Today was great. I took my little brother to a Christian concert for 92.7 FM. James Gray, Addison Road, and Sanctus Real all played shows. It ran really long... We got there at 6:15 and we left around 11:05. It was SUCH a good concert... the music quality was awesome, stagelights and LED racks were beautiful. What delighted me most was the key ingredient... the Gospel. I was hoping they would be truly Christian bands and they were. Hopefully the people there who looked dead were just being challenged at heart and they didn't feel too great. I pray that God opens their eyes and convicts them of a fresh, wonderful reality in which they're free to serve Christ and discover more of Him each day.
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I ran across an upsetting book in Barnes and Noble once. On the back cover it read something like this... and keep in mind, it's targeting elderly individuals...
"Has your church taken a turn for the modern? Has your choir been replaced by a new, flashy praise band?" It proceeded to criticize modern church services as generally being silly, irrelevant, and shallow. It disturbed me because although sometimes this may be true, there are a lot of valid churches out there that serve Christ lovingly and passionately. I don't think the writers of this book understood that the "contemporary face" we put on our church services is more than a face. It's a tool. What's our mission? I present the Gospel and develop Christ-centered individuals.
I think the goal of a good church is just that. To present the Gospel. I grew up attending a sleepy Methodist service that talked a lot about parables and how good of a guy Jesus was, and occasionally I was challenged. I can tell you that when I started praying and self-examining in college and maybe late high school, I felt like their services spoke to me. BUT this church did not influence me enough to give me an epiphany and start loving Christ. I credit Campus Crusade with that, and I credit God for making me miserable and creating a drive in me to find a way out through Him. My point is that you need to present the Gospel to win people over. I don't think the point of church is to simply keep the organization's head above the water financially and keep holding on while maintaining tradition. I think the point of church is to, with our blood and tears and sweat, start a revolution in our communities with hearts that love Christ.
Things you need to emphasize if you're going to present the Gospel:
-We are utterly sinful.
-All sin has the effect of earning us death, so all sin is equal in its final effect. In other words, no one is worse or better than you, because we all equally deserve Hell. That's what makes Christ's deed understandably so glorious.
-Sin is not just what we do... it's also the state we're designed in (we normally want anything more than God, so we're all idolaters, from which all sin comes).
-God's grace is more powerful than your sin.
-We cannot earn our salvation. If you try to earn it, you're putting yourself in Christ's place, who bought it for you. Nothing you can do can make you pure like God. By nature, you're not.
-It's not about you. God loves you, but if you make your life about you, you'll idolize yourself and lose sight of the fact that throughout Scripture, God is all about God. It's all about bringing praise back to Him because that's what you should want.
And one more thing. This is ruining the contemporary church and we need to understand this.
Worship is NOT:
a setting
a praise band or music
bowing to a statue
Worship IS:
in any and every situation, you value God's desires first. They become your desires and you hold Him most precious. Therefore you can play basketball to the glory of God by evangelizing to players, drink orange juice to the glory of God by thanking Him you can afford healthy food, or whatever. It's any choice you make to treasure God, Christ, in your heart.
So don't think that when you praise God while your band plays, that you're getting your worship time in for the week. Because everything in creation was created for Christ, if you interact with something in a way that disagrees with or says nothing about God, you're not worshipping. You're committing idolatry and breaking the first two commandments. Worship is demanded of us all the time. Every last baby moment we possess is God's.
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I haven't blogged in a while... you gotta expect me to dump a heavy one! And the clock's a filthy liar... it's 4:30 AM and I'm just finishing this. -G
I ran across an upsetting book in Barnes and Noble once. On the back cover it read something like this... and keep in mind, it's targeting elderly individuals...
"Has your church taken a turn for the modern? Has your choir been replaced by a new, flashy praise band?" It proceeded to criticize modern church services as generally being silly, irrelevant, and shallow. It disturbed me because although sometimes this may be true, there are a lot of valid churches out there that serve Christ lovingly and passionately. I don't think the writers of this book understood that the "contemporary face" we put on our church services is more than a face. It's a tool. What's our mission? I present the Gospel and develop Christ-centered individuals.
I think the goal of a good church is just that. To present the Gospel. I grew up attending a sleepy Methodist service that talked a lot about parables and how good of a guy Jesus was, and occasionally I was challenged. I can tell you that when I started praying and self-examining in college and maybe late high school, I felt like their services spoke to me. BUT this church did not influence me enough to give me an epiphany and start loving Christ. I credit Campus Crusade with that, and I credit God for making me miserable and creating a drive in me to find a way out through Him. My point is that you need to present the Gospel to win people over. I don't think the point of church is to simply keep the organization's head above the water financially and keep holding on while maintaining tradition. I think the point of church is to, with our blood and tears and sweat, start a revolution in our communities with hearts that love Christ.
Things you need to emphasize if you're going to present the Gospel:
-We are utterly sinful.
-All sin has the effect of earning us death, so all sin is equal in its final effect. In other words, no one is worse or better than you, because we all equally deserve Hell. That's what makes Christ's deed understandably so glorious.
-Sin is not just what we do... it's also the state we're designed in (we normally want anything more than God, so we're all idolaters, from which all sin comes).
-God's grace is more powerful than your sin.
-We cannot earn our salvation. If you try to earn it, you're putting yourself in Christ's place, who bought it for you. Nothing you can do can make you pure like God. By nature, you're not.
-It's not about you. God loves you, but if you make your life about you, you'll idolize yourself and lose sight of the fact that throughout Scripture, God is all about God. It's all about bringing praise back to Him because that's what you should want.
And one more thing. This is ruining the contemporary church and we need to understand this.
Worship is NOT:
a setting
a praise band or music
bowing to a statue
Worship IS:
in any and every situation, you value God's desires first. They become your desires and you hold Him most precious. Therefore you can play basketball to the glory of God by evangelizing to players, drink orange juice to the glory of God by thanking Him you can afford healthy food, or whatever. It's any choice you make to treasure God, Christ, in your heart.
So don't think that when you praise God while your band plays, that you're getting your worship time in for the week. Because everything in creation was created for Christ, if you interact with something in a way that disagrees with or says nothing about God, you're not worshipping. You're committing idolatry and breaking the first two commandments. Worship is demanded of us all the time. Every last baby moment we possess is God's.
-
I haven't blogged in a while... you gotta expect me to dump a heavy one! And the clock's a filthy liar... it's 4:30 AM and I'm just finishing this. -G
I totally agree with what you've highlighted in this post. It's one of my favorites.
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