SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

Helping the Kenyans in Crisis

In case you have not heard from some other source, we are involved in a group effort to bring relief to some of the victims of the violence in Kenya that broke out two months ago.

My wife and I were there 9 weeks ago, so the tragedies have been very personal and upfront, involving several of our friends.

If you have not done so, please take a look at the following website set up to bring the latest reports and to coordinate giving that is going directly to Kenyan leaders who are ministering to critical needs.

www.simplechurchescare.com

Music is Not Worship

Dave Wainscott has put together some excellent quotes around the topic of “Worship is not Music.”

“It would be true to say that during the last twenty-five years or so amongst those churches which would own the label 'evangelical', a significant change in understanding has taken place over the meaning of the word 'worship'. If a few decades ago the person leading the service had said, 'We are now going to have a time of worship', most people would have looked on in utter bewilderment. Now everyone would know exactly what to expect: a lengthy time of contemporary Christian songs, maybe interspersed with a few prayers and exhortations, perhaps with hands held up in the air and a far-away look in the eyes.”

We have, first of all, limited the concept of worship to an event that takes place for twenty minutes rather than a life that is devoted in love and surrender to a compelling God.

Even worse, we have reduced corporate worship to times in which music must be present.  Further, we have become so dependent on great-sounding music to drive the worship times that very little true heart-worship is needed.  In fact, some would say, the result is a steep decline in actual corporate “worship” and an increase of music-moved emotion.

I share this only because simple/organic churches have the opportunity to re-capture the heart of worship.  We want to re-affirm that the Christian life of worship is one that is not segmented into times of worship and times of non-worship.  Every day, and every gathering (whether at home, or with friends, or with nonChristians, or with community) is an opportunity for worship of many different kinds.

AND, when we do gather together and find ourselves expressing love-sick worship toward God with our hands, lips, body, soul, and spirit… we can recover heart-driven worship.  We can learn the wonder of a small group of believers who have developed the daily discipline of turning their hearts toward God in adoration coming together to do the same corporately.  In that time, music can be good but it is not essential.  Spoken praise works, psalms read works, silence works, spontaneous non-professional singing works, poetry works.  When our hearts are driving worship the external forms become far less important than the inner longings that truly do usher in a deep conscious sense of God’s presence.

I love worship.  And I love music.  But I long to see our gatherings re-capture the numinous awe of God simply around the fact that a group of Jesus-lovers have gathered who are in awe of Him.

When the music fades / All is stripped away / And I simply come / Longing just to bring / Something that's of worth / That will bless Your heart
I bring You more than a song / For a song in itself / Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within / Through the way things appear / You're looking into my heart
I'm coming back to the heart of worship / And it's all about You / It's all about You, Jesus

Participatory Gatherings and the Need for Deep Spirituality

Ian Mobsby posts a talk that begins with the following quote from the theologian Voot suggesting the need for a deep spirituality among those who enjoy simple, participative church structures:

A participative model of the church requires more than just values and practices that correspond to participative institutions. The church is not first of all a realm of moral purposes; it is the anticipation, constituted by the presence of the Spirit of God, of the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God in communion with the triune God. Hence the church needs the vivifying presence of the Spirit, and without this presence, even a church with a decentralised participative structure and culture will become sterile, and perhaps more sterile even than a hierarchical church. For it will either have to operate with more subtle or open forms of coercion. Successful participative church life must be sustained by deep spirituality. Only the person who lives from the Spirit of communion (2 Cor. 13:13) can participate authentically in the life of the ecclesial community.

7 Obstacles to Engaging in Mission, Deb Hirsch

(Following are my notes on Deb Hirsch’s talk at the CMA Organic Movements Conference earlier this month.  This is the abbreviated version.  You can download my longer notes here: 7_obstacles_to_engaging_in_mission_deb_hirsch.doc )

The fall away rate for people who continue to be really involved in mission is very high.  People get older and become church attendees, but lose their enthusiasm for mission.  What's the motivation that keeps me going?  "Once I was lost; once I was blind."

There are obstacles that stop us from being engaged in mission.  Some are about external circumstances and some are internal.

7 Obstacles to Engaging in Mission:

1. Distorted view of Jesus.

I fear that a lot of Christians are not seeing Him clearly.  We see Him in our own image.  We try to tame Him or domesticate Him.  We try to keep Him behind the stain-glass walls.  The Jesus of the Gospels was quite unruly.  He didn't care much for social graces; often impolite or outright rude.  He always seemed to be hanging out with the wrong people at the wrong time in the wrong places.  We have made Him meek and mild, polite, never offensive, and always at the right place, in the right time, with the right people.

We have cleaned these images up because they offend us.  But when we follow a sanitized, cleaned up Jesus, then we become like that: tame and sanitized.

2. Distorted views of self

The foundational identity that we need to live out is that we are disciples.  Churches are full of Christians, but there are not a lot of disciples.  Christians believe, but disciples follow.  A sacrificial motif.  No sacrifice, no disciple.  If we see our self with this identity, we will walk out our purpose: "to go out and be missionaries in the world."

3. Distorted views of others

I started in ministry with a "worm" theology.  We are all bad people.  We end up focusing on people's negative behavior.

We need a paradigm shift.  The primary truth is that people are created in the image of God.  Look at other people I encounter and recognize that this person, no matter who it is, in some way reflects my God.

4. Distorted views of love

We are totally saturated in romantic notions of love.  But Christians are called to a sacrificial love.

C.S. Lewis says that self-giving love is the most fundamental of all loves.  "For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being. For the Eternal Word also gives Himself in sacrifice."

Romantic notions of love do not cut it in the mission field.  It's "fun" to get out there and have a romantic notion of the being out there.  But real love is what is needed to sustain mission.  "To know love one must know pain."

5. Distorted views of the world

Where you stand determines what you see.  Too many of us keep ourselves cocooned in our safe lives and houses.  How can we respond to the needs of the world if we are not out looking for them.  To understand the pain of a city, you have to go to where the pain is.  We have to move out beyond where we are to see the pain.

We bought a house with five people in a red-light district.  Every time I walked out of my house I could see a prostitute on one corner or another.  We have to place our self where we can see the needs and the pain or we become lazy.

6. Distorted views about money, consumption, and status

"No one can serve two masters…"

Martin Luther said three conversions were necessary--heart, mind, and wallet.  Money has the capacity to ensnare us like nothing else does.  For western Christians money is our greatest blindspot.

We have also been seduced by consumerism-- the alternative religion of our day.  Sociologists say consumerism has become the "new religion."  This is the greatest competitor to Christianity, yet we don't see it because we live amongst it.  We have to repent of the idolatry.

7. Distorted views of the family

We have become captive to the construct of the nuclear family (mom and dad and 2.2 kids) as the ideal family structure.  We have set this up as an idol.  We have ministries based upon this as the ideal.

This is not a biblical notion of family.  In fact, nothing like it.  This notion of family has only been known for the last 40-50 years with industrialization.  Prior to that, people lived much more in a village-type family structure.

The biblical notion of family is very inclusive-- households-- many, many uncles, brothers, sisters, parents.  The kingdom is a big inclusive family.

(Note: These are only my notes and do not convey the impact of her total message.  But I thought the bits and pieces of wisdom were powerful enough to pass along.)