speaks.  It doesn’t seem like a big stretch, in our media driven culture, that He would chose to speak visually.

Kathie told me that she doesn’t have a formula for creating a painting.  Sometimes she wakes up and paints the images from a dream.  Other times, she will trace the shadows created by imperfections on the canvas until an image coalesces.  She has even done some of her painting during worship while the musical people in the room were singing.

And that is the kind of thing we love to hear.

Kathie continues to paint and create works in other media and teaches summer classes in the art center adjacent to her home. She holds summer art shows where she talks to the patrons who visit about the reality of God’s love and the ways that He still speaks. She reminded me of a prayer that King David prayed long ago:

Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths;
guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.           - Psalm 25:4-5

Kathie still prays that prayer.  After talking with her, I do too.

You can check out Kathie’s art on Flickr.  She also has prints, postcards and some original paintings for sale at her eBay store.