Filed under: Faith, Friends, Legalism, Modern Church, Music, Worship Music | Tags: Cameron, Christianity, Crowder, Faith, Light, Passion, Tomlin, Worship
I’m sitting here with Cameron (Paul’s son) reminiscing about old Passion music. I love that old Tomlin and Crowder stuff. Worship music has changed a lot over the past few years and that’s great. In fact I believe that we are starting to heal the wound that was created when Christians made a big deal about separating our music from the world’s music. The separation of Christian culture and “Secular” culture is one of the most un-biblical ideas that Amercian Christians have ever came up with. We are be a light. We are to make everything better. We should be on the front lines of community activism, environmentalism, and art/creativity. We have failed and are now making our way to being the kind of light that Jesus asks us to be in scripture.
Ok I’m done ranting. It’s amazing what a little reminiscing can do.
Filed under: Faith, Modern Church, Theology | Tags: Faith, Grace, Teaching, Theology
This morning we had staff meeting. This is where we breakdown everything that happened the previous Sunday and see where we are going in the upcoming week. This morning, we spent the entire morning dealing with the upcoming sermon and it got me pumped up. The series we are in is called BLUEPRINT. the question we are asking is: What is God’s blueprint for our lives look like? However, what we are finding is that our idea of God’s Blueprint is not what we actually find in scripture.
The passage we are dealing with is Matthew 22:34-40 (The Great Commandment) and it is our nature to look at is just as that another “Commandment.” However, the entire essence of Jesus answer is personal relationship. It’s not another rule, it’s a perspective. As we were hashing out these talks, this analagy came to my mind check it out:
If we truly put this into construction terms it would read kind of like this: (Give me grace for a minute.) A foreman (teacher of the law) asked another foreman (Jesus, who they though was a teacher of the law) what is the most important measurement on this blueprint (greatest commandment)? However, the second foreman wasn’t a just a foreman, he was also the architect (Jesus wasn’t just a teacher, but the author of the Law). And so the architect, or designer, said it’s not about what measurement is most important, it’s your perspective. If you change your perspective, then the measurements will take care of themselves.
It’s the classic case of: Grace? or Grace + Law. And for anyone who is struggling with the idea of just Grace for Justification and Grace alone, then I encourage that person to read Galatians….Yeah the whole book….it’s just six chapters…but it is amazing.
What you think?
Filed under: Faith, Guitar, Modern Church, Music, Sunday Summary, Theology, Worship Music | Tags: Faith, Service Elements, Sunday Summary
This past week 7/6/08 was a great Sunday morning.
Thursday the 3rd was our July 3rd event so…the first element of the service was the July 3rd Volunteer video. The band played “God of this City” behind the video and it went off great. No lights on stage at all. It was a great mood setter.
After Paul’s welcome the band kicked into worship:
All Because of Jesus
You Never Let Go
The bottom line was: My devotion to God is founded on WHO HE IS not WHAT HE DOES.
The coolest part of the entire service was after the bumper video we had a video testimony of a lady who had a moment were the bottom line came vividly true in her life, but we only showed the first part of the video prior to the message. She did a great job of painting her life as the life of her dreams. Then Paul jumped into the message and after the tension was built we went into Part II of the video (where she explains about her husband getting cancer and everything in her life turning upside down.
The service became very emotional from that point and Paul just landed the plane. Second service was much harder personally on Paul because the lady who gave the testimony was in service and he was pretty close to her family.
So as Paul landed the plane, the band did a closer “Through the fire” that came off great and ended the service as it should have been ended…proclaiming hope in the Father.
“Through the fire” by the way was our own ROCKED up version of a Crabb Family song. I was worried about it at rehearsal, but by building stops and hits into it, some distorted “answer back” electric, and some steady drums it became a whole new song.
The band was great this week and kudos to Adam McCullen for producing a great service.
Auditions are tonight. Hopefully we get some great stuff.
